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Student loan debt is crushing Americans – 4 essential reads

  • Written by Jamaal Abdul-Alim, Education Editor, The Conversation
imageCurrently, the total outstanding federal student loan debt is $1.7 trillion. Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

US$1.7 trillion. That’s how much college students and graduates owed in federal student loan debt as of July 2021.

The rising amount of student loan debt can pose serious challenges for individual borrowers. For that...

Read more: Student loan debt is crushing Americans – 4 essential reads

SpaceX Inspiration4 mission sent 4 people with minimal training into orbit – and brought space tourism closer to reality

  • Written by Wendy Whitman Cobb, Professor of Strategy and Security Studies, US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies
imageFour people – none of them trained astronauts – launched into orbit aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule on Sept. 15, 2021.NASA Johnson/Flickr, CC BY-NC

Just after 8 p.m. EST on Sept. 15, 2021, the next batch of space tourists lifted off aboard a SpaceX rocket. Organized and funded by entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, the Inspiration4 mission touts...

Read more: SpaceX Inspiration4 mission sent 4 people with minimal training into orbit – and brought space...

Firebrands: How to protect your home from wildfires' windblown flaming debris

  • Written by David Blunck, Associate Professor School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University
imageA photographer stands in a rain of flaming embers during a fire in California in 2019.Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images

As firefighters tried to protect homes near Lake Tahoe from one of California’s largest fires on record, they battled, windblown embers that kept sparking new small fires, some well away from the fire line.

Those embers, also...

Read more: Firebrands: How to protect your home from wildfires' windblown flaming debris

18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic – a retrospective in 7 charts

  • Written by Katelyn Jetelina, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
imageSeptember 11, 2021 marks the 18 month anniversary of the WHO declaring the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemicsummerphotos/Stock via Getty Images Plus

A year and a half into what the World Health Organization officially declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, it’s an understatement to say that Americans are exhausted.

I’m an epidemiologist and...

Read more: 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic – a retrospective in 7 charts

Firebrands and protecting homes from wildfires: What everyone needs to know about flaming windblown debris

  • Written by David Blunck, Associate Professor School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University
imageA photographer stands in a rain of flaming embers during a fire in California in 2019.Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images

As firefighters tried to protect homes near Lake Tahoe from one of California’s largest fires on record, they battled, windblown embers that kept sparking new small fires, some well away from the fire line.

Those embers, also...

Read more: Firebrands and protecting homes from wildfires: What everyone needs to know about flaming...

Massive numbers of new COVID–19 infections, not vaccines, are the main driver of new coronavirus variants

  • Written by Vaughn Cooper, Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, University of Pittsburgh

The rise of coronavirus variants has highlighted the huge influence evolutionary biology has on daily life. But how mutations, random chance and natural selection produce variants is a complicated process, and there has been a lot of confusion about how and why new variants emerge.

Until recently, the most famous example of rapid evolution was the...

Read more: Massive numbers of new COVID–19 infections, not vaccines, are the main driver of new coronavirus...

For engineers, asking for help at work is influenced by gender

  • Written by Cristina Poleacovschi, Assistant Professor of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, Iowa State University
imageFemale engineers were more likely to ask for help from their female than male colleagues.alvarez/E+ via Getty Images

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

In a study published in the Journal of Management in Engineering, we analyzed whether knowledge accessibility – defined as the time and effort that...

Read more: For engineers, asking for help at work is influenced by gender

Minerals, drugs and China: How the Taliban might finance their new Afghan government

  • Written by Hanif Sufizada, Education and Outreach Program Coordinator, University of Nebraska Omaha
imageAfghanistan relies on informal money changers more than banks. AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini

Now that the Taliban have reportedly taken full control of Afghanistan and begun forming a government, a looming challenge awaits: How will they keep their country and economy afloat financially?

For the past 20 years, the U.S. government and other countries hav...

Read more: Minerals, drugs and China: How the Taliban might finance their new Afghan government

How social media – aided by bots – amplifies Islamophobia online

  • Written by Saif Shahin, Assistant Professor in School of Communication and Faculty Affiliate with Antiracist Research and Policy Center, American University
imageIslamophobia has changed in the 20 years since Sept. 11. Now, much of it plays out on social media.Atilgan Ozdil/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

In August 2021, a Facebook ad campaign criticizing Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the United States’ first Muslim congresswomen, came under intense scrutiny. Critics charged that the ads linked the...

