A team of computer scientists at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering set out to develop new tools automate and organize social science data. What did they use as their data sets? Twitter posts from coastal capitals, New York City and Los Angeles. The researchers found that they could identify similar tweets that do not...
When nature vanishes, people of color and low-income Americans disproportionally lose critical environmental and health benefits—including air quality, crop productivity and natural disease control—a new study in Nature Communications finds. The University of Vermont research is the first national study to explore the unequal impacts on American society—by race, income and other demographics—of projected declines in nature,...
Many employees have come to prefer working from home after being forced to do so more than a year ago when the pandemic started. By some estimates, at least one-quarter of employees will still be working remotely multiple days a week at the end of 2021. For those whose jobs allow it, being untethered from the office...
Extreme risk protection orders, also known as gun violence restraining orders (GVROs) or “red flag” orders, exist in 19 states and the District of Columbia. The laws allow law enforcement, family and household members, some co-workers, employers and teachers to work with a judge to temporarily remove access to firearms and ammunition from people at significant risk...
Residents in majority-Black neighborhoods experience higher rates of severe pregnancy-related health problems than those living in predominantly-white areas, according to a new study of pregnancies at a Philadelphia-based health system, which was led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The findings, published in Obstetrics and Gynecology, suggest that...
Heavy caseloads, job stress and biases can strain relations between parole and probation officers and their clients, upping offenders’ likelihood of landing back behind bars. On a more hopeful note, a new University of California, Berkeley, study suggests that nonjudgmental empathy training helps court-appointed supervision officers feel more emotionally connected to their clients and,...
A woman grips her purse tightly as you approach. A store manager follows you because you look “suspicious.” You enter a high-end restaurant, and the staff assume you’re applying for a job. You’re called on in work meetings only when they’re talking about diversity. The indignities and humiliations Black men — even those who have...
The U.S. criminal legal system has expanded at a rapid pace, even as crime rates have declined since the 1990s. As a result, individuals’ interactions with and surveillance by law enforcement are now commonplace. But citizens experience different interactions, with people of color who live in impoverished urban communities having the most frequent encounters. A...
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Black women have 80% higher risk of preterm birth between 32 and 33 weeks of pregnancy if a Black person who lives in their neighborhood is killed by police during the pregnancy, according to a study by researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley. The study by scientists at the UCSF California Preterm Birth...
The New Jersey State Police, founded 100 years ago, was created to counter the influence of the state’s rising populations of African Americans and immigrants, whom white residents feared. My research into the agency’s culture found that the agency emerged as the result of a seven-year campaign by the state’s Chamber of Commerce to replace...
