The Global Sanitation Fund's latest Progress Report details how support for nationally-led programs has helped 7 million people in over 20,500 communities become open-defecation free, improved toilets for 4.2 million people and seen eight million people gain access to hand-washing facilities. The governments of Australia, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom contributed.
Culture
The impact of scary TV on children's wellbeing has been overstated, according to University of Sussex psychologists.
While research has shown that a small minority of children can have extreme reactions to a scary programme or film, the researchers found that, overall, children show very little sign of increased anxiety, fear, sadness or sleep problems.
University of Sussex research student, Laura Pearce, and Andy Field, Professor of Child Psychopathology at the University, reviewed all research into the topic carried out over the past 25 years.
According to the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, 22% of Australian men and 29% of women aged 20 to 29 have at least one tattoo.
Office workers should be on their feet for a minimum of 2 hours daily during working hours, recommends the first ever UK guidance designed to curb the health risks of too much cumulative sitting time, and published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
This daily quota should eventually be bumped up to 4 hours a day, breaking up prolonged periods of sitting with the use of sit-stand desks, standing based work, and regular walk-abouts, it says.
A comprehensive study finds organic agriculture is more profitable for farmers than conventional agriculture.
In spite of lower yields, the global study shows that the profit margins for organic agriculture were significantly greater than for conventional agriculture. The results show that there’s room for organic agriculture to expand and, with its environmental benefits, to contribute a larger share in feeding the world sustainably. Organic agriculture currently accounts for only one percent of agriculture globally.
Aging is associated with significant decline in cognitive functions. But does this translate into poorer decision making? Psychologists from the University of Basel and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development report that in simple decision situations, older adults perform just as well as younger adults. However, according to their study published in the academic journal Cognition, aging may affect decision performance in more complex decision situations.
Both men and women are more likely to cheat on their spouses the more economically dependent they are on them, according to a new study.
"You would think that people would not want to 'bite the hand that feeds them' so to speak, but that is not what my research shows," said study author Christin L. Munsch, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut. "Instead, the findings indicate people like feeling relatively equal in their relationships. People don't like to feel dependent on another person."
One of the main health targets proposed by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is to reduce by one-third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases such as cancer, stroke and dementia. The goals for 2016-2030 define premature mortality as deaths occurring among people aged 69 years old or younger.
Some decisions arouse far more anxiety than others. Among the most anxiety-provoking are those that involve options with both positive and negative elements, such choosing to take a higher-paying job in a city far from family and friends, versus choosing to stay put with less pay.MIT researchers have now identified a neural circuit that appears to underlie decision-making in this type of situation, which is known as approach-avoidance conflict.
A child’s ability to succeed academically is one of the strongest determinants of his or her future quality of life. In particular, it has been directly linked to overall longevity and several other critical health outcomes. Ashaunta Anderson, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Center for Healthy Communities in the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine, and a team of researchers have described the types of racial socialization in early childhood that may increase a child’s ability to flourish in school and ultimately lead a healthier life.
ESF has just published a report on a pilot study of the career paths of post-doctorates and doctorate alumni from five research funding and research performing organisations: AXA Research Fund (AXA RF), France, Fonds National de la Recherche (FNR), Luxembourg, Goethe Graduate Academy at the Goethe University Frankfurt (GRADE), Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland and TDR, the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, a co-sponsored programme of UNICEF, UNDP, the World Bank and WHO.
A new cross-cultural study of social network site users in Japan (Facebook and Mixi) and the US (Facebook), shows that Japanese users are more concerned about Internet privacy than Americans, and suggests that Americans’ lower sense of concern is due to a higher level of general trust in strangers.
That is, Americans are less likely to believe a stranger would take advantage of their private information, should it be leaked online.
Gaining that required qualification to put on your CV is what counts to win a job in today’s “graduate economy”. On current trends, perhaps everyone will have a degree by the end of this century. Already in Finland, a remarkable 80% of young people are now going to university.
Teenage girls like and feel more similar to women in appearance-focused jobs such as models and actresses, though they find female CEOs and military pilots to be better role models, according to a new study by researchers at Oregon State University.
For the study, 100 girls and 76 boys ages 14 to 18 were shown photographs of model Heidi Klum, actress Jennifer Aniston, CEO Carly Fiorina and military pilot Sarah Deal Burrow. Klum and Aniston represented the appearance-focused careers and Fiorina and Deal Burrow represented the non-appearance focused careers.
Earlier this year, police revealed that at least 22 young women and girls as young as 15 have traveled to join Isis in Syria in the last 12 months. Joining a terrorist organization is all the rage among young people seeking adventure, but they won't get what they hope. For that reason, a Birmingham City University criminologist is urging young muslim “thrillseekers" to ignore the escapist vision offered by Islamic State.