Culture

NEW YORK CITY — A new University of Cincinnati-Blue Ash College study explores the evolution of hip-hop from party music into a political platform.

Todd Callais, an assistant professor of sociology, criminology, and criminal justice at UC-Blue Ash, focused on the hip-hop industry because of its impact on society and because there is a clear timeline of its development.

NEW YORK CITY — Adolescents who have half-siblings with a different father are more likely to have used drugs and had sex by age 15 than those who have only full siblings. That's according to new research from Karen Benjamin Guzzo, an assistant professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University, and Cassandra Dorius, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at Iowa State University.

NEW YORK CITY — Since the mid-1980s, unrestrained household spending has damaged American family finances — despite the fact that globalization and technological change have caused consumer prices to fall widely, says Queens College sociologist Joseph Nathan Cohen. In his paper, "The Myth of America's 'Culture of Consumerism': Policy May Help Drive American Household's Fraying Finances," which Cohen will present at the 108th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, he examines the factors that keep American families from tightening their belts.

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NEW YORK CITY — An Indiana University study found that the percentage of votes for Republican and Democratic candidates in 2010 and 2012 races for the U.S. House of Representatives could be predicted by the percentage of tweets that mentioned those candidates — and it didn't matter whether the tweets were positive or negative.

NEW YORK CITY — Chapman University's David Frederick will present new research at the 108th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association that examines men's and women's beliefs about who should pay for dates during courtship, and how couples actually go about splitting expenses. The paper, "Who Pays for Dates? Following versus Challenging Conventional Gender Norms," contains survey data from more than 17,000 participants; a quarter of whom also provided written commentaries to explain their beliefs and actions regarding paying for dates.

During the housing boom, when banks were discouraged from asking for accurate financial information, it was helping rich minorities most of all.

A New York University analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data from 2006 — the peak of the previous decade's housing boom - was conducted by Jacob Faber, a doctoral fellow at NYU's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy and a doctoral candidate in NYU's Department of Sociology and detailed at the American Sociological Association meeting.

Researchers reviewed 52 published studies to evaluate the effectiveness of self-measured blood pressure monitoring (SMBP) with or without support in adults with hypertension.

NEW YORK CITY — Morning sickness, shiny hair, and bizarre and intense cravings for pickles and ice cream — what expectations do pregnant women impose on their bodies, and how are those expectations influenced by cultural perspectives on pregnancy?

Danielle Bessett, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Cincinnati, will present her research on this issue at the 108th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

NEW YORK CITY — Immigration judges should be allowed to consider a person's family and social ties to the United States before ordering the deportation of legal permanent residents for minor offenses, says a professor at the University of California, Merced.

• Nephrologists whose dialysis patients had the best survival over six years had a significantly lower patient caseload than nephrologists whose patients had the worst survival.
• For every additional 50 patients cared for by a nephrologist, patients had a 2% higher risk of dying within six years.
• Worldwide, more than 1.5 million people are treated with hemodialysis.

NJIT Associate Professor Ali Akansu, PhD, wants to prevent another flash crash on Wall Street. An electrical and computing engineer who is an expert in the relatively new field of adapting signal processing to strengthen the security of finance markets, he fights to be heard. Among his weapons are frequent talks to colleagues at IEEE events. He believes that by using new technology—like digital signal processing (DSP) engineering--another flash crash, like the one in 2010 that almost destroyed world-wide financial markets, need never happen again.

WASHINGTON—A landmark immigration bill passed by the Senate would create new pathways to citizenship and provide a much-needed boost to the U.S. economy but would do little to ease immigration-related disparities in health care, according to a new report.

A new study in the journal Cancer that tracked survival of more than 2,200 adults over the last decade with a highly aggressive form of lymphoma finds that with notable exceptions, medicine has made substantial progress in treating them successfully. To help doctors and researchers better understand who responds well to treatment and who doesn't, the study authors used their findings to create a stratified risk score of patient prognosis.

New Rochelle, NY, August 8, 2013—As many as 20% of adolescents and 44% of young adults have shared nude or semi-nude photos of themselves via cell phone or social networking sites, a behavior known as sexting. Some people do it in the hopes it will lead to a "hook-up" or sexual activity.

Sexting behavior and what results people expect may differ depending on a person's gender, relationship status, and sexual identity, are explored in a study published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

Commentary on the trial of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin highlighted some Americans' perception of the influence of race and class on law enforcement in the United States. University of Missouri sociologists recently documented the influence of racial division and economic inequality on the size of a city's police force. Understanding the dynamic relationship among race, economic inequality and the criminal justice system can help America's leaders design policies that increase individuals' security while ensuring justice for all.