Loose talk costs … nothing

Careless talk costs grants

The editors of Current Biology really should be more careful; some contributors are in danger of giving the game away. Years of careful fostering of the idea that everything can be explained in terms of molecular genetics and structural biology — thus keeping many of us gainfully employed — may have been undermined by their careless revelations. The current ascendancy of these disciplines could...

Money for nothing? The net costs of medical training.

One of the stages of medical training is the residency programme. Hosting institutions often claim compensation for the training provided. How much should this compensation be? According to our results, given the benefits arising from having residents among the house staff, no transfer (either tuition fee or subsidy) should be set to compensate the hosting institution for providing medical trai...

The Digital Privacy Paradox: Small Money, Small Costs, Small Talk

This paper uses data from the MIT digital currency experiment to shed light on consumer behavior regarding commercial, public and government surveillance. The setting allows us to explore the apparent contradiction that many cryptocurrencies offer people the chance to escape government surveillance, but do so by making transactions themselves public on a distributed ledger (a ‘blockchain’). We ...

The costs of interdigital phlegmon in four loose-housed Finnish dairy herds

BACKGROUND The aim of the study was to provide detailed herd level cost information about an outbreak of interdigital phlegmon (IP), which has been an emerging problem with enlarged loose house barns in Finland in recent years. During enlargement, the farmer's financial situation is sensitive because of the large investments to the farm business and unexpected costs can risk the farm's survival...

Loose Couplings