March 13, 2007, 9:34 PM CT

Videotaped confessions can create bias

Police often videotape interrogations of suspects for use in criminal trials. Video confessions that focus exclusively on the suspect, however, can bias judges and law enforcement officers to consider the suspect's statements as voluntary, according to a new Ohio University study.

In more than 25 percent of wrongful convictions exonerated by DNA testing, innocent defendants made incriminating statements, delivered outright confessions or pled guilty, according to the Innocence Project. Police interrogation tactics - which include exaggerating the evidence against the suspect or implying the suspect could face an extreme sentence - can prompt a suspect to make a false confession, said Daniel Lassiter, an Ohio University professor of psychology.

In videotaped confessions, many law enforcement agencies focus the camera on only the suspect. Lassiter's research shows that this practice creates what he calls a camera-perspective bias that leads trial participants to view the confessions as voluntary, regardless of how interrogators obtained them.

In the recent study, published in the recent issue of Psychological Science, Lassiter and colleagues from Northwestern University and the American Bar Foundation asked 21 judges and 24 law-enforcement officers to view a videotaped mock confession. The researchers presented participants with different versions of the confession in which the camera focused on only the suspect, only the detective, or both suspect and detective. Participants assessed how voluntarily the suspect confessed in each case......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

March 12, 2007, 9:56 PM CT

What causes attractiveness?

Perceived attractiveness is the result of compatibility of biological sex and gendered cues--masculinity and femininity as specified within the societyaccording to a study by researchers at New York University and Texas A & M University. The findings are published in the most recent issue of the journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study, conducted by Kerri Johnson at NYUs Department of Psychology and Louis Tassinary at Texas A & Ms Department of Architecture, sought to address the following question: Is perceived attractiveness the result of the compatibility of biological sex and gendered cues (i.e., masculinity and femininity as specified within the society)?

"These findings bolster our understanding of how and why the body is perceived attractive," said Johnson. "Body cues bring about the basic social perceptions of sex and gender, and the compatibility of those basic percepts affects perceived attractiveness".

Previous research on western societies has shown how the bodys shape (i.e., the waist-to-hip ratioWHR) relates to judgments of womens attractiveness. Compared to "tubular" figures, "hourglass" figures tended to be judged more favorably in western societies.

In this study, the researchers hypothesized that perceived attractiveness would depend on the compatibility of basic social perceptions that arise from sexually dimorphic (i.e., external differences between males and females) body cues. Specifically, they posited that some body cues will reliably provoke a sex categorization. Once this categorization has been made, other sexually dimorphic cues will be perceived to be either masculine or feminine - and consequently compatible or incompatible given the perceived sex of a target. If correct, when a target is judged to be female, she should be judged attractive when also perceived to be feminine, but not masculine, and vice-versa when a target is judged to be male......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

March 12, 2007, 9:21 PM CT

Developing Countries' Water And Sanitation Needs

Worldwide, more than one billion people lack access to an improved water source, such as a rainwater collection or dug well, and two billion still need access to basic sanitation facilities, such as a latrine.

By 2015, the international community hopes to reduce by half the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

This target for sustainable water and sanitation is just one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals adopted in September 2000 at the Millennium Summit. These goals serve as the world's time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty.

Local communities in the developing world and professional scientists are working to meet this goal. Scientists recently presented their work toward this end at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

In the developed world, the moment a drop of water hits the ground, it goes into the water system until it becomes wastewater. Then it's treated and put it back into the system.

"We have a large-scale infrastructure in the United States to provide clean water," said Joseph Hughes, chair of the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "Using our current approach will not provide the rapid fix the United Nations is looking for in developing countries. It would take decades"......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

March 12, 2007, 8:58 PM CT

Lifting the Chinese tiger trade ban

WASHINGTONAny easing of the current Chinese ban on trading products made from tigers is likely a death sentence for the endangered cats, according to a new TRAFFIC report released recently by World Wildlife Fund and TRAFFICthe wildlife trade monitoring program of WWF and IUCN.

