‘Like a video game with health points,’ energy budgets explain evolutionary body size

Budgeting resources isn’t just a problem for humans preparing a holiday dinner, or squirrels storing up nuts for the winter. A new model of how animals budget their energy sheds light on how they live and explains why they tend to evolve toward...
18-Dec-2019 12:55 PM EST Add to Favorites

This ‘Fix’ for Economic Theory Changes Everything From Gambles to Inequality to Ponzi Schemes

Whether we decide to take out that insurance policy, buy Bitcoin, or switch jobs, many economic decisions boil down to a fundamental gamble about how to maximize our wealth over time. How we understand these decisions is the subject of a new...
28-Nov-2019 11:00 AM EST Add to Favorites

How to measure inequality as 'experienced difference'

Researchers propose a novel twist on the widely used Gini coefficient—a workhorse statistical measure for gauging the gap between haves and have-nots.
26-Nov-2019 4:40 PM EST Add to Favorites

Scientists, legal scholars fight for transparency and fairness in housing algorithms

the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) proposal to dramatically revise the Fair Housing Act. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed new legislation that would absolve landlords and lenders from any...
24-Oct-2019 1:05 PM EDT Add to Favorites

Information Theory as a Tool for Extracting Climate Signals

During Earth’s last glacial period, temperatures on the planet periodically spiked dramatically and rapidly. A new paper in the journal Chaos suggests that mathematics from information theory could offer a powerful tool for analyzing and...
16-Oct-2019 4:35 PM EDT Add to Favorites

Private Property, Not Productivity, Precipitated Neolithic Agricultural Revolution

The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution is one of the most thoroughly-studied episodes in prehistory. But a new paper by Sam Bowles and Jung-Kyoo Choi shows that most explanations for it don’t agree with the evidence, and offers a new interpretation.
11-Oct-2019 1:25 PM EDT Add to Favorites

Where to Park Your Car, According to Math

In a world where the best parking space is the one that minimizes time spent in the lot, two physicists compare parking strategies and settle on a prudent approach.
19-Sep-2019 4:35 PM EDT Add to Favorites

Study: Bigger cities boost ‘social crimes’

The same underlying mechanism that boosts urban innovation and startup businesses can also explain why certain types of crimes, like car theft and robbery, thrive in a larger population.
18-Sep-2019 9:00 AM EDT Add to Favorites

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