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Women and HIV: A story of racial and ethnic health disparities

By Guest PostJuly 7, 2013Culture, Healthafrican american, aids, american women, behavioral, causes of death, cira, cultural factor, culture, discrimination, ethnic health disparities, hiv, hiv acquisition, hiv epidemic, hiv infection, hiv risk, intimate partner violence, ipv, known risk factors, latina women, lisa rosenthal, negative, non caucasian women, prep access, racial, sarah k calabrese, sexual experience, sexual partnership, sexual risk taking, sexual self concept, sexual stereotypes, sexually transmitted infections, society, stigma, stis, story, theory, united states, women

The history of women with HIV/AIDS in the United States is really a story of racial and ethnic health disparities.

Overall, the rate of American women contracting the disease relative to men has climbed from 8 percent in the 1980s to 25 percent today. But most of this burden is in underserved communities: one in 32 African-American women will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime, as will one in 106 Latina women. Meanwhile, one in 526 Caucasian and Asian women will contract the virus. Death rates are also higher for African-American and Latina women, making it one of the leading causes of death for those groups. (more…)

World’s Longest-Running Plant Monitoring Program Now Digitized

By Guest PostMay 10, 2013Nature, Sciencecarnegie institution, data set, desert laboratory, digital format, dynamics, forrest shreve, gis technology, gps, helen raichle, janice bowers, larry venable, long term data, map, national science foundation, photographs, plant monitoring program, plants on tumamoc, raymond m turner, rhythm, robert h webb, science of ecology, society, sonoran desert, susana rodriguez buritica, tucson, tumamoc hill, U.S. Geological Survey, ua, university of arizona, usgs, volney spalding, Washington

Data from the research plots on Tumamoc Hill reveal changes in the Sonoran Desert and have been important to key advances in the science of ecology.

Researchers at the University of Arizona’s Tumamoc Hill have digitized 106 years of growth data on individual plants, making the information available for study by people all over the world.

Knowing how plants respond to changing conditions over many decades provides new insights into how ecosystems behave. (more…)

Female Pulitzer Prize Winners Require Higher Qualifications, MU Study Finds

By Guest PostOctober 29, 2012Culture, General, Mediachinese university, compensational equality period, exclusionary period, female, formal equality period, francis lee, gender disparities, hong kong, ivy league, journalism, journalistic industry, male, metropolitan city, missouri, new york times, prestigious awards, pulitzer prize, society, statistical difference, stratification, university, US, winner, yong volz

Gender disparity in journalism still exists, but is improving

COLUMBIA, Mo. —The Pulitzer Prize in Journalism is one of the world’s most prestigious awards. Despite progress in the last few decades, gender disparities in the field of journalism have existed as long as the profession has. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found that female Pulitzer Prize winners are more likely to have greater qualifications than their male counterparts in order to win the coveted award.

In a study to be published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Yong Volz, an assistant professor of journalism studies in the MU School of Journalism, along with Francis Lee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, studied biographical data from all 814 historical winners of the Pulitzer Prize from 1917 to 2010. They found that the majority of the 113 female Pulitzer Prize winners enjoyed access to greater resources than the average male winner. (more…)

Archivist an Expert on All Things ‘Born Digital’

By Guest PostOctober 24, 2012Education, Technologyaims project, american archivists, anne hartman, archivists, born digital, cds, collection, digital archivist, digital form, digital material, digital object, dvds, floppy disks, forensic toolkit, format, library, mark matienzo, paper document, saa, society, yale university

No longer primarily paper documents, donations to the Yale University Library now also come in digital forms and formats — including floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, and flash drives. Archivists are faced with a new and challenging dilemma: how to preserve “born-digital” collections in a form that can be read by available technology and also saved in a way that will be accessible in the future.

