Social Sciences
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Prison methods are as bad as you’ve heard, and spilling onto the streets
Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Haney wrote an opinion article about the damaging dynamics and lack of accountability inside jails and how these practices are increasingly taking place outside of jails too, with anonymous government actors operating unrestrained by due process safeguards, subjugating and terrorizing people with impunity — as has long been common inside…
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How Trump administration science cuts muffled one NIH institute
Jennifer Reardon, a professor of sociology and the founding director of the Science and Justice Research Center, has studied how dangerous ideas from eugenics can easily resurge. “It didn’t just go away; genomics has inherited that,” she said. “And so, if you take the thin structures we created to try to mitigate against that, and…
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The Zombees Are Here (And That’s Probably OK)
Stacey Philpott, an ecology professor at UC Santa Cruz, has studied how honeybees and yellow-faced bumblebees interact with A. borealis, and her work suggests that honeybees fall victim to the fly more often in specific environments, like urban gardens.
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Did wolves save Yellowstone’s aspen trees?
“Elk have declined a lot since wolves were reintroduced, but it’s not clear that that’s due to wolves,” said Chris Wilmers, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the author of another recent study that assessed the impacts of large carnivore recovery across North America.
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Ask Lookout: Why has Santa Cruz’s water demand dropped?
The decline stems from both cultural shifts and better fixtures in homes – things like low-flow toilets and high-efficiency washing machines – said Brent Haddad, director of the Center for Integrated Water Research at UC Santa Cruz.
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Have Wolves Saved Yellowstone’s Aspens?
“Most ecologists suspect that wolves and other predators have something to do with the decline of elk,” said Environmental Studies Professor Chris Wilmers. “But how much can be attributed to wolves, how much can be attributed to predators in general, how much is attributed to those other causes hasn’t been worked out yet.”
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Farmworkers Brave Deadly Heat, Pollution, and ICE Raids
It can be hard to trace the poor health of farmworkers to any one cause. Ecosyndemics is the term that Matt Sparke, a professor of geography and globalization at the University of California, Santa Cruz, uses to describe the compounding health impacts from environmental pollution.
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Scientists push for greater climate role for Latin America’s overlooked ecosystems
Lead author Scott Winton, an ecologist from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in the U.S., carried out three years of extensive fieldwork to produce the first data-driven map of recently documented and predicted peatlands in Colombia’s Orinoquía and Amazonian regions.
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World Cup draw in Washington is one more play in Trump and FIFA’s long game of politics
Jacqueline Gehring, an expert in the politics of sports at the University of California Santa Cruz, pointed out that FIFA has long drawn criticism for getting friendly with contentious regimes.
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Kids are missing out on one of their best chances at learning
During play, kids learn “how to collaborate, how to communicate, how to resolve conflict,” said Rebecca London, a sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has worked on recess research.
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India’s Goldilocks economy
India can’t be complacent, writes Distinguished Professor of Economics Nirvikar Signh. An 8% growth rate maintained over the next two decades will be transformative, but policies still need to be enacted or modified.
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Death Row Prisoners Granted Clemency by Biden Brace for “Living Hell” Under Trump
Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has visited ADX and conducted research on solitary confinement for decades, wrote in a declaration as part of the prisoners’ lawsuit, “mentally ill people are more likely to deteriorate and decompensate when they are subjected to the harshness and stress of prison…