Science & Society

Having a husband creates an extra seven hours a week of housework for women, according to a University of Michigan study of a nationally representative sample of U.S. families. For men, the picture is very different: A wife saves men from about an hour of housework a week. The findings are part of a detailed study of housework trends, based on 2005 time-diary data from the federally-funded Panel Study of Income Dynamics, conducted since 1968 at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "It's a well-known pattern," said ISR economist Frank Stafford, who directs the study. "There's still a…

  Well I know that not everyone's computer can do Youtube (especially if it is older or uses a less common OS). So Here I write the gist of what I said. World Autism Awareness day was April 2nd 2008 as designated by the United Nations. Which was a good thing. However I think that a condition that effects 1/150 people on Earth needs a week or a month. Autistic people are neurologically different from the typical, average person. This varies form from being a handicap to a mild benefit in certain situations. For example one person in my family was diagnosed with Autistm. I can see…

What ecological niche does a site like this occupy in the world of science journalism? Nature this week has an editorial ("Critical Journalism", subscription required) about the fact that coverage of science and technology news has declined in print and television news, from about 4%-6% of total news in 2001 to about 2% now. It is disappointing that science coverage is shrinking at a time when a scientifically informed public is probably more important than ever; however, Nature does point out that many people are turning to online resources for their science news. If this is true, it could…

Common sense says that we are happier when we get more money to spend on ourselves. At least, that’s what passes for commonsense in modern capitalistic societies, from the United States to China.  Indeed, when Elizabeth Dunn and colleagues at the University of British Columbia and at Harvard Business School asked a bunch of their students (the usual subjects in social science studies), that’s exactly what they found: students thought they would be happier getting $20 than $5, and that they would be happier spending the money on themselves than on others. Turns out, the students were…

The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research has a couple of interesting things in the works, the first being next generation media storage. Dutch researcher Alexander le Fèbre has demonstrated that a field-emission current signal can be used to arrange the position of thousands of nanometre-sharp needles. These probes can be applied to write and read in new storage media with an extremely high density, using bits on a nanometre scale. The development of the hard disk is reaching its technical limits because the entire disk is served by just a single head so the capacity of the disk…

LONDON, March 28 /PRNewswire/ -- It's fair to say that UK women now have more choice than ever when it comes facial anti-ageing solutions. From innovative cosmetic surgery procedures to topical so called 'cosmeceuticals' and sophisticated skin-care, there's never been a wider range of beauty solutions available on the market. However, the latest anti-ageing consumer research, commissioned by Olay Regenerist with YouGov, shows that only 4% of UK women are actually opting to undertake more drastic cosmetic procedures and increasing numbers are confused about which so-called 'wonder ingredients…

WASHINGTON, March 23 /PRNewswire/ -- In a Baltimore Sun opinion piece today (1), AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) called for the suspension of costly HIV vaccine research funding and the re-allocation of resources into effective, proven HIV/AIDS prevention, testing and treatment strategies. Co-authored by Dr. Homayoon Khanlou, AHF's Chief of Medicine/U.S. and Michael Weinstein, AHF's President, the op ed, "Enough is Enough," has been published on the eve of the HIV Vaccine Summit assembled by the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Dr. Anthony…

In baseball's golden age, pitchers had a higher mound and threw more complete games but careers were shorter. As salaries continue to rise there is greater concern about protecting the investments. A new study involving several Major League Baseball pitchers indicates that the height of the pitcher’s mound can affect the athlete’s throwing arm motion, which may lead to potential injuries because of stress on the shoulder and elbow. The study was led by William Raasch, M.D., associate professor of orthopaedic surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, who also is the head team…

A few days ago the internet was abuzz with shocking headlines because the gentleman behind 'virtual water', professor John Anthony Allan of King’s College London, got an award from a water conservation group, the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) for his work on advocating water conservation. Reading the news clippings about it, you'd have thought it was a Nobel prize for perpetual motion. Perpetual motion is a good analogy. Generally, if you see something too ridiculous to be true, it's probably not true. A few weeks ago, for example, a VA Tech grad student got a prize for a…

The tests for testosterone doping used in professional and amateur sports may routinely be confounded by a common genetic variation, according to a new study. Unless this variation is accounted for, current testing methods could implicate innocent athletes and allow cheaters to go undetected. “Genetic factors may play an important role in the accuracy and sensitivity of testosterone doping tests,” said Jenny J. Schulze, Ph.D, of the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, and lead author of the study. “This is of interest not only for combating androgen doping in sports, but also for…