When scientists try to predict the spread of something across populations–anything from a coronavirus to misinformation–they use complex mathematical models to do so. Typically, they’ll study the first few steps in which the subject spreads, and use that rate to project how far and wide the spread will go. But what happens if a pathogen...
It becomes annoyingly easy to knock over a shampoo bottle when it’s nearly empty. This is an easily observed and curiosity-provoking phenomenon that, according to Lehigh University physics professor Jerome Licini, yields insights into center-of-mass and impacts. “The physics of that is pretty interesting and easy to understand,” says Licini who, along with first-year physics major...
Have you ever followed a recipe to bake some bread? If you have, congratulations; you have executed an algorithm. The algorithms that follow us around the internet to suggest items we might like, and those that control what shows up in our Facebook feeds may seem mysterious and uncanny at times. Yet, an algorithm is...
Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, debates have raged about the reach of so-called “fake news” websites and the role they played during the campaign. A study published in Nature Human Behaviour finds that the reach of these untrustworthy websites has been overstated. To assess the audience for “fake news,” researchers at Dartmouth, Princeton and the University...
The average age at which teens and young adults start using drugs has been rising, according to a study published today in JAMA Pediatrics. The study examined changes in the average age of first drug use for 18 different drugs–including alcohol and tobacco products–between 2004 and 2017 and found that average ages had increased for the majority of...
The “Monday Effect” is real – and it’s impacting your Amazon package delivery. So says researcher Oliver Yao, a professor of decision and technology analytics in Lehigh University’s College of Business. He’s found that the “Monday Effect” – that letdown of returning to work after a weekend, which is documented to impact finance, productivity and psychology...
On Super Tuesday, Democratic voters from Colorado and across the United States will face a serious decision: Sanders or Warren? Biden, Klobuchar or Bloomberg? Then, afterward, what kind of wine to drink. Now, a new study taps into mathematics to probe how people make those kinds of fraught choices–in particular, how hypothetical, and completely rational,...
The physical and mental sensations we associate with feeling sick are a natural biological response to inflammation within the body. However, the strength and severity of these sensations go beyond biology and may be affected by gender, ethnicity and various social norms we’ve all internalized. These are the latest research findings, according to social scientists...
The scope of childhood malnutrition has decreased since 2000, although millions of children under five years of age are still undernourished and, as a result, have stunted growth. An international team of researchers analysed the scope of global childhood malnutrition in 2000 and 2017, and estimated the probability of achieving the World Health Organization Global Nutrition Targets...
For all its shortcomings, the gross domestic product (GDP) of a country remains an important barometer of its economic health, strongly influencing both private and public spending. Though conceptually simple as the total dollar value of all goods and services produced within a specified time frame, calculating GDP is tricky in practice and can be...
