Life News

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University of Iowa faculty members spend an average of 31.4 hours a week on teaching activities. The study marks the first time that the UI faculty has documented all of its teaching activities, including not only regularly scheduled classes, laboratories and seminars but also time spent preparing for classes, evaluating student assignments, holding office hours, advising students, providing individualized instruction, and working on special projects with honors, masters and doctoral students.

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Does your toddler show little interest in communicating with others? Does your 2-year-old not yet communicate with words? Is your 3-year-old's speech difficult to understand? If so, your child may need the services of a speech-language pathologist.

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The Internet is revolutionizing the way professors in the humanities teach their students. Prof. Beavers creator of the Exploring Ancient World Cultures Web site, The Early Church On-Line Encyclopedia and limited-area search engines Argos and Hippias--has developed a new site called "the 4th Tetralogy." The site provides English translations of Plato's Republic, the Phaedrus, the Symposium and the Phaedo.

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Facial muscle activity may serve as a tell-tale sign of latent personal prejudice, according Emory visiting psychology professor Eric Vanman, who analyzed how facial movements indicate racial bias among white college students in a study he conducted at the University of Southern California (USC).

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A new study by a Cornell University labor economist found that women have made "substantial progress" in gender equality over the past 25 years, increasing their presence in the labor market and narrowing the wage gap with men, but provides dramatic evidence that the economic status of less-educated women is deteriorating.

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Which is the most important factor influencing student performance in mathematics: A good teacher? Innate intelligence? Home environment? Studying hard? They're all important, of course. But differences in how Asians and Americans answer this question help to explain the U.S. disadvantage in math and science achievement.

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Older women are at greater risk for depression than men or younger women, yet often the condition goes unnoticed or untreated, according to the National Policy and Resource Center on Women and Aging at the Heller Graduate School, Brandeis University.

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Depending on how an attorney describes DNA evidence at a trial, jurors will believe the evidence is either irrefutable or unpersuasive, finds Dr. Jonathan J. Koehler, consultant for the defense in the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, and a professor of behavioral decision making at the University of Texas at Austin.

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How much children learn in school depends in good measure on the attitudes and values of the surrounding community -- and on how much those values are shared by the children themselves -- education experts agreed at a AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) symposium today (Feb. 16) in Philadelphia.

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Cornell studies of American and Chinese children provide new compelling evidence that human babies from any culture are born to grasp the complex rules of word order and sentence structure by age 3, says Barbara Lust, Ph.D., a developmental cognitive psycholinguist.

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For a family that relies on food stamps to make ends meet, wise food choices can be the difference between being able to pay the rent or to afford child care or medical expenses.

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As the threat of a U.S. attack on Iraq looms, parents may want to add the evening news to the list of violent TV programs they don't want their children to see. But she says screening news broadcasts doesn't mean that parents should avoid discussing the topic of war with their children.

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Women have gone from the "have it all" culture of the 1970s to the "do it all" of today, but what they really need to embrace is the concept of "share it all," says a Vanderbilt Divinity School professor.

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Figure skating judges are biased, but the current scoring system balances out bias, according to a University of North Texas researcher. The research looked at competition scores from 1982 to 1994 to check for bias and found any bias is cancelled out after final calculations are made to determine ranking.

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Survey results revealed that even in the age of modern technology, an overwhelming majority of Americans (94 percent) would prefer to receive a handwritten love letter to one sent by e-mail. As for those most likely to send love letters . . .

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A Johns Hopkins anthropologist regarded as one of the leading experts on Islamic movements in the Middle East and Europe is available as a source on the Arab view of the Middle East peace process and the confrontation with Iraq.

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While covering a story on battered women for The New York Times, journalist Andi Rieden became intrigued by the stories officials told her. Given extraordinary access, she spent three-and-a-half-years with inmates and correction officers researching the material for her recent book, "The Farm, Life Inside a Women's Prison."

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Schools interested in attracting involvement from parents and communities can now join a national network focused on the same goal. The National Network of Partnership Schools has been developed by the Center on School, Family and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University.

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Advisory on Johns Hopkins political scientist Steven David, an expert on military strategy and defense issues available as a source on the Iraq crisis.

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Women still face special roadblocks that discourage many from pursuing careers in engineering and science. A national project, announced Feb. 3, will use the information superhighway to lessen the detours encountered by female college students majoring in engineering and other sciences.

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A new book by a University of Illinois at Chicago art historian tells how the atomic bomb came to occupy its spot at the center of postwar American culture and psychology. Peter Bacon Hales's "Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project" draws on de-classified government files, plus medical records, letters, and photos. Creating the bomb, concludes Hales, "created a new form of American cultural landscape."

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What do the 1923 Teapot Dome Scandal and the current White House crisis have in common? Plenty, according to Gary Fine, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University who is writing a book on reputation politics.

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If musicals are back, as newspaper headlines are proclaiming, Northwestern theatre graduates are out there winning the roles that make these shows sing. "It's been another incredible year for Northwestern," says Dominic Missimi, the director of the music theatre program and an associate professor in Northwestern's legendary theatre department.

