ScienceDaily: Science & Society News

A new, 10-country analysis identifies between-nation differences in the amount of time men and women spend on various daily activities at different stages of life.

Low-consumption office buildings with infrequent water use could have chemical and microbiological safety issues, according to a new study. The research could have implications for office buildings used less frequently during pandemic lockdowns, and suggests that regular water testing in commercial buildings may be needed.

Looking for techniques to keep young athletes safer post-concussion, researchers devised a study in which teenage athletes who suffered concussions were randomized either to standard of care -- typically returning to play after clearing a set of standardized protocols that assess symptoms, cognition, and balance -- or completing the same protocol and then working with an athletic trainer on a specific neuromuscular training intervention that includes guided strength exercises and a focus on posture and landing stability.

A study of more than 2,000 streams around North America found that those altered by human activity are at greater risk of flooding.

In the wake of the Great Depression, the federally sponsored Home Owners' Loan Corporation drew maps of neighborhoods in U.S. cities that characterized their desirability for mortgage lending. Many neighborhoods with Black and immigrant communities received the worst grade, restricting access to federally backed loans and favorable mortgage terms. Now, researchers have found that these 'redlined' areas have higher levels of air pollution 80 years later.

A new study suggests that consistently maintaining face mask use until, and even two to 10 weeks beyond, reaching various vaccination coverage thresholds could not only prevent a substantial number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths but also end up saving businesses, the health care system, insurance companies, taxpayers, and others money.

If you're an 'equal-opportunity jerk,' does that mean you can't also be sexist? New research shows that many people think so -- and consider men to be gender blind when they're rude, condescending, and berating to women and men equally.

Disasters such as hurricanes, wildfires, floods, tornadoes, and droughts are not only increasing in intensity and frequency, they are also striking the same place multiple times. Yet, to date, disaster research largely focuses on individual events, and fails to account for legacy effects that leave people vulnerable in the wake of repeated disasters. To improve predictive capacity to better prepare for future disasters, an interdisciplinary team of researchers has developed a novel framework for improving scientific understanding of 'recurrent acute disasters' (RADs). Their work was published today in Science Advances.

Linguistic convergence refers to temporary (and often subtle) shifts in speech to sound more similar to those around us. A new study shows that even our expectations about how other people might speak (rather than the speech itself) is enough to shape our own speech patterns.

Over recent decades, hurricanes and other tropical cyclones in the U.S. were associated with up to 33.4 percent higher death rates from several major causes in subsequent months. The study exemplifies how far-reaching and varied the hidden costs to life could be from climate-related disasters and climate change. Until now, there had been a critical knowledge gap about cause-specific tropical cyclone mortality risks from a large-scale study covering the entire U.S. across multiple decades.

The first large-scale assessment of utility-level water loss in the United States found that leak reduction by utilities can be the most cost-effective tool in an urban water manager's toolkit, provided utility-specific approaches are used. California is among the first in the world to require water utilities to regulate their water losses.

New research compares the biodiversity value of plants classed as 'injurious weeds' against those stipulated by DEFRA for pollinator targeted agri-environmental options. The findings show that the abundance and diversity of pollinators visiting weed species are far higher than DEFRA recommended plants.

After decades of dominance by the United States, a new measure suggests that China edged the U.S. in 2019 on one important measurement of national research success.

Computer engineers have developed virtual eyes that simulate how humans look at the world accurately enough for companies to train virtual reality and augmented reality programs. Called EyeSyn for short, the program will help developers create applications for the rapidly expanding metaverse while protecting user data.