The Conversation

How Trump's global health budget endangers Americans

Written by Gerald W. Parker, Director, Pandemic and Biosecurity Policy Program, Scowcroft Institute for International Affairs, Bush School of Government and Public Service, and Associate Dean for Global One Health, College of Veterinary Medicine, Texas A&M Unive

Pandemics – global outbreaks of infectious diseases like the 1918 influenza that killed 40 million people and the 2009 H1N1 virus, which caused up to 203,000 fatalities – are among the greatest threats the world faces. But the Trump administration wants to cut more than US$2 billion in global health funding.

As experts with diverse...

Why restoring morale is important to mental health in difficult times

Written by Joan Cook, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University

City workers in London place flowers in the heart of the city after terrorism killed seven people and wounded 40 others. Tim Ireland/AP

The term demoralization was originally coined in the 1970s by a psychiatrist who was seeing patients that didn’t quite meet full criteria for major depression. Nonetheless, they were suffering – in a...

How does IS claim responsibility for a terrorist attack?

Written by Monica Duffy Toft, Professor of International Politics, Tufts University

An Iraqi soldier inspects a train tunnel adorned with an Islamic State group flag in Mosul, Iraq. AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed

News outlets have reported that the Islamic State claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack on a London Bridge June 3.

But how do they know? And how reliable are such claims?

We asked Monica Duffy Toft, an international...

Four reasons why the French parliamentary elections matter

Written by Garret Martin, Professorial Lecturer, American University School of International Service

Electoral posters of a candidate in the upcoming parliamentary elections, in Marseille, France.AP Photo/Claude Paris

The 2017 French presidential election saw the victory of newcomer Emmanuel Macron. But the French aren’t done voting. Elections for the lower house of French Parliament, the National Assembly, will take place on June 11 and 18....

Why Amazon should keep prescription drugs off its voluminous shelves

Written by C. Michael White, Professor and Head of the Department of Pharmacy Practice, University of Connecticut

A pharmacist prepares to grind up a potion from unidentified pills the old-fashioned way.AP Photo/Ruben Goldberg

Amazon hit a milestone this month after the price of one share hit US$1,000 for the first time, giving it a total value of close to $500 billion. That makes it the fourth-biggest company in the U.S. in terms of market capitalization and...

Why schools still can't put segregation behind them

Written by Derek Black, Professor of Law, University of South Carolina

The Supreme Court ruling of Brown v. Board of Education to desegregate U.S. public schools sparked protests across the country. This one took place in Louisville, Kentucky, 1956. AP Photo

A federal district court judge has decided that Gardendale – a predominantly white city in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama – can move forward in...

Can ocean science bring Cuba and the United States together?

Written by Jorge Alberto Angulo-Valdes, Visiting Research Scholar, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Florida

U.S. Navy diver off the coast of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.MC2 Kori Melvin, U.S. Navy/Wikipedia

Cuba is the ecological crown jewel of the Caribbean. It harbors thousands of the region’s endemic species and about half of its coastal ecosystems. It is rare to find comparable ecosystems or such rich biodiversity anywhere in the Caribbean, and perhaps...

Aid workers face an underreported sexual violence crisis

Written by Dyan Mazurana, Associate Research Professor, Tufts University

These South Sudanese soldiers are among those accused of rape, torture, killing and looting during an attack on aid workers.AP Photo/Bullen Chol

The world’s approximately 450,000 humanitarian aid workers operate amid armed conflicts and natural disasters, often in some of the world’s most dangerous countries. They’re not immune to...

Illusions influence our predictions about how well we'll remember in the future

Written by David J. Frank, Postdoctoral Scholar in Psychology, Case Western Reserve University

OK, I've got this....Illinois Springfield, CC BY-NC-ND

Every day we make decisions based on how we think our memory works. A student decides how long to study for an exam. A shopper decides whether or not to make a grocery list. An FBI director decides whether to write the contents of a concerning conversation in a memo or to trust he would never...

We use big data to sentence criminals. But can the algorithms really tell us what we need to know?

Written by Melissa Hamilton, Visiting Criminal Law Scholar, University of Houston Law Center, University of Houston

Use of data-driven risk assessments in sentencing may be heard by the Supreme Court.Karen Neoh/flickr, CC BY

In 2013, a man named Eric L. Loomis was sentenced for eluding police and driving a car without the owner’s consent.

When the judge weighed Loomis’ sentence, he considered an array of evidence, including the results of an...