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Thousands of nurses in three hospital systems in New York City went on strike Monday after negotiations through the weekend failed to yield breakthroughs in their contract disputes. Nurses on strike! … Fair contract now! they shouted on a picket line outside NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital’s campus in Upper Manhattan. Others picketed at multiple hospitals in the Mount Sinai and Montefiore systems. About 15,000 nurses are involved in the strike, according to their union, the New York State Nurses Association. The hospitals remained open, hiring droves of temporary nurses to try to fill the labor gap. The strike involves private, nonprofit hospitals, not city-run ones. But the strike, which the union casts as lifesaving essential workers fighting hospital executives who make millions of dollars a year, could be a significant early test of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new administration. The democratic socialist campaigned on a pro-worker platform and struck a similar note while visiting nurses on the NewYork-Presbyterian picket line Monday. These executives are not having difficulty making ends meet,” said Mamdani, who extolled nurses’ work and said they were seeking dignity, respect and the fair pay and treatment that they deserve. They should settle for nothing less. Some other Democratic city and state politicians also visited striking nurses, while Gov. Kathy Hochul sent state health officials to the hospitals to keep watch over patient care. She called in a statement for the sides to negotiate a deal that recognizes the essential work nurses do.” The strike, which comes during a severe flu season, could potentially force the hospitals to transfer patients, cancel procedures, or divert ambulances. It could also put a strain on city hospitals not involved in the contract dispute, as patients avoid the medical centers hit by the strike. The nurses demands vary by hospital, but the major issues include staffing levels and workplace safety. The union says hospitals have given nurses unmanageable workloads. Nurses also want better security measures in the workplace, citing incidents such as an episode last week when a man with a sharp object barricaded himself in a Brooklyn hospital room and was then killed by police. The union also wants limitations on hospitals use of artificial intelligence. The hospitals say that theyve been working to improve staffing levels but say that the unions demands overall are too costly. After the nurses gave notice Jan. 2 of the looming strike, the hospitals hired temporary nurses and vowed to do whatever is necessary to minimize disruptions. Montefiore posted a message assuring patients that appointments would be kept. NYSNAs leaders continue to double down on their $3.6 billion in reckless demands,” Montefiore spokesperson Joe Solmonese said Monday, adding that those demands included exorbitant raises and job protections even if a nurse was intoxicated on the job. “We remain resolute in our commitment to providing safe and seamless care, regardless of how long the strike may last, Solmonese said. New York-Presbyterian accused the union of staging a strike to create disruption, but said it has taken steps to ensure patients receive the care they need. “Were ready to keep negotiating a fair and reasonable contract that reflects our respect for our nurses and the critical role they play, and also recognizes the challenging realities of todays healthcare environment, the hospital said. Each medical center is negotiating with the union independently. Several other hospitals across the city and in its suburbs reached deals in recent days to avert a possible strike. Both Hochul and Mamdani had expressed concern about the possibility of the strike. The last major nursing strike in the city was only three years ago, in 2023. That work stoppage, at Mount Sinai and Montefiore, was short, lasting three days. It resulted in a deal raising pay 19% over three years at those hospitals. It also led to promised staffing improvements, though the union and hospitals now disagree about how much progress has been made, or whether the hospitals are retreating from staffing guarantees. By Ted Shaffrey, Jennifer Peltz, and David R. Martin, Associated Press
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Technological advancements in various fields of science are shattering what some scientists once deemed impossible. In recent years, researchers have mitigated the existential threat of asteroids, unlocked the power of immunotherapy to treat cancer tumors, and achieved unprecedented control over the human vestibular system. These scientific innovations have been fostered by new types of cross-disciplinary collaboration and the use of artificial intelligence tools. And though theyre approaching it from vastly different perspectives, planetary science, pathology, and neuroscience researchers shared at the World Changing Ideas Summit in November how theyre really working toward a common goal: to improve the human experience in some way. The DART mission of 2022 saw a team led by NASA intentionally crash a spacecraft into an asteroid and successfully change the asteroids path through space, marking a waterline for humanity, said Terik Daly, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, at the summit cohosted by Fast Company and Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. Researchers are better prepared, he added, for the real threat of asteroidswhich is a medium-size asteroid, roughly the size of an Olympic swimming pool or half a football field, that could easily destroy an area like the D.C. metro area or even larger. Currently, we cannot stop earthquakes, we cannot stop volcanoes, we cannot stop hurricanes, Daly said. But with appropriate investments, we can be ready to stop an asteroid if we find one coming our way. New mapping tools for cancer research And finding new ways to treat cancer is getting an assist from a perhaps unlikely discipline: astronomy. Thats the idea behind AstroPath, which uses decades-old learnings about organizing spatial data to help researchers figure out how the immune system interfaces with cancer, said Janis Taube, a pathologist and a professor of dermatology and pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Cancer researchers are making advancements about how to treat tumors, including identifying which patients are a good candidate for immunotherapy, none of which would be possible were it not for learning how to map the breadth of tumors using tools from astronomy, Taube said. We never would’ve been able to separate the signal from noise. New uses for neurotechnology Finally, the founders of the neurotechnology startup Orbit set out to find a solution to a supposedly anatomically unsolvable problemgenerating a motion hallucination. They not only did that, but they are now looking for ways to use the technology to optimize and heal humans, said Steven Pang, cofounder and CEO. If you get really fine, great control over the vestibular system, you can use it to build a generation of general bodily or mental regulators that no one’s ever been able to build before,” Pang said. Orbit is now in clinical trials for its first few devices focused on enhancing human cognition and optimizing both the onset of and effectiveness of sleep, Pang said. There are projections of some incredibly powerful neurotechnology coming in the next 30 to 40 years that could help people be smarter, faster, sleep a lot better, and solve various health conditions that have eluded pharmaceutical interventions for decades, but Pang is optimistic that such innovations could happen even sooner. Our take is just, if you’re clever about it, you start solving some of these problems with some distinct ways of thinking, that it might just be two or three years away, he said. So hopefully we’ll prove that out.
