When most of a community is rushing in one direction, the few who hang back may serve to protect the whole population from something catastrophic attacking the group, says a team of Princeton scientists led by Corina Tarnita.

Study shows how a lack of community support caused by inequality exacerbates cycles of poverty

Princeton researchers have been awarded a National Science Foundation RAPID grant to study how anxiety about COVID-19 influences how we learn and share information about the pandemic.

Princeton this week endorsed new guidelines aimed at accelerating the transition of the University's COVID-19 discoveries into solutions to protect health care workers and prevent, diagnose, treat and contain the pandemic.

As global climate change leads to more hot and dry weather, the resulting droughts are stressing plants, making them less able to remove ozone — which at ground level is a dangerous pollutant — from the air.

The existence of superconducting currents, or supercurrents, along the exterior of a superconductor, has been surprisingly hard to find. Now, researchers at Princeton have discovered these edge supercurrents in a material that is both a superconductor and a topological semi-metal. This evidence for topological superconductivity could help provide the foundation for applications in quantum computing and other future technologies.

In a guest piece, industry executive Aaron Simpson explains how the animation industry had been preparing for this disaster for decades without even knowing it.

The post For The Animation Industry, The Coronavirus Crisis Has Created A Big Opportunity appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Four aliens crash-land into suburban America. They can't agree on whether Earth is awful or awesome.

The post ‘Solar Opposites,’ From ‘Rick And Morty’ Co-Creator Justin Roiland, Lands On Hulu To Warm Reviews appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

BOSTON – The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is making grants available for New England communities to support EPA's goals of reducing environmental risks, protecting human health and improving the quality of life. 

DALLAS – (April 30, 2020) Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a grant to the Texas Department of Agriculture for $73,056. The funds will be used to support a variety of pesticide training and inspection programs.

Environmental News FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Environmental News FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Environmental News FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PHILADELPHIA – (May 7, 2020) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the 2019 winners of the National WasteWise Awards this month. The City of Chesapeake Garage, in Chesapeake, Virginia, was recognized as Local Government Partner of the Year.

Media contacts: Jennah Durant or Joe Hubbard, R6Press@epa.gov or 214 665-2200

DALLAS – (May 8, 2020) Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing that the city of Alexandria, Louisiana, will receive $300,000 as a Brownfields assessment grant.

DALLAS – (May 8, 2020) Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing that the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality will receive $800,000 as a Brownfields revolving loan fund grant.

PHILADELPHIA (April 16, 2020) – In a settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Texas-based Raven Power LLC recently paid a $105,000 penalty for allegedly failing to timely report a 2017 release of a hazardous substance from the H.A.

Hotels could be 'commandeered'

Saturday 7th March 2020It was awesome to start the day with a swim at the hotel's infinity pool. From where I stood the morning views of the city was unforgettable. At 8am this was probably the best time of the day to be at the pool when the

I wrote this back in 2013. I am reposting in the hopes that you might donate to City Lights Bookstore as they struggle through the quarantine in San Francisco. It is by far the most historic and unusual bookstore I have ever visited. They have been r

I took TX State Hwy 7 East to Center Texas for a good day. I took TX Hwy 87 SE to Shelbyville the first brief county seat for Shelby County and the Fire Department is my first pic in the City of Shelbyville. A block West of Fire Department is the First

A few months ago most people did not know what a pandemic was or how deadly it could become. Just common sense told me that the Corona virus could become a global pandemic with many sick and many would perish. A pandemic is an disease epidemic with a rapi

Did you know that there was a connection between our large 7000 inhabitant village of Wingerworth Randolph Hearst and the a museum across the pond in St Louis No neither did I until I treated our village as if I were a visitor on a first visit . As a v

We came close to learning the meaning of life in Salt Lake City. Visiting the Mormon capital of the world of course we had to check out some Mormon activities at their headquarters Temple Square. There is a building called Tabernacle which has very spe

Day 1 in Auckland. After a tiring day yesterday plane was late time to pick up campervan. Driving the roads we found the camp site. After shopping it was time for dinner and a drink.We have woken to a sunny day. After a 1 hour bus ride into Auckland.

