Culture

NEW YORK, NY (August 17, 2014) —Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have identified the immune cells responsible for destroying hair follicles in people with alopecia areata, a common autoimmune disease that causes hair loss, and have tested an FDA-approved drug that eliminated these immune cells and restored hair growth in a small number of patients.

The results appear in today's online issue of Nature Medicine.

In the corporate world, meritocracies are the norm. Personalities that don't like competition and having to produce results may default to academia, but they may not find it the psychological safe haven they think it is. America is producing more PhDs than ever and only one sixth of them will be able to stay in school after their degree - since universities have the choice of the best and brightest, the "rainmakers" who will aggressively bring in big NIH grants - everyone else can be an adjunct professor or a blogger at Scientific American and never get a chance at tenure.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Pressure to meet national education standards may be the reason states with significant populations of African-American students and those with larger class sizes often require children to learn fewer skills, finds a University of Kansas researcher.

"The skills students are expected to learn in schools are not necessarily universal," said Argun Saatcioglu, a KU associate professor of education and courtesy professor of sociology.

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal law enacted to combat the use of "club drugs" such as Ecstasy — and today's variation known as Molly — has failed to reduce the drugs' popularity and, instead, has further endangered users by hampering the use of measures to protect them.

Risky situations and uncertain outcomes increase anxiety for women but not for men, leading women to perform in those kinss of pressure situations, according to a presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association by Susan R. Fisk, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Stanford University, who defines a risky situation as any setting with an uncertain outcome in which there can be both positive or negative results, depending on some combination of skill and chance.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Many politicians see the temporary worker program in the U.S. as a solution to undocumented immigration from Mexico. But an Indiana University study finds that these legal workers earn no more than undocumented immigrants, who unlike their legal counterparts can improve their situation by changing jobs or negotiating for better pay.

Women applying for a job in male-dominated fields should consider playing up their masculine qualities, according to a new paper in Psychology of Women Quarterly - because there is bias in the hiring process.

Everyone notices the academic superstars and failures, but what about the tens of millions of American teens straddling these two extremes? A new study from the University of California, Berkeley, has spotlighted a high school subculture that has made an art of slacking – even with ample educational resources – and may be destined to perpetuate the nation's struggling lower-middle class.

About 1 in 5 Medicare patients is discharged from hospice care alive, due to patients' informed choice or a change in their condition, but sometimes inappropriate actions by the hospice to save on hospitalization costs related to terminal illness.

With an ongoing global financial crisis and the ensuing economic and political disruptions, inequality has re-emerged as a central focus of public debate. The drivers of rising inequality of income and wealth and the various scientific models for counteractive measures will be among the central topics debated among 17 Nobel Laureates in Economic Sciences and approximately 450 aspiring young economists from more than 80 countries in Lindau, Germany, next week.

Well-publicized tragedies on college campuses across the United States have prompted university officials to implement alert systems that broadcast real-time warnings via text message and e-mail to students, faculty, and staff. Such systems can be highly effective tools, but only if users take them seriously. New research to be presented at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 2014 Annual Meeting in Chicago illustrates some factors that can determine whether campus alert systems are attended to or disregarded.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Childhood obesity remains the top health concern for children in 2014, but when asked about national concerns, adults put school violence and gun-related injuries in the top 10, according to a new University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health.

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- In the past half-century, fear of crime in the United States has fueled "white flight" from big cities, become known as a quality of life issue and prompted scholars and law enforcement experts to address ways of reducing this fear.

But a study by a Michigan State University criminologist challenges this longstanding theory by arguing that a healthy fear of crime is, in fact, a good thing.

ANN ARBOR---They're not your father's lowbrow roach coaches serving up greasy burgers and bad dogs. Today's gourmet food trucks peddle sushi, hybrid Korean tacos and other dishes that combine different types of cuisine to create a highbrow dining experience for foodies in search of eclectic, local eats.

That's the take of researchers from the University of Michigan and Northwestern University who harvested Twitter data to conduct a de facto census of up-scale U.S. food trucks, invented in Los Angeles in 2008.

SAN FRANCISCO — When middle-aged women seek extra-marital affairs, they are looking for more romantic passion, which includes sex — and don't want to divorce their husbands, suggests new research to be presented at the 109th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

"Being happy in marriage is far different than being happy in bed," said Eric Anderson, a professor of masculinity, sexuality, and sport at the University of Winchester in England and the chief science officer at AshleyMadison.com, a popular website for those interested in having extra-marital affairs.