Free Republic

Research has found that being attractive influences many things in a person's life -- their salary, their popularity and grades in school, even the prison sentences they receive. So why not their politics? A recently published study in the Journal of Public Economics concludes that the attractiveness of a candidate does correlate with their politics. They find that politicians on the right are more good looking in Europe, the United States and Australia. The research also suggests that voters correctly see candidates who are more good looking as more likely to be conservative.

You've been had, America You know that massive rash of racist police shootings in which white officers shoot black suspects just because they’re black? Right. Neither do I. Because a few overhyped videos presented by the media without context don’t prove that any such thing is happening. Of course, that’s not stopping gullible celebrities and athletes from protesting and declaring “this isn’t right.” There is no solid information to suggest that a “this” even exists, but when you’re engaging in very public moral preening, you’re not going to let that stop you. But what might stop you is some actual...

GREENSBORO, NC -- Are some Walmarts "better” than others? We're talking good customer service. Clean stores. Stocked shelves. Short check-out times. According to a new study, yes. Andy Reich, a Columbia University Assistant Professor of Sociology says his study has revealed not all Walmarts are created equal. To simplify his findings, he says, White and rich neighborhoods have better Walmarts than Black and poor neighborhoods. “People used words like ‘unorganized’, ‘nasty’ and ‘worst’ to describe stores in communities of color much more than they used those words to describe Walmarts in Whiter communities,” Reich said in a Skype interview....

f you ever need an argument settled, once and for all, just ask a Harvard professor to conduct a study. They do it right. And, to their credit, they report on the results–even when those results don’t support their own agendas. Check out the bomb they’ve just dropped on Black Lives Matter and all of the armchair pundits.

The youngest black professor ever to receive tenure at Harvard and recipient of an economics prize for “most promising American economist under 40” has just upended the conventional wisdom on police shootings. There is no racial bias when officers fire on suspects, according to a new study by Prof. Roland Fryer – black suspects are actually less likely to be shot than other suspects.The study looked at more than a thousand shootings in 10 major police departments, The New York Times reports. Fryer and student researchers spent 3,000 hours putting together data from police reports in Houston, Austin, Dallas and...

Paris (AFP) - A rapidly melting glacier atop East Antarctica is on track to lift oceans at least two metres, and could soon pass a "tipping point" of no return, researchers said Wednesday. To date, scientists have mostly worried about the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets as dangerous drivers of sea level rise. But the new study, following up on earlier work by the same team, has identified a third major threat to hundreds of millions of people living in coastal areas around the world. "I predict that before the end of the century the great global cities of...

Washington (AFP) - Global warming could make the planet far hotter than currently projected because today's scientific models do not correctly account for the influence of clouds, researchers said this week. The study in the journal Science was led by researchers at Yale University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. When climate scientists look ahead to how much the planet's surface temperature may warm up in response to a doubling of carbon dioxide -- a byproduct of fossil fuel burning -- they typically predict a rise of between 2.1 and 4.7 degrees Celsius (3.75 to 8.5 degrees Fahrenheit). But these models...

This is not a philosophical riddle. Despite their highly variable appearance, dogs can recognize each other by sight alone. Do you see dogs everywhere? My ears perk up to the jingle jangle of metal-on-metal, hopeful that it predicts a dog and his collar, disappointed when it turns out to be keys on a belt (boring). A person walking down the street with their arm outstretched holds the promise of a leash with a dog on the other end (sometimes it's a stroller holding a kid. Oh well). From a distance, my eyes play a cruel trick on me, where shopping...

Despite its name, the primary goal of the Affordable Care Act was to expand health care coverage to millions of Americans who had been uninsured. And while it's done that - 15 million non-elderly adults have gained coverage - making that insurance "affordable" remains a significant challenge. Government subsidies for enrollees with incomes below 400 percent of the federal poverty level were designed to help with that, but rising premiums and high deductibles mean that getting health care coverage and treatment remains a financial burden for many Americans. A new study from the Urban Institute shows just how high the...

Man's best friend came about after generations of wolves scavenged alongside humans more than 33,000 years ago in south east Asia, according to new research. Dogs became self-domesticated as they slowly evolved from wolves who joined humans in the hunt, according to the first study of dog genomes. And it shows that the first domesticated dogs came about 33,000 years ago and migrated to Europe, rather than descending from domesticated European wolves 10,000 years ago as had previously been thought.

