A new report prepared by a UCLA sociology professor for the Writers Guild of America–West reveals that diverse writers continue to face significant obstacles to employment in Hollywood, particularly in light of the recession.
Darnell Hunt, who is also director of UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, writes that “the current recession has clearly done little to help women, minority and older writers move ahead in the Hollywood industry, relative to their male, white and younger counterparts.” (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Want to convince someone to do something? A new University of Michigan study has some intriguing insights drawn from how we speak.
The study, presented May 14 at the annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, examines how various speech characteristics influence people’s decisions to participate in telephone surveys. But its findings have implications for many other situations, from closing sales to swaying voters and getting stubborn spouses to see things your way. (more…)
*UCLA psychologist helps law enforcement agencies tell truth from deception
When someone is acting suspiciously at an airport, subway station or other public space, how can law enforcement officers determine whether he’s up to no good?
The ability to effectively detect deception is crucial to public safety, particularly in the wake of renewed threats against the U.S. following the killing of Osama bin Laden.(more…)
Scholars, artists and other individuals around the world will enjoy free access to online images of millions of objects housed in Yale’s museums, archives, and libraries thanks to a new “Open Access” policy that the University announced today. Yale is the first Ivy League university to make its collections accessible in this fashion, and already more than 250,000 images are available through a newly developed collective catalog.
The goal of the new policy is to make high quality digital images of Yale’s vast cultural heritage collections in the public domain openly and freely available. (more…)
As the world’s leading authority on beads manufactured from shells by California’s Chumash Indians, UCLA archaeologist Jeanne Arnold was stumped by a series of anomalous artifacts excavated at former settlements on the Channel Islands.(more…)
Happy Mother’s Day: Cordial Greetings to all the Mothers on Earth. Special Greetings to My Mother. I Love You Mom very Deeply, But I know Your Love for me is much more Deeper and Eternal!!! You are the best Mother on Earth I have even seen!!!…
People in different cultures make different assumptions about the people around them, according to an upcoming study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The researchers studied the brain waves of people with Caucasian and Asian backgrounds and found that cultural differences in how we think about other people are embedded deep in our minds. Cultural differences are evident very deep in the brain, challenging a commonsense notion that culture is skin deep. (more…)
The International Roma, (Gypsy) Day was founded at the first World Gypsy Congress, which took place in London on April 8, 1971. The congress gathered representatives from 30 countries. The national symbols of the gypsies – the flag and the anthem – were approved at the congress. The gypsies of the whole world became one single nation.
There are six basic branches of gypsies in the world today: three western and three eastern branches. Roma, Sinti and Iberian gypsies are referred to the Western branch. The eastern group includes the Lom, the Dom and the Lyuli people. In addition, there are smaller groups of gypsies. There are several ethnographic groups of nomadic peoples in Europe. Their lifestyle is close to that of the gypsies, but their origin is different – the Irish Travellers, or the Yeniche people from Central Europe, for instance. Many specialists, who study nomadic nations, agree that the gypsy ethnos had been finally formed only by the 15th century, when the gypsies were traveling from Byzantium to Europe. (more…)
