Culture

"One implication is that female legislators might talk about politics and deliberately engage the other party more than their male colleagues," said Patrick Miller, a KU assistant professor of political science. "That might have some effects on the kind of legislative environment we have. Maybe if we have more women in office, you'd have more communication, less fighting, and perhaps more legislating and less gridlock."

The most comprehensive analysis to date of research on the effect of negative stereotypes on older people's abilities has concluded that these stereotypes create a significant problem for that demographic.

A research team at the University of Kent's School of Psychology carried out a review and meta-analysis of Aged-Based Stereotype Threat (ABST).

Imagine the following scenario: a woman and a man are having a conversation. She is interested in the conversation, and is friendly, smiling and warm. He interprets her behavior as sexual interest.

Or maybe: a man is sexually attracted to a woman he has just met, and signals this in various ways. She thinks that he is just being friendly.

Recognize these situations? If so, you're not alone.

We misunderstand each other

A proper choice of business model plays a critical role in electric vehicle industry where many consumers are subject to range and resale anxieties. In particular, a combination of owning or leasing electric batteries and improving charging technology can reassure such skeptics and help increase the electric vehicle adoption, according to a new study in the Articles in Advance section of Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (M&SOM), a publication of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

Researchers at The University of Texas Medical Branch have determined that maternal exposure to high levels of flame-retardants may be a contributing factor in preterm births.

When donating blood, plasma, human tissue or any other bodily sample for medical research, most people might not think about how it's being used. But if you were told, would you care?

A new Michigan State University study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, indicates that most people are willing to donate just knowing that their contribution is going toward research. But, when specific scenarios are brought into the equation, that willingness changes.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo, Japan sent self-administered questionnaires to 364 medical journalists, who described their experiences in selecting stories, choosing angles, and performing research when creating cancer-centered news pieces. The journalists reported that they did not find pharmaceutical press releases to be helpful, preferring direct contact with physicians as their most reliable and prized sources of information.

Scholars say they have used computer models to create strong evidence for what conspiracy theorists have long thought - oil is often the reason for interfering in another country's war.

Throughout recent history, countries which need oil have found reasons to interfere in countries with a good supply of it and, the researchers argue, this could help explain the US interest in ISIS in northern Iraq.

Montreal, January 27, 2015 -- With the "creative class" on the rise, many businesses are trying to capitalize on imagination and innovation. But when it comes to creative juices, some societies have a faster flow than others. That's because, as new research from Concordia University suggests, creativity is tied to culture.

A natural gas well in Bradford County, PA. New York has said "no thanks" to fracking but they would have brown-outs without Pennsylvania energy. Reuters

By Susan Christopherson, Cornell University

Perceptions of a decline in multiculturalism as a means of integrating ethnic minorities are unfounded, research led at the University of Strathclyde has found.

The study, comparing citizenship programs in four European nations - the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark - concluded that, while the term 'multiculturalism' was being less frequently used with a positive meaning, the actual public policies designed to help ethnic minorities to integrate and remake citizenship remained in place and were, in fact, being expanded.

In the largest study of opioids users ever undertaken, the researchers used records of 198,247 people in England who had been involved in drug treatment or the criminal justice system between 2005 and 2009. The data recorded 3,974 deaths and their causes during this period. Opioid users were six times more likely to die prematurely than people in the general population. Almost one in ten of these deaths were due to suicide, more than four times the rate in the general population.

Young lovers walking down the aisle may dream of long and healthy lives together, but close friends in the wedding party may have a better sense of whether those wishes will come true, suggests new research on personality and longevity from Washington University in St. Louis.

"You expect your friends to be inclined to see you in a positive manner, but they also are keen observers of the personality traits that could send you to an early grave," said Joshua Jackson, PhD, assistant professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences.

Considerable attention has been paid to how boys' educational achievements in science and math compare to girls' accomplishments in those areas, often leading to the assumption that boys outperform girls in these areas. Now, using international data, researchers at the University of Missouri and the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, Scotland, have determined that girls outperform boys in educational achievement in 70 percent of the countries they studied--regardless of the level of gender, political, economic or social equality.