The Conversation

Improving women's lives through energy: What Rick Perry got right and wrong

Written by Michael E. Webber, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Deputy Director of the Energy Institute, University of Texas at Austin

Refugee women from Darfur, Sudan return to their camp in eastern Chad with wood for their households in 2011.European Commission DG ECHO, CC BY-SA

On Nov. 2, U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry clumsily stated that fossil fuels could help prevent sexual assaults on vulnerable women in Africa. “When the lights are on, when you have light, it...

Why social media may not be so good for democracy

Written by Gordon Hull, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Director of Center for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of North Carolina – Charlotte

Some of the Facebook and Instagram ads used in 2016 election released by members of the U.S. House Intelligence committee. AP Photo/Jon Elswick

Recent revelations about how Russian agents inserted ads on Facebook, in an attempt to influence the 2016 election, present a troubling question: Is Facebook bad for democracy?

As a scholar of the social...

Academic journal publishing is headed for a day of reckoning

Written by Patrick Burns, Dean of Libraries and Vice President for Information Technology, Colorado State University

Locking articles away behind a paywall stifles access.Elizabeth, CC BY-NC-ND

Imagine a researcher working under deadline on a funding proposal for a new project. This is the day she’s dedicated to literature review – pulling examples from existing research in published journals to provide evidence for her great idea. Creating an...

How citizen investigators can collaborate on crowdsourced fact-checking

Written by Ricky J. Sethi, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Fitchburg State University

People can work together to help tell truth from falsehood.waraut60/Shutterstock.com

It can be hard to know what is true online. Propaganda and misinformation have a much longer history than the internet, of course. But the rapid proliferation of “fake news” on social media, and its tendency to extend into mainstream news coverage, can...

Maria will fundamentally change US policy toward Puerto Rico

Written by Pedro Caban, Professor of Latin American, Caribbean and U.S. Latino Studies, University at Albany, State University of New York

In the last 90 years, three catastrophic hurricanes have struck Puerto Rico.

San Felipe II in 1928 and San Ciprían in 1932 triggered political and economic changes in America’s largest colony that endured for generations. However, Puerto Rico remains an unincorporated territorial possession of the United States, subject to the plenary...

The curious relationship between altitude and suicide

Written by Hoehun Ha, Assistant Professor of Geography, Auburn University at Montgomery

Does living at a higher altitude affect your mental health?VAndreas/shutterstock.com

Suicide is one of the top 10 causes of death in the U.S. In the next 20 years, it’s expected to cause more than 2 million deaths per year worldwide, ranking 14th in the world as a cause of death.

There are many factors known to affect an individual’s...

How burnout is plaguing doctors and harming patients

Written by Jay Desai, Assistant Professor, University of Southern California

Exhaustion and burnout among physicians are growing problems. wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.com

The presidential symposium at this year’s Annual Meeting of the Child Neurology Society of America in early October in Kansas City raised many eyebrows. The first presentation of this symposium focused on burnout rates among neurologists around the...

'Voodoo economics' makes a comeback in Republican tax plan enriching the rich

Written by Christian Weller, Professor of Public Policy and Public Affairs, University of Massachusetts Boston

Voodoo doll or an illustration of the Republican tax plan on income inequality?Rainer Fuhrmann/Shutterstock.com

Republicans in Congress recently released more details of their tax plan, which they say would boost economic growth and lower the burden on middle-income households. They hope to pass a bill into law by Christmas.

The reality is that the...

As wildfires expand, fire science needs to keep up

Written by Albert Simeoni, Professor of Fire Protection Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Wildfire threatens a home near Possum Kingdom, Texas, April 19, 2011.State Farm, CC BY

In the month of October nearly 250,000 acres, more than 8,000 homes and over 40 people fell victim to fast-moving wildfires in Northern California, the deadliest and one of the costliest outbreaks in state history. Now is the time to wrestle with hard questions....

How does an oppressive government celebrate a revolution?

Written by Cynthia Hooper, Associate Professor of History, College of the Holy Cross

A worker cleans a statue of Vladimir Lenin in St. Petersburg. But how much Russian history gets whitewashed today?Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo

“And what, exactly, is there to be celebrating?” snapped Vladimir Putin’s press secretary on Oct. 25, a little more than a week before the 100th anniversary of what, in Soviet times, was lauded...