The Conversation

Young immigrants are looking to social media to engage in politics and elections – even if they are not eligible to vote

Written by Sara Wilf, PhD student in social welfare, University of California, Los Angeles

Immigrant advocates protest near the U.S. Capitol on June 15, 2022 Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Immigrants’ political power is on the rise in the United States.

The number of eligible immigrant voters nearly doubled from about 12 million in 2000 to more than 23 million in 2020.

Immigrant voters tend to be older than U.S.-born voters, but...

Good faith and the honor of partisan election officials used to be enough to ensure trust in voting results – but not anymore

Written by Thom Reilly, Professor & Co-Director, Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy, School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University

Candidate signs during the first day of early primary voting on July 7, 2022, in Silver Spring, Md. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

As the U.S. moves closer to the 2022 midterm elections, a sizable number of Americans express a lack of confidence in the accuracy of the vote count.

That distrust is built largely on the widespread – and false...

Genetically engineered bacteria make living materials for self-repairing walls and cleaning up pollution

Written by Sara Molinari, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Synthetic Biology, Rice University

As a material, bacteria's ability to rapidly multiply and adapt to different conditions is an asset.Gschmeissner/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

With just an incubator and some broth, researchers can grow reusable filters made of bacteria to clean up polluted water, detect chemicals in the environment and protect surfaces from rust and mold.

I...

Who invented music? The search for stone flutes, clay whistles and the dawn of song

Written by Laura Dallman, Lecturer in Music History, University of Florida

Something people today have in common with civilizations past: a love of music.peepo/E+ via Getty Images

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

Who invented music? – Rom, age 7, Las Vegas, Nevada

The short answer is: No one...

The 5,000-year history of writer's block

Written by Joyce Kinkead, Distinguished Professor of English, Utah State University

The romantic image of the writer doesn't do justice to the tedious reality of churning out words, one after another.fcscafeine/iStock via Getty Images

Ann Patchett, who has written eight novels and five books of nonfiction, says that when faced with writer’s block, sometimes it seems that the muse has “gone out back for a smoke.”

I...

Headcovers have always been political in Iran – for women on all sides

Written by Eliz Sanasarian, Professor of Political Science and Gender and Sexuality Studies, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Iranian newspaper headlines about the protests that started with death of Mahsa Amini.Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

A friend and I were strolling through Tehran’s streets one afternoon when she was approached by a member of the “morality police,” an agency tasked with enforcing modesty laws in public. First, the...

How to steer money for drinking water and sewer upgrades to the communities that need it most

Written by Andrian Lee, Water Policy Specialist, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Raw sewage bubbles up in the front yard of a home in Jackson, Mississippi, on Oct. 20, 2021.Rory Doyle/The Washington Post via Getty Images

When storms like Hurricane Ian strike, many people have to cope afterward with losing water service. Power outages mean that pumps can’t process and treat drinking water or sewage, and heavy stormwater...

Nobel-winning quantum weirdness undergirds an emerging high-tech industry, promising better ways of encrypting communications and imaging your body

Written by Nicholas Peters, Joint Faculty, University of Tennessee

Devices like this experimental apparatus can produce pairs of photons that are linked, or 'entangled'.Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Unhackable communications devices, high-precision GPS and high-resolution medical imaging all have something in common. These technologies – some under development and some already on the market all...

Effort to recover Indigenous language also revitalizes culture, history and identity

Written by Daryl Wade Baldwin, Executive Director, Myaamia Center, Miami University

Myaamia Heritage Program students get a lesson from Daryl Baldwin, executive director of the Myaamia Center at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.Scott Kissell, Miami University, CC BY-ND

When the federal government set up boarding schools in the 19th century to assimilate Native American children into American culture, one of the objectives was to...

New satellite mapping with AI can quickly pinpoint hurricane damage across an entire state to spot where people may be trapped

Written by Zhe Zhu, Assistant Professor of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Connecticut

New satellite mapping techniques can quickly locate washed out and damaged areas.Ricardo Arduengo / AFP via Getty Images

Hurricane Ian left an extraordinarily broad path of destruction across much of South Florida. That was evident in reports from the ground, but it also shows up in satellite data. Using a new method, our team of spatial and...