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How does a television set work?

  • Written by Jay Weitzen, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UMass Lowell
imageThe TV in your home is very different from the television sets of just a few years ago.moodboard/Image Source via Getty Imagesimage

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.

How does a TV work? – Caden, age 11

Look at your modern-day...

Read more: How does a television set work?

Shorter days affect the mood of millions of Americans – a nutritional neuroscientist offers tips on how to avoid the winter blues

  • Written by Lina Begdache, Associate Professor of Health and Wellness Studies, Binghamton University, State University of New York
imageFor those prone to seasonal affective disorder, a shift in the sleep cycle can impact energy levels.Ben Akiba/E+ via Getty Images

The annual pattern of winter depression and melancholy – better known as seasonal affective disorder, or SAD – suggests a strong link between your mood and the amount of light you get during the day.

To put...

Read more: Shorter days affect the mood of millions of Americans – a nutritional neuroscientist offers tips...

Pharma's expensive gaming of the drug patent system is successfully countered by the Medicines Patent Pool, which increases global access and rewards innovation

  • Written by Lucy Xiaolu Wang, Assistant Professor of Resource Economics, UMass Amherst
imageDrug patents don't necessarily spur companies to innovate so much as restrict access to their IP.Andrii Zastrozhnov/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Biomedical innovation reached a new era during the COVID-19 pandemic as drug development went into overdrive. But the ways that brand companies license their patented drugs grant them market monopoly,...

Read more: Pharma's expensive gaming of the drug patent system is successfully countered by the Medicines...

Text-to-image AI: powerful, easy-to-use technology for making art – and fakes

  • Written by Hany Farid, Professor of Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley
imageA synthetic image generated by mimicking real faces, left, and a synthetic face generated from the text prompt ‘a photo of a 50-year man with short black hair,’ right.Hany Farid using StyleGAN2 (left) and DALL-E (right), CC BY-ND

Type “Teddy bears working on new AI research on the moon in the 1980s” into any of the...

Read more: Text-to-image AI: powerful, easy-to-use technology for making art – and fakes

A judge in Texas is using a recent Supreme Court ruling to say domestic abusers can keep their guns

  • Written by April M. Zeoli, Associate Professor of Public Health, University of Michigan
imageTaking guns from abusers saves lives.Kameleon007 via Getty Images

For a large part of the history of the United States, domestic abuse was tolerated under the nation’s legal system. There were few laws criminalizingdomestic violence, and enforcement of the existing laws was rare.

It was only in the past few decades that laws criminalizing...

Read more: A judge in Texas is using a recent Supreme Court ruling to say domestic abusers can keep their guns

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's pending promotion sheds new light on his overlooked fight for equal rights after the Civil War

  • Written by Anne Marshall, Associate Professor of History, Mississippi State University
imageGeneral Grant stands in front of his campaign tent at his headquarters in Virginia in 1865.Bettmann/Getty Images

Tucked away in an amendment to the FY2023 U.S. defense authorization bill is a rare instance of congressional bipartisanship and a tribute to U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.

If approved, the measure would posthumously promote Grant to...

Read more: Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's pending promotion sheds new light on his overlooked fight for equal rights...

Orthodox Judaism can still be a difficult world for LGBTQ Jews – but in some groups, the tide is slowly turning

  • Written by Orit Avishai, Professor of Sociology, Fordham University
imageAcceptance of LGBTQ identities is growing in some parts of Orthodox Judaism, but slowly.motimeiri/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Yeshiva University, the storied modern Orthodox Jewish university in New York City, is in the midst of a legal battle over its refusal to recognize the YU Pride Alliance, an undergraduate club.

While YU does not object to...

Read more: Orthodox Judaism can still be a difficult world for LGBTQ Jews – but in some groups, the tide is...

This course takes college students out of this world – and teaches them what it takes to become space pioneers

  • Written by Joshua D. Ambrosius, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Dayton
imageGoing to space requires more than just rocket science.John Lamb via Getty Imagesimage

Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

Title of course:

“Space Exploration: Toward a Spacefaring Society”

What prompted the idea for the course?

The idea came from a desire to...

Read more: This course takes college students out of this world – and teaches them what it takes to become...

Weasels, not pandas, should be the poster animal for biodiversity loss

  • Written by David Jachowski, Associate Professor of Wildlife Ecology, Clemson University
imageA short-tailed weasel in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.Jacob W. Frank, NPS/Flickr

At the United Nations biodiversity conference that opens in Montreal on Dec. 7, 2022, nations aim to create a new global framework for transforming humanity’s relationship with nature. The conference logo features a human reaching to embrace a panda –...

Read more: Weasels, not pandas, should be the poster animal for biodiversity loss

The 4 biggest gift-giving mistakes, according to a consumer psychologist

  • Written by Julian Givi, Assistant Professor of Marketing, West Virginia University
imageIf only little Gregory got a gift card ...Philipp Nemenz/The Image Bank via Getty Images

A good gift can elicit a surge of happiness and gratitude in the recipient. It also feels great to give, with psychologists finding that the joy of giving a gift is more pronounced than the pleasure of receiving one.

