Orion Jones

America’s most meritocratic institutions—schools, universities, and the workplace—are becoming places where inheritance thrives rather than individuals with talent.

The ubiquitous salt truck of winter, which helps spread a collective fifteen million tons of salt each season, is becoming an hefty bill to pay. 

A day after forecasters unanimously predicted a snowstorm of epic proportions for New York City, and the mayor ordered eight million people to stay off the roads, the predictions failed to materialize. The city received inches of snow rather than the feet predicted. A good thing, to be sure, but how did such dire predictions miss the mark?  

Being bilingual does offer cognitive benefits. Exactly what those benefits are, however, may have been overstated and misconstrued.

How self-aware we are during the day can affect how we experience dreams, possibly helping us achieve states of lucid dreaming.

Amit Sood, professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic wants to help the general public benefit from recent esoteric advances in neuroscience.

Personality and intelligence do help lift people from poverty in America, lending some plausibility to the American dream in which hard work and stick-to-it-iveness improve one’s lot in life.

A new nationwide competition for young entrepreneurs may be in the planning stages thanks to a recent meeting between technology heavyweights and concerned academics.

Boston’s aging infrastructure is leaking methane gas into the atmosphere at levels much higher than originally suspected, hurting the environment and the regional economy.

Having a conscientious spouse benefits the professional life of the other partner, according to new research out of Washington University. 

The cognitive drain of switching tasks—”multitasking”—is more harmful to your brain than smoking marijuana, which studies have shown impedes concentration and memory formation.

Avoiding self-reflection can be a helpful strategy for delivering a composed and powerful speech, say researchers who examined how confident people prepare themselves to speak before an audience. 

Personality is a partial indicator of health and more extroverted people tend to have stronger immune systems, perhaps because they interact with a wider range of people—and those people’s germs.

Google and Fidelity, an international investment firm, will invest $1 billion in Space X in an effort to extend the reach of Google’s Internet services and mapping imagery literally into outer space.

How often a film is referenced in other films is a better determiner of how important the work is than the combined efforts of reviewers, critics, awards, and box office sales.

Even exercise cannot undo the health harms caused by leading a sedentary lifestyle, according to a piece of research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The so-called creative class has made it more difficult for the creators of culture—artists and thinkers who depend on leisure time—to produce work that reminds the country of its values, purpose, and potential.

Passion is a great motivator but having too much emotion riding on a particular job, promotion, or interview is a sure way to lose the interest of your professional colleagues.

When teams of professionals are composed of more women, share ideas in equal part, and are emotionally perceptive, they make better decisions and find better solutions to problems.

Last year was the hottest on record for every place in the world, except two: a small part of Antarctica and the Northeast United States. 

Concerned that extreme advances in artificial intelligence could endanger humanity, Elon Musk has donated ten million dollars this week to safeguard humans from an “intelligence explosion.”

Smartphone software that anticipates what you want to type to a friend, colleague, or spouse, may make you less intentioned in your communication.

When children believe that telling the truth will make their parents happy, they become less likely to lie.

Lack of exercise is more deadly than obesity, according to a study of 334,000 men and women which found that twice as many deaths are attributable to physical inactivity than to obesity.

A Dutch startup is working on behalf of seriously ill or dying patients to access experimental pharmaceutical drugs years before they are approved (or not) by governmental regulatory bodies.

Artists are being priced out of New York and other large urban centers. Some are moving to Detroit where houses go for a dollar; others are finding refuge in the suburbs.

For decades now, an employment and wage gap has emerged between college graduates and individuals with only a high school diploma. 

Different neighborhoods suit different personalities and when these metrics align, people are measurably happier.

Recent studies which look at the effects of kindness and generosity over time suggest that the cynical phrase “nice guys finish last” is false outside of isolated events.

Taking notes by hand helps students learn more and it’s up to teachers to impose anti-screen policies in the classroom as a pedagogical tool.