In Lily Tomlin’s classic SNL comedy sketch, her telephone operator “Ernestine” famously delivers the punchline, “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Phone Company.” But new research finds that satisfied customers mean increased profits even for public utilities that don’t face competition. Little is known about effect of customer satisfaction at utilities. As...
Over the last three decades, the United States prison population has exploded from 300,000 to more than 2 million. More than 1.1 million are African American men – the vast number of whom have returned within one to three years of their release. In fact, according to the World Prison Brief, America boasts the highest...
As the U.S. confronts a bitter election season, political unrest and violence, a shaky economy, and a soaring death toll due to COVID-19, 84% of U.S. adults say the country has serious societal issues that we need to address, according to a new poll. At the same time, 9 in 10 adults say they hope...
As the number of states increase where medical and recreational cannabis use is legal, so does the importance that physicians discuss with patients the effects of cannabis on those with asthma. A new survey in Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific journal of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, shows that of...
In just one year, COVID-19 has killed more than 400,000 Americans, and infected more than 24 million others. But a new study shows just how unevenly those deaths and cases have played out across the country. It finds that the more disadvantaged a county’s population was before the pandemic, the higher the toll of coronavirus...
What should we make of the spikes in the stock prices of companies like GameStop and AMC Entertainment? Has the pandemic suspended the laws of economics as they apply to share prices? Is there something more nefarious going on? Some brokerage firms have stopped customers from buying certain suddenly volatile stocks. Others have curtailed traders’ use of...
Amid a sharp economic downturn in 2008, police departments around the United States experienced budget shortfalls that required them to enact cutbacks. A new study examined the effects on crime of budget shortfalls in two New Jersey cities–one of which laid off more than 10 percent of its police force while the other averted layoffs....
Historically redlined neighborhoods are more likely to have a paucity of greenspace today compared to other neighborhoods. The study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco, demonstrates the lasting effects of redlining, a racist mortgage appraisal practice of the 1930s that established and...
Taking cannabidiol, a chemical in the cannabis sativa plant, isn’t an effective way to reduce your dependence on cocaine, researchers at the CHUM Research Centre find. In North America, close to 5.5 million people use cocaine regularly, and nearly one in five becomes addicted, developing cocaine use disorder, for which there is no clinical treatment....
Stopping the spread of COVID-19 is difficult enough. It’s even more complicated and confusing when information and resources provided by governments are largely inaccessible to a variety of disabled populations. A newly-published global survey of national health authority websites in nearly 200 countries has directly quantified COVID-19 information accessibility. The survey, published on January 27,...
