The Conversation

COVID-19 reveals how obesity harms the body in real time, not just over a lifetime

Written by Cate Varney, Clinician Physician, University of Virginia

A COVID-19 patient is connected to life-sustaining devices at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital in Oceanside, New York on April 14, 2020. Jeffrey Basinger/Newsday via Getty Images

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust the obesity epidemic once again into the spotlight, revealing that obesity is no longer a disease that harms just in the long run but one...

Delinquent electric bills from the pandemic are coming due – who will pay them?

Written by Theodore J. Kury, Director of Energy Studies, University of Florida

Who picks up the bill when customers can't pay?iStock / Getty Images Plus

The shutdowns and restrictions that governments have imposed to limit the spread of COVID-19 have made it hard for many households to afford basic needs. Thousands of Americans are struggling to pay monthly utility bills.

Utilities and policymakers recognized that services...

How Reagan's notions of a 'good society' resonate with Trump supporters today

Written by Diane Winston, Associate Professor and Knight Center Chair in Media & Religion, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

Ronald Reagan with his Democratic challenger Walter Mondale soon after a debate in 1984.AP Photo

If a ballooning federal deficit, tax breaks for the wealthy, rising income inequality, structural racism and cowboy diplomacy sound familiar, it’s because they were big issues in the 2020 presidential race.

But they’re not new. They also...

Remote education is rife with threats to student privacy

Written by Nir Kshetri, Professor of Management, University of North Carolina – Greensboro

Students are being forced to disclose sensitive information online. urbazon/Getty Images

An online “proctor” who can survey a student’s home and manipulate the mouse on their computer as the student takes an exam. A remote-learning platform that takes face scans and voiceprints of students. Virtual classrooms where strangers can po...

5 types of misinformation to watch out for while ballots are being counted – and after

Written by Kate Starbird, Associate Professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington

Mail-in and absentee ballots, like these being processed by election workers in Pennsylvania, are a subject of misinformation spreading across social media.AP Photo/Matt Slocum

With no clear winner yet in the presidential election, there’s an opportunity for partisan activists, conspiracy theorists and others to exploit public uncertainty and...

Congress could select the president in a disputed election

Written by Donald Brand, Professor, College of the Holy Cross

If the House of Representatives selects the president, each state would get a single vote – not one vote per House member. iStock/Getty

President Donald Trump’s campaign is challenging results of battleground states with lawsuits, hoping to litigate its way to a win in the 2020 election. But the Founding Fathers meant for Congress...

Trump's Pennsylvania lawsuits invoke Bush v. Gore – but the Supreme Court probably won't decide the 2020 election

Written by Steven Mulroy, Law Professor in Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Election Law, University of Memphis

Judges can intervene in elections, but the Supreme Court really prefers not to.Jantanee Phoolmas/Moment via Getty Images

The Trump campaign has filed two lawsuits in federal court over ballot counting and voting deadlines in Pennsylvania, threatening to take the election to the Supreme Court. Both consciously echo the two main legal theories of Bush...

3 scholars explain Senate results in South Carolina, Iowa and Arizona - and what they say about voters

Written by Paul Lasley, Professor of Sociology, Iowa State University

Democrats needed to net three seats to win control of the Senate.L. Toshio Kishiyama/Getty Images

The past few election cycles have seen notable geographical shifts in voting. Rural voters – already a bedrock of GOP support – have supported the party by wider margins. The 2018 midterms, meanwhile, showed the suburbs increasingly turning...

A disputed election delivered 3 governors to Georgia – at the same time

Written by John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College

With three claimants, which one should hold the governor's seat?Lisa-Blue via Getty Images

As election results continue to come in around the country, it’s worth recalling that once, the state of Georgia found itself with a dead governor-elect – and three politicians who each insisted he was the real governor.

It’s a story I had...

Post-election grief is real, and here are 5 coping strategies – including getting back into politics

Written by Christopher Ojeda, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Tennessee

Shortly after Abraham Lincoln was elected on Nov. 6, 1860, a woman from Alabama, Sarah Espy, documented her concerns in her diary. She wrote that she felt “grieved,” and explained why. “For it is thought now to be certainty that Lincoln…and that the Southern States are going to withdraw from the Union. If so, it is the...