news 2016

The Work Foundation , part of Lancaster University, has launched a brand new "Commission on Good Work". At an exclusive breakfast in the Churchill War Rooms, the new Director of the Work Foundation, Lesley Giles , welcomed senior leaders in business, trade unions, professional bodies, and the public and voluntary sectors.

Children and adolescents are being targeted by online gambling websites due to flaws in advertising legislation, according to new research from Queen Mary University of London and City University London. The researchers point to recent statistics from an international research review which suggest that 77 to 83 per cent of adolescents are involved in some kind of gambling, and 10 to 15 per cent of adolescents are at risk of developing serious gambling problems.

New research shows investing in elephant conservation is smart economic policy for many African countries. We know that within parks, tourism suffers when elephant poaching ramps up. This work provides a first estimate of the scale of that loss Andrew Balmford The current elephant poaching crisis costs African countries around USD $25 million annually in lost tourism revenue, according to a new study published .

The researchers found that for every 10 additional sanctions applied in each quarter of the year, on average five more adults would be referred to foodbanks in the area. There is a 'strong, dynamic' relationship between people having their benefits stopped and an increase in referral to foodbanks, new research has found.

Incentives intended to stimulate the development of more treatments for rare diseases are being exploited to boost the profits of pharmaceutical companies, new research from the University of Liverpool shows. Researchers found that companies which market drugs for rare diseases (known as orphan drugs) are five times more profitable and have up to 15% higher market value than other drug companies.

Around 90% of people in England now take their own bags with them when food shopping as a result of the plastic carrier bag charge, new research has revealed. This has increased from 70% before the charge was introduced and was independent of age, gender or income. In addition to this, less than 1 in 15 shoppers (7%) are now regularly taking single-use carrier bags at the checkout, the research from Cardiff University shows, as opposed to 1 in 4 shoppers before the charge.

Financial traders are better at reading their 'gut feelings? than the general population - and the better they are at this ability, the more successful they are as traders, according to new research led by the University of Cambridge. In economics and finance most models analyse conscious reasoning and are based on psychology.

A new study by the Saïd Business School finds that low-quality infrastructure investments pose significant risks to the Chinese and the global economy. It argues that over half of the infrastructure investments in China have destroyed rather than generated economic value. The study authored by Atif Ansar, Bent Flyvbjerg, Alexander Budzier and Daniel Lunn is based on the largest dataset of its kind.

An independent study undertaken by University researchers could pave the way for significant improvements in the health, safety and welfare of workers in the global container port industry. Carried out by Professor David Walters and Dr Emma Wadsworth, of the University's School of Social Sciences, the landmark report, Experiences of arrangements for health, safety and welfare in the global container terminal industry , is the only one of its kind ever undertaken to such an exhaustive level.

"F**k it! Let's get to drinking - poison our livers!" — some of the lyrics in YouTube music videos which researchers at the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies say may harmfully influence adolescents in Britain. The new research is an extension of previous work which found that UK teenagers were heavily exposed to images of alcohol and tobacco in YouTube music, effectively glamourising the habits and promoting underage drinking and smoking.

New research shows that women ask for wage rises just as often as men, but men are 25 per cent more likely to get a raise when they ask. Using a randomly chosen sample of 4,600 workers across more than 800 employers, the research is the first to do a statistical test of the idea that women get paid less because they are not as pushy as men.

Economists from the University of Oxford have come up with a novel approach for measuring global poverty - counting the number of people who live in darkness at night. Researchers analysed two separate datasets from satellites: the first showed images of all the areas of the world that light up at night, and the second estimated population using images of roads, buildings and other signs of human habitation.

Gulf stream slowdown to spare Europe from worst of climate change Europe will be spared the worst economic impacts of climate change by a slowing down of the Gulf Stream, new research predicts. Scientists have long suggested that global warming could lead to a slowdown - or even shutdown - of the vast system of ocean currents, including the Gulf Stream, that keeps Europe warm.

Retail and institutional investors alike often buy stocks in Real Estate Investment Trusts, because they are known as defensive stocks, able to withstand periods of economic downturn, but a new study explains why some of these companies could prove a much safer bet than others.

Meaningful work not created - only destroyed - by bosses, study finds Bosses play no role in fostering a sense of meaningfulness at work - but they do have the capacity to destroy it and should stay out of the way, new research shows. The study by researchers at the University of Sussex and the University of Greenwich shows that quality of leadership receives virtually no mention when people describe meaningful moments at work, but poor management is the top destroyer of meaningfulness.

Anger often decreases - rather than boosts - a person's intention to quit a job when they identify strongly with their company, says a new study. Company policies that are designed to promote positive emotions or minimise negative emotions may in fact not have the intended effect. Jochen Menges Anger at the workplace is commonly associated with employees storming out of the office and quitting their jobs, but a new study from the Cambridge Judge Business School suggests that the picture is far more complex.

Unemployment and reduced public-sector health spending following the 2008 crisis were associated with increased cancer mortality, says a new study. The research, from Imperial College London, estimates that the recent economic crisis was associated with over 260000 additional cancer deaths in countries within the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD) by 2010, of which 160000 were in the European Union.

One month before the EU referendum vote, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University has released interim findings on the stance being taken by newspapers. The findings, which cover two sample days of coverage a week during the first two months of the referendum campaign immediately after David Cameron's post-summit Cabinet meeting on 20 February, find that of the 928 articles focused on the referendum, 45% were in favour of leaving compared with only 27% in favour of staying in the EU.

Implementation of plain packaging for cigarettes and loose tobacco will go ahead on schedule today (Friday, 20 May 2016) after yesterday's ruling from the UK High Court, which found in favour of the Department of Health.

Implementation of plain packaging for cigarettes and loose tobacco went ahead on schedule (Friday, 20 May 2016) after last week's ruling from the UK High Court, which found in favour of the Department of Health.