Culture

The environmental movement is making a difference - nudging greenhouse gas emissions down in states with strong green voices, according to a Michigan State University (MSU) study.

Social scientist Thomas Dietz and Kenneth Frank, MSU Foundation professor of sociometrics, have teamed up to find a way to tell if a state jumping on the environmental bandwagon can mitigate other human factors - population growth and economic affluence - known to hurt the environment.

Using Twitter and Google search trend data in the wake of the very limited U.S. Ebola outbreak of October 2014, a team of researchers from Arizona State University, Purdue University and Oregon State University have found that news media is extraordinarily effective in creating public panic.

Because only five people were ultimately infected yet Ebola dominated the U.S. media in the weeks after the first imported case, the researchers set out to determine mass media's impact on people's behavior on social media.

It's been around for decades and it's probably in your diet soda - for a little while longer anyway. PepsiCo announced recently it was removing the artificial sweetener aspartame from its Diet Pepsi products in the U.S. starting in August.

The company cited consumer concerns about the chemical's safety.

So this week, Reactions answers the question, "Is aspartame safe?"

Mortality from coronary heart disease declined in Sweden from 1986 to 2002. The improvement was due mainly to a reduction in risk factors among the healthy population (primary prevention) and, to a lesser extent, treatment of people who already had developed heart disease (secondary prevention). A study conducted at Sahlgrenska Academy explored the reasons for the trend.

Deaths from coronary heart disease fell by 53% among men and 52% among women in 1986-2002. The improvement was evident among all age groups.

Simply asking the question, "Do you want more pain medication?" resulted in satisfactory pain control in 99 percent of emergency department patients participating in a study. The study of a new evidence-based protocol to treat acute, severe pain in emergency department patients was published online yesterday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Efficacy of an Acute Pain Titration Protocol Driven by Patient Response to a Simply Query: 'Do You Want More Pain Medication?'").

Even before last week’s publication of Wednesday Martin’s semi-autobiographical, semi-anthropological book Primates of Park Avenue much had been made of her exposé of the supposedly widespread practice of “wife bonuses” – that is, rich, male executives, in New York’s Upper East Side, paying their wives set amounts for homemaking.

Orange is the New Black is about to return for a third season. If you haven’t watched it yet, it’s time to sit up and take note: the Netflix program looks set to become a classic of feminist television.

Australia has been hugely successful in reducing the number of people who smoke. Today, 12.8% of people over age 14 smoke on a daily basis, which is nearly half the daily smoking rate in 1991 (24.3%).

African-American adults -- particularly women -- are much more likely to know or be related to someone behind bars than European-Americans, according to the first national estimates of Americans' ties to prisoners.

The research, led by Hedwig Lee, University of Washington associate professor of sociology, reveals the racial inequality wrought by the U.S. prison boom, with potentially harmful consequences to families and communities left lacking social supports for raising children and managing households.

The increasing use of video games is often blamed for children's lack of interest in physical activity, but a study by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, recently published in the Games for Health Journal suggests that active video games may actually be a source of moderate or intense physical activity in children five to eight years old.

When a new type of drug or therapy is discovered, double-blind randomized controlled trials (DBRCTs) are the gold standard for evaluating them. These trials, which have been used for years, were designed to determine the true efficacy of a treatment free from patient or doctor bias, but they do not factor in the effects that patient behaviors, such as diet and lifestyle choices, can have on the tested treatment.

The recent case of the retraction of an article on the ability of openly gay canvassers to shift voters' views toward support for same-sex marriage serves in many ways as a cautionary tale both for researchers and the public.

On June 7th, the English actor Sir Christopher Lee was pronounced dead, after being admitted to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for respiratory problems and heart failure. He was 93.

Peer reviews in science, in which independent scientists who are experts on the subject assess the paper, is the current strategy for ensuring quality and control in scientific research and, therefore, it is essential for the academic world. However, a study led by the Portuguese, Catarina Ferreira, uncovers why this system frequently receives harsh criticism about its effectiveness and transparency, and she proposes alternatives to improve it.

While the world’s attention focuses on the economic crisis in Greece, another financial debacle looms closer to home for the United States.

Puerto Rico is now being called “the next financial catastrophe,” and the territory’s outstanding debt is being compared to that of Greece.