Not least because of the COVID-19 pandemic, conspiracy theories are more topical than ever. They are reported and discussed in almost all media and communication channels. But what influence do they have on our behavior? Scientists led by behavioral economist Loukas Balafoutas investigated this question in a recently published study. The result: We don’t need...
An estimated 14,480 new cases of invasive cervical cancer will be diagnosed in the United States this year, according to the American Cancer Society. Cases that could be prevented or cured with better education from screening to treatment based on improved provider-patient communication, says a Michigan State University researcher. The issue is particularly acute for...
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Black women have 80% higher risk of preterm birth between 32 and 33 weeks of pregnancy if a Black person who lives in their neighborhood is killed by police during the pregnancy, according to a study by researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley. The study by scientists at the UCSF California Preterm Birth...
Search engines are one of society’s primary gateways to information and people, but they are also conduits for misinformation. Similar to problematic social media algorithms, search engines learn to serve you what you and others have clicked on before. Because people are drawn to the sensational, this dance between algorithms and human nature can foster...
The New Jersey State Police, founded 100 years ago, was created to counter the influence of the state’s rising populations of African Americans and immigrants, whom white residents feared. My research into the agency’s culture found that the agency emerged as the result of a seven-year campaign by the state’s Chamber of Commerce to replace...
There is no shortage of disciplines and industries rife with sexism. The STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – are particularly well known for their misogynistic cultures. But I believe, based on my personal experience, the experiences of my fellow female economists and hard data, that there’s a strong case to be made...
Financial strains like debt or unemployment are significant risk factors for becoming homeless, and even help to explain increased risk of homelessness associated with severe mental illness, reports a study in a supplement to the April issue of Medical Care. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. The findings “suggest that adding financial...
March 26 marks 50 years since the start of Bangladesh’s liberation war, a bloody nine-month campaign that culminated in the nation’s independence on Dec. 16, 1971. It was a violent birth, with some of its roots in the 1947 partition of India – when Pakistan was created as a separate nation. As the British Empire...
In the 1995 movie “Outbreak,” Dustin Hoffman’s character realizes, with appropriately dramatic horror, that an infectious virus is “airborne” because it’s found to be spreading through hospital vents. The issue of whether our real-life pandemic virus, SARS-CoV-2, is “airborne” is predictably more complex. The current body of evidence suggests that COVID-19 primarily spreads through respiratory...
Judging by its massive, bone-crushing teeth, gigantic skull and powerful jaw, there is no doubt that the Anteosaurus, a premammalian reptile that roamed the African continent 265 to 260 million years ago – during a period known as the middle Permian – was a ferocious carnivore. However, while it was previously thought that this beast...
