Culture

The so-called "silver spoon" effect -- in which wealth is passeddown from one generation to another -- is well established in someof the world's most ancient economies, according to an internationalstudy coordinated by a UC Davis anthropologist.

The study, to be reported in the Oct. 30 issue of Science, expandseconomists' conventional focus on material riches, and looks atvarious kinds of wealth, such as hunting success, food sharingpartners, and kinship networks.

CORAL GABLES, FL (October 29 2009)—One of the joys of riding a motorcycle is the freedom that comes with that form of travel. However the absence of physical barriers to protect riders puts motorcyclists at a higher risk of injury than other motorists. Motorcycle fatalities have been on the rise for many years, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 29 – A University of Pittsburgh study sheds new light on the relationship between race, body weight and sexual behavior among adolescent girls. The results suggest that a girl's ethnicity and her actual weight or perception of her weight may play a role in her participation in risky sexual behaviors. The study results are published in the November issue of Pediatrics, now available online.

Scientists at LSTM have developed a tool to support the development of appropriate age-based dosing regimens for malaria drugs. Weight-based dosing is challenging in many malaria endemic countries because access to formal health services is limited, functioning scales may be scarce and many treatments are given at home using antimalarials bought from shops and street vendors. In these settings, drug doses are calculated using a patient's age to estimate their body weight.

Lack of health insurance might have led or contributed to nearly 17,000 deaths among hospitalized children in the United States in the span of less than two decades, according to research led by the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

According to the Hopkins researchers, the study, to be published Oct. 30 in the Journal of Public Health, is one of the largest ever to look at the impact of insurance on the number of preventable deaths and the potential for saved lives among sick children in the United States.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - People who watch forensic and crime dramas on TV are more likely than non-viewers to have a distorted perception of America's criminal justice system, according to new research from Purdue University.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The underlying similarities between teaching, research and music can be a powerful metaphor for education and qualitative inquiry, according to a University of Illinois professor of education.

Liora Bresler, a professor of curriculum and instruction in the U. of I. College of Education, says that the inherently performative and improvisatory aspects of teaching, along with the temporal, polyphonic aspects of scholarly research, compares favorably with musicianship.

Scientists in Switzerland are reporting results of one of the first studies on the release of silver nanoparticles from laundering those anti-odor, anti-bacterial socks now on the market. Their findings, scheduled for the Nov. 1 issue of ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology, may suggest ways that manufacturers and consumers can minimize the release of these particles to the environment, where they could harm fish and other wildlife.

DALLAS – Oct. 28, 2009 – Less pain during injections for wrinkle-fighting facial fillers. Less swelling afterward. Less time in the office waiting for anesthesia to take effect.

"At first we thought that collaborative filtering would just spot similar artists: if you like Daft Punk, it might recommend any song by Justice. However, we found that acoustic similarities come through in Genius playlists. Genius seems to find correspondences between songs that go beyond what you get by just matching artists.

WASHINGTON – Research management experts from across federal science agencies will gather in Washington, D.C., Oct. 28-29, to discuss approaches for identifying research priorities, exploring research performance management, and assessing the impact of completed research. The goal of the meeting is to develop a collaborative framework to ensure future research and development dollars are spent wisely and in a coordinated manner.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Cyber criminals are using fake messages claiming to be from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to deliver a virus capable of stealing unsuspecting victims' bank passwords and other sensitive personal information, says Gary Warner, the director of research in computer forensics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

Warner says the spam is being delivered with one of two subject lines:

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today released a user-friendly document to help risk assessors understand how children are exposed to pollution.

The document, titled "Highlights of the Child-Specific Exposure Factors Handbook," serves as a quick-reference guide to the more comprehensive "Child-Specific Exposure Factors Handbook," published by EPA in 2008. It will serve as an additional resource for those who work on children's health issues, which the agency has been highlighting during Children's Health Month.

Legal counsel is a matter of life and death in Houston, but it is not necessarily tied to a defendant's socioeconomic status, according to new research by Scott Phillips, associate professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver (DU).

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 27, 2009 – A diverse group of health care and consumer organizations released five policy recommendations this week that are designed to promote better medication adherence and improved health outcomes for patients.