Ten years in the making under the editorship of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, using beautiful font, and published by Harper Collins, the Study Quran is modeled after various Study Bibles, such as the NIV, ESV, NASB, Catholic Study Bible, to name only those. It is a new translation of the 114 surahs (suras) or chapters. Then on nearly every verse, sometimes down to a phrase or clause within a verse, the team of scholars offers comments. First, in the General Introduction, Nasr says he wanted to employ only Muslim commentators who accept the Quran as the Word of God. He...

Washington - Registering an unprecedented growth of nearly 30 per cent last year, a record 132,888 Indian students are now studying in the US, making an estimated contribution of more than $3.6 billion to the American economy, a report said. While China remains the top country of origin of international students in the US, increasing by 11 per cent to 304,040, India's growth outpaced China's this year, with students from India increasing by 29.4 per cent to a record high of 132,888, said the latest Open DoorsReport on International Educational Exchange. This is the highest rate of growth for Indian...

Obesity is still rising among American adults, despite more than a decade of public-awareness campaigns and other efforts to get people to watch their weight, and women have now overtaken men in the obese category, new government research shows. For the past several years, experts thought the nation's alarming, decades-long rise in obesity had leveled off. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report Thursday that the obesity rate has climbed to nearly 38 percent of adults, up from 32 percent about a decade earlier.

A recent study reveals an aspect about solar energy we never expected or thought possible - it contributes to climate change. The study, conducted by climate change research scientist Aixue Hu of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that solar panels tend to cause regional cooling when converting sunlight into electricity and increase urban area temperatures when said electricity transforms into heat. Researchers conducted climate model sensitivity experiments to look at the effects of solar panels placed in various regions.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is spending over $100,000 studying disgust, hypothesizing that all bullying behavior begins with feelings of revulsion.Researchers at Columbia University want to see if they can “successfully regulate” disgust emotions in teens in order to stop bullying.“Whether it’s being the victim, being the perpetrator, or having to watch this upsetting cycle of peer rejection and victimization, few adolescents are unaffected by bullying’s harmful impact,” a grant for the project states. “This effect can last long past adolescence, as both being the bully and being the victim are linked to the development of both short- and...

Findings reveal all-male units outperformed mixed-gender unit but Navy secretary says study was flawed because of mindset of volunteers A US marine corps study examining how women would perform in ground combat roles showed all-male units broadly outperformed mixed-gender units on everything from reaching targets quickly to firing accurately with heavier weapons. The results of the study, a summary of which was released by the marine corps this week, could factor into Pentagon deliberations about which roles, if any, should remain off-limits to women. The US military services will soon submit their recommendations to Defense Secretary Ash Carter on the...

Omega-3, a fatty acid found in oily fish, may prevent the onset of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders long after being consumed, according to a study released Tuesday. Up to seven years after taking omega-3 supplements for 12 weeks, young people at "ultra-high" risk were less likely to have suffered the debilitating condition than a control group given a placebo, reported the study. Schizophrenia is characterized by delusions and hallucinations, including hearing voices and seeing things that do not really exist. It typically emerges during adolescence or early adulthood, either abruptly or gradually. There is no cure. Current treatment focuses...

During the past few days the legacy media and the internet have been flooded with news articles, editorials and blog posts with titles like “Overhead costs exploding under ObamaCare.” This all-too-predictable phenomenon has been breathlessly reported by outlets as different in their ideological perspectives as the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Kos. Sadly, when liberal and conservative publications are equally enthusiastic about breaking a story, it usually means the latter have been duped into promoting progressive propaganda. This case is no exception. The basis for these reports is a “study” produced by a couple of notorious lefty data diddlers....

Breathing polluted air every day may change a person's brain in ways that end up leading to cognitive impairment, according to a new study. In the study, researchers examined 943 healthy adults who were at least 60 years old and lived the New England region. The investigators used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to look at the participants' brain structures, and compared the images with the air pollution levels in the places where the participants lived. The researchers found that an increase of 2 micrograms per cubic meter in fine-particle pollution — a range that can be observed across an average...

WASHINGTON (AP) — If you find yourself sweating out a day that is monstrously hot, chances are you can blame humanity. A new report links three out of four such days to man's effects on climate. And as climate change worsens around mid-century, that percentage of extremely hot days being caused by man-made greenhouse gases will push past 95 percent, according to the new study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.