From WBEZ Chicago: With all of us closing the book on 2022, we’re taking a moment to look back on some of the best things that happened to Chicagoans. And Reset talks to one listener about finishing a book about her parents who were longtime activists in Chicago. Then, Reset gets tips from a behavioral economist on how to set yourself up for a successful 2023. GUEST: Margot McMahon, author of Resist! A Visual History of Protest, Katherine Milkman, behavioral economist at University of Pennsylvania Listen to the Episode at WBEZ Chicago.
From Markets Insider: The specter of inflation continues to haunt the US economy, but the Federal Reserve risks harming the poorest Americans if it keeps raising interest rates, a management professor at the Wharton School has warned. “The big ghost in the attic is inflation,” Iwan Barankay recently told Wharton Business Daily. “Prices are going up, the economy’s getting too hot.” Inflation surged to a 40-year high of 9.1% in June, and clocked in at 7.1% in November, well above the Fed’s annual target of 2%. The US central bank has reacted by hiking interest rates from almost zero in March to over…
From Knowledge@Wharton: Don’t worry about the U.S. economy. Wharton management professor Iwan Barankay has looked at the data, crunched the numbers, and read the latest research from fellow economists, and he says everything is just fine. “This is the longest continuous expansion of the economy since the second World War, and we’re not used to that,” he told Wharton Business Daily on SiriusXM. “This is completely new territory, so of course you look for signs that this party can’t go on forever. But as for the data today, we see that after the COVID intermission, so to speak, we are back to the trends…
From Physician’s Weekly: When initiating statins, it is critically important for clinicians to ensure that patients understand the associated benefits and risks, explains Mitesh S. Patel, MD, adding that statins have been shown to significantly reduce the risk for major adverse cardiovascular events, including coronary events and stroke. “Studies have shown that statins can reduce mortality and readmissions by up to 30%,” says Dr. Patel. “However, only about 50% of adults in the United States who could benefit from a statin are prescribed one. These data highlight the critical need for new and innovative approaches to increase statin-prescribing rates.” A way…
From Discover: In August 2013, Mark Post of Maastricht University unveiled to an events hall the world’s first kill-free beef patty. Through a laborious and bogglingly expensive process, Post and his team successfully grew real meat in a lab from a biopsy all the way up to an edible burger. But the response from the public was mostly, “yuck.” At the time, cultured meat seemed to irk most on a fundamental level. Today, while there is still some aversion to cultured meat, domestic support for this technology is steadily growing. A recent poll found that two thirds (67 percent) of Americans would be…
From MedPage Today: WASHINGTON — The U.S. needs a “whole-of-government” approach to addressing diet-related diseases, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said Wednesday at a Senate hearing on food as medicine. “Currently in the United States, half our population is pre-diabetic [or] has type 2 diabetes,” said Booker, who is chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics, and Research. “That is something that isn’t exclusively affecting older people … one-quarter of our teenagers today are pre-diabetic or have type 2 diabetes. Much of that can be attributed to the alarming fact that ultra-processed foods now…
From No Stupid Questions: DUCKWORTH: I know everyone says this is dumb, but I’m going to do it anyway. * * * DUCKWORTH: I’m Angela Duckworth. DUBNER: I’m Stephen Dubner. DUCKWORTH + DUBNER: And you’re listening to No Stupid Questions. Today on the show: Why do some people love horror movies? DUBNER: It is so gory, it has caused audience members to pass out and vomit. * * * DUBNER: Angela, we have a listener email from Skyo who writes to say, “Why are people into horror movies? I couldn’t for the life…
From Vox: It’s that time of year again — when seemingly every advertisement, social media post, or well-meaning loved one is quick to remind you how you’re due for a refresh, a restart, a rebrand. Self-improvement is difficult any time of year, but you may feel extra pressure to embark on a life change at the top of the new year. The desire to set goals often comes on the heels of the start of a new week, month, year, semester, or birthday, dubbed the “fresh start effect.” When the slate is wiped clean in any capacity, people feel more compelled to conquer…
From MedPage Today: Medicare needs to pay physicians more, especially those who treat low-income patients, members of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) said at their December meeting. “There’s no question that there’s high levels of physician burnout, and there’s some evidence to suggest that that’s increased quite a lot,” said Lawrence Casalino, MD, PhD, of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, adding that increasing payments would be a good way to show that the Medicare program cares about its clinicians. “I don’t think it’s good for beneficiaries or the program to have a lot of burned-out physicians,…
From The Register: Exposure to industrial robots in the workplace leads to less participation in the labor force, less employment, and less pay, according to economics researchers. Workplace automation also appears to increase family debt and reduce – by only a small amount – the number of children born to affected families, while adding to the time and money that families invest in existing children. In a paper titled “How do Workers and Households Adjust to Robots? Evidence from China,” distributed by the National Bureau of Economics Research, co-authors Osea Giuntella (University of Pittsburgh), Yi Lu (Tsinghua University), and Tianyi Wang (University of…