Elderly Need Better Access to Pets, Says Purdue Expert
Purdue UniversityElderly people who have pets are happier and healthier, but society has erected roadblocks that often keep animals away from the elderly, a Purdue University expert says.
Elderly people who have pets are happier and healthier, but society has erected roadblocks that often keep animals away from the elderly, a Purdue University expert says.
Sea Grant Tip Sheet: 1) Study Finds Group of Marine Bacteria Dominate Waters Off Southeastern U.S. Coast, 2) Teachers to Gain Hands-On Experience at Interactive Exotic Species Day Camp, 3) Women Who Claim Title "Fisherman's Wife" Meet Stress of Fishing Marriages Better
"Go west, young man," New York journalist Horace Greeley told growth-happy American men (and women) in the 19th century. And for most of America's history, the country's increasingly mobile citizens pushed west, and south. Until recently, perhaps.
Minority and handicapped children in the New York state foster care system who qualify for subsidies are twice as likely to get adopted as other children, according to a Cornell University study by Rosemary Avery. She has completed one of the most comprehensive studies tracking the outcome of foster care children. However, she notes, 90 percent of the foster children available for adoption in the state get adopted.
Hard-to-place children who are adopted in New York State receive "vastly different levels of support," sometimes half that of a similar child living in a nearby county, says a new Cornell University study. Some of the most vulnerable children are not being treated equally, and low support may inhibit adoption rates, leaving children to linger in foster care, says Rosemary Avery, associate professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell.
Traditional support groups clearly help cancer survivors cope with their experiences, and Internet-based networks can offer many of the same benefits, says a University of Delaware professor who examined the content, advantages andpitfalls of "cyber solace" in a new study published in the January-February issue of "Computers in Nursing."
In the new book "Escaping the Advice Trap," two Cornell psychologists ask more than 100 experts how they would respond to 59 tough relationship problems. Then, Wendy M. Williams and Stephen Ceci, both professors in the department of human development at Cornell University, offer a bottom-line analysis for each dilemma.
Even though people of all ages are working fewer hours and retiring earlier than their parents and grandparents did, many of them feel overloaded. "Especially in two-job families with young children, life can seem like one long sprint, without time for real exercise or real leisure," says University of Michigan psychologist Robert L. Kahn.
A new book, The Soviet World of American Communism, further confirms the fact that the American Communist Party was a tool of the Soviet Union says co-author and Emory University political scientist Harvey Klehr. The claims are based on Klehr's research in the archives of the Communist International in Moscow.
In the first study focusing on the juvenile "peer court" process, UC Irvine professor Robert Beck has concluded that this recent and innovative approach to combating teen crime appears to be an effective alternative to the more traditional and punitive juvenile justice system.
It's not a good idea to be extremely friendly with your ex-spouse, but it's not healthy to be overly hostile, either
U-M Population Studies Center researcher Sanjiv Gupta analyzed data to see how changes in their martial status affected time spent cooking, doing the dishes, washing and ironing clothes, cleaning the house, and other routine, repetitive household chores.
An Arizona State University graduate student studying the Tibetan plateau in China is helping nomadic yak herders fight two years of savage winters. Biology student Marc Foggin went to the Qinghai Province of China to learn how best to sustain development and ecology on the grasslands of Tibet, one of the harshest environments in the world.
News stories about food and health bombard us daily. Whether we're watching the evening news at home, flipping through a newspaper or reading magazine headlines while in the grocery store checkout line, we stumble upon the latest food study. But what are consumers actually hearing and reading from media sources? That's what the International Food Information Council (IFIC) Foundation revealed in a new quantitative and qualitative study that analyzed three months of coverage (May-July 1997) in 38 national and regional television, newspaper and magazine outlets.
Mediator and Central Michigan University restorative justice expert Harry Mika can talk about the role of local, community-based justice organizations involved in Northern Ireland's peace process. He can trace the development of emerging community justice programs designed as options to a current form of community policing called "punishment violence." According to Mika: "One of the preconditions of the peace talks and agreement is the ending of punishment violence" in Northern Ireland.
