Your Thoughts Matter

Normalized hurricane damage in the United States, 1900-2005

Source: JournalistsResource.org

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall as a Category 3 storm with maximum winds of 125 mph, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The cost of the ensuing damage to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast was more than $80 billion; it is generally considered to be most destructive tropical storm in U.S. history in terms of property damage, followed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and Hurricane Ike in 1998.

Growing income inequality in OECD countries

Source: JournalistsResource.org

Over the two decades prior to the onset of the global financial crisis, real disposable household incomes increased an average of 1.7% a year in the 34 countries represented by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. As this rise in earnings occurred, however, so too did a rise in income inequality — a pattern that raises questions about imbalances in growth around the world.

Health reform and medical bankruptcy in Massachusetts

Source: JournalistsResource.org

Massachusetts’ statewide healthcare reform, implemented in 2008, served as a model for the national Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Both the state and federal legislation mandated coverage for the previously uninsured and, among other goals, sought to reduce the risk of personal medical bankruptcy.

Breaking-news leads

Source: JournalistsResource.org

The job of a breaking-news lead is to accurately relate the essence and urgency of a story in the most efficient way possible. The art of a breaking-news lead is to do so in a way that’s not just readable, but also natural and memorable.

Content

Oregon health insurance experiment: Evidence from the first year

Source: JournalistsResource.org

For researchers, it has often been difficult to conduct experimental studies on health care outcomes due to biases introduced by differences between insured and uninsured individuals. To produce unbiased data, the ideal circumstance would require the provision of health care to be randomly assigned across a population.

Effects of cell phone use on brain glucose metabolism

Source: JournalistsResource.org

Since cell phones were first popularized in the 1980s, questions have been raised over their potential health risks. In the past 10 years, numerous observational studies have been released suggesting harmful links to brain function and sleep patterns, and to heart palpitations and various forms of cancer. Often, however, other studies have arrived at opposing conclusions.

Exercise, physical activity and exertion over the business cycle

Source: JournalistsResource.org

Research has suggested that an increase in unemployment rates tends to bring about a rise in recreational exercise, leaving open the possibility that a period of persistent joblessness may actually have health benefits across the population. But as a paper from scholars at Pace University and Bentley University notes, any such overall assessment of physical activity levels must also take into account the lost physical labor that is normally expended at many jobs.