Culture

Baby boomers appear to be driving a dramatic rise in suicide rates among middle-aged people, a new study finds.

The suicide rate for middle-aged people – a group considered relatively protected from suicide and with historically stable suicide rates – took an upward jump between 1999 and 2005, according to research by sociologists Ellen Idler of Emory University and Julie Phillips of Rutgers University.

Their study has been published in the September/October issue of the journal Public Health Reports.

TORONTO, Sept. 27, 2010 − Homeless young people are victims of crime at rates that society would consider unacceptable for any other group, according to a new report by researchers at York University and the University of Guelph.

The report, Surviving Crime and Violence: Street Youth and Victimization in Toronto, highlights the degree to which it is street youth themselves − often perceived as delinquent and dangerous − who are vulnerable to crime and violence.

PRINCETON, N.J. (September 23, 2010) — Increasing the taxes on beer, wine, and hard liquor significantly reduces the rates, and health costs associated with, a wide range of alcohol-related deaths, diseases and injuries,, according to a new study in the American Journal of Public Health.

Researchers at the University of Florida (UF) report that public policies that increase the price of alcoholic beverages, such as increases in alcohol excise taxes, not only reduce drinking but also significantly reduce most of the negative and costly outcomes associated with alcohol.

You'd think that people choosing to live near to outdoor recreation amenities would have a lower body mass index or BMI thanks to an increase in all that healthy outdoor activity right on one's doorstep. Yet a new University of Alberta study looking at the relationship between reasons for choosing a neighbourhood to live in, physical activity and BMI, shows that's simply not the case.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study has determined that teenagers who have abortions are no more likely to become depressed or have low self-esteem than their peers whose pregnancies do not end in abortion.

The study conducted by researchers from Oregon State University and University of California, San Francisco, is the first to use both depression and low self-esteem as outcomes with a nationally representative sample of adolescents.

London, UK (September 24, 2010) – Prison numbers in England and Wales have risen sharply in the last decade, and are set to rise further and study out today in the Probation Journal suggests that economists have a unique opportunity to help solve the prison crisis by bringing sophisticated economic modeling techniques to bear on the problem.

Or at least it might distract economists from screwing up the economy.

Washington, DC, September 23, 2010 – A new study looking at how hospitals account for the number of pediatric patients who develop catheter-associated bloodstream infections (CA-BSIs) found substantial inconsistencies in the methods used to report the number of patients who develop these infections.

Archaeologists who interpret Stone Age culture from discoveries of ancient tools and artifacts may need to reanalyze some of their conclusions.

That's the finding suggested by a new study that for the first time looked at the impact of water buffalo and goats trampling artifacts into mud.

Over the past decade, psychotropic medication use in the general youth population has more than doubled. Estimated rates of psychotropic medication use in foster care youth, however, are much higher (ranging from 13-52%) than those in the general youth population (4%).

Researchers from Utrecht University who studied the effect of negative emotions on pain perception in women with and without fibromyalgia found that anger and sadness amplified pain equally in both groups. Full findings are now online and will publish in the October print issue of Arthritis Care & Research, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology.

Adjustments, applications and other tools allow users to configure preferences and use services such as iGoogle and Yahoo to control and customize the news they consume online. These tools can make online experiences more efficient and productive, but they do not ensure that users will be consistently pleased with their selections, according to Penn State researchers.

People who leave strict religious groups are more likely to say their health is worse than members who remain in the group, according to a Penn State researcher.

The percentage of people who left a strict religious group and reported they were in excellent health was about half that of people who stayed in the group, said Christopher Scheitle, senior research assistant in sociology.

FORT COLLINS – The hiatus of global warming in the Northern Hemisphere during the mid-20th century may have been due to an abrupt cooling event centered over the North Atlantic around 1970, rather than the cooling effects of tropospheric pollution, according to a new paper appearing today in Nature.

September 22, 2010 -- Most studies of the food choices available near public schools have focused on fast food outlets rather than the full range of options available to schoolchildren. A new study by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health examined the patterns of exposure to a broad range of food outlets for school children in New York City.