Forbes

Zach Plesac, a former Ball State baseball standout, could be better than Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber. Equally intriguing is that the Indians acquired Bieber and Plesac at the same time; in the 2016 major league draft. Bieber was selected in the fourth round out of UC Santa Barbara, and Plesac in the 12th round out of Ball State University.

The pandemic and its resulting distancing measures, not to mention the effect on the perceptions of the consumer in terms of dining safety, could move robots from behind the scenes into more customer facing roles. Some research, however, is already indicating that while consumers may be comfortable with robots at the quick service level, fine dining is an area where humanity will still hold sway. “The term ‘human touch’ kept coming up over and over and over again,” Dina Marie Zemke, associate professor of residential property management at Ball State in Muncie, and lead author of the study “How to Build a Better Robot for Quick-Service Restaurants,” told Restaurant Business. “People said, ‘I like to know that a person is handling my food. I like to know that human effort and the human touch is involved.’”

A new study from Ball State University suggests that thousands of college students who visited popular spring break destinations this year may have become infected with Covid-19, which they subsequently brought back to their campuses and local communities.

Sin taxes are excise taxes imposed on goods or behaviors - like booze and cigarettes - that lawmakers deem harmful. In addition to raising revenue, the idea is that bumping taxes high enough should trigger a slowdown in the behavior. But what happens if taxpayers simply exchange the "sinful" behavior - not for a "better" response - but for another bad behavior? That's precisely what a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health suggests: raising taxes on e-cigarettes in an attempt to curb vaping may cause people to purchase more traditional cigarettes.

Auto stocks climbed Tuesday on news that the U.S. and Mexico have reached a tentative agreement to update the provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement. And Canada looks to be eager to sign on as well.

Barry Umansky, telecommunications professor and DPI member, is quoted.

Michael Hanley, journalism professor, is quoted.