University of Colorado Boulder
Institute of Behavioral Science

News

All news items, blog posts, and feature stories.

Lori Hunter’s Class Examines the Sociology of Yoga

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Lori M. Hunter, professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder, has spent a semester prompting students to grapple with such questions as "What is colonization, and what does it mean to “decolonize” something?", "Beyond taking land, what other aspects of a culture can be colonized?", and "What does this have to do with yoga?." Her course is called “Yoga, Culture & Society,” an upper-division class designed to hone students’ critical-thinking-skills, and is discussed in depth in an article in Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine.  This article generated so much interest that Lori is also featured in the Coloradoan ~ "A Yogi in the Classroom".

Geographers Research Deadly Fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh

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Between Armenia and Azerbaijan lies a contested territory controlled by an unrecognized state called the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR). In the early hours of April 2, violence exploded in this Armenian-supported statelet in the southern Caucasus. This festering conflict in former Soviet territory suddenly turned hot.  John O'Loughlin and colleague Gerard Toal have researched in great depth the conflicts and political implications thereof in this region, and their findings are reported today in the Washington Post.  Read the entire article here.

Krister Andersson Book Published

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Krister Andersson, along with co-authors Pamela Matson and William C. Clark, has a new book just published: "Pursuing Sustainability: A Guide to the Science and Practice", Princeton University Press, March 2016.

Described as "A primer for students and practitioners who are seeking a more systematic and comprehensive platform on which to base their pursuits of sustainability", the book explores frameworks and approaches for understanding, analyzing, and effectively engaging in sustainability challenges, addressing the question of how to achieve sustainability, presenting that the ultimate determinants of intergenerational well-being should be thought of as the stocks of assets on which people now draw and will draw in the future to subsist and improve their lives – stocks that include natural, social, manufactured, human, and knowledge capital.

Population Science Researchers Become Agency Advocates

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CUPC affiliates Ryan Masters and Stef Mollborn participated in “Advocacy Day” through the Population Association of America in Washington DC, late March 2016.  Advocacy Day took place the day prior to the annual PAA meeting and Ryan and Stef met with staff in the offices of Senator Michale Barnett (CO), Senator Cory Gardner (CO) and Representative Diana DeGette (CO01).  The conversations were designed to inform staff about population sciences in general, what population researchers are doing at CU-Boulder, and how population sciences benefit from the federal government (both directly through grants and indirectly through agencies). They also urged continued support for the agencies that support population sciences (e.g., NIH, NIA, NSF, the Census Bureau, NCHS, and other statistical and data-based agencies). The PAA specifically asked advocates to request the following: (1) support funding federal agencies related to PAA and population-based sciences in 2017, esp NIH, NSF, and Census; (2) oppose bills and amendments that are anti-behavioral science or anti-social science; and (3) oppose attempts to make the American Community Survey voluntary.

Natural Hazards Center Announces New Website

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The Natural Hazards Center is happy to announce a brand new Web site designed to better display all the great content we collect and create on a regular basis—and that includes when you visit on your phone or tablet!  Among the changes, you’ll find brand new online layouts for the Observer and DR that highlight the visual aspects of the publications and let you easily share the articles you love. We also have more on our current research projects, library book reviews, and other Center activities.  New advanced search features are on the way and we’re busily creating databases of resources, so you’ll be able to find what you need simply by typing a word or two.

Twenty Years Later ~ Bosnia’s “Dayton Generation”

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Ten years ago, funded by the National Science Foundation, John O'Loughlin and Gerard Toal organized a representative survey of 2,000 Bosnians, asking face to face how they felt about the Dayton Peace Accords and ethnic separation. Last month, 20 years on, they asked 3,000 people the same questions, again face to face.

The demographically representative surveys allow them to track evolving attitudes in post-war Bosnia.  Both surveys were conducted by a reputable Sarajevo-based research firm, and the margins of error are less than 2.5 percentage points. 

Read the full Washington Post article here.

Ferguson Effect Explored in New, Sweeping Study

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A new study, led by University of Colorado Boulder researcher David Pyrooz, finds no evidence of a widespread surge in total, violent or property crime in large U.S. cities in the aftermath of the highly publicized police shooting of Michael Brown. But the research does show the overall rate of robberies across the country has increased, as has the murder rate in certain cities.

The study – the most comprehensive of its kind to date – tests the hypothesis that the shooting of Brown, a young black man, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri – and a string of similar incidents across the country – have led to increases in crime across the U.S., a phenomenon known as the “Ferguson effect.” Researchers analyzed monthly crime data from 81 large U.S. cities the year before and year after the events in Ferguson on Aug. 9, 2014. The results were published today online in the Journal of Criminal Justice.

“We have seen crime rates drop to historic lows over the last two decades so any potential increase in crime, especially violent crime, is of great concern,” said lead study author David Pyrooz, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. “However, the finding that crime rates are essentially unchanged means that a “Ferguson effect” cannot be singled out as the driving factor of any widespread increase in crime other than robbery.”  Read the entire CU Boulder News Center article here.

CUPC Pilot Research Grants Awarded

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A central aim of the CU Population Center is to provide early support for innovative, collaborative projects with the potential to substantially advance understanding in one of CUPC’s central research themes: migration and population distribution, health and mortality, and/or environmental demography. This year, four outstanding projects were supported – combined, they represent a variety of disciplinary perspectives and will make important contributions to science and human well-being. The recipients include:

  • Jill Litt, Environmental Studies, "A Pilot RCT of Gardening as an Intervention to Reduce Risk of Cancer and Heart Disease"
  • Robin Bernstein, Anthropology, "Milk: Nutrition and Health Shaped by Cultural Practices and the Environment"
  • Stef Mollborn, Sociology, "Technology Use and Health Lifestyles in Children and Youth"
  • Stefan Leyk, Geography, "Evaluating Fine-Resolution Spatial Settlement Layers for New Forms of Data-Intensive Demographic Research Under Uncertainty"
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