Okay here goes with my first blog post ever.I'm two and a half days into my adventure and I'm still alive so that's a great start. The first thing that needs to be said which I'm sure most everyone has heard before is that the smog here is crazy

After leaving Texas apparently the best place in America according to the Texan cowboy even though he had been to less places in the USA than us basically if it's not in Texas then it must be rubbish seems to be their philosophy we headed to Oklamoma and

I haven't updated in quite a while... For a change I've been very busy I arrived in Hyderabad September 16th and was greeted at the airport by two of the sistersnuns who run the home and an American I got a hug and kiss on the cheek from Sister Alice

Okay so I haven't yet skyrocketed to the top of the Chinese Alist and I don't think the foreignerdirected jeerscatcalls on the street invariably a snickering hoot Hellooo Yeah nihao to you too jackass these days are any different from

After breakfast we mad our way to the Cu Chi Tunnels. It took around 1 and a half hours to get there. These were the tunnels used for battle during the Vietnamese war. This was very interesting and the tunnels were tiny. I wasn't brave enough to go down on

When you are homeless jobless and penniless there are few options open to you but to return to the family home even if it is in Australia With a degree behind him and a spring in his step Cieran tried so hard to start his career and settle into the next

Ukip has made thousands from merchandise on its online store. What could the other parties learn from it?

It can't be easy trying to fund a political movement in the current climate, when politicians are about as popular as a wasp in a submarine. You'd have more luck organising a whip-round for President Assad. That's why politicians are forced to suck up to billionaire donors, who expect them to tailor their policies accordingly, thereby further widening the gulf between parties and the public.

But wait. Not all parties are alike. The Daily Telegraph has revealed that, last year, Ukip made a whopping £80,000 from flogging branded merchandise to the public from its online store.

The prime minister has refused to go head-to-head with Ed Miliband – and the multi-party debate we are getting will be a 90-minute cry for help on behalf of the democratic system

Last week, Germany chose its entry for this year’s Eurovision: Heart of Stone, performed by Andreas Kümmert, former winner of the German version of The Voice (which is known as The Voice of Germany in its native country, rather than Die Stimme von Deutschland. Presumably the producers didn’t want to put viewers off by making it sound too German).

After wailing his guts out and winning the public vote, Kümmert abruptly announced, on live TV, that he didn’t actually want to “do” Eurovision after all, and awarded his “prize” to the runner-up instead. A chorus of boos broke out. German boos. Buhen.

An animated reality check of the man who claims to be the greatest U.S. president ever.

Amid the current public health crisis, hospitals and grocery stores have a growing demand for more security personnel. The guards will help to limit access to buildings -- and stop possible fights over goods.

Every day, tens of thousands people in Germany seek to get tested for the novel coronavirus. Often, though, they run up against a lack of testing capacity. And it is likely to only get worse. By DER SPIEGEL Staff

Ambient pollution is a byproduct of economic activity. It has been widely reported that COVID-19 and associated lockdowns have generated large improvements in air quality worldwide, including to China's notoriously-poor air quality. We analyze China's official pollution monitor data and account for the large, recurrent improvement in air quality following Lunar New Year (LNY), which essentially coincided with lockdowns in 2020. With the important exception of NO2, China's air quality improvements in 2020 are smaller than we should expect near the pandemic's epicenter: Hubei province. Compared with LNY improvements experienced in 2018 and 2019 in Hubei, we see smaller improvements in SO2 while ozone concentrations increased in both relative and absolute terms (roughly doubling). Similar patterns are found for the six provinces neighboring Hubei. We conclude that whether COVID-19 actually decreased pollution in China depends on the pollutant and reference period considered.

Do new societal needs increase charitable giving or simply reallocate a fixed supply of donations? We study this question using IRS datasets and the natural experiment of deadly tornadoes. Among ZIP Codes located more than 20 miles away from a tornado's path, donations by households increase by over $1 million per tornado fatality. We find no negative effects on charities located in these ZIP Codes, with a bootstrapped confidence interval that rejects substitution rates above 16 percent. The results imply that giving to one cause need not come at the expense of another.

Despite widespread interest, there is little systematic evidence on the relationship between income, wealth, and charitable giving. We use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to provide descriptive statistics on this relationship. We find that, irrespective of specifica­tion, donative behavior increases with greater resources.

