Culture

Research on how science works - the science of science - can benefit from studying the digital traces generated during the research process, such as peer-reviewed publications. This type of research is crucial for the future of science and that of scientists, according to Frank Schweitzer, Chair of Systems Design at ETH Zurich, in Switzerland. Indeed, quantitative measures of scientific output and success in science already impact the evaluation of researchers and the funding of proposals.

Giving employees more control over their work schedules may help curb sleep deficiency, according to health researchers. About 30 percent of U.S. adults reported not regularly getting a sufficient amount of sleep, a 2012 Centers for Disease Control survey found. Sleep deficiency has been linked to increased risk of automobile crashes, chronic disease and early mortality. Improving adequate sleep within the population is a goal of Healthy People 2020, a federal initiative that sets national objectives and monitors progress concerning the health of the nation.

Although nearly four in 10 workers wouldn't tell their manager if they had a mental health problem, half said that if they knew about a coworker's illness, they would desire to help, a new survey by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) shows.

The survey, headed by CAMH Senior Scientist Dr. Carolyn Dewa, reveals that workers have both negative and supportive attitudes about mental health in the workplace. The study was published in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Researchers used spatial analysis software and electronic medical records to identify clusters of underimmunization and vaccine refusal among Kaiser Permanente members in Northern California, according to a study published today in the journal Pediatrics.

Children are considered to be underimmunized when they miss one or more recommended vaccine doses before age three, while vaccine refusal means not allowing a child to receive any vaccines.

The majority of young women and men today would prefer an egalitarian relationship in which work and family responsibilities are shared equally between partners if that possibility were available to them, according to a new study from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of California-Santa Barbara.

The paper in the American Sociological Review was co-authored by David S. Pedulla, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, and Sarah Thébaud, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara.

A marketing study has raised concerns over the ethics of the marketing of skin-whitening products widely available in Australia.

Regardless, demand for the product is growing, with more than 60 percent of Indian women reportedly using one of the more than 240 brands of skin lightener available in that country.

Professor Lynne Eagle of James Cook University says skin whiteners are also easy to find in Australia. "I brought it from two different shops in Townsville within ten minutes' drive of my office," she said.

Disparities in cancer screening, incidence, treatment, and survival are worsening globally. In a new study on colorectal cancer, researchers found that the mortality-to-incidence ratio (MIR) can help identify whether a country has a higher mortality than might be expected based on cancer incidence.

Countries with lower-than-expected MIRs have strong national health systems characterized by formal colorectal cancer screening programs. Conversely, countries with higher-than-expected MIRs are more likely to lack such screening programs.

The wild tiger Panthera tigris is considered critically endangered, and it faces threats from habitat loss and fragmentation, depletion of prey and in natural medicine cases for illegal poaching for trade of tiger bones for alternative medical potions and still rarely as skins for ornamentation and collection.

Sociologists have long tried to document the influence religion has on social groups and in a new paper, a team of academics correlates its role in education. Louisiana State University Sociology Professor Samuel Stroope and colleagues searched for a relationship between religion and educational attainment in the U.S.

Microcredit--providing small loans to underserved entrepreneurs--has been both celebrated and vilified as a development tool. Six new studies from four continents bring rigorous evidence to this debate, finding that while microcredit has some benefits, it is not a viable poverty alleviation tool.

Over the past 100 years, licensing and accrediting bodies have raised the quality of medical education and efforts have been made to ensure that medical schools meet a minimum standard for the curricula and clinical training they offer to students. However, comparing institutions and identifying which ones produce the physicians who provide the best patient care and conduct the best biomedical research remains challenging for prospective students. A popular method for comparing medical schools, the analysis performed by U.S.

In a large, national study of extremely premature infants, researchers found that death rates decreased from 2000 to 2011. An analysis of specific causes found that deaths attributed to immaturity or pulmonary causes and complicated by infection or central nervous system injury all decreased; however, deaths attributed to necrotizing enterocolitis increased. Necrotizing enterocolitis is an intestinal complication resulting from prematurity.

The study results are published in the Jan. 22 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

People have a distinctive way of talking to babies and small children: We speak more slowly, using a sing-song voice, and tend to use cutesy words like "tummy". While we might be inclined to think that we talk this way because it is easier for children to understand, new research published in Psychological Science suggests that, surprisingly, mothers may actually speak less clearly to their infants than they do to adults.

Love is blind. PytyExplainer: what is sexual fluidity?

By Dylan Selterman, Lecturer at University of Maryland.

The author, getting up to speed in Davos. World Economic Forum

By Alex Rogers, Professor of Conservation Biology at University of Oxford