Science News for Writers

The conclusions of this Austrian study helps explain why some people see the world as frightening and filled with dangers.  As the study points out, they "overestimate the probability of being the victim of crime." While this study did not address this, it raises the question that the more a person watches television, the more likely they are to stereotype different cultures, races, and societal issues.  For example, does watching reality police shows lead to the impression that a certain minority group is responsible for the majority of crime?  Do the images portrayed on television create either positive or negative stereotypes of different groups? For example, does the way media focuses on problems in a racially segregated ghetto lead one to believe that all members of that racial group lead exactly that lifestyle in exactly those circumstances.  This could explain why a political candidate in a current election race seemed to express the view that all Afric...

Credit: Busby et al./Current Biology 2015 Gene flow within West Eurasia is shown by lines linking the best-matching  donor group to the sources of admixture with recipient clusters (arrowhead).  Line colors represent the regional identity of the donor group, and line thick- ness represents the proportion of DNA coming from the donor group. Ranges of the dates (point estimates) for events involving sources most similar to  selected donor groups are shown. It's often said that the history we know was written by the winners with the losers lost to history and memory. Until the age of DNA analysis, that is. DNA retains a record of historic events, and the collective DNA of a population can be used to trace historic movements of entire populations or invasions by outside groups. Using DNA allows us to trace historic movements of peoples in pre-history, such as recent research that shows that an unknown somewhat mysterious population invented agricultu...

www.prohamm.de There is a saying, "the more things change, the more they remain the same."   While our society has made tremendous strides since the civil rights movement of the sixties, it's been a bit like squeezing a balloon.  Squeeze here, bulge there.  For those of us alive in the sixties, we've watched as redlining and other blatant discriminations have faded while other racially based practices to control minorities have flourished.  I'm thinking of Nixon's War on Drugs that imprisons primarily black men for essentially petty crimes of simple possession. So have things changed?  Yes and no. This research points out that the balloon has simply bulged in another direction. *  *  *  *  * With racial segregation declining between neighborhoods, segregation now taking new form " Neighborhood segregation still remains high in America ." Recent research has shown that racial segregation in the U.S. is declining between...