“At $226 billion annual revenues, Optum is the largest healthcare business in the US that no-one knows anything about. Optum by itself has revenues that are a little less than 5% of total US healthcare spending.” … and … “If there really were economies of scale in healthcare, they would mean that care was of demonstrably better value provided by vast enterprises like Optum/United than in more fragmented, smaller, or…
A story of incentives. “After almost two decades of relentless colony collapse coverage and years of grieving suspiciously clean windshields, we were stunned to run the numbers on the new Census of Agriculture (otherwise known as that wonderful time every five years where the government counts all the llamas): America’s honeybee population has rocketed to an all-time high.” ~ learn more
The Today show coverage of a startup that’s working on ocean carbon capture. There’s a balance of carbon between the air and the ocean. As we pump more into the air, the ocean absorbs some. When that happens it becomes more acidic. By adding a basic substance, the ocean is neutralized and the carbon trapped, allowing the ocean to pull yet more carbon from the air. ~ learn more
The bacterial flagellum is an incredible, natural, nano-scale motor. “Film from Keiichi Namba and colleagues, explaining their work at the cutting edge of research into the structure, function and assembly of the bacterial flagellum.” ~ learn more
“People’s inability to maintain their independence is going to have a massive ripple effect on our world, with major implications to our society (loneliness, increased family caregiving demands), economy (rising health costs, lost productivity), healthcare system (stress on our already overwhelmed care system), and the lives of aging adults (loss of autonomy, ability to get dressed, and decreased quality of life from not being able to enjoy the activities they…
Interesting findings here, demonstrating that the market was not perfectly efficient nor competitive. Maybe because of a high barrier to entry? “We use a panel data set covering 160 million credit card accounts and a difference-in-differences research design that compares changes in outcomes over time for consumer credit cards, which were subject to the regulations, to changes for small business credit cards, which the law did not cover.” See the…
They have filed for, but not yet received a trademark on ‘chili crunch’. Yet, “David Chang’s food empire is sending cease-and-desists in what some say is an effort to dominate the spicy condiment’s market.” ~ learn more
A very insightful review of the 1980s movie Wall Street. “But what I would like to do is make the following case; very few of the actions which bring down the whole house of cards on Bud Fox and Gordon Gekko were actually illegal under securities law at the time. In fact, I’d make a case that any sequel to this film would have to start with the premise that…
“I’m here to tell you: you can simply decide to do big things. And I’m here to argue that you should spend the time to figure out the most ambitious thing you could dream of doing with your one wild and precious life.” ~ learn more
The researchers had access to a giant dataset of 22,743 randomized controlled trials thanks to headline A/B testing on Upworthy. “Although positive words were slightly more prevalent than negative words, we found that negative words in news headlines increased consumption rates (and positive words decreased consumption rates).” ~ learn more