Culture

First-generation immigrant adolescents in Canada performed below average in math and science in recent testing indicating that these students may be struggling to succeed in the educational system. These results from a study by Queen's University Faculty of Education PhD candidate Shaljan Areepattamannil are surprising because they contradict findings of other studies.

ATLANTA— As Atlanta officials aim to tackle the city's safety problems this year, some of their toughest criminals to stop maybe young offenders whose desires to commit crimes are being fueled by an anticipation of dying early.

Georgia State University Criminal Justice experts Timothy Brezina, Volkan Topalli and economist Erdal Tekin, have released a unique study that indicates that although young criminals are aware of the risks of violent injury, death or punishment, the possibility of a shorter life span encourages them to focus more on the "here and now."

Public health experts are calling for urgent steps to reduce the number of healthcare professionals who smoke, after a survey of over 800 new nursing students found that more than half were current or former smokers.

The Italian study, published in the January issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing, surveyed 812 students who were just starting their University course. They found that 44% of them were still smoking – twice as many as in the general population – and a further 12% were former smokers.

WASHINGTON -- A new joint report from the National Research Council and the National Academy of Public Administration offers U.S. leaders ways to address the nation's fiscal problems and confront its rapidly growing debt -- a burden that if unchecked will inevitably limit the nation's future wealth and risk a disruptive fiscal crisis that could lead to a severe recession.

The prevalence of adults in the U.S. who are obese is still high, with about one-third of adults obese in 2007-2008, although new data suggest that the rate of increase for obesity in the U.S. in recent decades may be slowing, according to a study appearing in the January 20 issue of JAMA. The study is being published early online because of its public health importance.

Young Swedish men are consuming at least double the recommended amount of salt according to a study carried out by the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg and Sahlgrenska University Hospital.

"It's alarming that young Swedish men are consuming so much salt, and something needs to be done about it. We can really only speculate on the consequences of such a high salt intake later on in life, in the form of cardiovascular diseases and stroke," says Lena Hulthén, Professor in Clinical Nutrition at the Sahlgrenska Academy.

'Ethnicity, Identity and Social Relations in Prison', carried out by Dr. Coretta Philips of the London School of Economics, explored how prisoners' ethnic identities helped them cope with prison life, and whether such identities informed a social pecking order and the formation of gangs. More specifically, it explored the influence of prison practices on prisoner and group identities.

The rate of increase for funding of biomedical research in the U.S. has slowed since 2005, and the level of funding from the National Institutes of Health and industry appears to have decreased by 2 percent in 2008, after adjustment for inflation, according to an article in the January 13 issue of JAMA.

TORONTO, ON – As many as 50 per cent of people bring their work home with them regularly, according to new research out of the University of Toronto that describes the stress associated with work-life balance and the factors that predict it.

Would you pay more for certain products to save the planet? That's the question behind the burgeoning carbon-offset industry — proponents pay more money for carbon-producing activities (such as flying), with the idea that the carbon emissions will be balanced out by funding for alternative energy sources. At the same time, economists and climate scientists agree that a carbon tax would be the most effective means through which the U.S. could lower carbon emissions and pay for alternative energy production.

The death rate from injuries in rural areas of China is higher than in urban areas, according to a new study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Injury Research and Policy. Rural males of all ages were 47 percent more likely to die from injuries than urban males, and the overall rate in rural females was 33 percent higher than in urban females.

Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC (January 12, 2010) Women are more drawn to true crime books than are men, according to research in the inaugural issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science (published by SAGE).

The true crime genre of nonfiction books is based on gruesome topics such as rape and murder. Many people might assume that men, being the more aggressive sex, would be most likely to find such gory topics interesting.

Being obese could lead to a greater risk of developing the most common form of renal cell cancer, according to research in the January issue of the UK-based urology journal BJUI.

US researchers found that obese patients with kidney tumours have 48 per cent higher odds of developing a clear-cell renal cell cancer (RCC) than patients with a body mass index (BMI) of less than 30. And the odds increase by four per cent for every extra BMI point.

British American Tobacco (BAT), the world's second largest tobacco transnational, strategically influenced the European Union's framework for evaluating policy options, leading to the acceptance of an agenda which emphasizes business interests over public health, according to a study published in PLoS Medicine.

MADISON — While much of the promise of stem cells springs from their ability to develop into any cell type in the body, the biological workings that control that maturation process are still largely unknown.

Writing in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week (Jan. 11), scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of California-Irvine present a new model of stem cell regulation.