The Conversation

Why we are hard-wired to worry, and what we can do to calm down

Written by James Carmody, Professor of Medicine and Population Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts Medical School

The everyday stressors of life can lead to worrisome thoughts. PR Image Factory

A new year brings both hopes and anxieties. We want things to be better for ourselves and the people we love, but worry that they won’t be, and imagine some of the things that might stand in the way. More broadly, we might worry about who’s going to win the...

3D printing of body parts is coming fast – but regulations are not ready

Written by Dinusha Mendis, Professor of Intellectual Property and Innovation Law and Co-Director of the Jean Monet Centre of Excellence for European Intellectual Property and Information Rights, Bournemouth University

The technology of producing biological parts is advancing, raising new legal and regulatory questions.Philip Ezze, CC BY-SA

In the last few years, the use of 3D printing has exploded in medicine. Engineers and medical professionals now routinely 3D print prosthetic hands and surgical tools. But 3D printing has only just begun to transform the...

Matching Vietnamese brides with Chinese men, marriage brokers find good business – and sometimes love

Written by Wei Li, Associate Professor of Sociology, Frostburg State University

A growing number of young Vietnamese women are marrying foreigners, mostly from China and South Korea. AP Photo/Chitose Suzuki

China has 24 million more men than women of marriageable age, putting some bachelors in a tough spot.

In rural areas of China, three decades of sex-selective abortions under the one-child policy, which ended in 2015, have...

Rotting feral pig carcasses teach scientists what happens when tons of animals die all at once, as in Australia's bushfires

Written by Brandon Barton, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, Mississippi State University

To understand the effects of a big die-off, researchers set up experiments with wild boar carcasses.Brandon Barton, Mississippi State University, CC BY-ND

The unprecedented wildfire raging across Australia is not only destroying human lives, but has killed hundreds of millions of animals – perhaps billions before it is all over.

Burning is...

Trump, like Obama, tests the limits of presidential war powers

Written by Sarah Burns, Associate Professor of Political Science, Rochester Institute of Technology

In an official White House photo, President Donald Trump stands alone.Shealah Craighead/White House

To many observers, President Donald Trump’s decision to kill a senior Iranian general is yet another example of his unique impetuousness and determination to go it alone in his foreign policy. Congress has begun to take steps to reel in...

The US-Iran conflict and the consequences of international law-breaking

Written by David Mednicoff, Chair, Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies, and Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Public Policy, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Mourners carry the coffins of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani and eight others during a funeral procession in Karbala, Iraq on Jan. 4, 2020.MOHAMMED SAWAF/AFP via Getty Images

Editor’s note: Iran’s missile attack on a U.S. base in Iraq in retaliation for the Trump...

School closures can hit rural communities hard

Written by Mara Casey Tieken, Associate Professor of Education, Bates College

An abandoned Arkansas high schoolMara Casey Tieken, CC BY-SA

The school bus begins picking up children before 6 a.m. in Elaine, Arkansas, a small, mostly African American town on the Mississippi River floodplains about 120 miles east of Little Rock. It crawls past long stretches of oxbow lakes, acres of soybean and cotton fields, and two closed...

What Trump's tweet threatening Iran's cultural sites could mean for Shiite Muslims

Written by Kishwar Rizvi, Professor in the History of Art Islamic Art and Architecture, Yale University

Golden Iwan, Shrine of Fatima Masuma, built in the eighth century, is also a leading Shii seminary in Iran.Kishwar Rizvi, CC BY-SA

President Donald Trump warned the Islamic Republic of Iran in a tweet on Jan. 4 that the U.S. would target Iranian cultural sites, if provoked.

His threat followed the United States’ killing of Maj. Gen. Qassem...

Tweets about cannabis' health benefits are full of mistruths

Written by Jon-Patrick Allem, Assistant Professor of Research, University of Southern California

Thomas Uhle, a grow manager, tends to marijuana plants growing at GB Sciences Louisiana in Baton Rouge in August 2019.Gerald Herbert/AP Photo

There has been a lot of talk in the U.S. about legalizing recreational cannabis, and about cannabis’ potential to help with health issues.

Scientists working in medicine may have a lot to discover about...

How countries in conflict, like Iran and the US, still talk to each other

Written by Klaus W. Larres, Richard M. Krasno Distinguished Professor; Adjunct Professor of the Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Diplomacy has provided a solution for how countries in conflict can communicate.Shutterstock/cybrain

Even countries that have broken ties with each other need to communicate in times of crisis and war.

That includes the U.S. and Iran, which have not had an official way to talk directly to each other since President Jimmy Carter cut off diplomatic...