The Conversation

China's plan to put two-faced citizens on credit blacklist isn't all that foreign

Written by The Conversation Contributor

Deceitful Chinese may have trouble getting a mortgage in the not-too-distant future.Dragon faces via www.shutterstock.com

China has a problem.

No, not Donald Trump trying to savage it any time he comes within three feet of a microphone. It’s that enormous social shifts in recent years – like the forcible relocation of 250 million people f...

Purging daily demons: what's behind the popularity of exorcisms?

Written by The Conversation Contributor

An exorcism being performed in Fafe, Portugal.Jose Manuel Ribeiro/Reuters

At Texas State University, I teach an honors course called “Demonology, Possession, and Exorcism.” It’s not a gut course. My students produce research papers on topics that range from the role of sleep paralysis in reports of demonic attacks to contemporary...

How children with disabilities came to be accepted in public schools

Written by The Conversation Contributor

Today, kids with special needs can have access to education.Boy image via www.shutterstock.com

When Alan joined my class in September, I knew he needed help.

So did I.

Alan had lived in an orphanage ever since he was an infant and faced many challenges: he was older than the other kids and did not want to play with them. He didn’t use words...

Russia, Turkey and the US: between the terrible and the catastrophic

Written by The Conversation Contributor

The Turkish Embassy in Moscow under siege. Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

The downing of Russia’s plane by Turkish military forces over the skies of the Syrian-Turkish border has added yet another layer of complexity to the vortex of conflict in the Middle East.

Most of the prior concern had focused on the prospect of the US clashing with Russia...

Locavore or vegetarian? What's the best way to reduce climate impact of food?

Written by The Conversation Contributor

Low food miles: a farmers market in Pennsylvania. Danny Jensen/flickr, CC BY-NC

This year’s Thanksgiving feast falls only a few days before the start of the global climate summit in Paris. Although the connections are not always obvious, the topic of food – and what you choose to eat – has a lot to do with climate change.

Our...

Passeth the cranb'rry sauce! The medieval origins of Thanksgiving

Written by The Conversation Contributor

Dutch painter Pieter Claesz's Still Life with Turkey Pie (1627) features a cooked turkey that's been placed back inside its original skin, feathers and all. Wikimedia Commons

How and why did the dishes served at Thanksgiving dinner come to be so fixed?

Many assume that most of them were simply eaten by the Pilgrims during the first Thanksgiving. For...

Machine learning and big data know it wasn't you who just swiped your credit card

Written by The Conversation Contributor

Whose hand is on the card?Reuters/Issei Kato

You’re sitting at home minding your own business when you get a call from your credit card’s fraud detection unit asking if you’ve just made a purchase at a department store in your city. It wasn’t you who bought expensive electronics using your credit card – in fact,...

Why do women need special laws to protect them from violence?

Written by The Conversation Contributor

A woman and a child walk amidst an art installation of 745 pairs of women's red shoes, put on display by Mexican visual artist Elina Chauvet to protest against gender violence and femicide, at La Constitucion Square in Malaga, southern Spain, June 12 2015. Jon Nazca/Reuters

November 25 marks the United Nations International Day for the Elimination...

From the clinic to the street: how the explosion in prescription painkillers has created more heroin users

Written by The Conversation Contributor

A man injects himself with heroin using a needle obtained from the People's Harm Reduction Alliance, the nation's largest needle-exchange program, in Seattle, Washington.David Ryder/Reuters

In the early years of my clinical practice as a psychologist treating heroin users, I commonly saw adolescents and young adults using heroin as their first...

Why Thanksgiving tells a story of America's pluralism

Written by The Conversation Contributor

What is the history of the Thanksgiving dinner?Nast, Thomas, 1840-1902, Library of Congress

Thanksgiving has been a focus of autumn grade-school curriculum for a hundred years.

Because of its paradoxical combination of tradition and invention, its appeals to the past and to the future, its ancestor worship and its acceptance of diversity,...