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Sociologists discover young women and men prefer egalitarian relationships

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.

Poorer parents are just as involved in children's activities as better-off parents

p>Poorer parents are just as involved in education, leisure, and sports activities with their children as better-off parents, a new study has found.

Dr Esther Dermott and Marco Pomati analysed survey data on 1,665 UK households and found that poorer parents were as likely to have helped with homework, attended parents' evenings, and played sports or games with their children in the previous week.

Dr Dermott, of the University of Bristol, and Mr Pomati, Cardiff University, say they found no evidence of a group of poor parents who failed their children.

Dog-human cooperation is based on social skills of wolves

Commonly accepted domestication hypotheses suggest: "Dogs have become tolerant and attentive as a result of humans actively selecting for these skills during the domestication process in order to make dogs cooperative partners."

Aboriginal women and high rates of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome addressed

One in eight children born in 2002 or 2003 and living in remote Fitzroy Valley communities in Western Australia have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, finds the The Lililwan study published today in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health.

Couples more likely to get healthy if they do it together

People are more successful in taking up healthy habits if their partner makes positive changes too, according to research* published in JAMA Internal Medicine today (Monday).

Scientists at UCL funded by Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation, and the National Institute on Aging looked at how likely people were to quit smoking, start being active, or lose weight in relation to what their partner did.**

They found that people were more successful in swapping bad habits for good ones if their partner made a change as well.

This Girl Can campaign is about sexiness, not sports

Inspiring or disappointing? Sport England

This Girl Can campaign is all about sex, not sport

Study identifies geographic long-term clusters of anti-vaccine beliefs in Northern California

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.

Raif Badawi gets a thousand lashes and the West stays silent on Arabian human rights

Solidarity from Paris. Alvaro

A thousand lashes for Raif Badawi, while the West stays silent on Saudi human rights

By Madawi al-Rasheed, London School of Economics and Political Science

2,500-year-old Pythagorean theorem helps determine when patient recovery has occurred

A medical researcher at the University of Warwick has found the 2,500 year-old Pythagoras theorem could be the most effective way to identify the point at which a patient's health begins to improve.

In a new paper, Dr Rob Froud from Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick and Gary Abel from the University of Cambridge made the discovery after looking at data from ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curves.

Islamic fundamentalism is not a 'marginal phenomenon' in Europe

Last week's attacks in Paris, committed in the name of a god, reopen a badly-healed scar in Europe. The world once again turns towards religious fundamentalism. A new study shows that hostility towards other out-groups is not an isolated phenomenon among Muslims living in Europe; but nor is it a synonym of violence. According to the author of the study, Ruud Koopmans, director of the WZB Berlín Social Science Centre (Germany), "Islam is not the problem".

Doctors facing complaints get severe depression and suicidal thoughts

UK doctors subject to complaints procedures are at significant risk of becoming severely depressed and suicidal, reveals research published in the online journal BMJ Open.

Those referred to the UK professional regulator, the General Medical Council, seem to be most at risk of mental ill health, the findings suggest.

The researchers base their findings on an anonymised online survey of more than 95,000 UK doctors in 2012, all of whom were members of the British Medical Association (BMA).

The French myth of secularism

With controversial headline "This brazen Islam" a French magazine in 2012 claimed Muslims were infiltrating hospitals, cafeterias, swimming pools, schools

By Mayanthi Fernando, University of California, Santa Cruz

Inventors are not as paranoid about patents as people think

Common wisdom and prior economic research suggest that an inventor filing a patent would want to keep the technical know-how secret as long as possible. But a new study of nearly 2 million patents in the United States shows that inventors are not as concerned with secrecy as previously thought. Researchers found that since 2000, most inventors when given the choice opted to disclose information about their patents before patent approval - even small inventors - and this disclosure correlates with more valuable patents.

Study supports new explanation of gender gaps in academia

It isn't that women don't want to work long hours or can't compete in highly selective fields, and it isn't that they are less analytical than men, scholars report about survey results on gender gaps in academia. It appears instead that women are underrepresented in academic fields whose practitioners put a lot of emphasis on the importance of being brilliant - a quality many people assume women lack.

What drives killers like the Ottawa or Paris attackers?

Zehaf-Bibeau, the Islamist convert who recently killed a Canadian military reservist on duty in Ottawa, Canada, represents a type of attacker rarely discussed--a person so obsessed with an overvalued idea that it defines their identity and leads them to commit violence without regard for the consequences. Although it appears that the assailants in Paris had more ties with terrorist organizations, the individuals still fit the description of people acting on overvalued ideas.