Canberra, ACT, AUS. Why are there so many countries in the world? At the end of World War II, there were 74 nations. Today, the United Nations has 192 members. Proliferating nations are more than an academic curio. As trade ministers and environment ministers know, one of the reasons it is so difficult to strike an international deal these days is because it requires the agreement of a couple of hundred representatives.

In The Size of Nations, Alberto Alesina (Harvard) and Enrico Spolaor

Washington, DC, USA. A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City knocks down a perception that energy states could recover from the recession faster than non-energy states.

The report, by Mark C. Snead of the bank’s Denver office, says that energy states typically enter recessions late and exit early as energy prices recover along with the rest of the overall national economy.

Snead says “weakness in natural gas prices suggests that a rapid recovery well ahead of the n

Houston, TX, USA. Healthcare providers are pushing toward electronic health records but it is hard to tell how well these complex health information technology systems are implemented and used, writes a health informatics researcher in an American Medical Association (JAMA) commentary.

Doctors and hospitals are racing to take advantage of the billions in federal incentives to digitize health records included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). To improve monitor

Buffalo, NY, USA. James Campbell finds no differences in economic growth, unemployment or income equality among American presidents. Campbell, a professor of political science at the University of Buffalo, has published an analysis that counters the widely publicized work of Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels in his recent book Unequal Democracy. [C1]

Bartels says Democratic presidents have generally done a better job handling the economy, with greater economic growth, lower une

Fairfax, VA, USA. An international scientific effort has built a detailed map that shows how the human genome is modified during embryonic development. Billions of data points were analyzed to provide a big picture of the human epigenome during a critical developmental window. This is a significant move towards the targeted differentiation of stem cells into specific organs, a crucial consideration for stem cell therapy.

Scientists at The Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) and The Scri