Culture

The past 15 years have seen an exciting run of creative scientific advances in fabricating three-dimensional (3-D) structures by self-folding of 2-D sheets, but the complexity of structures achieved to date falls far short of what can easily be folded by hand using paper - yes, origami still beats your 3-D printer.

When you have a conflict with your spouse or significant other, do you withdraw or perhaps you expect your partner to be a mind reader about what ticks you off?

Those are two of the most common types of disengagement in relationships, and both can be harmful, but in different ways and for different reasons, says researcher Keith Sanford, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at Baylor University.

America's youngest scientists, increasingly losing research dollars, are leaving the academic biomedical workforce, a brain drain that poses grave risks for the future of science, according to an article published this week by Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels.

The article, which appears in the online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, illustrates how for more than a generation, grants for young scientists have declined.

Black people in America may think they are over-represented in American corporate news media crime stories, but they are third. Instead, if you hear about a Muslim, it's invariably terrorism, and if you hear about Latinos, it is illegal immigration.

While an educated public is undoubtedly a crucial element to a democratic society, a new study by two University of Kansas professors has found that partisanship appears to be highest among the most educated Americans.

A new study suggests that dogs may have first successfully migrated to the Americas only about 10,000 years ago, thousands of years after the first human migrants crossed a land bridge from Siberia to North America.

Hippies were famous for substance abuse and that has not changed as they got older. Close to three million Americans aged 55 and older suffer from alcohol abuse and the number is expected to double by 2020. Alcohol abuse prevalence is not new but less well-known is that the rate of illicit drug abuse in older people more than doubled between 2002 and 2013, as people from the sixties became people in their fifties

The annual U.S. cost of psoriasis, a chronic inflammatory skin condition, was estimated to be between $112 billion and $135 billion in 2013, according to a review article published online by JAMA Dermatology.

Psoriasis affects about 3.2 percent of the U.S. population and understanding the economic burden of the disease is important for research, advocacy and educational efforts.

Research!America, a health care lobbying organization, is urging the new Congress to take action on five priorities in the first 100 days of the legislative session.

According to surveys, an employer is more likely to hire someone who has lost weight through exercise and dieting than through surgery. This is just one of the stigmas faced by obese people who undergo weight-reducing bariatric surgery, according to Robert Carels of East Carolina University and colleagues in Obesity Surgery.

Investigators have completed a comprehensive analysis of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding of research to prevent non-communicable chronic diseases (NCDs) and determined that prevention research in the United States is severely underfunded. Specifically, the study found the NIH spends just 7 to 9 percent of its research budget on behavioral interventions to prevent NCDs, despite the fact that 70 percent of deaths in the U.S. are due to NCDs, and that treating people with NCDs accounts for approximately 84 percent of U.S. healthcare expenditures.

In the US and many Western countries, people are urged to manage feelings of anger or suffer its ill effects -- but new research with participants from the US and Japan suggests that anger may actually be linked with better, not worse, health in certain cultures.

Alcohol sales data, which act as a proxy for alcohol consumption, and alcohol-related deaths for regions in Great Britain have been analyzed and the results in BMC Public Health show that of eleven regions analyzed, the South West, Central Scotland, North East, North West and Yorkshire had higher levels of alcohol sales per adult than the Great Britain average. There were lower sales in London, Central England and the East of England.

The continuing shortage of primary care physicians is expected to only worsen, as the expansion of health coverage under the Affordable Care Act increases the demand for primary care services. Recommendations for meeting the crisis have included both increasing the supply of primary care physicians and expanding the roles of primary care nurse practitioners.

Break up the fights early. Teenage fight via OllyShutterstock

By Vanita Sundaram, University of York