Culture

'Taking children seriously'

Small children are capable of engaging in issues concerning sustainable development.Their interests and rights must be better safeguarded in rules and policy decisions that concern the education of the youngest groups of children within the EU.

Swedes drink less and less alcohol while at the same time the Swedish Alcohol Retail Monopoly's salesare rising and statistics from Statistics Sweden show that alcohol consumption is on the increase. Thishas been the trend for a long period of time. Statistics from the Centre for Social Research on Alcoholand Drugs, SoRAD, show that alcohol consumption fell continuously in the period from 2004 to 2009,whereas the Swedish Alcohol Retail Monopoly's sales rose by 22% over the same period.

An estimated 6.5 percent of Americans age 40 and older have the eye disease age-related macular degeneration, a lower rate than was reported 15 years ago, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

It is well known that pain is a highly subjective experience. We each have a pain threshold, but this can vary depending on distractions and mood. A paper in the International Journal of Behavioural and Healthcare Research offers a cautionary note on measuring perceived pain in research.

Persistence paid off for a University of Alberta paleontology researcher, who after months of pondering the origins of a fossilized jaw bone, finally identified it as a new species of pterosaur, a flying reptile that lived 70 million years ago.

Victoria Arbour says she was stumped when the small piece of jaw bone was first pulled out of of a fossil storage cabinet in the U of A's paleontology department.

"It could have been from a dinosaur, a fish or a marine reptile," said Arbour. "

Researchers at the University of Warwick's Centre for Fusion Space and Astrophysics and the UK Atomic Energy Authority's Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, may have found a way to channel the flux and fury of a nuclear fusion plasma into a means to help sustain the electric current needed to contain that very same fusion plasma.

The researchers used large scale computer simulations to confirm a longstanding prediction by US researchers that high energy alpha particles born in fusion reactions will be key to generating fusion power in the next planned generation of tokamaks.

A paper describing a dramatic change during the 20th century in England and Wales in the association between social class and mortality from liver cirrhosis features in Alcohol and Alcoholism. While deaths from cirrhosis were more common among higher social classes in the early part of the century, the pattern changed so that deaths from cirrhosis were much more common among the lower social classes by the end of the century. Data on male cirrhosis mortality by social class were obtained from the Registrar General's Decennial Supplements for the years 1921�.

January 6, 2010 -- Nearly 10 years after the greatest human-made disaster in U.S. history-- the destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers -- there has been little research documenting the attacks' consequences among those most directly affected -- the survivors who escaped the World Trade Center towers.

Despite U.S. consumers' threats of protests in response to the redesigned Starbucks logo unveiled yesterday, the new look may be a smart move in the long run as the coffee company expands into Asian markets, according to a Rice University researcher who has studied consumer reaction to logos.

When interviewed by the BBC, the now retired BP boss Tony Hayward admitted to his company's insufficient response to the Deepwater Horizon rig accident in the Gulf of Mexico. Could the company have been better prepared for what turned out to be one of the biggest oil disasters in history?

A pesky bacterial slime reveals its survival secrets

Cambridge, Mass., January 7, 2011 – By rethinking what happens on the surface of things, engineers at Harvard University have discovered that Bacillus subtilis biofilm colonies exhibit an unmatched ability to repel a wide range of liquids—and even vapors.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — January 6, 2011 — Pharmaceutical companies and generic drug manufacturers have long been at odds over regulations about "data exclusivity," the period of time before generic manufacturers can make use of valuable clinical trial data.