Perpetrators of the Oklahoma City bombing have their roots in rural radicals and anti-government hate groups tracing back to Shay's Rebellion; Waco's Branch Davidians have roots not unlike cult beginnings of Christianity, say two Connecticut College historians who have authored books that detail lessons learned from these two tragedies, which share an anniversary April 19.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A whopping 73 percent of white college and high school students own a home computer, while only 32 percent of African American students have access to a computer at home, according to a survey by two professors at Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management.
Although President Clinton proudly proclaimed the recent federal welfare reform effort "an end to welfare as we know it," political scientist Gwendolyn Mink writes in her new book "Welfare's End" that the demise of welfare can be traced back almost to its origins.
Tallahassee, FL--Using funds from its settlement with the tobacco industry, today the State of Florida is launching a $25 million annual anti-tobacco advertising campaign. The ìTruthî campaign was developed by FloridaÃs teens and uses one of the most effective strategies known to affect teen behavior: rebellion.
"The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History," by Cornell University historian Walter LaFeber, has been awarded the Bancroft Prize in American History for 1998. The Clash, according to Akira Iriye, a Harvard University historian, "will easily become the best history of U.S.-Japanese relations in any language."
Social phobias -- the presence of extreme fear and/or avoidance of social situations -- is common in adults and children and is extremely debilitating, according to a newly released book, Shy Children, Phobic Adults: Nature and Treatment of Social Phobia, published by the American Psychological Association (APA).
The controversial topic of body image is explored in an intriguing and, frequently, disturbing new video by sociologist Dane Archer. Archer tackles such topics as eating disorders, body piercing and tattooing, cosmetic surgery, modeling and beauty pageants, aging, and cultural differences.
A Connecticut College psychology professor, author and researcher says the disease-based concept for addiction treatment, as embodied in recovery programs like AA, ignores the root causes of addiction and will unlikely achieve sustained recovery when used alone.
Every April since 1970, Americans have celebrated Earth Day with fairs, rallies and educational programs on the imortance of protecting the planet. The holiday serves to promote environmental values -- but it also reveals the environmental movement's problems and limitations, says a University of Maine political scientist."The holiday has proved to be a mixed legacy," says Amy Fried.
Boosting taxes on cigarettes will have a far less dramatic impact on rates of teen-age smoking than politicians are hoping, a new Cornell University study finds. In fact, say the researchers, higher taxes will have "a statistically insignificant impact" on whether young people decide to start smoking.
The difference between environmentally correct, native landscaping and a neglected, weedy neighborhood eye-sore is not universally apparent. A new book offers advice on what gardeners can do to a home landscape in cities and suburbs to make people realize it is being naturalized, rather than neglected.
Few people are cut out for pressure-cooker jobs such as being a 911 operator or an air traffic controller. University of Washington psychologist have determined that certain people seem to possess a common trait that enables them to handle these kinds of jobs, sometimes involving life and death, and have developed a new test that identifies these individuals.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute on Aging will hold a colloquium and two public lectures April 23-24 exploring new research insights into successful aging.
A study by a Purdue University expert on child development shows that boys who are bullies are not only accepted, but they can actually be among the more popular youngsters in school The only students that girl bullies were more popular than were the children that nobody seemed to like - the aggressive victims.
Alarmed by the epidemic rate at which children are being exposed to violence - on the streets, in their communities, and through the media - the Johns Hopkins Children's Center has opened an Office for the Prevention of Violence to address the needs of traumatized children and to draw attention to a rapidly escalating public health threat.
In a new book, an anthropologist has found that shamans on all five continents talk of a cosmic serpent, a very long single and double entity that is the key to life. They also report seeing twins, twisted ladders and sky ropes in their visions. Many say that this form shows them that the life principle is the same for all species.
She wasn't faster than a speeding bullet, but new research seems to indicate that Lucy and other early human ancestors walked with greater ease and efficiency than previously believed, despite their short leg, says a University of Washington anthropologist.