The report warns that Chinese business owners who would profit from the tiger trade are putting increasing pressure on the Chinese government to overturn its successful 1993 ban and allow domestic trade in captive-bred tiger parts for use in traditional medicine and clothing to resume. For example, investors in the growing number of large-scale captive-breeding "tiger farms" in China are pushing for legalizing trade of products from these facilities, which now house 4,000 tigers. The farms keep captive-bred tigers together in large enclosuresa condition not found in the wildand feed live animals to them before busloads of tourists. Such farmed tigers are unsuitable for reintroduction into the wild.

"Reopening any legal trade in tiger parts would be an enormous step backwards for tiger conservation," said Leigh Henry, Program Officer for TRAFFIC North America. "A legal market in China would muddy the waters for enforcement officials and provide smugglers with a convenient cover for laundering wild tigers since farmed and wild products are indistinguishable. Raising tigers in captivity is 250 times more expensive than poaching wild tigers so there's plenty of incentive to poach and smuggle the last remaining wild populations to extinction"......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 19:11:43 GMT

Can Luxury Homes Be Eco-friendly?

Luxury homes can be eco-friendly too. Scottish construction Stewart Milne Group plans to build UK’s first five-star near-zerocarbon neutral) house state-of-the-art environmental house.

The house being built by Stewart Milne is aiming to achieve a five star rating, but within a commercially viable design for volume produced housing, developed with PRP architects, which responds to the issues facing house builders and their customers.

The design of the new houses will help reduce energy consumption by incwind turbine on thesolar chimney, a fitted bathroom pod, open-tread stairs to let the air circulate, and under-floor Water-saving devices will keep use below 80 litres per person per day. Extensive terraces will be built into the design at upper levels to maximise outdoor space in urban environments

Glenn Allison, MD of Stewart Milne Group, says

Our decision to create this potentially 5 star house as a commercial reality gives us the opportunity to show key influencers in the housing sector that it is feasible to build low carbon houses in an affordable fashion.

Take a look at the another interesting eco-friendly prSambala group on Santiago Island.Those ofplan to build eco-friendly homes can take a cue from these projects.

Via: The Herald

Posted by: Rekha      Read more     Source

March 8, 2007, 8:09 AM CT

Retirement of Boomers

Americans in their early to mid-50s today report poorer health, more pain and more trouble doing everyday physical tasks than their older peers reported at the same age in years past, a recent analysis has shown. The research, published in print and online this week by the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), was supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a component of the National Institutes of Health.

The study was conducted by Beth J. Soldo, Ph.D., Olivia Mitchell, Ph.D., and John McCabe, Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania, and Rania Tfaily, Ph.D., of Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario. The newly published report appears as part of NBER's Working Paper series and follows the analysis' online appearance in 2006. It will also be published in a refereed volume from Oxford University Press in 2007.

Using a summary health index developed for their analysis, the researchers compared the overall, self-reported health of people in three birth-year groups-those born in 1936-41 (now ages 66 to 71), 1942-47 (now ages 60 to 65) and 1948-53 (now ages 54 to 59). The data came from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationwide, NIA-sponsored survey of more than 20,000 Americans over age 50 that began in 1992. It draws from survey respondents' answers to questions about their health and well-being when they were all between the ages of 51 and 56. The researchers' health index blended HRS participants' ratings of their health, difficulty with physical mobility and agility, and perception of physical pain......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

March 5, 2007, 10:02 PM CT

When God sanctions violence

Reading violent scriptures increases aggressive behavior, especially among believers, a new study finds. The study by University of Michigan social psychologist Brad Bushman and colleagues helps to illuminate one of the ways that violence and behavior are linked.

"To justify their actions, violent people often claim that God has sanctioned their behavior," said Bushman, faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research and lead author of the article published in the March 2007 issue of Psychological Science. "Christian extremists, Jewish reactionaries and Islamic fundamentalists all can cite scriptures that seem to encourage or at least support aggression against unbelievers".

