Culture

Young people from 10 countries around the world have shared their views on housework and abortion issues in a new study from the University of Adelaide, Australia.

The research, conducted by Professor Chilla Bulbeck in the University's Discipline of Gender, Work and Social Inquiry, looked at the attitudes of young men and women to a number of gender equality issues.

Small surveys were conducted at high schools and universities in the United States, Canada, Australia, Korea, China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, India and Indonesia.

Long-distance running is widely seen as one of the great physical challenges a human can undertake and as the 2008 Summer Olympics commence in Beijing on August 8, many eager sports fans will await with baited breath the last event of the Games – the men's marathon, held on August 24. For these armchair fans, how marathon runners can complete the gruelling, 42.195 km event – physically and mentally – may seem like a great mystery.

The western Amazon, home to the most biodiverse and intact rainforest left on Earth, may soon be covered with oil rigs and pipelines.

According to a new study, over 180 oil and gas "blocks" – areas zoned for exploration and development – now cover the megadiverse western Amazon, which includes Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and western Brazil. These oil and gas blocks stretch over 688,000 km2 (170 million acres), a vast area, nearly the size of Texas. The study appears in the August 13 edition of the open-access journal PLoS ONE.

Burmese Pythons – one of the largest snakes in the world – may have chosen Florida as a vacation destination, but are unlikely to expand further, according to a study released August 13 by researchers at the City University of New York (CUNY), published in the online, open access journal PLoS ONE. Although the United States Geological Survey (USGS) earlier this year released 'climate maps' indicating that the pythons could potentially inhabit up to thirty two states in the continental U.S., new research indicates that the snakes are unlikely to expand out of south Florida.

Since their introduction into land-based birds in 1988, H9N2 avian influenza A viruses have caused multiple human infections and become endemic in domestic poultry in Eurasia. This particular influenza subtype has been evolving and acquiring characteristics that raise concerns that it may become more transmissible among humans. Mechanisms that allow infection and subsequent human-to-human transmission of avian influenza viruses are not well understood.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers have discovered an unusual molecule that is essential to the atmosphere's ability to break down pollutants, especially the compounds that cause acid rain.

It's the unusual chemistry facilitated by this molecule, however, that will attract the most attention from scientists.

Marsha Lester, the University of Pennsylvania's Edmund J. Kahn Distinguished Professor, and Joseph Francisco, William E. Moore Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University, found the molecule, which had puzzled and eluded scientists for more than 40 years.

Younger service members and Reserve and National Guard combat personnel returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are at increased risk of new-onset heavy drinking, binge drinking and other alcohol-related problems, according to a study in the August 13 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on violence and human rights.

The first study to compare the performance of different types of green roofs has been completed by The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at The University of Texas at Austin and suggests that buyers shouldn't assume these roofs are created equal.

In the waters surrounding Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the warty comb jelly, Mnemiopsis ledyi, lives out its days, bumping against eel grass and collecting small crustaceans with its sticky tentacles. The delicate creature, which resembles a small jellyfish without the stinger, is just another member of the food web here on the Western Atlantic coast.

CLEVELAND--Spouses of husbands and wives with dementia pay an emotional toll as they care for their ailing spouse. This has prompted a call for new interventions and strategies to assist caregivers in coping with the demands of this difficult time, according to a study from Case Western Reserve University's Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences.

AIDS experts at Johns Hopkins say they have compelling evidence that some people with HIV who for years and even decades show extremely low levels of the virus in their blood never progress to full-blown AIDS and remain symptom free even without treatment, probably do so because of the strength of their immune systems, not any defects in the strain of HIV that infected them in the first place.

As the grouse shooting season gets under way, two scientists involved in high-profile studies of hen harriers and red grouse at Langholm Moor in Scotland have called for field trials of a "ceiling" on harrier numbers in an attempt to end the long running conflict between conservationists and grouse managers.

If you're a fan of habañero salsa or like to order Thai food spiced to five stars, you owe a lot to bugs, both the crawling kind and ones you can see only with a microscope. New research shows they are the ones responsible for the heat in chili peppers.

The spiciness is a defense mechanism that some peppers develop to suppress a microbial fungus that invades through punctures made in the outer skin by insects. The fungus, from a large genus called Fusarium, destroys the plant's seeds before they can be eaten by birds and widely distributed.

CHAPEL HILL – A new report on severe sporting injuries among high school and college athletes shows cheerleading appears to account for a larger proportion of all such injuries than previously thought.

The latest annual report from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill-based National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research shows high school cheerleading accounted for 65.1 percent of all catastrophic sports injuries among high school females over the past 25 years.

From the 10 to 15 August, the casino on the Westend Campus will become the worldwide centre for diamond researchers from industry and academia. During this time, the mineralogists from the GeoZentrum of the Goethe University will host the 9th International Kimberlite Conference, which is the most important meeting related to this unique gemstone. Kimberlite Conferences have been held in a 4‐5 year cycle for more than 30 years, usually in a diamond‐producing country.