Tag: study

Study Finds Browser Cookies Make People More Cautious Online
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Study Finds Browser Cookies Make People More Cautious Online

Website cookies are online surveillance tools, and the commercial and government entities that use them would prefer people not read those notifications too closely. People who do read the notifications carefully will find that they have the option to say no to some or all cookies. The problem is, without careful attention those notifications become an annoyance and a subtle reminder that your online activity can be tracked. As a researcher who studies online surveillance, I’ve found that failing to read the notifications thoroughly can lead to negative emotions and affect what people do online. How cookies work Browser cookies are not new. They were developed in 1994 by a Netscape programmer in order to optimize browsing experiences by exchanging users’ data with specific websites. Th...
According To A New Study Dangerous Counterfeit Drugs Are Putting Millions Of US Consumers At Risk
IN OTHER NEWS

According To A New Study Dangerous Counterfeit Drugs Are Putting Millions Of US Consumers At Risk

The Food and Drug Administration took 130 enforcement actions against counterfeit medication rings from 2016 through 2021, according to my new study published in the journal Annals of Pharmacotherapy. Such actions might involve arrests, confiscation of products or counterfeit rings being dissolved. These counterfeiting operations involved tens of millions of pills, more than 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of active ingredient powder that could be turned into pills in the U.S. and hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. Unfortunately, with over 11,000 rogue pharmacy sites selling drugs on the internet, these actions barely scratch the surface. The FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations conducts and coordinates criminal investigations into manufacturers and individuals violating federal...
A New Study Finds Youth Largely Underestimate The Risks Of Contracting STIs Through Oral Sex
LGBTQ

A New Study Finds Youth Largely Underestimate The Risks Of Contracting STIs Through Oral Sex

Young people are largely unaware of the risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections, or STIs, through oral sex. That’s the finding of our recent study, published in Annals of Family Medicine. Research and education on oral sex are critical because it is a very common sexual practice. And many STIs are transmitted orally, including herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, HIV and human papillomavirus (HPV). Why it matters The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 85% of sexually active people ages 18 to 44 have engaged in oral sex at least once. A separate survey found that 41% of adolescents ages 15 to 19 reported having oral sex. Historically, research on reducing STI transmission among young people has focused primarily on heterosexual vaginal intercourse rathe...
Study Reveals Neighborhoods With MLK Streets Are Poorer Than National Average And Highly Segregated
POP CULTURE & TRENDS

Study Reveals Neighborhoods With MLK Streets Are Poorer Than National Average And Highly Segregated

The big idea Poverty rates are almost double the national average in areas surrounding streets named after Martin Luther King Jr., according to our recent study, and educational attainment is much lower. Our geography research, published in the GeoJournal in September 2020, analyzed the racial makeup and economic well-being of 22,286 census blocks in the U.S. with roadways bearing the slain civil rights leader’s name. Streets named after Martin Luther King typically run through multiple census blocks; we identified a total of 955 such streets in the United States. The areas surrounding MLK streets are predominantly African American, with very few white residents, we found. This is particularly true in the South and Midwest. A notable exception includes California, where MLK neighborhoods...
A New Study Finds Gun Violence Soared During The COVID-19 Pandemic – But The Reasons Why Are Complex
IN OTHER NEWS

A New Study Finds Gun Violence Soared During The COVID-19 Pandemic – But The Reasons Why Are Complex

Paddy Ssentongo, Penn State and Jennifer McCall-Hosenfeld, Penn State In a new study, we found that the overall U.S. gun violence rate rose by 30% during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the year before. In 28 states, the rates were substantially higher between March 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, compared to the pre-pandemic period from Feb. 1, 2019, through Feb. 29, 2020. There were 51,063 incidents of gun violence events resulting in injury or death in the United States in the first 13 months of the pandemic compared to 38,919 incidents in the same time span pre-pandemic. CC BY-ND Early in the pandemic, gun sales in the United States surged, with more than 20% of these purchases by first-time buyers. And access to firearms is a well-established risk factor for gun-rel...
Several Hours A Day Of Kids On Their Computers Is OK, Study Suggests
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Several Hours A Day Of Kids On Their Computers Is OK, Study Suggests

