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Top headlines
Lead story
I grew up in Washington, D.C., riding the public bus to school and going to Smithsonian museums on weekends. I’ve also raised two kids in the Boston area.
So when I read about young families leaving large U.S. cities at high rates, I wondered what that meant for places like San Francisco, Chicago and, yes, Boston, where the share of the population under age 18 is dramatically falling compared with past decades.
As Iowa State University economist Biswa Das explains, this trend isn’t good news. That’s because young families help create lively communities. They advocate for high-quality public services, and their spending and tax payments help fund public investments. The good news is that by investing strategically in areas like affordable housing, school systems and public spaces, cities can keep young families in town.
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Jennifer Weeks
Senior Environment + Cities Editor
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Parents and educators rally at Boston City Hall demanding urgent action to improve the city’s public schools.
Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Biswa Das, Iowa State University
Although many US cities have recovered from economic downturns during the COVID-19 pandemic, they still are losing young families in large numbers. Here’s how that trend degrades urban life.
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Science + Technology
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Nicholas Money, Miami University
Mold growth happens in damp indoor areas and is difficult to prevent. It can be an annoyance but usually isn’t harmful to your health.
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Vinny Negi, University of Pittsburgh
Type 1 diabetes develops when the body destroys its own insulin-producing cells. Using stem cells to replace them could be a way to get around donor shortages and transplant complications.
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Politics + Society
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Charlie Hunt, Boise State University
Gridlock can still happen under unified government, and for reasons that are likely to be on full display in the 119th Congress, where the GOP controls both houses under a Republican president.
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Alex Hinton, Rutgers University - Newark
People acknowledging and inspecting their own political biases is one way that they can begin to reduce polarization.
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Environment + Energy
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L. Beril Toktay, Georgia Institute of Technology; Abhinav Shubham, Georgia Institute of Technology; Donghyun (Daniel) Choi, Georgia Institute of Technology; Manpreet S. Hora, Georgia Institute of Technology
Microsoft, Walmart and a few other high-profile companies made news for scaling back their public climate commitments. However, a closer look at the numbers shows commitments are still booming.
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Arts + Culture
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Marta Fanasca, Università di Bologna
Since many Japanese women still find it difficult to explore and discuss their sexual desires with their partners, the services have become popular among all women, not just lesbians.
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Holly Willis, University of Southern California
In a world where algorithms increasingly shape everyday life, many works of art are beginning to reflect how intertwined we’ve become with computational systems.
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Ethics + Religion
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Shannon Toll, University of Dayton
Despite assumptions to the contrary, Tallchief showed that Indigenous people could not just exceed the standards of Western arts but also set new ones, writes a scholar of Indigenous cultures.
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Economy + Business
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Jill Horwitz, University of California, Los Angeles; Ellen P. Aprill, Loyola Law School Los Angeles; Rose Chan Loui, University of California, Los Angeles
When for-profit companies are spun out of nonprofits, there is no easy way out of the legal consequences.
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