Read more: How social media – aided by bots – amplifies Islamophobia online

Buying groceries isn't a problem just for the poor – middle-class millennials like me with student debt have trouble too

  • Written by Cassandra M. Johnson, Assistant Professor of Nutrition and Foods, Texas State University
imageWhen people can't afford what they want to eat, they have to make a lot of calculations at the supermarket.oonal/E+ via Getty Images

When I teach undergraduate and graduate students about food insecurity, I sometimes mention that my perspective is based not only on professional expertise but also on my personal experience.

Food insecurity might...

Read more: Buying groceries isn't a problem just for the poor – middle-class millennials like me with student...

More Articles ...

  1. How to design a public play space where kids practice reading and STEM skills
  2. On 50th anniversary of Attica uprising, 4 essential reads on prisoners' rights today
  3. ¿Por qué se fortaleció la tormenta Ida en el Noreste tan rápido después de haberse debilitado?
  4. Government and charitable actions likely kept millions of Americans out of food insecurity during the pandemic
  5. Black Lives Matter: How far has the movement come?
  6. Packaging generates a lot of waste – now Maine and Oregon want manufacturers to foot the bill for getting rid of it
  7. What schools teach about 9/11 and the war on terror
  8. The science of product placements – and why some work better than others
  9. Data science education lacks a much-needed focus on ethics
  10. How threats of hellfire helped keep 'immodest' women in their place – from the ancient world to 'My Unorthodox Life'
  11. Who is Mullah Hasan Akhund? What does the Taliban's choice of interim prime minister mean for Afghanistan?
  12. Wildfire burn scars can intensify and even create thunderstorms that lead to catastrophic flooding – here's how it works
  13. How someone becomes a torturer
  14. Wildfire burn scars can intensify and even trigger thunderstorms, leading to catastrophic flooding – here's how
  15. Removing urban highways can improve neighborhoods blighted by decades of racist policies
  16. Why are planets round?
  17. Elon Musk’s Tesla Bot raises serious concerns – but probably not the ones you think
  18. Women face motherhood penalty in STEM careers long before they actually become mothers
  19. Netflix’s 'My Unorthodox Life' spurred ultra-Orthodox Jewish women to talk publicly about their lives
  20. When does life begin? There’s more than one religious view
  21. Medicine is an imperfect science – but you can still trust its process
  22. What young kids say worked -- and didn't work -- for them during virtual learning
  23. The women who appear in Dante's 'Divine Comedy' are finally getting their due, 700 years later
  24. The next attack on the Affordable Care Act may cost you free preventive health care
  25. Pandemic hardship is about to get a lot worse for millions of out-of-work Americans
  26. Can burying power lines protect storm-wracked electric grids? Not always
  27. At the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, ancient Greece and Rome can tell us a lot about the links between collective trauma and going to war
  28. How memories of Japanese American imprisonment during WWII guided the US response to 9/11
  29. Tattoos have a long history going back to the ancient world – and also to colonialism
  30. Slavery was the ultimate labor distortion – empowering workers today would be a form of reparations
  31. Al-Qaida, Islamic State group struggle for recruits
  32. Will having so many disasters happening at the same time affect donations? We asked an expert
  33. 5 reasons video games should be more widely used in school
  34. Dance and movement therapy holds promise for treating anxiety and depression, as well as deeper psychological wounds
  35. A subway flood expert explains what needs to be done to stop underground station deluges
  36. Hurricane Ida: 2 reasons for its record-shattering rainfall in NYC and the Northeast long after the winds weakened
  37. 'Get out now' – inside the White House on 9/11, according to the staffers who were there
  38. How Arctic warming can trigger extreme cold waves like the Texas freeze – a new study makes the connection
  39. Bitcoin will soon be 'legal tender' in El Salvador – here's what that means
  40. Bitcoin is now 'legal tender' in El Salvador – here's what that means
  41. Researchers trained mice to control seemingly random bursts of dopamine in their brains, challenging theories of reward and learning
  42. 'Work with hope' – a poet and classics scholar on facing the flood of bad news
  43. An entire generation of Americans has no idea how easy air travel used to be
  44. As Texas ban on abortion goes into effect, a religion scholar explains that pre-modern Christian attitudes on marriage and reproductive rights were quite different
  45. Education debates are rife with references to war – but have they gone too far?
  46. At my hospital, over 95% of COVID-19 patients share one thing in common: They’re unvaccinated
  47. When human life begins is a question of politics – not biology
  48. How the Purdue opioid settlement could help the public understand the roots of the drug crisis
  49. 20 years of 'forever' wars have left a toll on US veterans returning to the question: 'Did you kill?'
  50. Feds are increasing use of facial recognition systems – despite calls for a moratorium