PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

People with a university degree fear death less than those at a lower literacy level

2010-12-04
(Press-News.org) People with a university degree fear death less than those at a lower literacy level. In addition, fear of death is most common among women than men, which affects their children's perception of death. In fact, 76% of children that report fear of death is due to their mothers avoiding the topic. Additionally, more of these children fear early death and adopt unsuitable approaches when it comes to deal with death.

These are some of the conclusions drawn from a research entitled Educación para la muerte: Estudio sobre la construcción del concepto de muerte en niños de entre 8 y 12 años de edad en el ámbito escolar, [Education On Death: A Study On The Building Of The Concept Of Death In Children Aged Between 8 And 12 At School] conducted at the Department of Personality, Assessment and Psychological Treatment at the University of Granada by Claudia Fabiana Siracusa, and led by professors Francisco Cruz Quintana y Mª Nieves Pérez Marfil.

For the purpose of this study, researchers took a sample of 288 children, aged between 8 and 12, including their parents, tutors and teachers. The professors at the University of Granada analysed how adults' understanding of the concept of death affects children's attitudes, fears, beliefs and approaches to death.

A change In Mentality

This study revealed the need for a change in mentality within families and at school, regarding death and the end of life. The reason is that an appropriate approach to death is key to children's health and personality. Other conclusions were that all children –to a higher or lower degree- have had experiences related to death, that they believe in life after death, and that they are concerned about it. Additionally, it is more common among girls to believe in life after death than among boys.

As regards teachers, 80% of them reported that death was not included in the curriculum. Six out of ten recognised that they have occasionally talked about death with their students, mostly due to the death of a students' relative.

In the light of the results obtained, University of Granada researchers consider that it is essential to provide death education "as a way to value life, and an instrument to end with the misguided and unreal idea transmitted by the media. Such education would provide children with the appropriate strategies and resources to approach death during their lives, avoiding any slight or severe negative impact on their physical or psychological health."

Another finding was that a high educational level prevents negative attitudes, as fear of death and avoiding the topic. In accordance with the teachers that participated in the study, "at present, the education system does not have any formal and systematic method to deal with death in class. If death were introduced in the education system, children would have a more real and intense approach to life, and many of the problems derived from the mourning process in the adulthood would be prevented."

INFORMATION: The results obtained will be partly published in a book that will be released soon.

Contact: Claudia Fabiana Siracusa. Department of Personality, Psychological Assessment and Treatment, University of Granada. E-mail: fabianasiracusa@gmail.com

Mª Nieves Pérez Marfil. epartment of Personality, Psychological Assessment and Treatment, University of Granada. Office Phone: +34 958 24 37 39. E-mail: nperez@ugr.es

Accessible on English version

Accesible en Versión española

Accessible sur le site Version française



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Polluted air increases obesity risk in young animals

2010-12-04
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Exposure to polluted air early in life led to an accumulation of abdominal fat and insulin resistance in mice even if they ate a normal diet, according to new research. Animals exposed to the fine-particulate air pollution had larger and more fat cells in their abdominal area and higher blood sugar levels than did animals eating the same diet but breathing clean air. Researchers exposed the mice to the polluted air for six hours a day, five days a week for 10 weeks beginning when the animals were 3 weeks old. This time frame roughly matches the toddler ...

New insights about Botulinum toxin A

2010-12-04
A new study by researchers at the Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Calgary, is raising questions about the therapeutic use of botulinum toxin A. The study found that animals injected with Clostridium Botulinum type A neurotoxin complex (BOTOX, Allergan, Inc., Toronto, Ontario, Canada) experienced muscle weakness in muscles throughout the body, even though they were far removed from the injection site. The study also found that repeated injection induced muscle atrophy and loss of contractile tissue in the limb that was not injected with the Toxin. "We were surprised ...

Pattern of drinking affects the relation of alcohol intake to coronary heart disease

2010-12-04
A fascinating study published in the BMJ shows that although the French drink more than the Northern Irish each week, as they drink daily, rather than more on less occasions, the French suffered from considerably less coronary heart disease than the Northern Irish. Ruidavets and colleagues compared groups of middle aged men in France and Northern Ireland, who have very different drinking cultures and rates of heart disease.The authors found that men who "binge" drink (drink =50 g of alcohol once a week) had nearly twice the risk of myocardial infarction or death from coronary ...

Research provides better understanding of long-term changes in the climate system

Research provides better understanding of long-term changes in the climate system
2010-12-04
For more than a decade, Dr. Joseph Ortiz, associate professor of geology at Kent State University and part of an international team of National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded researchers, has been studying long-term climate variability associated with El Niño. The researchers' goal is to help climatologists better understand this global climate phenomenon that happens every two to eight years, impacting much of the world. El Niño is the periodic warming of central and eastern tropical Pacific waters. The last El Niño occurred in 2009, Ortiz said, and its impact was ...

Hospital perks: How much should hospitals be rewarded for the patient experience?