We explored two measures of inequality that described the full income distribution in cities. One measure is an income gini based on family incomes in 1929 for 33 cities and in 1933 for up to 48 cities in 1933 were spread throughout the country. We also estimated gini coefficients that made use of contract rents for renters and implicit rents for home owners for up to 955 cities throughout the country. We were able to expand to all counties when looking at a top-end inequality measure, the number of taxpayers per family. All three measures varied substantially across the country. We show the correlations between the various measures and also estimate the relationship between the measures and various relief programs developed by governments at all levels during the period.

We study a novel policy tool—interest rate uncertainty—that can be used to discourage inefficient capital inflows and to adjust the composition of external accounts between short-term securities and foreign direct investment (FDI). We identify the trade-offs faced in navigating between external balance and price stability. The interest rate uncertainty policy discourages short-term inflows mainly through portfolio risk and precautionary saving channels. A markup channel generates net FDI inflows under imperfect exchange rate pass-through. We further investigate new channels under different assumptions about the irreversibility of FDI, the currency of export invoicing, risk aversion of outside agents, and effective lower bound in the rest of the world. Under every scenario, uncertainty policy is inflationary.

Twelve weeks after the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic in China, leaders in Beijing are gradually reopening the country. But how can they be sure their decision won't backfire?

Not a soul to be seen on Wall Street, cafés closing down in Brooklyn and a field hospital in Central Park: New York City is in the grips of coronavirus. Notes from a week that changed the city.

Innovation policy involves trading off monopoly output and pricing in the short run in exchange for incentives for firms to develop new products in the future. While existing research demonstrates that expected profits fuel R&D investments, little is known about the novelty of the projects funded by these investments. Relying on data that describe the scientific approaches used by a large sample of experimental drug projects, we expand on this literature by examining the scientific novelty of pharmaceutical R&D investments following the creation of the Medicare Part D program. We find little evidence that the positive demand shock implied by this program prompted firms to undertake scientifically novel R&D activity, as measured by whether the specific scientific approach had been used before. However, we find some evidence that firms invested in products involving novel combinations of scientific approaches. These estimates can inform economists and policymakers assessing the tradeoffs associated with marginal changes in commercial returns from newly developed pharmaceutical products.

This paper investigates the effect of a large negative agricultural shock, the boll weevil, on black-white inequality in the first half of the twentieth century. To do this we use complete count census data to generate a linked sample of fathers and their sons. We find that the boll weevil induced enormous labor market and social disruption as more than half of black and white fathers moved to other counties following the arrival of the weevil. The shock impacted black and white sons differently. We compare sons whose fathers initially resided in the same county and find that white sons born after the boll weevil had similar wages and schooling outcomes to white sons born prior to its arrival. In contrast, black sons born after the boll weevil had significantly higher wages and years of schooling, narrowing the black-white wage and schooling gaps. This decrease appears to have been driven by relative improvements in early life conditions and access to schooling both for sons of black fathers that migrated out of the South and sons of black fathers that stayed in the South.

Estimating the returns to education remains an active area of research amongst applied economists. Most studies that estimate the causal return to education exploit changes in schooling and/or labor laws to generate exogenous differences in education. An implicit assumption is that more time in school may translate into greater earnings potential. None of these studies, however, explicitly consider the quality of schooling to which impacted students are exposed. To extend this literature, we examine the interaction between school quality and policy-induced returns to schooling, using temporally-available school quality measures from Card and Krueger (1992). We find that additional compulsory schooling, via either schooling or labor laws, increases earnings only if educational inputs are of sufficiently high quality. In particular, we find a consistent role for teacher quality, as measured by relative teacher pay across states, in generating consistently positive returns to compulsory schooling.

Traveling beyond the immediate surroundings of one’s residence can lead to greater exposure to new ideas and information, jobs, and greater transmission of disease. In this paper, we document the geographic mobility of individuals in the U.S., and how this mobility varies across U.S. cities, regions, and income classes. Using geolocation data for ~1.7 million smartphone users over a 10-month period, we compute different measures of mobility, including the total distance traveled, the median daily distance traveled, the maximum distance traveled from one’s home, and the number of unique haunts visited. We find large differences across cities and income groups. For example, people in New York travel 38% fewer total kilometers and visit 14% fewer block-sized areas than people in Atlanta. And, individuals in the bottom income quartile travel 12% less overall and visit 13% fewer total locations than the top income quartile.

In an interview, Arne Schönbohm, 49, the head of Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, discusses the potential danger posed by Huawei, why he thinks it is "manageable" and the general state of IT threats in Germany.