Bushman, who is also a U-M professor of psychology and communications studies, and colleagues at Brigham Young University and at Vrije University in the Netherlands, found the same relationship in two separate experiments detailed in the article.

The first study involved Brigham Young University students, 99 percent of whom believed in God and in the Bible. The second study involved Amsterdam students, 50 percent of whom believed in God and 27 percent of whom believed in the Bible.

After reporting their religious affiliations and beliefs, participants read a passage adapted from the King James Bible that described a woman's brutal murder and her husband's revenge on her attackers. Half the participants were told that the passage came from the Old Testament, half that it came from an ancient scroll found by archeologists. Half the participants from each of these groups read a version of the passage that included a sentence in which God commanded his followers to take arms against others......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

March 5, 2007, 9:50 PM CT

Poor Development Of Over 200 Million Children

Inadequate intellectual stimulation and poor nutrition, especially iodine and iron deficiencies, are likely to blame for hindering more than 200 million children in developing countries from meeting their full potential, says a Purdue University researcher."These problems are robbing children under age 5 of full development, contributing to a cycle of low educational attainment and poverty later in life," said Theodore Wachs, a professor of psychological sciences at Purdue and a lead researcher on the project. "We're not talking about genetics here. These are all preventable risks, which makes the situation that much more urgent".

"Child Development: Risk Factors for Adverse Outcomes in Developing Countries," is the second in a three-part series from Wachs and colleagues across the globe aimed at identifying the scope, causes and current prevention efforts regarding the loss of developmental potential among children in countries from Brazil to Vietnam. The series appeared in successive January editions of The Lancet.

The researchers drew from data in studies performed from 1985 to February 2006 by searching eight databases using keywords such as "developing countries," "cognitive development" and "educational attainment." They also worked with documents published by the World Bank, UNICEF and UNESCO's International Bureau of Education......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

March 5, 2007, 5:02 AM CT

Teenagers with retail, service jobs

Despite federal regulations intended to protect them, many teenagers in the U.S. use dangerous equipment or work long hours during the school week, according to a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study.

The national study was based on telephone surveys of 928 teenaged workers, 14 to 18 years old. The results show 52 percent of males and 43 percent of females use dangerous equipment such a box crushers and slicers, or serve and sell alcohol where it is consumed, despite federal child labor laws prohibiting these practices.

The results were published in the March 1, 2007 editor of the journal Pediatrics.

Additionally, 84 percent of females and 61 percent of males handle cash in their jobs, exposing them to risks associated with robberies. Homicides during robberies were the cause of up to one half of all youth fatalities in the retail trade.

"Many teenagers start working at an early age, and most find jobs in retail or service industries. Our aim is to examine the conditions under which they are working, and suggest ways to protect them at work," said lead study author Carol Runyan, Ph.D., director of UNC's Injury Prevention Research Center (IPRC) and professor of health behavior and health education in the UNC School of Public Health......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 02:00:48 GMT

SIENNA MILLER GIVING UP MEN FOR A WHILE

I've said this before, and I'll say it again, I don't understand why this girl continues to play games with Jude Law. It just seems to me that he's a wuss and she follows him around like a sick calf.

Maybe it's because he's a complete turn off to me and I just don't see what Sienna, and I guess other women see in the guy.

I think it's great that he spends lots of time with his kids, but must it always be with his ex-wife present to supervise? I'm sorry but they are divorced, and the kids know that, so why this "pretend" family thing? I think that's just making a difficult situation even more complicated for the kids to understand.

Well, anyway, that's my humble opinion.

So, now she says she's going solo for a while.

In this blurb Sienna encourages young girls to party, so she's not advising other young ladies to follow her current course.

And then there's this story about a possible liaison between Sienna and Bryan Ferry's son, Isaac, who fits does not fit the profile for men that usually interest the fickle Miller, rather than being significantly older, he's 21, 4 years younger than her.

Maybe she's been talking to Demi Moore, or Barbara Hershey.

On the professional front Miller will be in a movie with one of my favorite freaks, Steve Buscemi.
Posted by: Helen      Read more     Source