The effect of sales taxes is hotly debated. These taxes on consumption raise revenue for local governments, but do they also stymie business and hurt consumers?

Being a journalist means being resourceful. Presented with a name, you know where to dig. One place to hunt for leads is your state’s vital records office, which keeps certificates of birth, death, marriage and divorce. How much these forms tell you depends on state law.

When engineers build roads, they use weather models to decide what kind of pavement can withstand the local climate. Currently, many American engineers use temperature data from 1964 to 1995 to select materials. But the climate is changing.

Despite gains in health insurance, lesbian, gay and bisexual people are much more likely than straight people to use emergency rooms for routine care, a new study finds.

For decades, scientists have known that daylight is essential to human health. Back in 1948, the British Medical Journal poked fun at a group of engineers who tried to convince doctors that artificial light was superior to sunlight.

Elderly patients who were prescribed opiates had longer hospital stays, on average, than those who were not.

Reporting on academic research can push journalists out of the comfortable realm of words and into the less-familiar territory of numbers. Like it or not, though, statistics often comprise a key element of scientific studies, so it’s helpful to have some familiarity with the basics.