Despite an upward curve for 30 years, crime rates suddenly began to drop in the 1990s. More police, said the right. Abortions by mothers who would have been poor parents and raised criminals, said the left. Basically, no one had an answer but everyone was taking some credit.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Local ordinances in Appalachian states with weak statewide smoking regulations do not offer most residents adequate protection against second-hand smoke, according to a new study.
Researchers examined smoking-related ordinances at the community level in six Appalachian states. Based on their analysis, they said that efforts should be focused on enacting strong statewide clean indoor air laws rather than relying on local ordinances to make public places smoke-free in some of these states.
WASHINGTON (13 May 2010) -- Five engineering breakthroughs, from software for virtual surgery to an energy saving device that detects drafts, were cited today by IEEE-USA, the U.S. career and public policy unit of the IEEE, the world's largest professional association for the advancement of technology.
The five breakthroughs, as included in television news reports recently distributed to almost 200 local U.S. TV stations, are:
PHILADELPHIA –- Two University of Pennsylvania mathematicians have found solutions to a 140-year-old, 7-dimensional equation that were not known to exist for more than a century despite its widespread use in modeling the behavior of gases.
Falling down is hazardous to a senior citizen's health, yet fewer than half of all seniors see a doctor after a fall. And those who don't seek medical attention are far less likely to engage in any of the six widely recommended activities — such as a review of their medications or getting a cane or walker — that might prevent repeated falls, according to a new policy brief from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
ROCHESTER, Minn. — A new study led by researchers from Mayo Clinic in collaboration with six other U.S. institutions has found that patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma who smoked, consumed alcohol or were obese before their cancer diagnosis had poorer overall survival, compared to patients who did not have these risk factors. This association held after accounting for clinical and demographic factors, and also when considering only deaths due to this kind of lymphoma.
Male physical competition, not attraction, was central in winning mates among human ancestors, according to a Penn State anthropologist.
"There is sexual competition in many species, including humans," said David A. Puts, assistant professor of biological anthropology.
A first-of-its-kind study examining the long-term economic consequences of childhood psychological disorders finds the conditions diminish people's ability to work and earn as adults, costing $2.1 trillion over the lifetimes of all affected Americans.
People who suffer from childhood conditions such as depression and substance abuse are less likely to be married, attain less education and see their income reduced by about 20 percent over their lifetimes, according to findings published online by the journal Social Science & Medicine.
"Placing students on probation increases the probability that they will drop out," Lindo said. "For those students who return to school, their GPA goes up by about 0.2 grade points." The real impact, he added, is seen in what happens to young men.
For men, academic probation doubles the likelihood that they will drop out of school -- from a 3 percent probability to a 6 percent probability, Lindo said.
When pollsters ask Americans to name the most important problem facing the country, the environment is rarely mentioned. But this time-honored polling question masks the public's true concern about environmental issues, according to Stanford University researchers.
There once was a time conservationists believed selective methods for fishing were best for the ecosystem. Not so. A less selective approach to commercial fishing is needed to ensure the ongoing productivity of marine ecosystems and to maintain biodiversity, according to a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
The paper, 'Ecosystem-based fisheries management requires a change to the selective fishing philosophy', was written by a team of authors led by Shijie Zhou of the CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – In the animal kingdom, sexual signals often are manifested as displays of bright coloration or, in the case of crickets, as loud song.
Adult male crickets produce loud song to attract females, but the song, which permeates the environment, can be overheard also by unintended receivers - such as young males unable to produce song due to a mutation they carry.
As part of its most comprehensive assessment to date, the National Research Council – the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering – will release three new reports examining how the nation can combat the effects of global warming. One focuses on the science that supports human-induced climate change, and the others review options for limiting the magnitude of and adapting to the impacts of global warming. The reports are part of a congressionally requested suite of studies known as America's Climate Choices.
