Social Sciences

On 8-9 June 2006, the European Science Foundation (ESF) will launch an ESF Research Networking Programme to help member countries adapt their public policies and services to the changing political and cultural realities of the European Union.

Enlargement, harmonisation of tax policy, and growing labour mobility all bring public policy challenges that require improved understanding of the underlying dynamics in order to develop solutions.

The ‘Public Goods, Public Proj

With the ever more pervasive emphasis today on results, benefits and profits, research and science are under increasing pressure to show an impact. Investments made out of the public purse are expected to pay back. Although funding for research has increased considerably, competition for that funding has increased even more. This is seen both within the field of science and in the interaction and exchange between science and other spheres of life. Whenever questions are asked about the allocation

Teenage boys have feelings, too, and when it comes to matters of the heart, they may not be so fleeting after all. Not far beneath the bravado often on display is an unsure adolescent who finds it hard to express emotions that, while new, are nonetheless often sincerely felt.

Boys are more vulnerable and emotionally engaged in romantic relationships than previously thought, according to the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study led by Drs. Peggy Giordano, Monica Longmore and We

A group of researchers at the University of Kent has been awarded £156,000 by the Government’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to investigate the range of identity choices potentially available to mixed-race young people in Britain.

Conducted by Peter Aspinall (Centre for Health Services Studies), Miri Song (School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research) and Ferhana Hashem (Centre for Health Services Studies), this two year study will be the largest and mos

Despite research efforts to find modern factors that would explain the different life expectancies of men and women, the gap is actually ancient and universal, according to University of Michigan researchers.

“Women live longer in almost every country, and the sex difference in lifespan has been recognized since at least the mid-18th century,” said Daniel J. Kruger, a research scientist in the U-M School of Public Health and the Institute for Social Research. “It isn’t a recent t

Research investigating attention in infancy has revealed that, at just four months old, babies are able to organise visual information in at least three different ways, according to brightness, shape, and how close the visual elements are together (proximity). These new findings mean that very young infants are much more capable of organising their visual world than psychologists had previously thought. The study also has implications for understanding certain developmental disorders such as Williams