A new study examined the impact changes to background checks and licensing policies has made on different types of violent crime in Massachusetts. The study found no immediate impact, suggesting that state lawmakers may want to ensure their legislation is being implemented as intended.

A new study examined whether in-prison experiences among a nationally representative sample of inmates varied in their effect across different lengths of time served on incarcerated people’s perceptions of procedural justice. The study found that most incarcerated individuals’ in-prison experiences lessened their perceptions of procedural justice and fairness.

Limiting climate change to the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Climate Agreement will likely require coal and gas power use to decline at rates that are unprecedented for any large country, finds an analysis of decadal episodes of fossil fuel decline in 105 countries between 1960 and 2018. Furthermore, the findings, published October 22 in the journal One Earth, suggest that the most rapid historical cases of fossil fuel decline occurred when oil was replaced by coal, gas, or nuclear power in response to energy security threats of the 1970s and the 1980s.

What The Study Did: Researchers found a relatively high rate of cognitive impairment several months after patients had contracted COVID-19 in a study that included 740 individuals who were treated as an outpatient, in an emergency department or as a hospital inpatient. Impairments in executive functioning, processing speed, category fluency, memory encoding and recall were predominant among hospitalized patients.

What The Study Did: The results of this analysis suggest that financial assistance to hospitals through distribution of Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funds may have gone to hospitals that were in a stronger financial situation prior to the pandemic but funds also went disproportionately to those that eventually had the most COVID-19 cases.