Culture

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Dire predictions of impending doom for the future of legal education should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism, says a University of Illinois business law expert.

Law professor Larry E. Ribstein says both law schools and the legal profession are going through a period of change that will be rough for some, but will also open the door to new opportunities for others.

A fracture in a person over the age of 50 can be a sign of osteoporosis, yet some patient populations have little knowledge of the disease. According to a groundbreaking study published in a recent Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS), male and non-English speaking patients tend to have the least knowledge of osteoporosis, putting them at high risk for a subsequent fracture.

Six-year-olds who spent the most time watching television, using a computer or playing video games had narrower arteries in the back of their eyes — a marker of future cardiovascular risk, in a first-of-its-kind study reported in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Australian researchers found that more sedentary behavior such as "screen time" was associated with an average narrowing of 2.3 microns in the retinal arteriolar caliber. A micron is one thousandth of a millimeter or one-25th of a thousandth of an inch.

(Baltimore, MD) – Today, the Interactive Autism Network (IAN), www.ianproject.org, the nation's largest online autism research project, reveals the preliminary results of the first major survey on wandering and elopement among individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and announces the launch of a new research survey on the association between pregnancy factors and ASD.

Despite economic anxiety and concern for the future of the country, most Houstonians perceive an improving quality of life locally and 90 percent believe that Houston is a better place to live than most other metropolitan areas, according to the 30th annual Kinder Houston Area Survey conducted by Rice University. The findings were released today during a luncheon hosted by the Greater Houston Partnership and Rice's Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

The Guide aims to ensure high-quality assisted reproduction treatment as defined by the European Union criteria for good quality medical treatment and the ESHRE position paper on Good clinical treatment in Assisted Reproduction.

Although in principle foreign and local patients should be treated the same and with the best possible treatment, there is evidence that this is not always the case.

What race best describes your background? That one question, which appears on most paperwork for health care, could leave entire groups of people underserved and contribute to racial health disparities, according to new research from Rice University published in the current issue of the journal Demography.

Medical forms that ask patients to identify a single race can alter patterns of racial health disparities because some multiracial adults identify with single-race groups whose health experience is different from their own.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study published this month suggests that while younger Americans are more smitten with credit cards and debt than older Americans, the older generation helps enable their children by encouraging use of credit as a "safety mechanism."

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A repeat of a corporate tax holiday that found little success in stimulating the economy in 2005 is still a long-shot to jump-start a stagnant U.S. economy, says a University of Illinois expert in corporate and international taxation.

Dhammika Dharmapala, a professor of law at Illinois, says that while the idea of a tax holiday has found favor among some politicians and presidential hopefuls looking to jolt the country out of the financial doldrums, it would have little positive effect on economic growth.

It is not that adolescent students should stop using the television or Internet, but that they should learn how to use them. This is one of the premises of the UNESCO Cathedra in Communication and Educational Values, based at the Faculty of Philosophy and Educational Sciences of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). A premise that responds to the results arising from the research since the Cathedra began in December 2009. "Our objective is the communication media —mainly new technologies and television— as agents of socialisation.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Despite the growing scientific consensus that global warming is real, Americans have become increasingly polarized on the environmental problem, according to a first-of-its-kind study led by a Michigan State University researcher.

The gap between Democrats and Republicans who believe global warming is happening increased 30 percent between 2001 and 2010 – a "depressing" trend that's essentially keeping meaningful national energy policies from being considered, argues sociologist Aaron M. McCright.

Håkan Eggert's studies from Iceland and the Gullmar fjord on the Swedish west coast, reveal that when commercial fishermen are given fishing rights they voluntarily choose more sustainable fishing methods and earn far more. His research at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, demonstrates that over-capacity in the fishing fleet can be reduced.

Youngsters are, on average, 16 years old and sober when they make their sexual debut with somebody they have known for a while. However, condoms feature in just half of sexual encounters with new or casual partners, reveals a major survey on the sexual habits, attitudes and knowledge of young people carried out by the University of Gothenburg on behalf of the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control.

Most patients who have a reduced ability to smell or detect odors seem to attach less importance to the sense of smell in their daily lives than people with a normal olfactory function, according to a report in the April issue of Archives of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.