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CSDE News & Events

News & Events Blog

CSDE curates and summarizes local demography news and opportunities for our News & Events blog. To get these stories delivered straight to your inbox each week, Subscribe to our Newsletter.


Bostrom publishes article on scientists’ mental models of microplastics October 8th, 2025
CSDE Research

CSDE Affiliate Ann Bostrom and an international, interdisciplinary team of co-authors recently published “Scientists’ mental models of microplastics: insights into expert perceptions from an exploratory comparison of research methods” in the journal, Microplastics and Nanoplastics. The article presents results from two complementary studies of the causal beliefs—that is, the “mental models”—microplastic scientists hold related to the risks of microplastics in freshwater systems, an emerging global environmental problem. Study 1 examined core concepts in their mental models from a decision analysis perspective.

Tom publishes article on Religion and Racial Bias in Artificial Intelligence Large Language Models October 8th, 2025
CSDE Research

CSDE External Affiliate Joshua Tom (Seattle Pacific) and co-authors recently published an article titled, “Religion and Racial Bias in Artificial Intelligence Large Language Models” in Socius. Tom and co-authors examine if LLMs hold implicit assumptions with regard to religious identities by prompting LLMs to generate religious sermons, specifying different combinations of race and religious tradition of the clergyperson. Evangelical Protestant pastors had easier to read AI–generated sermons,

Martin co-authors opinion piece on youth prisons in The Imprint October 8th, 2025
CSDE in the News

CSDE Affiliate Karin Martin (Public Policy) and co-authors recently shared an opinion piece in The Imprint on the incarceration of youth, which overwhelming evidence shows does not work and disproportionately affects communities of color. Drawing on their article published in the American Journal of Public Health, Martin and co-authors highlight the recent trend in closure of youth prisons and call on policymakers to redirect resources and attention to community-based alternatives.

Dunbar Publishes on Development and Protocols of the Brain Health Study (BHS) October 8th, 2025
CSDE Research

CSDE Research Scientist Matthew D. Dunbar, PhD, and co-authors recently published an article in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, titled “The companion dog as a translational model for Alzheimer’s disease: Development of a longitudinal research platform and post mortem protocols.” The authors describe the objectives, infrastructure, platform development, and protocol of the Brain Health Study (BHS). The BHS aims to establish the role of privately owned companion dogs as a translational model for Alzheimer’s Disease research.

*New* eScience Institute Tutorial Series on Deep Learning for Images (starts 10/15/25) October 8th, 2025
Demography Event
*New* Tenure Track Position in Economics, Gender – Colgate University (11/15/25) October 8th, 2025
Employment
Where: Colgate University

*New* Assistant Professor of Anthropology in Human Reproductive Ecology – Penn State (ongoing) October 8th, 2025
Employment
Where: Penn State

Cha Publishes Article on Education and Dementia Risk in Demography October 2nd, 2025
CSDE Research

CSDE Affiliate Hyungmin Cha (Sociology) and co-authors just published an article in Demography, titled “How Does the Risk of Dementia Change With Each Additional Year of Education?”. The authors leverage the 2000–2018 Health and Retirement Study to evaluate how dementia risk changes with each year of education among non-Hispanic White and Black older adults. The results show a linear decline in dementia incidence with increasing years of educational attainment,

Glass Develops Roadmap for Causal Inference in Human Biology October 2nd, 2025

CSDE external affiliate and former CSDE T32 Fellow Delaney Glass (University of Toronto) and co-authors recently published an article, “Toward New Directions in Human Biology: A Roadmap for Anthropological Causal Inference With Observational Data” in the American Journal of Human Biology. The roadmap that Glass and co-authors developed begins with theory development, defines causal questions and estimands, employs directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) to clarify assumptions, and evaluates key identification criteria prior to statistical analysis.

Sharygin and PSU Publish Resource for Finding Federal Data During Shutdown October 2nd, 2025
CSDE Research

The Population Research Center at Portland State University, directed by CSDE External Affiliate Ethan Sharygin (Portland State University), has published a resource guide for finding federal data during the shutdown. These sources include Census Reporter, Esri, PolicyMap, IPUMS, NHGIS, and the Data Rescue Project Portal.