Culture

The moment is ripe to join thousands of other citizen scientists this spring in observing when the leaves come out and flowers bloom, when insects emerge, and when birds start migrating.

By observing and reporting these plant and animal life cycle events, you can help determine how they are influenced by long-term variations in climate.

For example, through citizen scientist observations, researchers can see that tree swallows now nest on average 9 days earlier than they did in 1959. Frogs in New York are calling 10-13 days earlier than in the beginning of the 1900s.

An international research team has sequenced the Neandertal genome, using pill-sized samples of bone powder from three Neandertal bones found in a cave in Croatia. The results appear in the 7 May issue of Science.

ST. LOUIS – A residential summer weight-loss camp markedly improved obese children's health, a study in the April edition of Pediatrics reports. A Saint Louis University physician found the camp improved children's weight, body mass index (BMI), physical fitness and blood pressure.

Nationwide, black women are twice as likely to be obese as white women - but that doesn't tell the whole story (unless you have an agenda)unless it includes other factors.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – When it comes to talking to parents about most dating issues, teen girls tend to disclose more than boys, and both sexes generally prefer to talk to their mothers.

However, a new study found that girls and boys are equally close-mouthed about issues involving sex and what they do with their dates while unsupervised. And in this case, teens were no more eager to talk to their mothers than they were their fathers.

Boston, Mass. – As H1N1 began to emerge in April 2009, HealthMap – an automated online disease tracking and mapping tool created by researchers in the Informatics Program at Children's Hospital Boston – was already collecting information about the virus and plotting that information on a map of the globe, creating a freely available, real-time, digestible display of the outbreak.

GRAND RAPIDS, MICH., May 6, 2010 – Americans who fall short in meeting their daily fruit and vegetable intakes based on government guidelines are also likely to fall short in common bone-building nutrients like calcium and vitamin D, according to a newly released report by the Nutrilite Health Institute called America's Phytonutrient Report: Bone Health by Color.

Husbands or wives who care for spouses with dementia are six times more likely to develop the memory-impairing condition than those whose spouses don't have it, according to results of a 12-year study led by Johns Hopkins, Utah State University, and Duke University. The increased risk that the researchers saw among caregivers was on par with the power of a gene variant known to increase susceptibility to Alzheimer's disease, they report in the May Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

A recent study by the Lab for Social Computing at Rochester Institute of Technology indicates that the use of social media in classroom settings has little effect on building connections or social capital among students.

Increasing the amount of vegetables in the first course of preschool lunch could be a smart way to get children to eat more vegetables, according to Penn State nutrition researchers.

"We have shown that you can use portion size strategically to encourage children and adults to eat more of the foods that are high in nutrients but low in calories," said Barbara J. Rolls, Helen A. Guthrie Chair of Nutritional Sciences.

New budget allocation models developed at Northwestern University suggest that New York City and Chicago appear underfunded for protection against terrorist threats while Los Angeles appears overfunded.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study suggests that it may not help older men and women with sexual problems to talk to a doctor, but men who talk to their partner report greater happiness – and those who talked with friends felt less depressed.

The research, to be published in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, shows that the way men and women deal with sexual health and stress in their later years varies greatly and that there is not one solution that can help ease unhappiness caused by sexual problems.

Common sense suggests that workers without unemployment insurance will often grab the first job that comes their way, even if the new job is low-paying or not a good career match.

Now, a North Carolina State University study suggests that this intuition is true: out-of-work agricultural laborers from small farms that do not provide unemployment insurance spend fewer weeks unemployed and then earn less than other workers when rehired.

Chicago - A recent study conducted at Northwestern Memorial Hospital found that almost 50 percent of medication discrepancies were related to a failure to understand all of the prescription medications patients were taking at the time of hospital admission. While it's common for patients not to recall all of their medications, especially when they are not feeling well or being unexpectedly admitted to the hospital, the results can be serious.

Waltham, MA—Millions of African-American and Latino seniors are living on the edge of financial collapse, according to a new report, Severe Financial Insecurity among African American and Latino Seniors. Released today by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy(IASP) at Brandeis University and the public policy organization, Demos, the report finds thatAfrican American and Latino seniors face widespread financial insecurity during retirement, a trend accelerated by the current economic crisis.