People in Malawi who are uncertain about their HIV status are more eager to start families than those who are certain of their HIV status, according to researchers. (more)
Leif Jensen, professor of rural sociology and demography in the College of Agricultural Sciences, has been named a distinguished professor by Penn State. The title of distinguished professor was established by the Office of the President to recognize a select group of professors with exceptional accomplishments in teaching, research and service. (more)
The first signs of spring mark the return to downtown State College of Research Unplugged, a non-traditional lecture series where experts from varying fields lead conversations with community members. All six Research Unplugged talks will be held Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m., at the Penn State Downtown Theatre on Allen Street. On March 23, join sociology professor Sam Richards and colleague Danna Jayne Seballos of the "World in Conversation Project" to find out "Why Race Still Matters: Creating Conversations in 21st Century Classrooms." (more)
Jennifer Parker Talwar, associate professor of sociology at Penn State Lehigh Valley, will present a talk on "Entrepreneurialism and the Cultural Anchoring of 'American' Small Business Growth: The Importance of Ethnic Social Structures to Modern Norms of Corporate Efficiency" at the next Faculty Forum lecture at 1 p.m. on Feb. 23, in room 302 at the campus in Center Valley. (more)
People who leave strict religious groups are more likely to say their health is worse than members who remain in the group, according to a Penn State researcher. The percentage of people who left a strict religious group and reported they were in excellent health was about half that of people who stayed in the group, said Christopher Scheitle, senior research assistant in sociology. (more)
Repeal of birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of unauthorized immigrants would expand the nation's unauthorized population by at least 5 million over the next decade, according to a new report from the Migration Policy Institute. The report's principal author is Jennifer Van Hook, professor of sociology and demographics at Penn State and non-resident fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based institute. (more)
Reviews of Lincoln's Proclamation: Emancipation Reconsidered, edited by William A. Blair and Karen Younger; The Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terrorism, Immigration and Trade Matter, by Bill Ellis and Gary Alan Fine; and Making Poems: Forty Poems with Commentary by the Poets. (more)
Children of immigrants often must overcome obstacles in order to achieve academic success. But research conducted by Suet-ling Pong, professor of educational theory & policy and sociology in the College of Education, reveals that in some regions of the world immigrant children actually perform better than their native classmates. (more)
A recent Penn State study on teens and body image yielded some surprising results. "Past researchers may have missed the key groups: normal weight girls who think they are overweight, and underweight boys," said Jason Houle, graduate student in sociology and demography. It's not just weight that troubles kids, it's the combination of weight and weight perceptions, he added. "Clinicians cannot assume that healthy weight adolescents know their weight is healthy or feel good about it," said Michelle Frisco, assistant professor of sociology and demography. (more)
Few, if any, archival resources can claim as complete and wide-ranging a documentary record for American academic publishing in the social sciences over the past half century than the Irving Louis Horowitz-Transaction Publishers Archives, 1939-2009. According to William L. Joyce, Penn State's Dorothy Foehr Huck chair and head of special collections, "This archive of well over 100 cubic feet of materials documents the expansion of social science research and publication from the 1960s into the first decade of the 21st century as it also illustrates the widening focus of the social sciences on important public policy issues." The archive is newly opened for public research use at Penn State's Historical Collections and Labor Archives (HCLA) of The Eberly Family Special Collections Library, University Libraries. Researchers worldwide can obtain more information and access digitized copies of the majority of the archive through the Libraries' website at http://publications.libraries.psu.edu/coll/transaction online. (more)
