Culture

Rape trial juries need better guidance in the courtroom — and a better understanding of rape victims — to help them reach their verdict.

Professor Vanessa Munro of The University of Nottingham and Dr Louise Ellison of the University of Leeds found jurors have a poor understanding of the various ways in which women might react when raped, the levels and types of injuries they might sustain and the different behaviours they might display in the witness box.

"We were astounded when our customer, Markus Wild, approached us and we were not at all certain whether mathematics could offer a solution for the very complex problem of volume optimization of gemstones," says Dr. Anton Winterfeld from the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM. Jointly with his colleague Dr. Peter Klein, he will receive one of the 2009 Joseph von Fraunhofer prizes for the development of GemOpt, a new industrial process for the volume-optimized utilization of colored gemstones.

Over the years, research has shown that Latino youth face numerous risk factors when integrating into American culture, including increased rates of alcohol and substance use and higher rates of dropping out of school.

But a new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows adolescents who actively embrace their native culture – and whose parents become more involved in U.S. culture – stand a greater chance of avoiding these risks and developing healthier behaviors overall.

Investigators at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Oakland, California found a way to obtain large numbers of hematopoietic stem cell from human term placenta. The results, which appear in the July 2009 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine, describe detailed report on quantification, characterization, engraftment capacity, and most importantly, practical way to obtain hematopoietic stem cells from placenta in numbers that are several-fold higher than could be obtained from cord blood.

June 24, 2009 – Despite recent declines in cigarette use in the U.S., nicotine dependence has remained steady among adults and has actually increased among some groups. The finding by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health suggests that public health initiatives have been far more successful in preventing Americans from taking up smoking than in persuading hard-core smokers to stop. The study is available online in the American Journal of Public Health and will be published in the August 2009 issue.

In December 2007 a team of experts, led by The University of Nottingham, unveiled an extraordinary set of high-resolution images that gave an insight into the plan of the Roman town of Venta Icenorum at Caistor St Edmund in Norfolk.

The new research demonstrated that Caistor is a site of international importance — and tomorrow there will be an event to showcase the work and to clarify some of the mysteries of this buried roman town and highlight the impact of the research in developing Caistor as a cultural resource for Norfolk.

Differences in growth factor (GF) signaling may cause the poor prognosis in some breast cancer cases. A new study, published in the open access journal BMC Medical Genomics, suggests that some estrogen receptor-positive breast cancers respond poorly to tamoxifen because of increased GF signaling.

Young adults who are overweight or obese have an increased risk of pancreatic cancer, and being obese at an older age is associated with a lower overall survival rate for patients with pancreatic cancer, according to a study in the June 24 issue of JAMA.

BOULDER--Close to 9 out of 10 adult Americans obtain weather forecasts regularly, and they do so more than three times each day on average, a new nationwide survey by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has found. The value Americans place on these forecasts appears to be far more than the nation spends on public and private weather services.

Close to nine out of 10 adult Americans obtain weather forecasts an average of more than three times each day, a new nationwide survey by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., has found.

Bielefeld, Germany—June 23, 2009—Children who live in Afghanistan are particularly affected every day by a multitude of war time stressors which increase the likelihood of developing PTSD: trauma, child labor, and family and military violence. On a daily basis they are first-hand witnesses to the bombings, abuse, and the general upheaval of their home life and society as a result of war, including the effects of long-term poverty and familial turmoil.

TORONTO, Ont., June 23, 2009 — While Ontario women live longer than men, a majority are more likely to suffer from disability and chronic conditions, according to a new women's health study by St. Michael's Hospital researcher Dr. Arlene Bierman. What's more, low-income women have more chronic conditions, greater disability and a shorter life expectancy than women in high-income groups.

Two new reports examining climate change adaptation and policy making across Europe will be launched today in Brussels in the presence of Peter Gammeltoft, Head of Unit 'Protection of Water & Marine Environment' at the European Commission. The preliminary conclusions of the research were used in the European Commission's White Paper on climate change, published in April 2009.