Culture

The higher incidence of diabetes among African Americans when compared to whites may have more to do with living conditions than genetics, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Rockville, MD — Scientists have ample evidence that individuals use a variety of cues to identify their own kin. People can also detect resemblances in families other than their own. A new study shows that their success in doing so is the same, whether or not those families are the same race as themselves.

(Santa Barbara, California) — New technologies may change our lives for the better, but sometimes they have risks. Communicating those benefits and risks to the public, and developing regulations to deal with them, can be difficult — particularly if there's already public opposition to the technology.

The United States can become more energy efficient and create more "green" jobs by adopting some of the strategies used by the European Union and Australia to rate and disclose the performance of commercial and government-owned buildings, according to a new RAND Corporation study issued today.

Scientists funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have shown that a common biological protein molecule called SHP-2 is crucial for encouraging placenta growth. The research is published today in Endocrinology.

Being seen as either well behaved or naughty at school is never entirely in the hands of the individual child, this study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council shows.

The research demonstrates that being good is not a simple matter. Once some children acquire poor overall reputations among teachers and other school staff, classmates and parents, it becomes difficult for them to be regarded as good. When young children start school they also have to develop interpretive skills to decode and negotiate mixed messages about how to behave.

• A new study has examined the relationship between suicide and number of alcohol outlets.
• Results show that suicides – both completed and attempted – occurred at greater rates in rural community areas with greater bar densities.
• Completed suicide rates were lower among blacks and Hispanics, and higher among low-income, older whites living in rural areas.

• Interaction of gene/gene, gene/environment and environment/environment factors can contribute to alcoholism.
• New research looks at the influence of gene/environment interaction on alcoholism among Mexican Americans.
• Findings show that interaction between education and a polymorphism of the reward gene contribute to severe alcoholism among Mexican Americans.

The Arab world is not the socioeconomic basket case that conventional wisdom holds, says University of California, San Diego economist James Rauch.

An "apples-to-apples" analysis, coauthored by Rauch and published in the current issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, refutes the unfavorable view painted by the United Nations' Arab Human Development Report from 2002 onward and seized on by Western media.

Sixty percent of the causes of unintended incidents in the emergency department that could have compromised patient safety are related to human failures, according to a study published in the open access journal BMC Emergency Medicine.

An analysis of public opinion polls and terrorist activity in 143 pairs of countries has shown for the first time that when people in one country hold negative views toward the leadership and policies of another, terrorist acts are more likely to be carried out.

The Arctic sea ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent for the year, the third-lowest recorded since satellites began measuring sea ice extent in 1979, according to the University of Colorado at Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center.

WASHINGTON, DC---Older Americans have weathered the financial crisis relatively well, although many now expect to work longer than they did just a year ago, according to a University of Michigan study released on Capitol Hill today (Sept. 16).

The study is based on data from 4,412 older Americans collected in April and May of this year in a special Internet survey of respondents of the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative sample of Americans age 51 and older conducted by the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and funded by the National Institute on Aging.

WASHINGTON, DC---Consumer spending will lag rather than lead the recovery from the current recession, according to University of Michigan economist Richard Curtin.

"In the coming years, U.S. consumers will save more and spend less," said Curtin, director of the Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers. "The recovery will be slow and uneven, and it could take a decade or more for consumers to restore their sense of financial security to pre-recession levels."

Wartime leaders have long sought to sway public opinion by "framing" bad news from the frontlines. They present inconvenient facts in an altered format in order to generate support for their policies. A new study from North Carolina State University shows that Bush administration attempts to "frame" casualties from the Iraq War bolstered support for the war effort among certain members of the U.S. public, but also produced a backlash that led to decreased tolerance for additional casualties and war spending among others.