The Conversation

Even before COVID-19, US nursing homes were filling empty beds with psychiatric patients

Written by Don Martin, Director, Urban School Counseling Graduate Program, Youngstown State University

Many elderly residents of nursing homes are seeing younger patients move in, often with mental illnesses. Steve Smith via Getty Images

One year ago, a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, became an early battleground for the U.S. coronavirus outbreak. The disease has since decimated nursing home populations – more than one-third of the...

Your favorite fishing stream may be at high risk from climate change – here’s how to tell

Written by Danielle Hare, Hydrogeologist, Graduate Research Assistant, University of Connecticut

Stream temperature affects the survival of fish like salmon and trout.Peter Adams/Avalon/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Many of the streams that people count on for fishing, water and recreation are getting warmer as global temperatures rise. But they aren’t all heating up in the same way.

If communities can figure out where these...

Why repressive Saudi Arabia remains a US ally

Written by Jeffrey Fields, Associate Professor of the Practice of International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

A demonstrator dressed as Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with blood on his hands protests outside the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 8, 2018.Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman “approved an operation … to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” according...

Pope's upcoming visit brings attention to the dwindling population of Christians in Iraq

Written by Ramazan Kılınç, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Nebraska Omaha

A mural depicting Pope Francis on a concrete wall around the Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad, in preparation for the pontiff's visit, AP/Photo/Khalid Mohammed

Pope Francis will arrive in Iraq on Friday in a first-ever papal visit to the country that is expected to raise awareness about the challenges facing Iraqi Christians – a...

Colleges are eliminating sports teams – and runners and golfers are paying more of a price than football or basketball players

Written by Molly Ott, Associate Professor of Higher & Postsecondary Education, Arizona State University

Over 5,000 student-athletes were directly affected by a recent wave of shutdowns of intercollegiate sports teams.Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

North Carolina Central University, a historically Black college, announced in February that its men’s baseball team – which formed in 1911 – would cease to exist after this...

News organizations that want journalists to engage with their audience may be setting them up for abuse

Written by Jacob L. Nelson, Assistant Professor of Digital Audience Engagement, Arizona State University

Women journalists who engage with their audience often experience harassment and ugly comments.Justin Paget/Stone/Getty Images

News organizations are trying to do a better job connecting with their audiences, in hopes of overcoming the profession’s credibility problems and ensuring its long-term survival.

To do this, a growing number of...

Forcibly sterilized during Fujimori dictatorship, thousands of Peruvian women demand justice

Written by Ñusta Carranza Ko, Assistant Professor, School of Public and International Affairs, University of Baltimore

Victims of forced sterilizations protest in Lima, Peru, in 2014. Public hearings to uncover this dark chapter of the Fujimori dictatorship began in January. Erneseto Benavides/AFP via Getty Images

The regime of Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori sterilized 272,028 people between 1996 and 2001, the majority of them Indigenous women from poor, rural...

Scientist at work: Tracking the epic journeys of migratory birds in northwest Mexico

Written by Julián García Walther, PhD Student in Ornithology, University of South Carolina

Shorebirds gather by the thousands at important feeding and resting areas, but how individual birds move among sites remains a mystery.Julian Garcia-Walther, CC BY-ND

One morning in January, I found myself 30 feet (9 meters) up a tall metal pole, carrying 66 pounds (35 kilograms) of aluminum antennas and thick weatherproofed cabling. From this...

Two gaps to fill for the 2021-2022 winter wave of COVID-19 cases

Written by Maciej F. Boni, Associate Professor of Biology, Penn State

A sign in County Kildare, Ireland. in March 2020. Epidemiologists around the world worked hard to try to stop big parties in the face of rising caseloads of what would come to be called COVID-19. Niall Carson/PA Images via Getty Images

Epidemiologists – like oncologists and climate scientists – hate to be proven right. A year ago this...

How some people can end up living at airports for months – even years – at a time

Written by Janet Bednarek, Professor of History, University of Dayton

Mehran Karimi Nasseri sits among his belongings in a 2004 photograph taken at Charles de Gaulle Airport, where he lived for nearly 18 years.Eric Fougere/VIP Images/Corbis via Getty Images

In January, local authorities arrested a 36-year-old man named Aditya Singh after he had spent three months living at Chicago’s O'Hare International Airport....