At Yale Library’s Manuscripts & Archives department, Mark Matienzo, Digital Archivist, is helping to develop strategies to reclaim and organize information that was created within the past 20 years — on media that may be already becoming obsolete. (more…)

The Right to Vote

By Guest PostOctober 6, 2012Culture, Politicsamerica, american public, bartender, cartogram, christopher uggen, civil war, crime, criminal, criminal history, data, drug offense, electorate, felon disenfranchisement, florida, floridians, former felon, gpa, grad, inmate, jeff manza, kentucky, key battleground, locked out, maine, marker, marriage, minneapolis, minnesota, new york, november, owatonna, policy, policy maker, presidency, right, rob stewart, same sex, sarah shannon, society, states, united states, university, us house, us senate, vermont, virginia, vote, voter id

A lot is up for grabs this November in America—the presidency of the United States, for one. Not to mention a third of U.S. Senate seats, all seats in the U.S. House, and state-level amendments on issues ranging from voter ID to same-sex marriage (Minnesota has both on the ballot).

But almost six million Americans will sit this one out because of something they’ve done. They’re felons—perpetrators, at some point in their lives, of a serious crime. (more…)

Ageing Population Could Boost Economy

By Guest PostApril 26, 2012Economyadam jones, ageing population, alzheimer disease, boost, british economy, david taylor, diabetes, dilnot proposal, economic problem, Economy, gdp, gross national product, heart attack, jennifer gill, life expectancy, longevity, medicine, national productivity, nhs, obesity, older people, pharmaceutical revolution, phenomena, society, stroke, ucl, uk

Older people are a benefit, rather than a burden, to the economy and society according to a new report from the UCL School of Pharmacy.

The report, Active Ageing: Live Longer and Prosper (produced with financial support from Alliance Boots) refutes the view that older people are a major source of economic problems such as reduced international competitiveness. It provides evidence that the benefits of living longer will outweigh the additional health and social care costs of population ageing.

“All too often old age is seen as a time of increasing dependency, vulnerability and frailty. But older people already contribute significantly to their families’ and wider communities’ wellbeing,” said Dr Jennifer Gill (UCL School of Pharmacy), co-author of the report. (more…)

Cultural “Tightness” Can Hold Back Female Leadership – But not Always, Says University of Toronto Study

By Guest PostMarch 10, 2012Culture, Politicscultural norms, cultural tightness, deutsche telekom, geoffrey leonardelli, german company, germanic europe, hungary, ken mcguffin, leader, new zealand, Pakistan, scandinavian country, sex, society, soo min toh, south korea, statistics, turkey, ukraine, university of toronto, women, women leaders, world bank

Normative support for equality can make the difference

Countries that more strictly uphold their cultural norms are less likely to promote women as leaders, unless those norms support equal opportunity for both sexes, shows a new paper from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

“Cultural tightness can prevent the emergence of women leaders because tighter cultures may make a society’s people more resistant to changing the traditionally-held practice that placed men in leadership roles,” said Professor Soo Min Toh, who is cross-appointed to the Rotman School and the University of Toronto Mississauga, and co-wrote the paper with Professor Geoffrey Leonardelli at the Rotman School and U of T’s Department of Psychology. (more…)

The Tales Top Bosses Tell To Keep Ahead of The Game

By Guest PostMarch 4, 2012Politicscharles harvey, economic crisis, exeter, mairi maclean, movers and shakers, newcastle, project, robert chia, saxon kings, self construction, society, Steve Jobs, storyteller, storytelling, strathclyde, top boss, winston churchill

Top bosses are expert storytellers who tell versions of the same four stories to keep ahead of the game, experts have found. Researchers from Exeter, Newcastle and Strathclyde universities have discovered four powerful messages are built into the often subtle and sometimes self-deprecating stories leaders tell about themselves.

The messages are about defying the odds, staying the course, succeeding through talent and giving back to society. The overall effect of this image-enhancing cocktail is to legitimise their positions as captains of industry.

Storytelling has long been recognised as a way leaders such as Winston Churchill or Steve Jobs maintained legitimacy. However, this research goes further, revealing how and why these stories are such a potent way of keeping stellar careers on track. (more…)

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