Katie Paulich, University of Colorado Boulder The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Even when kids spend five hours a day on screen – whether computers, television or text – it doesn’t appear to be harmful. That’s what my colleagues and I at the University of Colorado Boulder discovered after analyzing data taken from nearly 12,000 participants in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study – the largest long-term study of its kind ever in the U.S. The participants included children between the ages of 9 to 10, from diverse backgrounds, income levels and ethnicities. We investigated how screen time was linked to some of the most critical aspects of their lives: sleep, mental health, behavior and friendships. Our results, recently published...
Study Finds Evidence Of Sex Trafficking In Trade Schools
IN OTHER NEWS

Study Finds Evidence Of Sex Trafficking In Trade Schools

Researchers identified at least 18 schools across five states that state certification boards suspected of forcing their students into the sex industry. Mariel Padilla Originally published by The 19th Researchers identified at least 18 state-authorized schools across five states suspected of engaging in sex trafficking operations, according to a report published on Wednesday by the Seldin/Haring-Smith Foundation (SHSF). And now a congressional committee is demanding that something be done. The report’s authors, Ellie Bruecker and Abigail Seldin, wrote that state certification boards suspected these vocational schools of facilitating environments that could be too easily used by traffickers to train their victims for more lucrative work — but Bruecker estimated that the problem is much...
New Study Finds In One Urban School District Nearly 10% Of Youth Identify As Gender-Diverse
LIFESTYLE

New Study Finds In One Urban School District Nearly 10% Of Youth Identify As Gender-Diverse

It seems that more and more teens are identifying as transgender, gender-fluid or nonbinary. But because linguistic and cultural norms are always evolving, it’s been challenging to pin down an exact number.   CC BY-NC-ND The 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that 1.8% of high school students identified as transgender. But my team – made up of pediatricians, adolescent medicine specialists and public health researchers – suspected that this study underrepresented the prevalence of gender-diverse youth. That’s because not all people who are gender-diverse – an umbrella term for those whose gender identity does not fully align with the sex they were assigned at birth – identify as “transgender.” So we put tog...
New Study Reveals Where And Why 80% Of Fatal E-Scooter Crashes Involve Cars Most Collisions Occur
SOCIETY

New Study Reveals Where And Why 80% Of Fatal E-Scooter Crashes Involve Cars Most Collisions Occur

About 30 people in the United States have been killed riding electric scooters since 2018. Most – 80% – were hit by drivers of cars. Publicly available e-scooters arrived to U.S. cities in 2017 as an energy-efficient and fun new way to get around town. By 2019, e-scooter rides had soared from zero to 88 million trips annually. But putting e-scooter riders on the same roads as cars without good infrastructure or clear rules has been dangerous. Making streets safer will require urban policymakers, not to mention drivers, to understand where and why cars collide with these new vehicles. The few empirical studies on e-scooter safety come from emergency departments in cities where e-scooters launched early, like Los Angeles and Austin. They meticulously describe which injuries occurred and w...
In Ultraclean Labs ‘Humanized Pigs’ Are Being Created To Study Human Illnesses And Treatments
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

In Ultraclean Labs ‘Humanized Pigs’ Are Being Created To Study Human Illnesses And Treatments

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires all new medicines to be tested in animals before use in people. Pigs make better medical research subjects than mice, because they are closer to humans in size, physiology and genetic makeup. Pigs with human immune systems. Ahlea Forster, CC BY-SA In recent years, our team at Iowa State University has found a way to make pigs an even closer stand-in for humans. We have successfully transferred components of the human immune system into pigs that lack a functional immune system. This breakthrough has the potential to accelerate medical research in many areas, including virus and vaccine research, as well as cancer and stem cell therapeutics. Existing biomedical models Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, or SCID, is a genetic condition that cause...