A recent study from North Carolina State University finds that U.S. government spending on military personnel has a positive impact on the nation’s human capital – essentially improving the American workforce. Using a new computer model, the study estimates the economic impact of this human capital improvement to be $89.8 billion for 2019 alone. (more…)
The available evidence indicates that economic sanctions are not effective tools for achieving specific policy goals in foreign nations. New research from North Carolina State University argues that increased military spending caused by economic sanctions counterbalances the adverse impact of the sanctions – and points to Iran as a case study in how this can happen. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — The U.S. military has made progress by conducting sexual assault training, but a new University of Michigan study raises questions about the effectiveness of those efforts.
Sexual assault has been a problem in the military for years, resulting in the Department of Defense in 2005 creating a Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office. This office oversees sexual assault training conducted by the five branches. However, their training had undergone little evaluation by outside researchers. (more…)
It wasn’t until he began taking a more artistic approach that Richard Mosse felt his photographs were truly capturing the horror of the conflict in the Congo, the artist told a group of undergraduates and graduates on Feb. 5.
Mosse spoke about the process behind his most recent project, “The Enclave,” at the Yale School of Art. The talk was sponsored by the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism. (more…)
Too busy to vacuum your living room? Let Roomba the robot do it. Don’t want to risk a soldier’s life to disable an explosive? Let a robot do it.
It’s becoming more common to have robots sub in for humans to do dirty or sometimes dangerous work. But researchers are finding that in some cases, people have started to treat robots like pets, friends, or even as an extension of themselves. That raises the question, if a soldier attaches human or animal-like characteristics to a field robot, can it affect how they use the robot? What if they “care” too much about the robot to send it into a dangerous situation? (more…)
Researchers seek better ways to diagnose, treat disorder
Tania Roth studies what happens to the brain when stress occurs early in life, seeking to pinpoint how those kinds of bad experiences can cause molecular changes to DNA.
Now, by participating in a national consortium of researchers, the assistant professor of psychology at the University of Delaware is hoping to use her expertise to contribute to a better understanding of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). (more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — People who commit cyber-attacks against the government also tend to download music illegally and participate in physical protests. Surprisingly, however, they don’t appear to be acting out of some sense of national pride or patriotism.
Those are some of the findings to emerge from a Michigan State University study that for the first time begins to paint a profile of “civilian cyber-warriors,” or people who engage in attacks against domestic or foreign governments without support from military or government agencies. Cybercrimes pose a huge societal risk and have become a hot issue globally, yet little is known about the mindset behind them. (more…)
The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project is the effort of hundreds of scientists to describe the workings of the human genome. Their research, outlined in 30 papers published in multiple journals Sept. 5, has confirmed our genome is far more complex than originally thought. Regions that contain instructions for making proteins, which carry out life’s functions, account for only about 1 percent of our genome. ENCODE has shed light on the other 99%. Almost 80 percent of the genome is biochemically active, much of it involved in some sort of regulation of genes. Vast regions of our DNA once considered “junk” contain some 400,000 regulators called enhancers, which play a key role activating or silencing genes despite residing far away from the gene itself. Yale University researchers played a key role ENCODE, helping to author 9 of the 30 papers published in four journals on Sept. 5. Some of their work is described below.
The massive Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) unveiled Sept. 5 reveals a human genome vastly more rich and complex than envisioned even a decade ago. In a key supporting paper published in the journal Nature, the lab of Yale’s Mark Gerstein, the Albert L. Williams Professor of Biomedical Informatics, has found order amidst the seeming chaos of trillions of potential molecular interactions. (more…)
