Money can’t buy you happiness, but it could motivate you to live a better life. A new study featuring researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York found that viewing wealth and material possessions as a sign of success yields significantly better results to life satisfaction than viewing wealth and possessions as a sign...
A new algorithm achieves school diversity goals while allowing parents to still have a say in where their child attends. The only caveat with the model is there is no way to control the size of a school, so diversity changes may have more of an impact on smaller schools. In order to reach goals,...
Pity the poor blemished banana. In a society that equates beauty with quality, the perception that blemished produce is less desirable than its perfect peers contributes to 1.3 billion tons of wasted food a year globally. That, in turn, raises the cost and environmental impact of feeding the world’s population. Researchers are suggesting a potential...
Since 2000, school district secessions in the South have increasingly sorted white and black students, and white and Hispanic students, into separate school systems, weakening the potential to improve school integration, according to a new study published today in AERA Open, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. The study, conducted by Kendra Taylor (Sanametrix), Erica...
Securing enough energy to meet human needs is one of the greatest challenges society has ever faced. Previously reliable sources–oil, gas and coal–are degrading air quality, devastating land and ocean and altering the fragile balance of the global climate, through the release of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, earth’s rapidly industrializing population is projected...
University of Cambridge researchers have shown that an algorithm can predict the outcomes of complex chemical reactions with over 90% accuracy, outperforming trained chemists. The algorithm also shows chemists how to make target compounds, providing the chemical ‘map’ to the desired destination. The results are reported in two studies in the journals ACS Central Science and Chemical Communications....
Europe has enough solar and wind resources to meet its electricity demand entirely from renewable sources. A new study by researchers at the Institute for Transformative Sustainability Research (IASS) in Potsdam shows that many regions and municipalities could meet their electricity demand using electricity systems based exclusively on renewables. However, their development would exacerbate land...
When reading words on a screen, the human brain comprehends words placed on the right side of the screen faster. The total amount of presented information on the screen also affects the speed and accuracy of the brain’s ability to process words. These are the findings of HSE University researchers Elena Gorbunova and Maria Falikman...
The utterances of Old World monkeys, some of our primate cousins, may be more sophisticated than previously realized — but even so, they display constraints that reinforce the singularity of human language, according to a new study co-authored by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) linguist. The study reinterprets evidence about primate language and concludes...
Mobile apps increase sales, purchase frequency and the range of items sold not only on a retailer’s website but also in its stores. App users exhibit greater product returns. Retail mobile app users are likely to buy a more diverse range of products. Shoppers buy more when they access mobile apps for loyalty rewards programs,...