Unfortunately, there are times when you...

Read more: The 4 biggest gift-giving mistakes, according to a consumer psychologist

More Articles ...

  1. How fake foreign news fed political fervor and led to the American Revolution
  2. Jobs are up! Wages are up! So why am I as an economist so gloomy?
  3. Religious freedom and LGBTQ rights are clashing in schools and on campuses – and courts are deciding
  4. Nurses' attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination for their children are highly influenced by partisanship, a new study finds
  5. Brain-computer interfaces could allow soldiers to control weapons with their thoughts and turn off their fear – but the ethics of neurotechnology lags behind the science
  6. Darknet markets generate millions in revenue selling stolen personal data, supply chain study finds
  7. Protecting 30% of Earth's surface for nature means thinking about connections near and far
  8. Student 'slave auctions' illustrate the existence of a hidden culture of domination and subjugation in US schools
  9. 3 ways cryptocurrency is changing the way colleges do business with students and donors
  10. Genocides persist, nearly 70 years after the Holocaust – but there are recognized ways to help prevent them
  11. Jiang Zemin propelled China's economic rise in the world, leaving his successors to deal with the massive inequality that followed
  12. EU plans to set up a new court to prosecute Russia's war on Ukraine – but there's a mixed record on holding leaders like Putin accountable for waging wars
  13. Twitter lifted its ban on COVID misinformation – research shows this is a grave risk to public health
  14. How parents can play a key role in the prevention and treatment of teen mental health problems
  15. Who's giving Americans spiritual care? As congregational attendance shrinks, it's often chaplains
  16. Satellites detect no real climate benefit from 10 years of forest carbon offsets in California
  17. Resounding success of 'Black Panther' franchise says little about the dubious state of Black film
  18. Healthy democracy requires trust -- these 3 things could start to restore voters' declining faith in US elections
  19. Protests in China are not rare -- but the current unrest is significant
  20. Ancient DNA from the teeth of 14th-century Ashkenazi Jews in Germany already included genetic variations common in modern Jews
  21. Oath Keepers convictions shed light on the limits of free speech – and the threat posed by militias
  22. Where Mauna Loa’s lava is coming from – and why Hawaii’s volcanoes are different from most
  23. Pregnancy is a genetic battlefield – how conflicts of interest pit mom's and dad's genes against each other
  24. What's a polycule? An expert on polyamory explains
  25. Beware of 'Shark Week': Scientists watched 202 episodes and found them filled with junk science, misinformation and white male 'experts' named Mike
  26. Sci-fi books for young readers often omit children of color from the future
  27. Black Twitter's expected demise would make it harder to publicize police brutality and discuss racism
  28. Fatherhood changes men's brains, according to before-and-after MRI scans
  29. More than 4 in 5 pregnancy-related deaths are preventable in the US, and mental health is the leading cause
  30. Even weak tropical cyclones have grown more intense worldwide – we tracked 30 years of them using currents
  31. A sampler of our most popular articles of 2022
  32. White landowners in Hawaii imported Russian workers in the early 1900s, to dilute the labor power of Asians in the islands
  33. Alabama’s execution problems are part of a long history of botched lethal injections
  34. 'Y'all,' that most Southern of Southernisms, is going mainstream – and it's about time
  35. Is China ready to lead on protecting nature? At the upcoming UN biodiversity conference, it will preside and set the tone
  36. Graphene is a proven supermaterial, but manufacturing the versatile form of carbon at usable scales remains a challenge
  37. Still recovering from COVID-19, US public transit tries to get back on track
  38. We're decoding ancient hurricanes' traces on the sea floor – and evidence from millennia of Atlantic storms is not good news for the coast
  39. This course takes a broad look at failure – and what we can all learn when it occurs
  40. How can you tell if something is true? Here are 3 questions to ask yourself about what you see, hear and read
  41. Celebrities in politics have a leg up, but their advantages can't top fundraising failures
  42. Treating mental illness with electricity marries old ideas with modern tech and understanding of the brain – podcast
  43. Rampage at Virginia Walmart follows upward trend in supermarket gun attacks – here's what we know about retail mass shooters
  44. Wilma Mankiller, first female principal chief of Cherokee Nation, led with compassion and continues to inspire today
  45. What is ethical animal research? A scientist and veterinarian explain
  46. Scientists discover five new species of black corals living thousands of feet below the ocean surface near the Great Barrier Reef
  47. Midterm election results reflect the hodgepodge of US voters, not the endorsement or repudiation of a candidate’s or party’s agenda
  48. Dreaming of beachfront real estate? Much of Florida's coast is at risk of storm erosion that can cause homes to collapse, as Daytona just saw
  49. The World Cup puts the spotlight on Qatar, but also brings attention to its human rights record and politics – 4 things to know
  50. Suspect in the Colorado LGBTQ shootings faces hate crimes charges – what exactly are they?