The Conversation

Imran Khan hopes to transform Pakistan but he'll have far less power than past leaders

Written by Adnan Rasool, Ph.D. Candidate/ Student Innovation Fellow, Georgia State University

Khan won over Pakistanis with promises to boost the economy and create jobs. He may have also enjoyed some behind-the-scenes help in the election from Pakistan's armed forces.

Pakistan’s July 25 election, which brought the former cricket star Imran Khan into power as prime minister, was a landmark event.

It marked the second consecutive...

Yes, humans are depleting Earth's resources, but 'footprint' estimates don't tell the full story

Written by Robert B. Richardson, Associate Professor of Sustainable Development, Michigan State University

Purse seiner fishing in the Indian Ocean. Footprint estimates do not assess how sustainably resources such as fisheries are managed.Jiri Rezac, CC BY-SA

Experts widely agree that human activities are harming the global environment. Since the Industrial Revolution, the world economy has grown dramatically. Overall this is a success story, since...

Could your gut microbes hinder your cancer treatment? A new first-in-human trial investigates

Written by Diwakar Davar, Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh

Gut microbes in the small intestine are essential for good physical and mental health. By Kateryna Kon/shutterstock.com

Could the poop of some cancer patients hold the key to treating certain cancers in all people?

What does cancer have to do with poop? In the past few years, researchers around the world, including us, have realized that the gut...

Why fewer kids work the kind of summer jobs that their parents used to have

Written by Elliot Lasson, Professor of the Practice and Graduate Program Director, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

The summer jobs of the days of old are becoming fewer and fewer.Paulette Kaytor/www.shutterstock.com

Back in the day, most teens had some sort of job lined up for the summer. For some, it was an extension of an after-school job they held during the year. For others, it was a seasonal type of job such as working at a drugstore or as a lifeguard in a...

I’m an economist riding a bike across America, defying what the data says about cycling's safety

Written by Jay L. Zagorsky, Economist and Research Scientist, The Ohio State University

Cycling can be more dangerous than it looks.AP Photo/Kevin Clifford

It’s summer, a time when many people who might have spent the winter hibernating get outside and start being more active by doing things like playing sports and going for bike rides.

While raising your heart rate and exercising your muscles is unquestionably a good thing,...

Arrested development: Can we improve cardiac arrest survival in hospitals?

Written by Brahmajee Nallamothu, Professor of Internal Medicine, Division of Cardiovascular Diseases, University of Michigan

How teams respond to cardiac arrests in hospitals can make all the difference, a new study suggests. antoniodiaz/Shutterstock.com

Each July brings residents – recent graduates from medical schools – to the inpatient wards of major teaching hospitals across the United States. Among the many new responsibilities these young doctors will...

What are madrasa schools and what skills do they impart?

Written by Myriam Renaud, Ph.D. Candidate in Religious Thought and Ethics, University of Chicago

Students at a madrasa in the Assaba region of southern Mauritania in May 2014.Michal Huniewicz, CC BY

Turkey’s recently reelected president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has made expansion of Muslim schools a top priority. Erdogan’s government is reported to have approved a religious education budget of US$1.5 billion this year, an increase of...

Congress could declaw restrictions on politicking from the pulpit — over the objections of many churches

Written by Samuel Brunson, Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago

President Trump signed an executive order related to the Johnson Amendment in 2017.AP Photo/Evan Vucci

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump promised his Evangelical supporters that he would eliminate the Johnson Amendment, a law that has barred tax-exempt charities from weighing in on political candidates since the 1950s.

Trump reiterated his...

Weaponized information seeks a new target in cyberspace: Users' minds

Written by Richard Forno, Senior Lecturer, Cybersecurity & Internet Researcher, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Cyberattacks target Americans' thinking.Fancy Tapis/Shutterstock.com

The Russian attacks on the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the country’s continuing election-related hacking have happened across all three dimensions of cyberspace – physical, informational and cognitive. The first two are well-known: For years, hackers have...

After summit Russians like Trump more, Americans less

Written by Erik C. Nisbet, Associate Professor of Communication, Political Science, and Environmental Policy and Faculty Associate with the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, The Ohio State University

President Donald Trump has garnered a great deal of criticism in the United States for his performance at the summit with Russian Vladimir Putin. But how was Trump’s performance viewed by the Russian public?

Our analysis of Russian polling data collected before and after the summit suggests one outcome of this meeting was a significant rise...