While many have argued that media freedom is integral to a functioning democracy and respect for human rights, a new study is the first to examine the effects of media freedom in countries that lack such democratic institutions as fair elections.
"We would expect to find most free media in democratic states and most controlled media in autocratic states, but this is not always the case," said Jenifer Whitten-Woodring, a doctoral candidate in political science and international relations at USC.
Elena Nicoladis, an experimental psychologist, recently published a study of unilingual and bilingual children's ability to recall words in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. Nicoladis' research with students between the ages of seven and 10 showed that bilingual children's lexical recall was slightly lower than their unilingual counterparts.
Parolees with a gambling habit may resort to criminal activities and substance abuse when they are released from prison if there are few community supports to help them re-integrate, a University of Alberta study has concluded.
Gambling is prevalent in prisons and the study found that even inmates not habituated to the pastime before incarceration can acquire a taste for it they're unable to shake when released. It's a fact that has worrisome consequences often associated with the commission of crime and substance abuse as parolees try to re-integrate into society.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Against the backdrop of last week's Congressional hearing into the future of forensic science, researchers from the University at Buffalo's Laboratory for Forensic Odontology Research in the School of Dental Medicine, have published a landmark paper on the controversial topic of bitemark analysis.
Levels of chloride, a component of salt, are elevated in many urban streams and groundwater across the northern U.S., according to a new government study.
Chloride levels above the recommended federal criteria set to protect aquatic life were found in more than 40 percent of urban streams tested. The study was released today by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Elevated chloride can inhibit plant growth, impair reproduction, and reduce the diversity of organisms in streams.
Younger people with pain look similar in terms of their disability to people who are two to three decades older without pain, according to a study published in this month's issue of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society. The results of the study uncovered that people with pain develop the functional limitations classically associated with aging at much earlier ages.
Worldwide, 13% of women who give birth suffer from postnatal depression, which causes a significant deterioration in a mother's quality of life and her ability to care for her baby. Now, Spanish researchers have developed a model to diagnose this illness with a predictive power of 80% - the best result to date for this kind of depression.
Scientists in Pennsylvania report that boosting production of crops used to make biofuels could make a difficult task to shrink a vast, oxygen-depleted "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico more difficult. The zone, which reached the size of Massachusetts in 2008, forms in summer and threatens marine life and jobs in the region. Their study is scheduled for the Oct. 1 issue of ACS' semi-monthly journal Environmental Science & Technology.
In a paper evaluated by f1000 Medicine, six studies tested relationships between reminders of money, social exclusion and physical pain.
In The symbolic power of money: reminders of money alter social distress and physical pain published in the journal Psychological Science, Xinyue Zhou, Kathleen Vohs and Roy Baumeister explored how money could reduce a person's feeling of pain and also negate their need for social popularity.
CHAPEL HILL – A new study shows that parents are more likely to understand a body mass index (BMI) chart if it's color-coded, like a traffic light, than the standard charts currently in use.
"We think that better communication of BMI from doctor to parent could lead to parents earlier awareness of their child's weight status in time to help them make important lifestyle changes," says Eliana Perrin, M.D., M.P.H., senior and corresponding author of the study and assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.
New mobile phone software will help epidemiologists and ecologists working in the field to analyse their data remotely and map findings across the world, without having to return to the lab, according to research published in PLoS One today. The authors of the study, from Imperial College London, say the software will also enable members of the public to act as 'citizen scientists' and help collect data for community projects.
Two new expert commentaries released in the September 16 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience spotlight the increasingly violent animal rights attacks and the need for an educated public and engaged research community to ensure the safety of animals and researchers, as well as the continuation of health advances. The commentaries, written by Jeffery H. Kordower, and by Dario L. Ringach and J. David Jentsch, outline the strong efforts by The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) and the research community to ensure humane and responsible animal research.
Hospitalized patients who experience acute kidney problems that require dialysis are at increased risk of receiving chronic dialysis once discharged, but do not have an increased risk of death, according to a study in the September 16 issue of JAMA.
Black patients have lower rates of successful resuscitation and are less likely to survive an in-hospital cardiac arrest compared to white patients, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In the study, black patients had a 12 percent lower overall rate of surviving the cardiac emergency in which the heart stops beating. Much of the racial difference was associated with the poor-performing hospitals where black patients received their care.
Two Iowa State University researchers are examining a new method of controlling soybean aphids without the use of chemical pesticides.
Bryony Bonning, professor of entomology, and Allen Miller, professor of plant pathology and director of the Center for Plant Responses to Environmental Stresses, are looking at a way to genetically modify soybeans to prevent damage from aphids.