Facts & Trends

THE PROBLEM Congestion caused by commuters carries an annual price tag of $121 billion in wasted time and fuel costs. The average American who drives to work wastes 38 hours in traffic each year. THE INNOVATION City planning authorities increasingly ...

In many developing countries, poor hygiene and sanitation can be a death sentence.  That fact led sales exec Shawn Seipler to quit his job seven years ago to launch Clean the World, a charity dedicated to collecting and recycling leftover ...

Homicide is the leading cause of on-the-job death among women. And taxi drivers are the people most likely to be murdered while working ...

Bao Lulin was always being mistaken for someone else.  People would approach her at the restaurant where she worked in Guizho, China, asking why she didn't recognize them.  This October she discovered why: Lulin had an identical twin sister from whom ...

A study in JAMA Psychiatry found that women using hormonal birth control had an increased risk of receiving treatment for depression. Those on progestin-only pills or IUD's were 34% more likely, respectively, to begin using antidepressants than women not on ...

About 690,000 of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.—or about 6.3 percent—have been convicted of a felony or serious misdemeanor, according to a new report from the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group.These immigrants, along with the ...

A 60-year-old Dutch man received a brain implant to cure his obsessive-compulsive disorder, and suddenly became a fanatical Johnny Cash fan. The patient said his doctors, “kept listening simply and solely to Johnny Cash.” ...

JetBlue said it would offer a chance to win free, round-trip tickets to other countries for disgusted customers whose preferred presidential candidate loses the election.  The company is planning to give away more than 1,000 tickets ...

Russia’s secret service ordered dozens of electric typewriters, saying that recent revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency’s online surveillance program made them distrust computer communications ...

Astronomers have spotted the most enormous black holes ever detected, inspiring new theories about how such pockets of extreme gravity form. Together, the two objects, which are roughly 300 million light-years away, have more mass than 30 billion suns, University ...