News by Subject Business & Economics

California leads the nation in the adoption of rooftop solar systems, but information on which communities do, and do not, benefit from these installations has been limited. The adoption of distributed solar -- rooftop installations as opposed to industrial-scale operations like solar farms -- is closely correlated with socioeconomic status and health, environmental and demographic indicators. The study, published online August 20, 2019 in Energy Policy, is the first peer-reviewed analysis of distributed solar adoption in disadvantaged communities.

When young adults pass the age limit for paying patient co-payments, or out-of-pocket prices, their medical consultations in primary care decrease by 7 percent, a study shows. The groups affected most are women and low-income earners.

New data showed that term, breastfed infants fed activated Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis EVC001 (B. infantis EVC001) experience improved metabolism of protein-bound glycans from human milk, compared to matched controls. Not only do these new data provide greater mechanistic understanding of how B. infantis selectively utilizes the glycans from human milk as growth substrate but may also provide a basis for facilitating B. infantis colonization in formula fed infants via utilization of bovine derived N-glycans.

The study shows reaching a goal expressed in round numbers results in higher levels of customer satisfaction. That was particularly true when the final goal was still distant. Hitting intermediate targets expressed as round numbers increased customers' feeling of progress at low levels of achievement.

In a large survey in sub-Saharan Africa, adults who said they had paid a bribe for healthcare in the past year were more than four times as likely to report difficulty in obtaining care than those who had not paid bribes. Amber Hsiao and colleagues at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, report these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on Aug. 21, 2019.

Like many women who develop a particular type of breast cancer, the same gene -- HER2 -- also appears to be the cause of lung cancer in many dogs. TGen and Ohio State found that neratinib -- a drug that has successfully been used to battle human breast cancer -- might also work for many of the nearly 40,000 dogs in the US that annually develop the most common type of canine lung cancer, known as CPAC.

In an effort to address emergency department overcrowding, pay-for-performance (P4P) incentive programs have been implemented in various regions around the world, including hospitals in Metro Vancouver. But a new study from the UBC Sauder School of Business shows that while such programs can reduce barriers to access for admitted patients, they can also lead to patient discharges associated with return visits and readmissions.

In India, children that belong to disadvantaged castes face a much higher likelihood of not living past their fifth birthday than their counterparts in non-deprived castes. IIASA researchers examined the association between castes and under-five mortality in an effort to help reduce the burden of under-five deaths in the country.