Culture

When their schools are near fast-food restaurants, black and Hispanic adolescents are more likely to be overweight and receive less benefit from exercise than Asian or white students, according to a study published in the current issue of Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. The study underscores the importance of understanding how adolescents respond to fast-food availability near school.

Sexual assault has almost as much to do with age as it does with gender, according to Penn State criminologists. Young people -- both male and female -- are the most likely targets of rape and other sexual assaults, said Richard Felson, professor of criminology and sociology. The most frequent victims of those assaults are 15 years old, regardless of gender, or the age of the offender, he said. Older people and women rarely commit the crime, but when they do, their most frequent victims are still 15 years old.

New Rochelle, NY, May 30, 2013—Enrollment of women in clinical trials of new anti-HIV drugs is extremely low, representing only about 15% of all treatment-experienced patients. For women of color it is even lower. Why women, and especially women of color, are so poorly represented in HIV drug trials is the focus of an important article in AIDS Patient Care and STDs, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Officials who close neighborhood schools in poor, urban areas often ignore parents' input, which only reinforces the "institutionalized racism that plagues U.S. schools," a Michigan State University scholar argues.

From Michigan to Texas, superintendents and school boards are closing dozens of urban schools based strictly on data such as low test scores and graduation rates and poor student attendance, Muhammad Khalifa, assistant professor of educational administration, found in his latest research.

Researchers at The Open University (OU) and The University of Manchester have found conclusive proof that Ancient Egyptians used meteorites to make symbolic accessories.

WASHINGTON, DC, May 28, 2013 — Less-educated white women were increasingly more likely to die than their better-educated peers from the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s, according to a new study, which found that growing disparities in economic circumstances and health behaviors—particularly employment status and smoking habits—across education levels accounted for an important part of the widening mortality gap.

A new sociology paper suggests that the decline of labor unions is the main reason why U.S. corporate profits have surged as a share of national income.

From 1979 through 2007, labor's share of national income in the U.S. private sector decreased by six percentage points. This means that if labor's share had stayed at its 1979 level (about 64 percent of national income), the 120 million American workers employed in the private sector in 2007 would have received as a group an additional $600 billion, or an average of more than $5,000 per worker, Kristal said.

NEW YORK – Clinicians have long speculated that poor sleep may be a mechanism involved in the higher risk of further cardiac events or death among those with post-traumatic stress disorder following a heart attack, but the association between PTSD and sleep after a heart event has been unknown.

Individuals suffering from anorexia nervosa perceive their bodies as being larger than they are and this disturbed body representation affects their movements, according to research published May 29 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Anouk Keizer and colleagues from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

A new federal law allowing young adults to remain on their parents' medical insurance until age 25 has shielded them, their families and hospitals from the full financial consequences of serious medical emergencies, according to a new paper by the advocacy group RAND Corporation.

Too many cooks may spoil a recipe, and too many doctors may give you the flu.

That's the takeaway from a new study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research that found that Californians who jump from provider to provider rather than seeing a regular doctor who coordinates their care may be less likely to get the kind of preventive treatment that protects against the flu and flare ups in their chronic conditions.

Irvine, Calif., May 29, 2013 – Mexican American mothers' formal immigration status influences the educational achievement of their children and even their grandchildren, according to a new study led by a UC Irvine sociologist.

In a large, international, randomized trial, initial radiotherapy was compared to temozolomide chemotherapy. A statistically significant difference between the two treatment strategies was not observed for progression-free survival, although radiotherapy was numerically favored. However, molecular tumor characterization may allow the treatment approach to be personalized and one or the other treatment modality to be selected.

A pioneering imaging technique to track the effects of next-generation nanomedicines on patients has been harnessed by a University of Strathclyde academic.

After analysing football league players over nine seasons, from 2000 to 2009, Spanish researchers have come up with a mathematical method for estimating the goal-scoring performance of each player. According to their ranking, the most able strikers are Messi, Ronaldo Nazário, Makkay, Villa and Etoo.