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The ‘Monday Effect’ Is Real — and It’s Impacting Your Amazon Package Delivery
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The ‘Monday Effect’ Is Real — and It’s Impacting Your Amazon Package Delivery

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 Eve of Super Tuesday, Study Sheds Light on How People Make Choices
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On Eve of Super Tuesday, Study Sheds Light on How People Make Choices

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,...

Researchers Study Role Culture Plays in Feeling Sick
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Researchers Study Role Culture Plays in Feeling Sick

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...

Mapping Childhood Malnutrition
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Mapping Childhood Malnutrition

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...

The GDP Fudge: China Edition
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The GDP Fudge: China Edition

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...

A Brief History of Invisibility on Screen
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A Brief History of Invisibility on Screen

What would you do if you could be invisible? Would this newfound power bring out the best in you, instilling you with the courage to discreetly sabotage the efforts of evildoers? Or would the ability to slip in and out of rooms unnoticed tap into darker impulses? This alluring fantasy has long been fodder for...

Black Women Prefer Hair Products Marketed with Them in Mind
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Black Women Prefer Hair Products Marketed with Them in Mind

The big idea Marketing reports indicate that black consumers long to feel authentically represented in advertising campaigns, especially black women. Black female consumers outpace other consumer groups in a number of spending categories, notably personal care and hair products, but feel unappreciated by top brands. This line of thinking raised several questions for me: With...

How Art Helped Construct Afrikaner Nationalism in Apartheid South Africa
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How Art Helped Construct Afrikaner Nationalism in Apartheid South Africa

In this revised extract from the introduction to Troubling Images: Visual Culture and the Politics of Afrikaner Nationalism, the book’s editors assess how art and design helped forge Afrikaner nationalism. In Banal Nationalism British academic Michael Billig writes, “If the future remains uncertain, we know the past history of nationalism. And that should be sufficient...

Art for Our Time, Perez Art Museum Miami
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Art for Our Time, Perez Art Museum Miami

Art and Soul: what does that mean? The expression has lent itself to many things in American society, such as a crafts studio in Long Island, a tattoo/piercing shop in the Hudson Valley of New York, and a gallery in Boulder, Colorado.  Art and Soul echoes the expression heart and soul, which means without reservations...

How One Man Fought South Carolina Democrats to End Whites-Only Primaries – and Why That Matters Now
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How One Man Fought South Carolina Democrats to End Whites-Only Primaries – and Why That Matters Now

A rusting chain-link fence represents a “color line” for the dead in Columbia, South Carolina. In Randolph Cemetery, separated by the barrier from the well-manicured lawn of the neighboring white graveyard, lies the remains of George A. Elmore. A black business owner and civil rights activist, Elmore is little remembered despite his achievement. But a...