Tag Archives: united states

Q&A: Economic ‘Prophet’ Now Showing Classes How Theory Translates into Practice

Stephen Roach is a respected authority on Asia — China in particular — and an often-cited and widely recognized prophet on the global economy.

Until recently chair of Morgan Stanley Asia and long the firm’s chief economist, Roach came to Yale in 2010 as a senior fellow in the newly inaugurated Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, with a joint appointment at the School of Management (SOM). This spring Roach announced he would be retiring from Morgan Stanley after 30 years with the firm to teach full time at Yale.

YaleNews recently met with the economist in his office to discuss his new career as a teacher and to get his prognosis on the future of the world economy. (more…)

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Study Shows That, In Restaurants, Race Matters

A new study from North Carolina State University shows that more than one-third of restaurant servers discriminate against African-American customers.

“Many people believe that race is no longer a significant issue in the United States,” says Sarah Rusche, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the study. “But the fact that a third of servers admit to varying their quality of service based on customers’ race, often giving African-Americans inferior service, shows that race continues to be an issue in our society.” (more…)

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Inspired by Insects

For treatment of vocal fold disorders, UD researchers look to insect protein

A one-inch long grasshopper can leap a distance of about 20 inches. Cicadas can produce sound at about the same frequency as radio waves. Fleas measuring only millimeters can jump an astonishing 100 times their height in microseconds. How do they do it? They make use of a naturally occurring protein called resilin.

Resilin is a protein in the composite structures found in the leg and wing joints, and sound producing organs of insects. Highly elastic, it responds to exceptionally high rates of speed and demonstrates unmatched resilience after being stretched or deformed. (more…)

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CU Research Shows Warming Climate Threatens Ecology at Mountain Research Site West of Boulder

A series of papers published this month on ecological changes at 26 global research sites — including one administered by the University of Colorado Boulder in the high mountains west of the city — indicates that ecosystems dependent on seasonal snow and ice are the most sensitive to changes in climate.

The six papers appeared in the April issue of the journal BioScience. The papers were tied to data gathered at sites in North America, Puerto Rico, the island of Moorea near Tahiti, and Antarctica, which are known as Long-Term Ecological Research, or LTER, sites and are funded by the National Science Foundation. CU-Boulder’s Niwot Ridge site, one of the five original LTER sites designated by NSF in 1980, encompasses several thousand acres of subalpine forest, tundra, talus slopes, glacial lakes and wetlands stretching up to more than 13,000 feet on top of the Continental Divide. (more…)

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Safe Sleep Environments Key to Preventing Many Infant Deaths, MU Researcher Says

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Since 1992, the government’s Back-to-Sleep Campaign has encouraged parents to place infants on their backs to sleep. Still, more than 4,500 infants die unexpectedly during sleep each year in the United States. Now, a University of Missouri injury prevention researcher says that safe, separate sleep environments for infants are critical to preventing sudden unexpected infant deaths (SUIDs).

“Many of these SUIDs are due to unsafe sleep environments, and these deaths are totally preventable,” said Patricia Schnitzer, an associate professor in the MU Sinclair School of Nursing. “The safest place for infants to sleep is on their backs in their own cribs without soft bedding.” (more…)

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Rebuilding a Heart, Saving a Life

A young girl in Bridgeport, Connecticut, born with one of the most serious, life-threatening congenital heart defects known, is on her way to living a normal life thanks to Yale doctors who developed and performed the first operation of its kind in the United States.

Angela Irizarry was the first American patient to receive a tissue-engineered blood vessel made of her own natural cells. (more…)

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Belief in God Rises with Age, Even in Atheist Nations

International surveys about the depth of people’s belief in God reveal vast differences among nations, ranging from 94 percent of people in the Philippines who said they always believed in God, compared to only 13 percent of people in the former East Germany. Yet the surveys found one constant—belief in God is higher among older people, regardless of where they live.

A new report on the international surveys, “Belief About God Across Time and Countries,” was issued by the General Social Survey of the social science research organization NORC at the University of Chicago. It is based on a comprehensive, international study of belief in God and includes information from the International Social Survey Program, a consortium of the world’s leading opinion survey organizations. Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey, wrote the report. (more…)

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Homeland Security Chief Speaks About Challenges Facing U.S., Global Cooperation

The United States is stronger and more secure than it was prior to 9/11, but threats from overseas remain and must be proactively managed, said Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, who visited campus April 16 for a public talk sponsored by the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations.

In a globalized world, international cooperation is the key to identifying those who intend to do harm, she said, adding that threats to the global supply chain, the activities of drug and human smuggling organizations, and the prevalence of cyber-criminals who attempt to steal information and intellectual property and disrupt critical networks are among the major challenges facing the Department of Homeland Security. (more…)

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