The Conversation

Accelerating exoplanet discovery using chemical fingerprints of stars

Written by Natalie Hinkel, Planetary Astrophysicist, Senior Research Scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and Co-Investigator for the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS), Arizona State University

Planets form from a disc of dust orbiting a star.Mopic/Shutterstock.com

Stars are born when huge clouds of dust and gas collapse in on themselves and ignite. These clouds are made up of raw elements, like oxygen and titanium, and each cloud has a unique composition that imprints on the star. And within the stellar afterbirth – from the...

Biodiversity helps coral reefs thrive – and could be part of strategies to save them

Written by Cody Clements, Postdoctoral Fellow, Georgia Institute of Technology

A healthy coral reef at Swains island, American Samoa.NOAA/NMFS/PIFSC/CRED, Oceanography Team., CC BY

Coral reefs are home to so many species that they often are called “the rainforests of the seas.” Today they face a daunting range of threats, including ocean warming and acidification, overfishing and pollution. Worldwide, more than...

Italy’s minimal competition to host the 2026 Winter Olympics

Written by Mark Wilson, Professor, Urban & Regional Planning, School of Planning, Design and Construction, Michigan State University

Italy will host the 2026 Winter Games, the International Olympic Committee announced on June 24. The IOC, which organizes the Winter and Summer Games, chose a bid from Milan and the Alpine ski resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo over a single rival bid from the Swedish capital of Stockholm and the village of Åre. The field had narrowed to two...

Health care price transparency: Fool's gold, or real money in your pocket?

Written by J.B. Silvers, Professor of Health Finance, Weatherhead School of Management & School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University

The news is full of stories about monumental surprise hospital bills, sky-high drug prices and patients going bankrupt. The government’s approach to addressing this, via an executive order that President Trump signed June 24, 2019, is to make hospitals disclose prices, including negotiated rates with insurers, so that patients supposedly can...

Amazon, Google and Facebook warrant antitrust scrutiny for many reasons – not just because they're large

Written by Amanda Lotz, Fellow, Peabody Media Center; Professor of Media Studies, Queensland University of Technology

Google's size isn't the only reason way it exerts market power.AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

There’s a growing chorus of U.S. politicians, antitrust scholars and consumer watchdogs calling for stricter antitrust treatment of Amazon, Google, Facebook and other tech giants. Some even say they should be broken up.

Most recently, U.S. lawmakers launched a...

We probed Santorini's volcano with sound to learn what's going on beneath the surface

Written by Emilie Hooft, Associate Professor of Earth Sciences, Volcanology Cluster of Excellence, & Oregon Hazards Lab, University of Oregon

Sound waves let researchers visualize what's happening below the surface.Emilie Hooft, CC BY-ND

The island of Santorini in the Mediterranean has attracted people for millennia. Today, it feels magical to watch the sun set from cliffs over the deep bay, surrounded by cobalt blue churches and whitewashed houses. This mystical place attracts about 2...

Not all Americans have a fair path to a good death – racial disparities are real

Written by Jason Ashe, Doctoral Student (Ph.D.), Human Services Psychology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Not everyone has a chance to die in peace and dignity.

What does it mean to “die well”?

The world got an idea recently from the 92-year-old Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, who popularized mindfulness and meditation in the U.S. The monk returned to his home in Vietnam to pass his remaining years. Many admired his desire...

Identifying a fake picture online is harder than you might think

Written by Mona Kasra, Assistant Professor of Digital Media Design, University of Virginia

If you know how photo editing works, you might have a leg up at spotting fakes.Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com

It can be hard to tell whether a picture is real. Consider, as the participants in our recent research did, these two images and see whether you think neither, either or both of them has been doctored.

Image A: Is it real?Mona Kasra, CC BY-NDIm...

The civil rights activist so close to Martin Luther King Jr. she was thought of as his 'other wife'

Written by Jason Miller, Professor of English, North Carolina State University

Civil rights activist Dorothy Cotton teaches a student in one of her Citizenship Education Program classes.Bob Fitch Photography Archive, Department of Special Collections, © Stanford University Libraries, CC BY-NC

In a recent article published in Standpoint Magazine, Pulitzer Prize-winning Martin Luther King Jr. biographer David Garrow...

US poverty statistics ignore millions of struggling Americans

Written by Sophie Mitra, Professor of Economics, Fordham University

Unemployment and a loss of health insurance are two problems not necessarily captured in official poverty measures.tuaindeed/Shutterstock.com

Who counts as poor in the U.S. today?

Measuring the share of the population that experiences poverty is important to understanding and monitoring how the country’s economy is doing. It also informs the...