2010-12-04
From hotel-style room service to massage therapy to magnificent views, hospitals are increasingly touting their luxury services in a bid to gain market share, especially those in competitive urban markets. An important new article, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, raises crucial questions about the role of amenities in hospital care, explaining that how we decide to value the patient experience can have a significant effect on health care costs. "Though amenities have long been relevant to hospital competition, they seem to have increased in importance ...

Urban youth cope with neighborhood violence in diverse ways

2010-12-04
Experiences with violence cause teens growing up in dangerous neighborhoods to adopt a range of coping strategies, with notable impact whether the violence takes place at home, among friends or during police incidents, a University of Chicago study shows. The responses to violence include seeking out non-violent friends, avoiding trouble, becoming resigned to the situation, striving to do well in school, or for some, retaliating physically, the authors said. "Exposure to community violence is pervasive among youth in many urban neighborhoods. We found in one study that ...

Sows ears and silk purses: Packing more flavor into modern pork

2010-12-04
Perhaps you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but scientists are reporting progress in pulling off the same trick with the notoriously bland flavor of pork. They are reporting new insights into the biochemical differences in the meat of an Italian swine renowned for its good flavor since the ancient Roman Empire and the modern "Large White" or Yorkshire hog, whose roots date back barely 125 years. Their study appears in ACS' Journal of Proteome Research. Lello Zolla and colleagues note that modern lean pork's reputation as bland and tasteless — "the other white ...

Heat helped hasten life's beginnings

2010-12-04
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- There has been controversy about whether life originated in a hot or cold environment, and about whether enough time has elapsed for life to have evolved to its present complexity. But new research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill investigating the effect of temperature on extremely slow chemical reactions suggests that the time required for evolution on a warm earth is shorter than critics might expect. The findings are published in the Dec. 1, 2010, online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Enzymes, ...

University of Toronto physicists create supernova in a jar

2010-12-04
A team of physicists from the University of Toronto and Rutgers University have mimicked the explosion of a supernova in miniature. A supernova is an exploding star. In a certain type of supernova, the detonation starts with a flame ball buried deep inside a white dwarf. The flame ball is much lighter than its surroundings, so it rises rapidly making a plume topped with an accelerating smoke ring. "We created a smaller version of this process by triggering a special chemical reaction in a closed container that generates similar plumes and vortex rings," says Stephen ...

'Perfumery radar' brings order to odors

2010-12-04
Scientists are announcing development and successful testing of the first "perfumery radar (PR)." It's not a new electronic gadget for homing in on the source of that Eau de Givenchy or Jungle Tiger in a crowded room. Rather, PR is a long-awaited new tool for bringing scientific order to the often arbitrary process of classifying the hundreds of odors that make-up perfumes. A report on the advance appears in ACS' journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. Alírio Rodrigues and colleagues note that the typical perfume has 50-100 fragrant ingredients. Experts who ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Trailblazing Young Scientists honored with $250,000 prizes at Blavatnik National Awards Gala

Revolutionary blood test for ME / Chronic Fatigue unveiled

Calorie labelling linked to 2% average reduction in energy content of menu items

Widely prescribed opioid painkiller tramadol not that effective for easing chronic pain

Exercise snacks may boost cardiorespiratory fitness of physically inactive adults

15,000 women a year with breast cancer could benefit from whole genome sequencing, say researchers

Study highlights risks of Caesarean births to future pregnancies

GLP-1 agonists pose emerging challenge for PET-CT imaging, study finds

Scripps Research scientists unlock new patterns of protein behavior in cell membranes

Panama Canal may face frequent extreme water lows in coming decades

Flash Joule heating lights up lithium extraction from ores

COMBINEDBrain and MUSC announce partnership to establish biorepository for pediatric cerebrospinal fluid and CNS tissue bank

Questionable lead reporting for drinking water virtually vanished after Flint water crisis, study reveals

Assessing overconfidence among national security officials

Bridging two frontiers: Mitochondria & microbiota, Targeting Extracellular Vesicles 2025 to explore game-changing pathways in medicine

New imaging tech promises to help doctors better diagnose and treat skin cancers

Once dominant, US agricultural exports falter amid trade disputes and rising competition

Biochar from invasive weed shields rice from toxic nanoplastics and heavy metals

Rice University announces second cohort of Chevron Energy Graduate Fellows

Soil bacteria and minerals form a natural “battery” that breaks down antibiotics in the dark

Jamestown colonists brought donkeys, not just horses, to North America, old bones reveal

FIU cybersecurity researchers develop midflight defense against drone hijacking

Kennesaw State researcher aims to discover how ideas spread in the digital age

Next-generation perovskite solar cells are closer to commercial use

Sleep patterns linked to variation in health, cognition, lifestyle, and brain organization

University of Oklahoma researcher awarded funding to bridge gap between molecular data and tissue architecture

Nationally-recognized pathologist Paul N. Staats, MD, named Chair of Pathology at University of Maryland School of Medicine

The world’s snow leopards are very similar genetically. That doesn’t bode well for their future

Researchers find key to stopping deadly infection

Leafcutter ants have blind spots, just like truck drivers

[Press-News.org] People with a university degree fear death less than those at a lower literacy level