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Before the Internet and television, women's magazines were a one-stop shop for advice on fixing marriages, making a casserole, planting flowers and teaching children manners. Vanderbilt University Professor of English Nancy Walker usually researches women's literature, but her most recent book focuses on women's magazines from 1940 to 1960. "I think there is scarcely a better way to look at the lived history of a nation than to look at a popular periodical," Walker said. "You don't get that from a history book."

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Rules established by religious denominations allowing women to be ordained as ministers -- or prohibiting it -- have little to do with the roles women actually play in the church, according to a new book by a sociologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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One of the most popular courses at Johns Hopkins University this spring is "Anthropology of Love." Assistant professor Sonia Ryang, who teaches the course, is an excellent Valentine's Day story source on "falling in love" and society's view of romantic love.

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Cornell English Prof. Culler has written a new and very brief introduction to literary theory that is brief, lucid and witty and makes the case that not only will literary theory not kill you, it may even be fun.

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"Through These Eyes: The Photographs of P.H. Polk," one of the South's most eminent African-American photographers, is on display now, north of the Mason Dixon Line, at the University of Delaware.

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Audio recordings of arguments in Clinton v. Jones before the U.S. Supreme Courts can now be heard on the Supreme Court Web site developed by Jerry Goldman, associate professor of political science at Northwestern University.

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A study by a Michigan State University exercise physiologist has found that the aerobic fitness levels of young African American girls tend to be lwoer than those of white girls.

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The American Psychiatric Association Press has just released seven new books. Review copies are available for journalists.

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Society tends to assume that men are dangerous and women are helpless, and Martha McCaughey wants to change that image -- especially when it comes to women's defending themselves from male violence

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In 1970, students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business were among the first in the country to have the opportunity to manage "real-world" equity portfolios. Now UW-Madison students will be among the first to manage a substantial fixed income fund.

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If you're planning to buy your Valentine the standard $5 box of no-name chocolates this year, you may get more than you bargained for.

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It's not every day that a member of a royal family can be found teaching at an American college. But for the first half of February, students at Agnes Scott College will be taught by a Jordanian princess.

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When selecting a puppy for a pet, choosing the breeder may be more important than choosing the breed, suggests a Purdue University animal behaviorist.

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In honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of singer/actor/activist Paul Robeson, Long Island University's Brooklyn Campus is presenting a free, all-day event celebrating his life.

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Cornell University's Mann Library will digitize the contents of 125 agricultural journals to create The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library, or TEEAL, on CD-ROM, to be distributed to university libraries in developing countries.

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Older adults who have a positive attitude about their physical health may be at a lower risk for becoming depressed.

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Women get more tension headaches than men and people with advanced degrees suffer more often from tension headaches than the less educated, according to a recent study of tension headache prevalence conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.

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In the first long-term study of mathematically precocious young children, University of Washington researchers have found significantly more boys than girls with very high levels of math talents, and discovered that even when children are given an enrichment program math-talented girls don't catch up with boys in the first two years of school.

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"Throughout U.S. history, when ever such affairs have surfaced, Democrats have been the alleged malefactors," says Rebecca B. Edwards, Ph.D., associate professor of history at Vassar College. "This has less to do with the individuals involved than with the larger patterns of partisan beliefs."

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The mass media's depiction of female prisoners as family-centered and easily reformed is driving the national concern over the Karla Faye Tucker case, according to John Sloop, an expert in television critism and mass media theory at Vanderbilt University.

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If Paul Simon had been a social scientist instead of a song writer he might have stopped counting those "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" and focused on finding ways to keep his lover around. The result might have been like "The Love Test," a new book filled with 32 romance and relationship-oriented quizzes that has been compiled by two University of Washington sociologists.

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Where have all the "flower children" gone and how have they fared?

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A Vanderbilt University education professor who has studied the impact of class size on students' learning says a comprehensive plan to improve skills would be a better investment of the nation's resources.

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New research relates executions to parental models of care and compassion, says a psychology professor at The University of Arizona in Tucson. Following the release earlier this week of a study on clemency issues surrounding capital murder cases, Professor Gary Schwartz says he has found evidence that correlates public willingness to execute certain condemned prisoners as a function of personal and parental justice and compassion.

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When it comes to homework, quantity does not always equal quality. Dean of Purdue University's School of Education says for young children, 20 minutes to an hour three to four times a week is just about right for homework. Older students in middle school and high school can profit from meaningful assignments in the one- to two-hour range. But Haring stresses that all homework should be meaningful to the child.

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Dogs and cats still dominate the patient list at University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Veterinary Medicine, but they're sharing more space with a new breed of companion critters, from ailing ferrets to sick lizards.

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Why do Black and White Americans perceive police actions so differently? Is White fear of Black crime justified? Do African Americans really "protect their own?" Should they? These and other hard-hitting questions are explored in "The Color of Crime," a bold new book by University of Maryland criminology professor Katheryn Russell.