The Conversation

States drop COVID-19 mask mandates but still expect people to mask up – will they?

Written by Murray J. Côté, Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management, Texas A&M University

Texas' announced it is ending its COVID-19 restrictions. Its vaccination rate is among the lowest in the U.S., and its case numbers are still high.Montinique Monroe/Getty Images

The governors of Texas and Mississippi announced that they were rescinding their statewide mask mandates and allowing restaurants and other businesses to return to 100%...

Women in Afghanistan worry peace accord with Taliban extremists could cost them hard-won rights

Written by Mona Tajali, Assistant Professor in IR and WGSS, Agnes Scott College

Audience members listen to Afghan parliamentarian Fawzia Koofi speak in 2014. Women's access to politics increased greatly after the Taliban's 2001 ouster.Sha Marai/AFP via Getty Images

Three Afghan women who worked at a media company were gunned down in Jalalabad in early March. In January, unidentified gunmen killed two female Supreme Court...

10 years after Fukushima, safety is still nuclear power's greatest challenge

Written by Kiyoshi Kurokawa, Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo

An International Atomic Energy Agency investigator examines Reactor Unit 3 at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant, May 27, 2011.Greg Webb, IAEA/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Ten years ago, on March 11, 2011, the biggest recorded earthquake in Japanese history hit the country’s northeast coast. It was followed by a tsunami that traveled up to 6 miles (10...

The oil industry says it might support a carbon tax – here's why that could be good for producers and the public alike

Written by Richard Schmalensee, Professor Emeritus, Member of National Bureau of Economic Research Board of Directors, MIT Sloan School of Management

Regulations have an accountability problem.AP Photo/Gregory Bull

The oil industry’s lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute, suggested in a new draft statement that it might support Congress putting a price on carbon emissions to combat climate change, even though oil and gas are major sources of those greenhouse gas emissions.

An...

Backlash against Johnson Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine is real and risky – here's how to make its rollout a success

Written by Tinglong Dai, Associate Professor of Operations Management & Business Analytics, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing

The concern is about more than one shot vs. two.Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

More than 50 million Americans have received at least one dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. So far, Americans have been largely brand-agnostic, but that’s about to change as a new vaccine rolls out.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been hailed...

Support for QAnon is hard to measure – and polls may overestimate it

Written by James Shanahan, Dean of the Media School, Indiana University

It's not clear exactly how many people believe or follow QAnon.AP Photo/Matt Rourke

It’s hard to know how many people actually believe the key tenets of QAnon’s claims, including that devil-worshipping, cannibalistic pedophiles are somehow running the world. Its adherents have caused violence and insurrection, as happened at the U.S....

Support for Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package may not be as broad as it seems – it's all a matter of perspective

Written by Aaron Saiewitz, Associate Professor of Accounting, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Government spending bills that cost billions or trillions of dollars can seem abstract.Siri Stafford/DigitalVision via Getty Images

CC BY-NC-ND

Congress is on the verge of spending US$1.9 trillion to provide additional coronavirus relief to Americans, including $1,400 direct payments and extended unemployment benefits. Opinion polls show the bill...

Women used to dominate the beer industry – until the witch accusations started pouring in

Written by Laken Brooks, Doctoral Student of English, University of Florida

Three women dressed in Middle-Age period garb as alewives.Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images

What do witches have to do with your favorite beer?

When I pose this question to students in my American literature and culture classes, I receive stunned silence or nervous laughs. The Sanderson sisters didn’t chug down bottles of Sam...

Going forth with standardized tests may cause more problems than it solves

Written by Erin Marie Furtak, Professor of STEM Education and Associate Dean of Faculty, University of Colorado Boulder

Despite the many ways that COVID-19 has disrupted schools, the U.S. Department of Education will not give states a pass on giving standardized tests to students this year as it did in spring 2020. That’s according to new guidance the department issued Feb. 22.

The guidance invites states to request waivers to shorten tests, give the tests in...

Fungal microbiome: Whether mice get fatter or thinner depends on the fungi that live in their gut

Written by Kent Willis, Assistant Professor of Neonatology, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Fungi make up a small but important part of gut microbiomes.Mogana Das Murtey and Patchamuthu Ramasamy via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

Mice with certain communities of fungi living in their gut gained more weight when eating processed food than mice whose gut microbiomes...