Tag: reducing

Why Aren’t More Companies Reducing Methane, It’s Crucial For Protecting Climate And Health, And It Can Pay For Itself
ENVIRONMENT, VIDEO REELS

Why Aren’t More Companies Reducing Methane, It’s Crucial For Protecting Climate And Health, And It Can Pay For Itself

Methane, the main ingredient in natural gas, is a larger climate problem than the world anticipates, and cutting its emissions will be crucial to slow global warming, a new United Nations report warns. The greenhouse gas is many times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the planet, and its concentration in the atmosphere is increasing faster than at any time since record keeping began in the 1980s. Methane is much more than a climate problem, though, and this is where the report gets interesting. As methane emissions are reduced, the world reaps several benefits quickly, for health as well as the climate. In most cases, the benefits of taking action far outweigh the cost – in fact many of them make money. The report’s lead author Drew Shindell, a climate scientist and physicist,...
Reducing School Absenteeism, Breakfast After The Bell Programs
EDUCATION

Reducing School Absenteeism, Breakfast After The Bell Programs

The big idea Making a healthy breakfast available to students not only can help alleviate hunger and improve concentration at school; it also appears to encourage regular attendance, according to new research I co-authored. In a study published in February 2021, my co-author and I explored how the rollout of Breakfast After the Bell programs at high-poverty schools in Colorado and Nevada have been linked to reductions in the number of students who were chronically absent. The programs extend free morning meals to learners unable to get into school before classes start. Our study looked at levels of absenteeism in the last year before Breakfast After the Bell was introduced in the states – the 2013-2014 academic year – and two years after. In both states, high-poverty schools, where 70% o...
Journalism

Shop Here, Not There: Science Says Reducing Inequality Is Almost That Simple

New research shows that shuttling even 5 percent of consumer transactions to poorer neighborhoods can reduce income inequality by up to 80 percent. Imagine heading out to run errands at all your usual places, and your phone’s “equity app” has a better idea. Siri might say: “Buy your groceries at one of these other stores, just as close as your regular store.” Or: “There are three coffee shops within 2 miles. You haven’t tried this one before.” We already get shopping suggestions when we bring up Google Maps, especially when our smartphones are transmitting our GPS coordinates. A similar type of computation is happening behind the scenes at Facebook and Twitter, whose targeted ads can sometimes be scarily on point. But what if, instead of just boosting sales, those suggestions coming fr...