news 2015

Study of 1,000 quotes in newspaper articles found people were portrayed as 'dehumanised consumers' A dominant neoliberal narrative may affect people's response to the current economic situation Newspaper coverage of the financial crisis portrayed people as 'dehumanised consumers' rather than 'victims of a calamity' - which may explain why they are not angrier about the UK's economic position, a report has found.

Private equity firms have charged hidden fees amounting to $20 billion to companies, while some of the firms' partners have sat on the companies' board of directors, according to a new study. Dr Ludovic Phalippou, Associate Professor of Finance at the Saïd Business School, and his coauthors Dr Christian Rauch and Professor Dr Mark Umber examined the portfolio fees of 592 US companies worth $1.1 trillion in total.

People living in poor countries are exposed to more intense and aggressive tobacco marketing than those living in affluent countries, according to a study authored by researchers from our Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG) published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization released today.

People's life satisfaction follows a U-shape through the life cycle, gradually falling from early adulthood, reaching a minimum at around the ages of 40 to 42 and then rising up to the age of 70. That is the central finding of research by academics including Andrew Oswald, Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick.

The ethics of a person's negotiating tactics may differ according to the nationality of the other party to the negotiation, according to a new study. Business is increasingly global, so ethical concerns are becoming more important in terms of cross-national business and negotiations David De Cremer Do the ethics of a person's negotiating tactics differ when they negotiate with someone from a different country? A new study co-authored at University of Cambridge Judge Business School suggests that they do.

Government should focus resources on supporting young people in to mainstream employment rather than encouraging self-employment, a new report recommends. Although self-employment brings advantages such as autonomy and flexibility, being your own boss can be risky and can lead to lower financial returns, with little economic benefit for disadvantaged groups.

Scientists have discovered a way to authenticate or identify any object by generating an unbreakable ID based on atoms. The technology, which is being patented at Lancaster University and commercialised through the spin-out company Quantum Base, uses next-generation nanomaterials to enable the unique identification of any product with guaranteed security.

Andrew Charlesworth, Reader in IT & Law at the University of Bristol Law School, reported findings from a two-year EU-funded project he undertook on the increasing threat cybercrime poses to the UK's payment industry. The results were disseminated to police officers from national and international agencies, and members of the payments industry, at a conference in Londo.

A major new national report into the use of antiviral drugs (neuraminidase inhibitors) to treat and prevent influenza has drawn heavily on two pieces of research undertaken at The University of Nottingham. The landmark report, published today by the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Wellcome Trust, concludes that anti-viral drugs called neuraminidase inhibitors (NAIs) were successful in reducing deaths in hospitalised patients.

The first official experimental results since the National Graphene Institute (NGI) opened in March have been produced. The novel collaboration between industry and academia is exploring the production of graphene in the first stage of a long-term project. Morgan Advanced Materials joined forces last year with The University of Manchester – where graphene was first isolated a decade ago – to explore the potential of the material, with a full-time team based at the University's National Graphene Institute (NGI) .

University of Sheffield helps to launch the Institute of Inertia to examine the truth behind behaviour costing the UK £7.6bn New institute will explore why we do things that can cost us our time, health and money and find strategies to make us better off 53 per cent of people admit to never having switched a household utility despite almost a quarter of them (24 per cent) worrying about their finances at least once a week There are differ

New research at the University of Warwick with colleagues from the London School of Economics has identified changes in the shape of rainfall across Europe; changes in the amount of drizzle compared with downpours and everything in-between. Professor Sandra Chapman of the University of Warwick and co-authors Professor Nicholas Watkins and Dr David Stainforth from the London School of Economics have today published new research demonstrating how the variability in the way it rains makes it intrinsically difficult to identify the character of local climate change.

Association between employment and property crime - which was strong in 1970s and 1980s - fell from 1995 and became non-existent by 2005 Other research to be presented at Centre for Crime and Justice Studies includes changes in domestic property crime in the 1980s and 1990s and changing attitudes to crime and punishment across generations The assumption that rising unemployment means rising crime is challenged by new research by the Universities of Sheffield, Southampton and SciencesPo in Paris.

New analysis of the London Tube strike in February 2014 finds that it enabled a sizeable fraction of commuters to find better routes to work, and actually produced a net economic benefit due to the number of people who found more efficient ways to get to work.  The researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge analysed 20 days' worth of anonymised Oyster card data, containing more than 200 million data points, in order to see how individual Tube journeys changed during the strike.

New analysis of the London tube strike in February 2014 finds that it enabled a sizeable fraction of commuters to find better routes to work, and actually produced a net economic benefit.

New study using Facebook network data, including a dataset of over 57 billion friendships, shows correlation between higher social class and fewer international friendships. Researchers say results support ideas of 'restricting social class' among wealthy, but show that lower social classes are taking advantage of increased social capital beyond national borders.

While the benefits of cooperation in human society are clear, new research from The University of Nottingham suggests it also has a dark side - one that encourages corrupt behaviour. "Collaborative settings, not just greed, can provide fertile ground for corruption, as typified by recent scandals in the football and banking worlds.

The study by Professor Steve Strand, commissioned for the Department for Education, draws on data for attainment and ethnicity between 1991 and 2013 Research by the Department of Education at Oxford University shows gaps in educational achievement at age 16 have decreased substantially over the last 25 years, particularly in the attainment of different ethnic groups.

The price fluctuation of fine wines can now be predicted more accurately using a novel artificial intelligence approach developed by researchers at UCL. The method could be used to help fine wine investors make more informed decisions about their portfolios and encourage non-wine investors to start looking at wine in this manner and hence increase the net trade of wine.

The hormones testosterone and cortisol may destabilise financial markets by making traders take more risks, according to a study. Researchers simulated the trading floor in the lab by having volunteers buy and sell assets among themselves. They measured the volunteers' natural hormone levels in one experiment and artificially raised them in another.