Unconditional cash transfers reduce homelessness.

Homelessness is an economic and social crisis. In a cluster-randomized controlled trial, we address a core cause of homelessness-lack of money-by providing a one-time unconditional cash transfer of CAD$7,500 to each of 50 individuals experiencing homelessness, with another 65 as controls in Vancouver, BC. Exploratory analyses showed that over 1 y, cash recipients spent fewer days homeless, increased savings and spending with no increase in temptation goods spending, and generated societal net savings of $777 per recipient via reduced time in shelters. Additional experiments revealed public mistrust toward the ability of homeless individuals to manage money and demonstrated interventions to increase public support for a cash transfer policy using counter-stereotypical or utilitarian messaging. Together, this research offers a new approach to address homelessness and provides insights into homelessness reduction policies.

Are People Generous When the Financial Stakes Are High?

How generous are people when making consequential financial decisions in the real world? We took advantage of a rare opportunity to examine generosity among a diverse sample of adults who received a gift of U.S. $10,000 from a pair of wealthy donors, with nearly no strings attached. Two-hundred participants were drawn from three low-income countries (Indonesia, Brazil, and Kenya) and four high-income countries (Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States) as part of a preregistered study. On average, participants spent over $6,400 on purchases that benefited others, including nearly $1,700 on donations to charity, suggesting that humans exhibit remarkable generosity even when the stakes are high. To address whether generosity was driven by reputational concerns, we asked half the participants to share their spending decisions publicly on Twitter, whereas the other half were asked to keep their spending private. Generous spending was similar between the groups, in contrast to our preregistered hypothesis that enhancing reputational concerns would increase generosity.

Wealth redistribution promotes happiness.

How much happiness could be gained if the world's wealth were distributed more equally? Despite decades of research investigating the relationship between money and happiness, no experimental work has quantified this effect for people across the global economic spectrum. We estimated the total gain in happiness generated when a pair of high-net-worth donors redistributed US$2 million of their wealth in $10,000 cash transfers to 200 people. Our preregistered analyses offer causal evidence that cash transfers substantially increase happiness among economically diverse individuals around the world. Recipients in lower-income countries exhibited happiness gains three times larger than those in higher-income countries. Still, the cash provided detectable benefits for people with household incomes up to $123,000.

Emergency Medicine/Internal Medicine Combined Residency Graduates Have High Career Satisfaction and Commonly Practice in Both Specialties.

OBJECTIVES: The first combined emergency medicine/internal medicine (EM/IM) residency was established in 1991. As the 30th anniversary of this unique dual-training opportunity approaches, multiple changes to the practice and educational landscape have occurred. Previous surveys examining this topic are now more than 10 years old and occurred prior to the establishment of the EM/IM/critical care medicine (EM/IM/CCM) pathway. We conducted a survey to investigate career trajectories, satisfaction, and opportunities available to EM/IM graduates. METHODS: Survey questions were developed to both allow for comparison with previously published data and examine new topics not previously investigated. A group of EM/IM and EM/IM/CCM program directors validated the survey questions. Eligible respondents were identified and contacted through their previous residency program leadership. RESULTS: Fifty-two percent (152/290) of graduates completed the survey. Thirty-seven percent of respondents practice both EM and IM, 51% practice EM only, and the remainder practice IM only. Thirty-one percent of total respondents completed a fellowship, with critical care being the most popular choice. Seventy-one percent of graduates practice in an academic center, and many hold leadership positions within education, research, and hospital administration. Eighty-seven percent of graduates were "extremely satisfied" with their choice to pursue EM/IM or EM/IM/CCM and 95% reported that they would choose this path again. CONCLUSIONS: Most respondents are satisfied with their residency choice and would choose to pursue this training again, despite the additional years of training. The proportion of graduates pursuing fellowship is higher than previously published data. Most continue to work in academics, and many are leaders within their institutions. The changing health care landscape offers multiple opportunities to dually trained graduates.

Relation between Ejection Mechanism and Ion Abundance in the Electric Double Layer of Droplets.

Charged droplets have been associated with distinct chemical reactivity. It is assumed that the composition of the surface layer plays a critical role in enhancing the reaction rates in the droplets relative to their bulk solution counterparts. We use atomistic modeling to relate the localization of ions in the surface layer to their ejection propensity. We find that ion ejection takes place via a two-stage process. First, a conical protrusion emerges as a result of a global droplet deformation that is insensitive to the locations of the single ions. The ions are subsequently ejected as they enter the conical regions. The study provides mechanistic insight into the ion-evaporation mechanism, which can be used to revise the commonly used ion-evaporation models. We argue that atomistic molecular dynamics simulations of minute nanodrops do not sufficiently distinguish the ion-evaporation mechanism from a Rayleigh fission. We explain mass spectrometry data on the charge state of small globular proteins and the existence of supercharged droplet states that have been detected in experiments.

Microsecond photocapacitance transients observed using a charged microcantilever as a gated mechanical integrator.

How light is converted to electricity in blends of organic donor and acceptor molecules is an unsettled question, partly because the spatial heterogeneity present in these blends makes them challenging to characterize. Although scanned-probe measurements have provided crucially important microscopic insights into charge generation and transport in these blends, achieving the subnanosecond time resolution needed to directly observe the fate of photogenerated charges has proven difficult. We use a charged microcantilever as a gated mechanical integrator to record photocapacitance indirectly by measuring the accumulated change in cantilever phase as a function of the time delay between precisely synchronized voltage and light pulses. In contrast with previous time-resolved scanned-probe photocapacitance measurements, the time resolution of this method is set by the rise and fall time of the voltage and light pulses and not by the inverse detection bandwidth. We demonstrate in an organic donor-acceptor blend the ability of this indirect, "phase-kick" technique to record multiexponential photocapacitance transients on time scales ranging from 40 µs to 10 ms. The technique's ability to measure subcycle, nanosecond charge dynamics is demonstrated by measuring the tens of nanosecond sample electrical charging time.

Cu2S Reduced Graphene Oxide Composite for High-Efficiency Quantum Dot Solar Cells. Overcoming the Redox Limitations of S2-/Sn2- at the Counter Electrode.

Polysulfide electrolyte that is employed as a redox electrolyte in quantum dot sensitized solar cells provides stability to the cadmium chalcogenide photoanode but introduces significant redox limitations at the counter electrode through undesirable surface reactions. By designing reduced graphene oxide (RGO)-Cu2S composite, we have now succeeded in shuttling electrons through the RGO sheets and polysulfide-active Cu2S more efficiently than Pt electrode, improving the fill factor by ∼75%. The composite material characterized and optimized at different compositions indicates a Cu/RGO mass ratio of 4 provides the best electrochemical performance. A sandwich CdSe quantum dot sensitized solar cell constructed using the optimized RGO-Cu2S composite counter electrode exhibited an unsurpassed power conversion efficiency of 4.4%.