Data-driven public policy depends on data. And, in the area of technology policy, access to data has been a significant barrier to research. Concerned about how online services might intrude on privacy, push hyper-partisan misinformation, or disadvantage their competitors? Those services aren’t sharing the relevant data with researchers.
The world’s human population is expanding, which means even more agricultural land will be needed to provide food for this growing population. However, choosing which areas to convert is difficult and depends on agricultural and environmental priorities, which can vary widely.
Great uncertainty surrounds the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Early on, some suggested a link between COVID-19 and a seafood market in Wuhan, China. Other theories are now circulating, though the origins of the virus are still unknown.
In response, governments have pushed for the closing of so-called “wet markets” around the world, but this is not an effective policy solution, Princeton University researchers report.
COVID-19 has been associated with increases in opioid overdose deaths, which may be in part because the pandemic limited access to buprenorphine, a treatment used for opioid dependency, according to a new study led by Princeton University researchers.
Partisan media outlets are often blamed for growing polarization, but new research points to another consequence of consuming partisan news: an erosion of trust in the media.
A team of researchers combined computational social science techniques and experimentation to study the long-term effects of online partisan media on political opinions and trust.
Princeton disease ecologist C. Jessica Metcalf and Harvard physician and epidemiologist Michael Mina say that predicting disease could become as commonplace as predicting the weather. The Global Immunological Observatory, like a weather center forecasting a tornado or hurricane, would alert the world, earlier than ever before, to dangerous emerging pathogens like SARS-CoV-2.
The alarming rate at which COVID-19 has killed Black Americans has highlighted the deeply embedded racial disparities in the U.S. health care system.
Princeton researchers now report that low-income Black households also experienced greater job loss, more food and medicine insecurity, and higher indebtedness in the early months of the pandemic compared to white or Latinx low-income households.
As the planet continues to warm, people living in the world’s most vulnerable regions — like arid or low-lying nations — must contend with the decision to stay in a place where livability is decreasing or leave for countries with more stable climate and economic conditions.
Vaccines are one of the most important tools we have in our defense against infectious diseases, but not everyone responds to vaccination in the same way. Parasites such as worms and viruses change the way a person or animal’s immune system functions, and this can affect their ability to respond to vaccines.
A Policy Forum article published today in Science shows that an annual investment of $30 billion should be enough to offset the costs of preventing another global pandemic such as COVID-19.
Thus far, COVID has cost at least $2.6 trillion and may cost 10 times this amount. It is the largest global pandemic in 100 years. Six months after emerging, it has killed over 600,000 people and is having a major impact on the global economy.
