With each terrorist attack on another airport, train station or other public space, the urgency to find new ways to detect bombs before they’re detonated ratchets up.

Chemical detection of explosives is a cornerstone of aviation security. Typically...

Lawmakers meet today to try to finalize legislation to solve the nation’s opioid crisis. It’s an issue that The Conversation has been covering for many months.

How can it be that nearly half a million people in the U.S. are addicted to heroin and another two million have substance use disorders related to prescription drug abuse? In...

The 1990s were a high-water mark for public interest in UFOs and alien abduction. Shows like “The X-Files” and Fox’s “alien autopsy” hoax were prime-time events, while MIT even hosted an academic conference on the abduction phenomenon.

But in the first decade of the 21st century, interest in UFOs began to wane. Fewer...

In California, about 74 percent of people who leave prison return within 12 months. Considering that the California prison system paroles about 45,000 people each year, this recidivism rate presents serious problems for policymakers and correctional agency administrators. It’s a revolving door – one that needs to be stopped.

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With three billion camera-equipped cellphones in circulation, we are awash in visual information. Cameras are lighter, smaller and cheaper than ever and they’re everywhere, making it possible for nearly anyone to watch, create, share and video.

One of the most dramatic ways camera proliferation is changing our lives is in the area of law...

Beneath fields of corn and soybeans across the U.S. Midwest lies an unseen network of underground pipes. These systems, which are known as tile drainage networks, channel excess water out of soil and carry it to lakes, streams and...

Venezuela is a nation rich with natural resources such as oil, gold, diamonds and other minerals. Yet, it is experiencing a crisis in which most people cannot find food or medicine.

In the past several months, there has been great social unrest in Venezuela. Venezuelans are going out on the streets demanding their basic needs, and storming delivery...

Donald Trump has been bashing free trade for much of his campaign. But in recent weeks he’s taken his anti-trade tirades to a whole new level in lashing out at the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a deal that was signed by its 12 Asia-Pacific members but has yet to be ratified.

On June 22, he told a crowd in New York City that the TPP would...

Ramadan, a month of intense prayer and fasting, has been especially trying for American Muslims this summer: Other than the heat, the small community has been grappling with the aftermath of the massacre in Orlando and the presumptive Republican Party candidate Donald Trump’s call to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, not to...

On June 10 Americans celebrated Muhammad Ali as a paragon of athletic prowess, dignity in the face of suffering and patriotic dissent.

But his fellow American Muslims more commonly find themselves cast as a “problem” for American religious pluralism and a threat to American security. They join a long list of religious groups who have...