With continued unrest threatening to boil over in corners of the former Yugoslavia, a professor at a small New Hampshire college is working to plant seeds for peace and stability there. Douglas Challenger, professor of sociology at Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, N.H., is helping educators in the former Yugoslavia learn how to promote concepts of democracy in the classroom.
High-profile shootings by students in Mississippi, Kentucky and Arkansas generate interational headlines and parental fears that school violence is the norm. But a professor who developed a method for reducing school crime says deadly incidents are anomalies that should mobilize the public to action.
A new analysis shows the tendency to "catastrophize"---to see the bad that happens to you as part of a pervasive pall of evil and pain that happens to everyone, everywhere---has been linked to an increased risk of dying before the age of 65.
Despite living in a society that is increasingly weight and appearance conscious, many American children may be headed toward sedentary, overweight adulthood. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center have found that as the hours of television watched by American children increases, so does their weight.
Ten million Americans, including almost 4 million children, don't get enough to eat, according to a new Cornell University/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study. More than half of the 4 percent of Americans who report they don't have enough food live in households in which at least one person has a job, says Katherine Alaimo, a doctoral candidate in nutritional sciences at Cornell.
The vast majority of past studies on peer victimization have focused on boys and physical aggression. But new research illustrates that girls also experience peer victimization, usually relational aggression, in which a person is harmed through hurtful manipulation of their peer relationships or friendships.
The new Mount Holyoke Center for Leadership and Public Interest Advocacy has invited four prominent experts with opposing points of view to examine the potential success or failure of current directions in welfare policy and to debate both the likely outcome of current reforms.
A University of Georgia historian has discovered that it is possible for African-Americans to begin identifying particular ethnic cultural and social influences once thought unrecoverable.
A team of anthropologists from the University of Georgia has joined the Foxfire Fund, Inc., to help preserve materials collected during the 30 years of the project that studies the southern Appalachians.
A unique collection of correspondence between Indonesian adolescents and the psychology professor who has become Southeast Asia's own "Dr. Ruth" is now available at the Cornell University Library.
"Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi," a book by John Dittmer, DePauw University professor of history, provides further insight into the civil rights efforts of the 1960s and the documents released by the Sovereignty Commission.
A groundbreaking new book by William Rottschaefer, professor of philosophy, Lewis & Clark College, integrates recent findings and theories in evolutionary theory, biology and psychology to explore what it means to behave morally. "The Biology and Psychology of Moral Agency" explains how people acquire and put into practice their capacities to act morally and how these capacities are reliable means to achieving true moral beliefs. Most philosophers argue that the sciences are no help at all in answering how moral action is justified. Rottschaefer argues that science has a lot to contribute.
The records of the organization Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), a collection of letters and other documents showing how a handful of American families made history and launched a national movement by publicly supporting their gay and lesbian children, is now available at Cornell University Library's Human Sexuality Collection.
Researchers say they have identified a common, but apparently mindless, psychological phenomenon that plays a previously unrecognized role in the way people form impressions of other people. Specifically, they've found that when someone attributes positive or negative traits to someone else, the listener will often attribute those same traits to the speaker. Embargoed: 3-18-98.
A Purdue University study of religion and body weight finds that religious people are more likely to be overweight than are nonreligious people. Fortunately for them, being religious may curtail some of the unhealthy effects of being overweight.
Changes in managed healthcare are creating pioneering roles for healthcare workers. This is happening against a backdrop of President Clinton's call for a national patient bill of rights and movements by several states to draft consumer protection bills for managed-care participants.
Religious beliefs are a major source of political cleavage, according to Vanderbilt political scientist Geoff Layman, who is calling for improved measurement of the effect of religous beliefs on voting.
President Clinton's proposal to spend $21.7 billion over five years to make child care affordable is a step in the right direction, but a Vanderbilt University historian says the public and policymakers need to do more to build a good system of child care. "Child care in America shouldn't just be expanded, it should also be improved," said Elizabeth Rose, assistant professor of history and author of a forthcoming book from Oxford University Press on the history of child care in America.