A note from...
Aviva Rutkin
Big Data + Applied Mathematics Editor
I’m writing today’s newsletter from Seattle, a city famous for its coffee and rainy weather.
Unfortunately, it’s also well-known for a serious homelessness problem. With about 12,500 people living on the streets or in shelters, Seattle ranks third in the country for homelessness.
Graham Pruss, a doctoral student at the University of Washington, has spent the last few years studying people who shelter in cars, RVs or other vehicles. Often skipped in official homeless censuses, many in this group have difficulty accessing social services.
Many cities have no standard method for counting the number of people who live in their cars. This means that their issues are often overlooked in policies designed to help the homeless.
Recent deaths of tourists in the Dominican Republic have brought attention to the troubling, and sometimes deadly, issue of counterfeit alcohol in countries outside the US.
New York City's municipal budget relies heavily on the property taxes of extremely high-value real estate. That drives gentrification and distorts local policy in other ways that hurt residents.
Morgan Marietta, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Conflict made its way to the Supreme Court this past session with two cases – one about the census, the other about gerrymandering. A court scholar says the two cases are intimately connected.
Protests in Hong Kong over a proposed extradition law are the largest in the territory's history. But not all of the people out in the street share the same tactics or goals.
A professor of information discusses how an app she developed can help solve the problem of schools failing to report when students are restrained or secluded.
Claudia Masferrer, The College of Mexico, A.C.; Erin R. Hamilton, University of California, Davis; Nicole Denier, University of Alberta
Between 2000 and 2015, the population of U.S. citizen minors living in Mexico more than doubled. Who are the kids living on the other side of the border?
'Why is nutrition so confusing?' is a common lament, but the truth is out there. Forget fad diets and media hype. It's time to harness the power of science to create a healthy and sustainable diet.