Noted

Alex Eben Meyer

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A team including Yale researchers has found what caregivers often know intuitively—that singing is a great way to calm fussy infants.  

Researchers split 110 parents of infants into two groups, encouraging one to sing to their babies more frequently by teaching the parents songs, providing songbooks and videos, and sending ideas for incorporating music into routines. Parents answered survey questions about their musical behavior, time spent soothing their babies, and their babies’ moods. 

Parents who received the encouragement spent more time singing to their babies and rated their babies’ moods as improved overall—not just in response to the music. The researchers note that because improved mood in infancy is associated with better life quality for parents and babies, altering the home music environment could mean other positive outcomes.

As the ride-hailing industry moves toward self-driving cars (autonomous vehicles or AVs), a study coauthored by a Yale researcher shows that lower labor costs would not necessarily translate into lower prices.

The researchers constructed four scenarios. In one, both AVs and human drivers could be matched with riders on the same platform; in another, AVs and human drivers were separated into different ride-hailing platforms. They also compared scenarios where AVs were provided by a monopolistic supplier to situations in which each AV was provided by a different supplier. The only scenario that  lowered prices was one combining competitive AV suppliers and a single ride-hailing platform. They note that their model assumes consumers don’t care if they get an AV or human driver. But anti-AV sentiment might lead the companies to split AVs and human drivers into separate apps, leading to higher prices overall.