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E-Commerce
Imagine you are searching for a new mattress online and find something surprising. The retailer displays an ad featuring a Mattress Comfort Scale running from 1 (soft) to 10 (firm), followed by the message that if your firmness preference is at either end, this mattress is not for you. Wait . . . what? A retailer telling someone not to buy its product? No way! Why would a company tell potential buyers that the product might not suit them? Our team of professorsKaren Anne Wallach, Jaclyn L. Tanenbaum, and Sean Blairexamines this question in a recently published article in the Journal of Consumer Research. Marketers spend billions trying to persuade consumers that a product is right for them. But our research shows that sometimes the most effective way to market something is to say that it isnt for them. In other words, effective marketing can mean discouraging the wrong customers rather than convincing everyone to buy. We call this dissuasive framing. Instead of saying a product is perfect for everyone, a company is up front about who it might not be for. Surprisingly, that simple shift can make a big difference. We ran experiments comparing ads with dissuasive versus persuasive framing. For example, one coffee ad said, If you like dark roast, this is the coffee for you. Another said, If you dont like dark roast, this isnt the coffee for you. Most marketers assume the first version would work better. But for people who prefer dark roast, the second message outperformed it. Across different products, from salsa to mattresses, and in a real Facebook campaign for a toothbrush brand, we consistently saw the same results. The dissuasive ad drove more engagement and clicks, making the brand feel more specialized and its product more appealing for the right customers. Why? You might think its about fear of missing out, or reverse psychology, but we ruled out those explanations. Instead, we found that what really drives the effect is the perception of a stronger match between personal preference and product attributes. When a message signals that a product may not suit everyone, consumers see it as more focused on a specific set of preferences. This sense of focus, which we call target specificity, makes the product feel like a better match for customers whose preferences align with it. For others, it feels less relevant, which helps companies reach their goal of attracting those who are most likely to buy. Our results show a clear trend: When companies set boundaries in their messages, products appear more focused. This messaging strategy makes the intended customer feel like the product is a better match for them. People assume that if a product isnt meant for everyone, it must be more specialized. That sense of specificity makes those in the target audience feel the product was designed just for them. Why it matters These findings challenge one of marketings most enduring assumptions: that effective marketing comes from directly persuading customers that a product matches their needs. In todays crowded marketplace, where nearly every brand claims to be for you, dissuasive messaging offers an alternative. By clearly signaling that a product may not be right for customers with different preferences, brands can communicate focus and specialization. Consumers see this as a sign that the company understands its own product and who it will best serve. Our work also helps explain how people make what psychologists call compensatory inferences. This means consumers often believe that when a product tries to do too many things, it ends up doing each of them less well. Think of an all-in-one tool that can cut, twist, open and filebut few would say it performs any of those tasks better than the dedicated tool. From a practical standpoint, dissuasive framing helps marketers communicate more effectively by defining the boundaries of their products appeal. In doing so, brands can build trust, strengthen connections with the right customers, and avoid spending their marketing dollars on those unlikely to purchase. What still isnt known Our research focused on products with clear attributes, such as taste or comfort, and on consumers who already knew their preferences. Future work could test how this approach works when people are less certain about what they like or when choices reflect self-expression rather than product fit. Even with these open questions, one conclusion stands out. Defining whom a product is not for can help the right customers see that it truly fits them. By focusing on preference matching rather than universal appeal, brands can make their messages more targeted, more efficient and ultimately more effective. In other words, telling the wrong customers This isnt for you can actually help the right ones feel that it is. Jaclyn L. Tanenbaum is an associate teaching professor at Florida International University. Karen Anne Wallach is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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