The Conversation

Sex trafficking in the US: 4 questions answered

Written by Monti Datta, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Richmond

Hotels and motels along major highways are common spots for sex trafficking.Ken Stocker/shutterstock.com

New England Patriots CEO Robert Kraft’s criminal charges in a suspected sex trafficking case in southern Florida draw new attention to this serious problem.

Sex trafficking, as the federal government defines it, is “the recruitment,...

Thoreau's great insight for the Anthropocene: Wildness is an attitude, not a place

Written by Robert M. Thorson, Professor of Geology, University of Connecticut

Henry David Thoreau lived at 255 Main Street in Concord, Massachusetts from 1850 until his death in 1862.John Phelan/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

When Americans quote writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, they often reach for his assertion that “In Wildness is the preservation of the world.” This phrase elicited little response when Thoreau...

3 ways activist kids these days resemble their predecessors

Written by David S. Meyer, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine

Yolanda Renee King, the grandchild of Martin Luther King Jr., alongside Jaclyn Corin, a Parkland survivor and activistAP Photo/Andrew Harnik

A gaggle of young activists recently paid Dianne Feinstein a visit at the senator’s San Francisco office, imploring her to support the Green New Deal framework for confronting climate change. She...

Veterans are concerned about climate change, and that matters

Written by Matthew Motta, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Science of Science Communication at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania

Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, the Navy's largest base, is endangered by sea level rise.Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ernest R. Scott

News that the Trump administration plans to create a panel devoted to challenging government warnings about climate change has been met with opposition from members of the U.S. military. Citing concerns...

University of California's break with the biggest academic publisher could shake up scholarly publishing for good

Written by MacKenzie Smith, University Librarian and Vice Provost for Digital Scholarship, University of California, Davis

Libraries subscribe digitally to academic journals – and are left with nothing in the stacks when the contract expires.Eric Chan/Flickr, CC BY

The University of California recently made international headlines when it canceled its subscription with scientific journal publisher Elsevier. The twittersphere lit up. And Elsevier’s parent...

11 things you can do to adjust to losing that 1 hour of sleep this weekend

Written by Deepa Burman, Co- Director Pediatric Sleep Evaluation Center and Associate professor of pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh

The loss of even an hour of sleep is hard on the body, and kids are particularly vulnerable.kornnphoto/Shutterstock.com

As clocks march ahead of time on March 10, 2019 and daylight saving time begins, there is a lot of anxiety around losing the hour of sleep and how to adjust to this change.

Usually an hour seems like an insignificant amount of time...

New AI art has artists, collaborators wondering: Who gets the credit?

Written by Aaron Hertzmann, Affiliate Faculty of Computer Science, University of Washington

An artificial image created on the Ganbreeder sitesgc/Ganbreeder

Over the past few years, many artists have started to use what’s called “neural network software” to create works of art.

Users input existing images into the software, which has been programmed to analyze them, learn a specific aesthetic and spit out new images that...

#StopThisShame, #GirlsAtDhaba, #WhyLoiter and more: women's fight against sexual harassment didn't start with #MeToo

Written by Alka Kurian, Senior Lecturer, School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington, Bothell

Indian women hold protests against sexual violence.AP Photo/Ajit Solanki, File

Just two months after allegations of sexual abuse against Hollywood film mogul Harvey Weinstein came to light in a 2017 New York Times article, women in at least 85 countries began using the the hashtag #MeToo, to speak against sexual harassment.

In China, sexual...

Once captives of Boko Haram, these students are finding new meaning in their lives in Pennsylvania

Written by Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob, Visiting International Scholar in International Studies & Political Science, Dickinson College

Chibok schoolgirls freed from Boko Haram captivity shown in Abuja, Nigeria in 2017.Olamikan Gbemiga/AP

Of all the challenges faced by people who’ve been displaced, perhaps none is more important than to find new meaning in their lives. And so it is with the four young women who are students in a college prep class that I teach at Dickinson...

How to prevent the 'robot apocalypse' from ending labor as we know it

Written by Thomas Kochan, Professor of Management, Co-Director of the MIT Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research, MIT Sloan School of Management

Fears of robots taking nearly half of human occupations have been overblown.Mykola Holyutyak/Shutterstock.com

It seems not a day goes by without the appearance of another dire warning about the future of work.

Some alarmists fear a “robot apocalypse,” while others foresee the day of “singularity” coming when artificial...