When you’re stressed, do you ever feel like you just don’t want to be around other people? According to a Dartmouth study, greater levels of stress on a given day were found to be predictive of decreases in social interaction the following day. The results are published in the journal Emotion. “For our study, we wanted...
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Removing Urban Highways Can Improve Neighborhoods Blighted by Decades of Racist Policies
The US$1.2 trillion infrastructure bill now moving through Congress will bring money to cities for much-needed investments in roads, bridges, public transit networks, water infrastructure, electric power grids, broadband networks and traffic safety. We believe that more of this money should also fund the dismantling of racist infrastructure. Many urban highways built in the 1950s...
How Hood River Watershed Can Become More Resilient to Climate Change
Hood River, long an agricultural center for Oregon, faces an uncertain future of climate impacts, but a new Portland State University study lays out strategies that the watershed can adapt to become more resilient to the inevitable changes. Glaciers are receding and snowpack levels are peaking earlier and declining faster, meaning farmers will lose water...
After Ida, Energy Facilities in Gulf Inching Back to Life
Oil companies began gradually restarting some of their refineries in Louisiana, and key fuel pipelines fully reopened Tuesday, providing hopeful signs that the region’s crucial energy industry can soon recover from Hurricane Ida’s onslaught. Exxon Mobil said crews were starting to resume normal operations at its Hoover platform in the Gulf of Mexico that managed...
Ida’s Sweltering Aftermath: No Power, No Water, No Gasoline
Hundreds of thousands of Louisianans sweltered in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida on Tuesday with no electricity, no tap water, precious little gasoline and no clear idea of when things might improve. Long lines that wrapped around the block formed at the few gas stations that had fuel and generator power to pump it. People...
As Cities Grow in Size, the Poor ‘Get Nothing at All’
Cities are hubs of human activity, supercharging the exchange of ideas and interactions. Scaling theory has established that, as cities grow larger, they tend to produce more of pretty much everything from pollution and crime to patents and wealth. On average, people in larger cities are better off economically. But a new study published in the Journal of...
Nationwide, Non-White Neighborhoods Are Hotter Than White Ones
In cities and towns across the United States, neighborhoods with more Black, Hispanic and Asian residents experience hotter temperatures during summer heatwaves than nearby white residents, a new study finds. It is the first to show that the trend, documented in some major cities, is widespread, even in small towns, nationwide. According to the new nationwide study,...
Officers’ Tone of Voice Reflects Racial Disparities in Policing
The Black Lives Matter movement has brought increasing attention to disparities in how police officers treat Black and white Americans. Now, research published by the American Psychological Association finds that disparity may exist even in subtle differences in officers’ tone of voice when they address Black and white drivers during routine traffic stops. In the...
Poor and Minority Communities Suffer More from Extreme Heat in U.S. Cities
Low-income neighborhoods and communities with higher Black, Hispanic and Asian populations experience significantly more urban heat than wealthier and predominantly white neighborhoods within a vast majority of populous U.S. counties, according new research from the University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy. The analysis of remotely-sensed land surface temperature measurements of...
The Quiet of Pandemic-Era Lockdowns Allowed Some Pumas to Venture Closer to Urban Areas
New research from the University of California, Santa Cruz shows how regional shelter-in-place orders during the coronavirus pandemic emboldened local pumas to use habitats they would normally avoid out of fear of humans. This study, published in the journal Current Biology, is part of a growing wave of research working to formally document the types of...