The movies and TV are full of stories of women sabotaging other females at work. Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, Katharine Parker in Working Girl and Amanda Woodward in Melrose Place immediately come to mind. But a new study has found that the “queen bee” syndrome in the workplace might not just be fictional. Turns out, women are more likely to clash with their female coworkers than with their male colleagues, according to a study in the INFORMS journal Organization Science.

Every year, analytics professionals from around the world attend the INFORMS Business Analytics Conference to interact with and learn from leading analytics professionals and industry experts and to gain real-world insights on a successful analytics strategy. From April 15-17, 2018 nearly 1,000 attendees, at all stages of their analytics careers, will travel to Baltimore—the hometown of INFORMS and a vital hub of discovery and growth in Maryland—for the 2018 INFORMS Business Analytics Conference. The conference provides attendees many opportunities to share ideas, to network, and to learn about a range of current topics and trends that can help businesses and organizations improve their analytics prowess by applying science to the art of business.

INFORMS members Mark Ferguson of the University of South Carolina and Beril Toktay of the Georgia Institute of Technology, along with Aris Oraiopoulos of the University of Cambridge discussed the challenges and legalities of extending computer lifespans by refurbishing and reselling, and explored potential solutions.

INFORMS Fellow Brenda Dietrich is the newest addition to the Cornel University Operations Research and Information Engineering faculty as the Arthur ’59, M.S. ‘61 and Helen Geoffrion Professor of Practice.

Three INFORMS members are among those elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2018: Stephen C Graves of MIT, Ali H Sayed of the University of California, and Jianjun Shi of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

A study published in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science examined the link between Super Bowl viewership across the top advertising markets in the US and corresponding sales in those markets for advertisers brands during the 2006-2011 period. Focusing on the beer and soda categories (top-spending ones as outlined above), the authors estimated in one highlighted finding that “sales of Budweiser can increase as much as 10 six-packs per thousand households for a ten-point increase in ratings during the week leading up to the Super Bowl.” That’s good for Budweiser, which is reportedly now only the 4th-most popular beer in the US.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released in 1937, was the first animated feature-length film. Each frame of Snow White was painted painstakingly by hand to create the fantastical world of the Brother Grimm’s fairy tale. Since 1937, animation technology has advanced beyond recognition, with most animated films using computer-generated images to bring colorful fictional worlds to life. However, according to a study in the INFORMS journal Organization Science, ‘Drawing Snow White and Animating Buzz Lightyear: Technological Toolkits Characteristics and Creativity in Cross-Disciplinary Teams’, a film needs more than dazzling animation technology to impress.

INFORMS Fellow and professor at the University of Massachusetts Anna Nagurney discusses how the decreasing number of blood donor centers is putting additional pressure on an already strained blood supply.

The price for a 30-second ad to run during the Super Bowl this year is reportedly topping $5 million. A new study in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science focuses on the relationship between Super Bowl viewership and corresponding sales of brands advertised in the game. The question asked by the study is: "Do these things pay off?" The answer is both yes and no.

Patients often wait weeks or months for medical appointments. When they finally arrive at physicians’ offices, patients often face further delays. This in-office waiting occurs for many reasons. Perhaps those patients arrived early. Perhaps earlier patients put the physicians behind schedule, or urgent calls interrupted them. However, according to a new article by INFORMS member Michael J. Armstrong, professor at Brock University, and his colleagues, sometimes clinics purposely schedule appointments before physicians expect to be ready. They do this to ensure physicians don’t run out of work.

The situations in which the Eagles football team decide to strike might seem random, but in fact they are quite calculated. And they're often decided before the start of the game, or even before the start of the season. The approach is driven by an analytics team so involved in the operation that two members of the department  communicate with the coach during the game.

In the next three weeks, SEC fans will ponder, debate, agonize and pray over which school their most-coveted recruits will choose on National Signing Day. But a mathematical model has already made the call for all of them – sort of. The model, designed by Iowa Ph.D. candidate Kristina Bigsby, relies on social media posts and “basic biographical information” – presumably including publicly available data like hometown and school. Her work was published in the journal Decision Analysis, from INFORMS.

Dishonesty in general is concerning, but when a group decides to lie, it's even more troubling. The article "I Lie? We Lie! Why? Experimental Evidence on a Dishonesty Shift in Groups," published in the INFORMS journal Management Science, describes an experiment conducted to determine whether individuals or groups are more likely to tell falsehoods when they can benefit from doing so.

A new study in the INFORMS journal Management Science finds artwork created by artists when they are unhappy is valued at less than their other artistic works. Stuart Holman delves into this study with one of the authors, Kathryn Graddy, a professor at Brandeis with an interest in the economics of art.

The ‘ratcheting’ up of bonus goals can make workforces less motivated, so managers need a clear system of communicating changes to incentives, says a new study in the INFORMS journal Management Science, co-authored by INFORMS member Francisco Brahm of Cambridge Judge Business School.

In 2016, Allegheny County, PA became the first jurisdiction in the U.S., or anywhere else, to use a predictive analytics algorithm - the Allegheny Family Screening Tool - to help child protective services identify children most at risk.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which pioneered the use of auctions to allocate spectrum for wireless service, has been named one of six finalists for the prestigious INFORMS Franz Edelman Award for Achievements in Operations Research and Management Science. 

Europcar is one of six finalists for the 47th annual Franz Edelman Award for Achievements in Operations Research and Management Science from INFORMS, an operations research and analytics association. 

Benefits of Super Bowl ads linger in the months following the annual game, with sales boosts during other major sporting events like NCAA March Madness, NBA playoffs and MLB games, according to a study in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science. 

We’ve all heard the story of Vincent van Gogh cutting his ear off and of Jackson Pollock’s alcoholism and depression. The struggles facing the creative “genius” are so ingrained in our culture that it has its own moniker: “tortured artists.” Some of the greatest creators of all time are synonymous with depression. But a new study in the INFORMS journal Management Science finds that work created by artists when they are unhappy is valued less than their other works.