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How to Pick the 'Right' Amount to Spend Dec 09, 2019

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By Jay L. Zagorsky , Boston University Gift giving is a big deal this time of year. To find the “perfect” gift , Americans will spend about 15 hours shopping. Women will do about twice as much as men. And they’ll shell out about US$1 trillion on gifts. While retailers relish the holiday shopping season as a time when consumers open their purses or wallets, for many consumers – especially those who do not like shopping – these days are filled with dread . They mark moments when shoppers clog malls, websites become overloaded and delivery trucks block streets . The entire process generates untold amounts of stress and anxiety . One source of stress is just how much to spend on gifts. Spending too much can put you in financial distress. Spending too little may make you look cheap. How do you decide what’s the “right” amount to spend on gifts? As an economist , I study holidays and gift giving because a large fraction of retail shopping is driven by seasonal events like Black Friday, Cyber

We've Reached 'Peak Cow,' Report Says Dec 08, 2019

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The Impossible Burger has put high tech meat alternatives on people’s plates and minds. But just how big could this emerging sector become? And how soon? A new analysis says it could make the cow all but obsolete in a matter of years.

A Mood Of Urgency At UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid Dec 08, 2019

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This year’s United Nations conference on climate change is underway in Madrid, Spain, with about 25,000 people from 200 countries attending. The mood is one of urgency, according to participants.

Living Lab Radio: December 8, 2019 Dec 08, 2019

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“Essentially, the cost of producing protein is going to come down fast. So, it's five times cheaper by 2030 - and ten times by 2035 - than existing methods. And so, ultimately, this means 50 percent fewer cows by 2030. And it won't stop there.” – Catherine Tubb

New Effort to Understand Arctic Craters Caused by Warming Dec 02, 2019

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In July of 2014, images of an enormous crater in the Siberian tundra captivated scientists and the public, alike. Others were soon found, and a cause proposed: climate change. Specifically, the finger was pointed at an underground build-up of methane released as permafrost thaws. But this was not a climate change impact that anyone had anticipated.

Study: Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time? Dec 02, 2019

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“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” – Max Planck The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Planck articulated what has come to be known as Planck’s Principle in his 1950 Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers . The idea was born out of his frustration that eminent colleagues, notably Albert Einstein, were resistant to the revolutionary ideas of quantum mechanics that he had introduced. “That was his sort of cynical quip that, you know, maybe what was needed is for the generation of scholars who had been trained in a different tradition to simply sort of pass away before suddenly of young people could pick up the mantle and sort of push physics forward,” explained Pierre Azoulay of M.I.T. Sloan School of Management. Planck’s Principle strikes a chord for many researchers, and it has been fodder for science philosophers

Studies Show Meditation Can Reduce Pain AND Opioid Use Dec 01, 2019

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A new meta-analysis of dozens of studies finds evidence that mind-body therapies, like meditation, can reduce not only pain, but also opioid use. “There have been other reviews of studies of mind body therapies for people experiencing various types of pain,” said Eric Garland, lead author of the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association and director of the Center on Mindfulness and Integrative Health Intervention Development at the University of Utah. “By and large, those reviews have showed that my body therapies are effective for reducing pain.” But Garland and his colleagues were interested in another question, and that is whether mind-body therapies could not only reduce pain but also reduce opioid use and misuse. “We did not know whether these therapies could help people who were also prescribed opioids,” Garland explained. “Given the opioid crisis in this country, that question seemed really important.” A search of published research turned up more than 4,000

Defamation Case Mixes Climate Science and First Amendment Dec 01, 2019

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Before heading home for turkey, the Supreme Court this week declined to hear a case pitting a prominent climate scientist against a conservative news outlet and a free-market think tank. To be clear, this is considered a win for the climate scientist as it allows his defamation case to go forward. Michael Mann is the scientist in question. He leads the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University and is best known as one of the originators of the now infamous hockey stick graph of rising global temperatures. He is suing – or has been trying to sue - National Review and Competitive Enterprise Institute for defamation after they attacked his science and called him “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science,” saying that he had “molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science” and that the University had covered up his wrongdoing. “These two columnists wrote pieces pretty much harpooning [Mann’s] science concerning the hockey stick graph and then inserted that

Living Lab Radio: December 1, 2019 Dec 01, 2019

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"I didn't expect it then and I still don't expect it now. It's not something that any Arctic scientists talk about for this to happen on land - to have land explode because of a buildup of methane below the ground. It still surprises me now." - Sue Natali This week on Living Lab Radio: Jennifer Hijazi of E&E News reports on a defamation lawsuit that is mixing climate science and free speech issues in novel ways. The Supreme Court has said that scientist Michael Mann's case can move forward. Integrative health researcher Eric Garland breaks down the evidence that mindfulness meditation and other mind-body therapies can reduce both pain and opioid use. He says the biggest challenge, at this point, is providing access to these safe and effective therapies. Pierre Azoulay of M.I.T. explains what happens to a scientific field after a prominent researcher passes away prematurely. The research suggests some avenues for accelerating scientific advancement across the board. Climate

Star Stories - A Tradition That Spans Time and Cultures Nov 24, 2019

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Stargazing and storytelling are universal, age-old past-times. For millenia, people have looked to the sky, seen shapes in the stars, and attached stories to them. Constellations and their movements have been used to navigate the seas, predict personalities and major events, and to teach moral lessons. “The sky was always there,” says Anthony Aveni, professor emeritus at Colgate University and author of Star Stories: Constellations and People . “The sky was the storyboard, filled with tales about the meaning of life and social relations.” Aveni speculates that linking myths and legends to constellations may predate cave paintings. And, while different cultures have enshrined different constellations and stories, there are many common themes. The cluster of stars known in the Greek system as Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, is recognized almost universally as a group of between six and eight stars. In fact, Aboriginal Australians also call them the Seven Sisters, KungaKungaranga, while

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