Culture

Just in time for Discovery Channel's Shark Week (don't get eaten, even in a PR stunt), a new paper, "Seasonal cycles and long-term trends in abundance and species composition of sharks associated with cage diving ecotourism activities in Hawai'i,", comes to their rescue.

Teenagers yearn to fit in and be accepted by their friends. A new study suggests that girls and boys think differently about being judged by their peers as they move through adolescence.

The study, by researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Georgia State University, appears in the July/August 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.

McDonald's seems recession-proof, its profitability apparently untouched by the newest economic crisis to hit America. Though the average family may not be able to eat out in style, they can afford a Dollar Menu double cheeseburger - or four.

Young, American-raised Asian and Pacific Islanders (API), who are in the sexual minority, face psychological and social stresses in dealing with their families' values and ancestral cultures that significantly impact the development of their ethnic and sexual identities.

API teens and young adults identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender face a different set of challenges than their western or Caucasian peers. These challenges often lead to rejection by their families who emigrated to the U.S. and a stigmatization by the larger Asian community.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] ‹ Brazil's nearly two-decade effort totreat people living with HIV and AIDS shows that developing countries cansuccessfully combat the epidemic. Inexpensive generic medicines are a largepart of the solution, say researchers from Brown University and the HarvardSchool of Public Health.

Brazil did this, researchers said, largely by pursuing controversialpolicies that prompted pharmaceutical companies with exclusive drugs tolower their prices dramatically and generic companies to develop lower-costalternatives for use in emerging markets.

For people without a prior conviction for a hands-on sex offense, the consumption of child pornography alone does not, in itself, represent the risk factors for committing such an offense. Researchers writing in BMC Psychiatry studied 231 men convicted of consuming child pornography in 2002 and found that only 1% had gone on be convicted of committing a hands-on sex offense in the following six years.

Convictions not being instances, of course, nor did the study determine how many child abusers did not look at child pornography at all.

The American College of Physicians (ACP) joined with two other physician groups to offer strong support for the Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) provisions included in the Tri-Committee health reform bill about to be considered in the House. The Tri-Committee, which unveiled its proposed legislation on June 19, is made up of the House Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Education and Labor Committees.