Complexity and Random Overlaps

Our world is increasingly shaped by biased algorithms that have been built with little oversight.

New research suggests a third way. Caregivers need to be empathetic, but empathy is not one thing. Both neuroscience and psychology have uncovered an important distinction between two aspects of empathy: Emotion contagion, which is vicariously sharing another person’s feeling, and empathic concern, which entails forming a goal to alleviate that person’s suffering. Whereas contagion involves blurring the boundary between self and other, concern requires retaining or even strengthening such boundaries. Learning to practice one but not the other could be the best example of how caregivers can simultaneously look out for patients and for themselves.

A new method of controlling complex networks could have "a transformative impact" on the field.

Companies can become more agile by designing their organizations both to drive speed and create stability.

In spite of all evidence to the contrary, we exhaust ourselves in an endless search for solidity and certainty. Commentator Adam Frank says, however, that release and happiness are the reward for people who accept the uncertain, ever-changing nature of the universe.

How do bees do it? The honeycombs in which they store their amber nectar are marvels of precision engineering, an array of prism-shaped…

The tide that has swept experimental program evaluation to the forefront of knowledge building about social policy is suddenly ebbing.

Platform-based talent markets help put the emphasis in human-capital management back where it belongs on humans.

The automation of work and the digital disruption of business models place a premium on leaders who can create a vision of change and frame it positively.