Anti-bullying program reduces malicious gossip on school playgrounds

ScienceDaily (2011-01-05) -- Elementary school students who participated in a three-month anti-bullying program in Seattle schools showed a 72 percent decrease in malicious gossip. The study is the first to show that the widely-used Steps to Respect bullying prevention program can curb children's gossip, an element of playground culture often seen as harmless but capable of causing real harm.

Walking speed associated with survival in older adults

ScienceDaily (2011-01-05) -- In an analysis that included data from 9 studies, having higher measures of walking speed among older adults was associated with increased length of survival, according to a new study.

Metabolic cost of human sleep deprivation quantified by researchers

ScienceDaily (2011-01-05) -- In the first-ever quantification of energy expended by humans during sleep, a research team has found that the metabolic cost of an adult missing one night of sleep is the equivalent of walking slightly less than two miles.

Filtering kitchen wastewater for plants

ScienceDaily (2011-01-05) -- Water is a precious commodity, so finding ways to re-use waste water, especially in arid regions is essential to sustainability. Researchers in India have now carried out a study of various waste-water filtration systems for kitchen wastewater and found that even the most poorly performing can produce water clean enough for horticultural or agricultural use.

How does your green roof garden grow?

ScienceDaily (2011-01-03) -- Growing plants on rooftops is an old concept that has evolved from simple sod roofing to lightweight "extensive green roofs". Researchers have evaluated the influence of substrate type and depth on establishment of five common green roof plants. A standout performer was saxifrage pink, which had an attractive appearance and persistent flowering habit, making it an excellent choice as a green roof plant.

The ecosystem engineer: Research looks at beavers' role in river restoration

ScienceDaily (2011-01-04) -- When engineers restore rivers, one professor hopes they'll keep a smaller engineer in mind: the North American beaver.

New system for analyzing information on WikiLeaks, social media

ScienceDaily (2011-01-04) -- Researchers in Spain have created a new computer system that has multiple applications for exploring information in a variety of areas including fraud detection, biomedicine, education, social media and the Internet. For example, the technology can be used to extract information from WikiLeaks from two perspectives: one, to obtain generic indicators that provide information on whether the data network has the features of a social network and whether communities of data are created that can provide relevant information; and two, to use the documents hosted on the website to analyze how a topic evolves over time, how a person or a group relates to different topics and how the documents themselves interrelate.