Flying along the coast in Senegal, it’s impossible not to notice thousands of dots below in the water. These are large, planked fishing canoes, the product of centuries of design and tradition, and a vital part of the local economy.

When the fishing crews come home, Senegalese beaches...

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.

Can we colonize Mars? – Clara, age 9, Newton, Massachusetts

In all likelihood, the first Martian will be a...

When President Donald Trump likened a whistleblower’s White House sources to spies and made a lightly veiled reference to execution, he highlighted a longstanding peril facing those who come forward to alert the public to governmental wrongdoing.

In many instances,...

At the heart of the current crisis over President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is an intelligence whistleblower whose information has finally made it into public view.

The...

Beautiful people tend to have a lot more luck in the work world.

Research has shown people deemed attractive get paid more, receive better job evaluations and are generally more employable. It’s even been shown that good-looking CEOs bring better stock...

Native North Americans first arrived in Florida approximately 14,550 years ago. Evidence for these stone-tool-wielding, megafauna-hunting peoples can be found at the bottom of numerous limestone freshwater sinkholes in...

Flu vaccination prevents millions of flu-related illnesses and deaths annually, but vaccination rates are low for many reasons.

During the 2018-2019 flu season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that about 45% of U.S. adults received...

The story of climate change is one that people have struggled to tell convincingly for more than two decades. But it’s not for lack of trying.

The problem is emphatically not a lack of facts and figures. The world’s best scientific minds...

When states like Florida pass laws to put more police officers in schools, the idea is to keep kids safe.

But as the arrest of two six-year-olds in a Florida school in October has shown, sometimes one threat to the...

President Trump has called for ways to allow U.S. residents to buy cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. Many drugs are cheaper in Canada, thanks to government price controls in that country.

I teach a course in...