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How did health insurance get so complicated? Here are some answers

  • Written by: J.B. Silvers, Professor of Health Finance, Case Western Reserve University
Rep. Fred Upton, left, (R-Mich.) and Rep. Greg Waldon (R-Ore.) outside the White House on May 3, 2017, after meeting with Pres. Trump to discuss the heath care law. Susan Walsh/AP

With the passage of the Republicans’ health care act, the House of Representatives seems to be saying that coming up with a plan to insure Americans really...

Read more: How did health insurance get so complicated? Here are some answers

The future is in interactive storytelling

  • Written by: Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Professor of Computational Media, University of California, Santa Cruz
Seeking to make stories that surround us.'Screen,' by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Robert Coover, Shawn Greenlee, Andrew McClain, and Ben "Sascha" Shine, CC BY-ND

Marvel’s new blockbuster, “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2,” carries audiences through a narrative carefully curated by the film’s creators. That’s also what...

Read more: The future is in interactive storytelling

How funding to house mentally ill, homeless is a financial gain, not drain

  • Written by: Carol Caton, Professor of Sociomedical Sciences (Psychiatry and Public Health), Columbia University Medical Center
A director of a supportive housing center in Bronx, New York, talks with a resident and case worker in December 2015. Bebeto Matthews/AP

As Congress considers the federal budget proposal for fiscal year 2018 to reduce funding for services to poor and homeless Americans, programs with proven cost-effectiveness should not be on the chopping block....

Read more: How funding to house mentally ill, homeless is a financial gain, not drain

Anti-terror rules are blocking aid to conflict zones

  • Written by: Sabith Khan, Visiting Researcher, Georgetown University
Rules imposed after the 9/11 attacks can obstruct aid to Somalia's internally displaced people.Omar Abdisalan/AMISOM Photo

The famines looming in countries like war-torn Yemen and Somalia and the conflicts entrenched in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere are making it hard for aid workers to reach everyone who desperately needs help. However, U.S....

Read more: Anti-terror rules are blocking aid to conflict zones

Heroes and American politics

  • Written by: Bruce Peabody, Professor of American Politics, Fairleigh Dickinson University
www.shutterstock.com

Who counts as a hero in the 21st century?

How is heroism adapting to an age of nonstop news, hyper-partisanship and intense political scrutiny?

Research I recently conducted with my colleague Krista Jenkins focuses on the evolving profile and significance of U.S. heroism over the past century.

After examining decades of survey...

Read more: Heroes and American politics

Helping student activists move past 'us vs. them'

  • Written by: Steven Fesmire, Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies, Green Mountain College
High school and college students protested Trump's inauguration at Seattle Central College in January.AP Photo/Elaine Thompson

Protest turned violent on the Berkeley and Middlebury campuses; students shouted down speakers at MacMaster University and UCLA and blocked entry to a talk at Claremont McKenna: These are among the many recent incidents...

Read more: Helping student activists move past 'us vs. them'

Macron and LePen are battling for France’s heart and soul in election runoff

  • Written by: Richard Fogarty, Professor of History, University at Albany, State University of New York

On April 24, the day after her second-place finish in the first round of the French presidential elections, Marine Le Pen thundered against her opponent, Emmanuel Macron, declaring, “Nothing in Monsieur Macron’s plan, nor anything in his behavior indicates the least evidence of love for France.”

She went on to invoke his supposed...

Read more: Macron and LePen are battling for France’s heart and soul in election runoff

Alphabet's new plan to track 10,000 people could take wearables to the next level

  • Written by: Bennett Allan Landman, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, Radiology, Image Science, and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Vanderbilt University
imageWhat can your data tell us?www.shutterstock.com

Verily – the life sciences research arm of Google parent company Alphabet – wants to track the health of 10,000 people.

On April 19, the group announced that it was starting to recruit for Project Baseline, in partnership with Duke and Stanford. Over the course of four years, Project...

Read more: Alphabet's new plan to track 10,000 people could take wearables to the next level

Why emojis –

  • Written by: Florian Schaub, Assistant Professor of Information; Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan
An alternate choice for unlocking a smartphone.Lydia Kraus et al., 'On the Use of Emojis in Mobile Authentication,' 2017., CC BY-ND

Would you rather unlock your smartphone with a plain four-digit PIN or with a smiley-face emoji? Would it be easier and more pleasant to remember “🐱💦🎆🎌,” for example, or...

Read more: Why emojis –

Why emojis –

  • Written by: Florian Schaub, Assistant Professor of Information; Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan
An alternate choice for unlocking a smartphone.Lydia Kraus et al., 'On the Use of Emojis in Mobile Authentication,' 2017., CC BY-ND

Would you rather unlock your smartphone with a plain four-digit PIN or with a smiley-face emoji? Would it be easier and more pleasant to remember “🐱💦🎆🎌,” for example, or...

Read more: Why emojis –

More Articles …

  1. Why emojis –
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  8. The long history, and short future, of the password
  9. Why emojis –
  10. Could a doodle replace your password?
  11. Trump's plan to dismantle national monuments comes with steep cultural and ecological costs
  12. Why Dodd-Frank – or its repeal – won't save us from the next crippling Wall Street crash
  13. A 147-year-old dispute between church and state spills onto a school playground
  14. What was the protest group Students for a Democratic Society? Five questions answered
  15. Inequality is getting worse, but fewer people than ever are aware of it
  16. Why America's public media can't do its job
  17. Blasphemy isn't just a problem in the Muslim world
  18. How to boil down a pile of diverse research papers into one cohesive picture
  19. The cultural division that explains global political shocks from Brexit to Le Pen
  20. Does ESPN have anywhere to go but down?
  21. How Trump's tax proposal could weaken faith in the system's fairness
  22. Why we choose terrible passwords, and how to fix them
  23. How crossing the US-Mexico border became a crime
  24. A digital archive of slave voyages details the largest forced migration in history
  25. Can blockchain technology help poor people around the world?
  26. Too pretty to play? Stephen Curry and the light-skinned black athlete
  27. Two key takeaways from the pope's TED talk
  28. How parents can help autistic children make sense of their world
  29. The patients we do not see
  30. How Woodrow Wilson's propaganda machine changed American journalism
  31. Can charity save journalism from market failure?
  32. Is charter school fraud the next Enron?
  33. New statistical methods would let researchers deal with data in better, more robust ways
  34. Is there any way to stop ad creep?
  35. National monuments: Presidents can create them, but only Congress can undo them
  36. Trump’s offshore oil drilling push: Five essential reads
  37. Is the death penalty un-Christian?
  38. Did artists lead the way in mathematics?
  39. The changing nature of sacred spaces
  40. Is the paper industry getting greener? Five questions answered
  41. One way Trump went big league in his first 100 days
  42. Should the giving styles of the rich and famous alarm us all?
  43. Federal role in education has a long history
  44. Physics of poo: Why it takes you and an elephant the same amount of time
  45. Would Trump's tax cut be the biggest ever? Fat chance
  46. Mine wars: The struggle for coal miners' health care and pension benefits comes to a head
  47. To have impact, the People's Climate March needs to reach beyond activists
  48. 100 days of presidential threats
  49. Syria’s forgotten pluralism and why it matters today
  50. 'Anumeric' people: What happens when a language has no words for numbers?