Left turns are dangerous and slow down traffic. One solution? Get rid of them. New research shows that limiting left turns at busy intersections would improve safety and reduce frustrating backups.
The power grid in Texas provides a stark lesson in the balance between efficiency and resilience.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
Disasters highlight the cost of society’s love of efficiency. Nature, in contrast, favors resilience. Being more like nature offers benefits for society, especially in the face of the climate crisis.
Netflix faces many new challengers in the subscription-based video streaming market.
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Netflix has added millions more subscribers as people practice social isolation to control the coronavirus. But service’s diverse menu of content is not an efficient business model.
The science of getting quickly and safely to the bottom.
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In many cities, convention holds that there’s a lane for walking and a lane for standing on the escalator. But human systems engineers suggest this isn’t the most efficient option for the system.
The Ontario government tabled legislation Dec.6 which would increase the number of young children who can be cared for at once by home child care providers. The proposed legislation is as part of larger reform measures introduced under the Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act that the province says will cut red tape for businesses.
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Low-income, less-educated parents with non-standard work schedules rely most on home child-care providers whose rules would be relaxed under proposed legislation.
Modern life seems to encourage acceleration for the sake of acceleration – to what end?
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Whether it’s our inboxes and calendars or how companies are structured, we’re obsessed with making things orderly. But research suggests it’s time to break free.
Here’s how to make a happy workplace during year-end assessments.
Australian banks improved their efficiency after the introduction in 2003 of the ASX Principles of Good Corporate Governance, which aimed for improved governance mechanisms and thus better control over bank management.
AAP Image/Paul Miller
Good corporate governance is good for efficiency and profit in banks. But having independent board members and the number of board meetings don’t play a role, research shows.
Computers aren’t a magical silver bullet for learning.
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The Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh, has said the the Government’s latest tax discussion paper says the GST is as inefficient as income tax, adding he thinks it’s less equitable. Is that right?
In the 27 years since the Hawke government came up with a public service efficiency dividend, the evidence has mounted against it.
National Archives of Australia
Every now and again in public policy debates a consensus emerges on some particular point among policymakers, stakeholders and commentators. These moments are distressingly rare. It is even more distressing…
Mind the gap: health services in trouble if we continue to expect too much.
PA/Carl Court
Health services are under constant scrutiny and rarely out of the news. But discussions about how and even whether they can continue are likely to exercise the whole developed world in the near future…
Perpetually seduced by the coolest, most “efficient” conveniences, we prefer not to see the heat and waste we leave in our wake.
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The idea that improving efficiency makes sustainability problems worse seems counter-intuitive. But what if aiming to do more with less is actually doing the wrong thing right? If sustainability is our…