• The U.K. August 2011 riots could have been predicted

    Researchers studying urban violence have developed a new method which can help city authorities to assess the conditions where conflict could potentially tip into violence; Participatory Violence Appraisal (PVA), used in Kenya and Chile, could have helped to anticipate the tipping points that led to last summer’s riots in cities across the United Kingdom, the researchers say

  • Viewing terrorist attacks on TV increases pain intensity

    A new study finds that exposure to media coverage of terrorist missile attacks increases pain levels in people already suffering from chronic pain

  • Teaching about Islam in the U.S. military

    U.S. Islamic groups complained that course material used by the joint Forces Staff College portrayed Islam in an unflattering light; they also complained about the views of Joint Staff terror analyst Stephen Coughlin, a specialist on Islamic law; the Pentagon last week announced it had completed its review of the issue

  • Crowd dynamics explains disaster at cultural, sports events

    Physicists investigating a recent crowd disaster in Germany found that one of the key causes was that at some point the crowd dynamics turned turbulent, akin to behavior found in unstable fluid flows

  • Turf wars: math model shows crimes cluster on borders between rival gangs

    A mathematical model that has been used for more than eighty years to determine the hunting range of animals in the wild holds promise for mapping the territories of street gangs; among other things, the research demonstrates that the most dangerous place to be in a neighborhood packed with gangs is not deep within the territory of a specific gang, as one might suppose, but on the border between two rival gangs

  • Belief in hell associated with reduced crime

    A broad study, study following143,197 people in sixty-seven countries over twenty-six years, found that criminal activity is higher in societies in which people’s religious beliefs contain a strong punitive component than in places where religious beliefs are more benevolent; a country where many more people believe in heaven than in hell is likely to have a much higher crime rate than one where these beliefs are about equal

  • Two new articles in the Journal of Homeland Security Education

    Two new articles in the Journal of Homeland Security Education look at important aspects of homeland security: the first examines homeland security academic provisions in the United States and the EU, the second argues that assessing practitioner experience as it relates to subject theory can be challenging, but critically important in homeland defense and security programs where student experiences are often utilized in the process of applying learning objectives

  • New eyewitness identification procedure flawed: psychologist

    University of California-Riverside psychologist finds that new eyewitness identification procedures may result in fewer correct IDs; the new procedures may, under some circumstances, lead to identification evidence that is less accurate than the identification evidence from the procedures they are designed to replace

  • Bios of female terrorists contradict stereotypes: study

    Much like their male counterparts, female terrorists are likely to be educated, employed, and native residents of the country where they commit a terrorist act, new research finds

  • Counterterrorism expert: democracy in Central Asia lost in translation

    Democracy in post-Soviet Central Asia states failed not only because of the region’s Soviet legacy and hardships of transition, but also due to a lack of cultural competence among international, U.S., and EU agencies promoting democracy

  • New academic homeland security journal launched

    The inaugural issue of a new academic, peer-reviewed journal — the Journal of Homeland Security Education (JHSE)— is out; JHSE will focus on innovative concepts and models, strategies, technical tools, and theoretical and observational analyses; it also provides a platform for translational research that connects education to practice

  • In environmental disasters, families experience conflict, denial, silence

    Environmental disasters affect individuals and communities; they also affect how family members communicate with each other, sometimes in surprising ways; the researchers say that the findings were, in some ways, counterintuitive

  • Formation of hate groups associated with presence of big-box stores

    In a new research, economists say that the presence of big-box retailers, such as Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and Target, may alter a community’s social and economic fabric enough to promote the creation of hate groups; the researchers say that the number of Wal-Mart stores in a county is more significant statistically than factors commonly regarded as important to hate group participation, such as the unemployment rate, high crime rates, and low education

  • Post-communist depression

    A new study reveals how a radical economic policy devised by Western economists put former Soviet states on a road to bankruptcy and corruption

  • NCAA tournament math: an alternative selection method

    Researchers propose a math-based method for placing teams in the NCAA March Madness tournament – a method which will reduce team-travel distances in early rounds and which could reduce travel costs by $1 million while increasing attendance in the games