The Conversation

Cancer vaccines could transform treatment and prevention – but misinformation about mRNA vaccines threatens their potential

Written by Dannell D. Boatman, Assistant Professor and Health Communication Researcher, West Virginia University

A cancer vaccine would only help patients if they were willing to take it.Javier Zayas Photography/Moment via Getty Images

Scientists are making rapid progress toward a long-awaited goal that could help to reshape cancer care: mRNA cancer vaccines with the potential to significantly boost the immune system’s ability to fight and eliminate...

Researchers develop biodegradable, plant-based packaging from natural fibers – new research

Written by J. Carson Meredith, Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Plastic packaging fills up landfills – engineers are working on a bio-based alternative that could replace the kind shown here. tuk69tuk/iStock via Getty Images

Jie Wu, an engineering graduate student, was studying a type of striking white beetle found in Southeast Asia and attempting to figure out how to mimic its brilliant color when an...

My research on wheelchair basketball challenges one of the biggest assumptions about sex differences in sports

Written by Leanne Snyder, Assistant Professor of Exercise Science, Loyola University Chicago

Physiological differences between women and men in sports may be far less pronounced in wheelchair basketball players.Steph Chambers/Staff via Getty Images Sports

Every March, millions of Americans fill out brackets and tune in to watch the NCAA college basketball tournaments known as March Madness. The men’s and women’s competitions...

Magic mushroom-infused products appear in Colorado gas stations – what public health officials want consumers to know

Written by David Kroll, Professor of Natural Products Pharmacology & Toxicology, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

This isn't the first time psilocybin-laced products have been found in Denver.John Moore/Getty Images

A Denver food and cannabis investigator became suspicious of PolkaDot-branded chocolate bars sitting next to convenience store energy shots and nicotine pouches in January 2026.

Months earlier, California public health officials warned about...

Tax changes taking effect in 2026 may boost the number of donors but lead to the US missing out on an estimated $5.7B a year in charitable giving

Written by Jon Bergdoll, Associate Director of Data Partnerships at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indiana University

New tax policies could change who gives and how much people and corporations donate. sesame/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images

Many provisions in the huge tax-and-spending package that President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025, sometimes called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, will influence how much money Americans give to charity....

In war-torn Iran, air pollution from burning oil depots and bombed buildings unleashes invisible health threats

Written by Armin Sorooshian, Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Arizona

A woman sifts through the rubble in her home after it was damaged by a missile on March 15, 2026, in Tehran. Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

The waves of U.S. and Israeli bomb strikes in Tehran and Beirut, and Iran’s missile and drone attacks on neighboring countries in response, are damaging more than buildings – they are sending toxic debris...

Paul Ehrlich, often called alarmist for dire warnings about human harms to the Earth, believed scientists had a responsibility to speak out

Written by William J. (Bill) Kovarik, Professor of Communication, Radford University

Biologist Paul R. Ehrlich in 2010.Paul R. Ehrlich/Wikipedia, CC BY

Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, who died March 15, 2026, in Palo Alto, California, was a scientific crusader whose dire predictions about population growth, world hunger and environmental collapse made headlines and sparked controversy for decades.

Sometimes called a...

The first modern rocket launched 100 years ago, beginning a century of both innovations and challenges for spaceflight

Written by Michael Carrafiello, Professor of History, Miami University

Robert Goddard, considered the father of modern rocketry, standing with a rocket in 1935. Esther Goddard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Apollo 11 first landed astronauts on the Moon in 1969, but the journey to the lunar surface actually began 43 years before, in snowy Massachusetts.

Exactly 100 years ago, on March 16, 1926, Robert H. Goddard launched...

Paleontologists uncover a new ‘Spinosaurus’ species by following a clue from a decades-old book into the Sahara Desert

Written by Paul C. Sereno, Professor of Paleontology, University of Chicago

In this illustration, _Spinosaurus mirabilis_ fight over a carcass some 95 million years ago in what is now the Sahara Desert in Niger. Dani Navarro

My fixation on a small, desolate locale in the heart of the Sahara Desert started with a single line buried in a 630-page tome in French about the rocks of the central Sahara: “Dent de Carcharodon...

What was the very first plant in the world?

Written by Erin Potter, Lecturer in Geography and Ph.D. student in Earth Sciences, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Once plants really got a foothold, they transformed our planet.Albert Fertl/Moment via Getty Images

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

What was the very first plant in the world? – Ivy, age 6, Phoenix

Long before dinosaurs...