All African Pygmies, inhabiting a large territory extending west-to-east along Central Africa, descend from a unique population who lived around 20,000 years ago, according to an international study led by researchers at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. The research, published April 10 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics, concludes that the ancestors of present-day African Pygmies and farmers separated ~60,000 years ago.
Culture
DURHAM, N.C. -- Since Congress lifted a moratorium on offshore drilling last year, federal lawmakers have grappled with the issue of how best to regulate U.S. ocean waters to allow oil, wave and wind energy development, while sustainably managing critical fisheries and marine animal habitats.
A new policy paper, published April 10 in Science by a team of Duke University experts, argues that establishing a public trust doctrine for federal waters could be an effective and ethical solution to this and similar conflicts.
French and Chinese blue glass, Dutch layered glass, Baltic amber: roughly 70,000 beads manufactured all over the world have been excavated at one of the Spanish empire's remotest outposts, the Santa Catalina de Guale Mission. The beads were found as part of an extensive, ongoing research project led by a team of scientists from the American Museum of Natural History on St. Catherines Island off the coast of Georgia.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A two-decade surge of legalized gambling is chipping away at U.S. security and military readiness, not just the bank accounts of bettors, a comprehensive new collection of research on the hazards of gambling warns.
Casinos drain money from consumer products and services, weakening the economic engine that ultimately drives defense spending, according to the latest volume in the three-part United States International Gambling Report Series.
Public middle-grades schools placed under private management in 2002 as part of a state-run overhaul of the Philadelphia School District did not keep pace with the rest of the city's public schools, according to a study published in the American Journal of Education.
The study, which tracked schools through 2006, found that test scores had improved in the privatized schools, but scores in the rest of the city's public schools improved at a much faster rate, leaving the privatized schools in the dust.
LAWRENCE, Kansas — Three professors at the University of Kansas have found that a one-time tax break allowed multinational corporations to receive a 22,000 percent average return on lobbying expenditures.
The study was conducted by Raquel Meyer Alexander, assistant professor of accounting; Stephen Mazza, associate dean of the School of Law; and Susan Scholz, associate professor of accounting and Harper Faculty Fellow. Mazza recently presented their findings at the Critical Tax Theory Conference, sponsored by the Indiana University Maurer School of Law in Bloomington.
Session: Advances in science, engineering, public policy and hazard mitigation as a result of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.Location: DeAnza Ballroom 1, Thursday, April 9, 2009, 1:30 p.m.
The Loma Prieta earthquake transformed the earthquake sciences and engineering and remains a major focus of study, some twenty years later. The 17 October 1989 magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake severely shook the San Francisco and Monterey Bay regions and initiated major changes in earthquake science and engineering, disaster response and public policy well beyond California.
HOUSTON – (April 8, 2009) – Middle school youth are engaging in sexual intercourse as early as age 12, according to a study by researchers at The University of Texas School of Public Health.
Results from this study are published in the April issue of Journal of School Health.
Christine Markham, Ph.D., assistant professor of behavioral science at the UT School of Public Health, and colleagues examined sexual risk behaviors among middle school students in a large southeastern U.S. urban public school district.
DENVER – What married couples have suspected for years is now proven by researchers at the University of Denver (DU) and Texas A&M – children can add problems and stress to a marriage. According to an eight-year study of 218 couples, ninety percent of the couples experienced a decrease in marital satisfaction once the first child was born.
They do not go to parks over the weekend or to the beach in summer. They do not receive gifts under the Christmas tree. They only see the sun behind the bars. Until before 2006 (the year the parliament granted a major pardon which decreased the number of prisoners), children up to three years of age living with their mothers in prison were around one hundred. Italian law states that, in order to avoid the trauma of mother-child separation, mothers sentenced to prison or awaiting trial can bring with them their children in specific nest areas of the jail.
COLUMBIA, Mo. –Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Journalism recently completed a comprehensive comparison of citizen journalism sites (news sites and blogs) and traditional media Web sites. They found that despite ongoing reports of financial troubles and cutbacks, legacy media are more comprehensive and more technologically advanced than citizen media and bloggers.
Tutoring children in and after school isn't new, but how much does it really help in critical areas like reading? Rigorous new research from Washington University in St. Louis shows significant gains from a national service program that trains experienced Americans to help low-income children one-on-one in urban public schools.
Sacramento, CA – April 8, 2009 – A new study published in the journal Contemporary Economic Policy assesses the impact of state attributes on the likelihood that a state adopts policies to limit youth access to tobacco. Across nine different measures of youth access restrictions, results find key political, economic, and demographic factors influence the likelihood that such measures are adopted.
Los Angeles, CA—April 8, 2009—When making investments, investors look for start-ups that have a strong business plan and a strong management team. A new study in The Journal of Finance reveals that while strong management is important, ultimately a strong business idea matters most to investors.
Falls Church, VA –-April 8, 2009—The deployment of military personnel to active war zones, which involves issues of separation, time away from home, and eventual reunion, increases the vulnerability of their families, The heavy reliance on National Guard and Reservists and the downsizing of traditional installations means that military families are increasingly likely to live in local communities rather than on military installations. This new context of military service ushers in new challenges for providing support to military families.