EAST LANSING, Mich. — Most of America’s urban cores were designed for walking but offer little in the way of supermarkets, healthy restaurants and other amenities for residents to walk to, according to a study led by a Michigan State University scholar.
The study is one of the first to show that poor residents living in declining urban neighborhoods want healthy food choices – evidenced by their willingness to travel long distances to find them. Past research has generally assumed that poor people will shop at whatever store is closest. (more…)
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Freedom of the press is viewed by many as a cornerstone of democracy. But can it actually help improve people’s lives and make them happy? Researchers at the University of Missouri have found that citizens of countries with press freedom tend to be much happier than citizens of countries without free presses. Edson Tandoc, Jr., a doctoral student in the MU School of Journalism, says that press freedom directly predicts life satisfaction across the world.
“We already know that having reliable, objective news sources can benefit democracy, but in this study, we found that press freedom also benefits communities by helping improve the overall quality of life of citizens and, in the process, by also making them happier,” Tandoc said. “People enjoy having an element of choice about where they get their news. Citizens of countries without a free press are forced to rely on the government for information, when what people really want is diversity in content where they are free to get the information they want from the source of their choosing.” (more…)
The phrase occurred to Joe Janes out of the blue one day and immediately appealed to him. From there, ideas began to flow quickly.
Janes, associate professor in the University of Washington Information School, had been a fan of the British Broadcasting Corp. radio series “A History of the World in 100 Objects” and thought those shows effectively blended history and storytelling.
He got to wondering, what if he took a similar approach to information, telling about the twists and turns of history — through documents? (more…)
Fears of terrorism in Europe and the United States have deteriorated into an irrational suspicion of Muslims, which will continue until the West turns its critical eye inward, argues University of Chicago professor Martha Nussbaum in her new book, The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age.
While fear is an important natural emotion, its self-centered nature makes it susceptible to irrational distortions that are harmful to others, writes Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics in the Law School and Philosophy. (more…)
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Marrying multiple husbands at the same time, or polyandry, creates a safety net for women in some cultures, according to a recent study by a University of Missouri researcher. Extra husbands ensure that women’s children are cared for even if their fathers die or disappear. Although polyandry is taboo and illegal in the United States, certain legal structures, such as child support payments and life insurance, fill the same role for American women that multiple husbands do in other cultures.
“In America, we don’t meet many of the criteria that tend to define polyandrous cultures,” said Kathrine Starkweather, doctoral student in MU’s Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Science. “However, some aspects of American life mirror polyandrous societies. Child support payments provide for offspring when one parent is absent. Life insurance allows Americans to provide for dependents in the event of death, just as secondary husbands support a deceased husband’s children in polyandrous societies.” (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new census of the Amish population in the United States estimates that a new Amish community is founded, on average, about every 3 ½ weeks, and shows that more than 60 percent of all existing Amish settlements have been founded since 1990.(more…)
University art conservation student prepares Blue Hen for display
When University of Delaware Prof. Jack Gelb, Jr., was given a taxidermy specimen of a Blue Hen by a retiring colleague in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences, he realized that this particular example of the Delaware state bird was somewhat the worse for wear.
And so Gelb, who is chairperson of the department as well as director of UD’s Avian Bioscience Center, turned to the Department of Art Conservation for expert help.
“This was a wonderful opportunity for me to learn about natural history materials,” said Elena Torok, now a third-year graduate student in the Winterthur-University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation. “We happily agreed to work” on the project. (more…)
Results Important to Parents/Motion Picture Industry
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Young people who watch more sexual content from movies also tend to engage in more sexual behavior and begin sexual activity at an earlier age, according to a University of Missouri researcher’s study.
“We can’t say that watching sexual content in movies is directly responsible for adolescents’ sexual behavior,” said Ross O’Hara, currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Missouri, who conducted the research with other psychological scientists while at Dartmouth College. “However, there is a correlation between the two. Sensation seeking, or the tendency to seek more novel and intense sexual stimulation, does seem to increase in young people who watched more movies with sexually explicit content.” (more…)
