The Conversation

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...

The decline in foreign students hurts America's future

Written by Paula Caligiuri, Distinguished Professor of International Business and Strategy, Northeastern University

Multicultural friendships formed in college help develop students' cultural agilityRawpixel / Shutterstock.com

The Trump administration’s nationalism (as most recently witnessed in his pro-travel ban Twitter reaction to the London attacks) has had an unfortunate effect on universities in the United States. Namely, some international students,...

The psychological benefits – and trappings – of nostalgia

Written by Krystine Batcho, Professor of Psychology, Le Moyne College

Winslow Homer's 'Boys in a Pasture' (1874).Wikimedia Commons

In his song “Time Was,” counterculture singer Phil Ochs reminisces about a past “when a man could build a home, have a family of his own. The peaceful years would flow; he could watch his children grow. But it was a long time ago.”

To Ochs, simpler times were...

Trump's push for self-sufficiency misses the point of safety net programs

Written by David Campbell, Associate Professor of Public Administration, Binghamton University, State University of New York

The Trump administration wants to shrink the safety net.www.shutterstock.com

Here’s how Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has tried to justify the Trump administration’s bid to cut or scrap many safety net programs:

“We are no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people...

What's hidden behind the walls of America's prisons

Written by Heather Ann Thompson, Professor of History and Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan

Inmates at the California Institution for Men state prison in Chino, California in 2011. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Few Americans fully appreciate just how many of their fellow citizens are ensnared in the criminal justice system.

Some may have heard that there are about 2.3 million people behind bars, but that figure tells only part of the story....