Culture

HOUSTON – (April 8, 2009) – Middle school youth are engaging in sexual intercourse as early as age 12, according to a study by researchers at The University of Texas School of Public Health. Results from this study are published in the April issue of Journal of School Health. Christine Markham, Ph.D., assistant professor of behavioral science at the UT School of Public Health, and colleagues examined sexual risk behaviors among middle school students in a large southeastern U.S. urban public school district. "This is one of the few school-based studies conducted with this age group to look…

PASADENA, Calif.--Scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have trained computers to automatically analyze aggression and courtship in fruit flies, opening the way for researchers to perform large-scale, high-throughput screens for genes that control these innate behaviors. The program allows computers to examine half an hour of video footage of pairs of interacting flies in what is almost real time; characterizing the behavior of a new line of flies "by hand" might take a biologist more than 100 hours. This work--led by Pietro Perona, the Allen E. Puckett Professor of…

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a new ion trap that enables ions to go through an intersection while keeping their cool. Ten million times cooler than in prior similar trips, in fact. The demonstration, described in a forthcoming paper in Physical Review Letters,* is a step toward scaling up trap technology to build a large-scale quantum computer using ions (electrically charged atoms), a potentially powerful machine that could perform certain calculations—such as breaking today’s best data encryption codes—much faster than today’s…

The prairies offer opportunities for capitalizing on environmentally friendly farming practices and potentially useful agricultural waste to produce jobs, economic growth, commercial opportunities, and renewable energy sources, according to a perspective article published in the current issue of the International Journal of Private Law. Ronald Griffin, Professor of Law at Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas, asks what can leaders do for a desperate and aging population in an environment faced with global warming to re-engage a region that blankets eight states. The Great Plains are dotted…

COLUMBIA, Mo. –Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Journalism recently completed a comprehensive comparison of citizen journalism sites (news sites and blogs) and traditional media Web sites. They found that despite ongoing reports of financial troubles and cutbacks, legacy media are more comprehensive and more technologically advanced than citizen media and bloggers. "We found that legacy sites offered almost double the percent of news (89 percent) in comparison with citizen news sites (56 percent) and three times that of blogs (27 percent)," said Margaret Duffy, faculty…

Sacramento, CA – April 8, 2009 – A new study published in the journal Contemporary Economic Policy assesses the impact of state attributes on the likelihood that a state adopts policies to limit youth access to tobacco. Across nine different measures of youth access restrictions, results find key political, economic, and demographic factors influence the likelihood that such measures are adopted. Craig A. Gallet, Gary A. Hoover, and Junsoo Lee utilized data on a variety of policies designed to restrict youth access to tobacco to address why some states are more aggressive in adopting anti-…

Los Angeles, CA—April 8, 2009—When making investments, investors look for start-ups that have a strong business plan and a strong management team. A new study in The Journal of Finance reveals that while strong management is important, ultimately a strong business idea matters most to investors. Steven N. Kaplan, Berk A. Sensoy, and Per Stromberg studied two samples of start-ups. The first sample consisted of 50 start-ups that went public in an initial public offering for which there was a very early business plan. The second sample included all start-ups that went public in 2004. In both…

Falls Church, VA –-April 8, 2009—The deployment of military personnel to active war zones, which involves issues of separation, time away from home, and eventual reunion, increases the vulnerability of their families, The heavy reliance on National Guard and Reservists and the downsizing of traditional installations means that military families are increasingly likely to live in local communities rather than on military installations. This new context of military service ushers in new challenges for providing support to military families. A new article in the journal Family Relations explores…

VIDEO: New research from Washington University in St. Louis has found that students who participated in the Experience Corps tutoring program, over a one year period, made drastic improvements in their... Click here for more information. Tutoring children in and after school isn't new, but how much does it really help in critical areas like reading? Rigorous new research from Washington University in St. Louis shows significant gains from a national service program that trains experienced Americans to…

WASHINGTON, DC — In Prague, President Barack Obama called for a world without nuclear weapons. Today, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released a report calling for fundamental changes to U.S. nuclear war planning, a vital prerequisite if smaller nuclear arsenals are to be achieved. "From Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence -- A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons" calls to abandon the almost five-decade-long central mission for U.S. nuclear forces, which has been and continues to be "counterforce," the…