The Conversation

How one federal agency took care of its workers during the yellow fever pandemic in the 1790s

Written by Julia Mansfield, Visiting Assistant Professor of History, St. Joseph's University

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, at a Senate GOP lunch meeting on March 20, 2020, to discuss the 'phase 3' coronavirus stimulus bill. Getty/ Drew Angerer

U.S. lawmakers are debating strategies to stem the economic impact of the coronavirus. With businesses across the country cutting back hours or closing, the pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of...

What happens to charitable giving when the economy falters?

Written by Patrick Rooney, Executive Associate Dean for Academic Programs, Professor of Economics and Philanthropic Studies, IUPUI

Will Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan quickly get money to charities?Peter Barreras/Invision/AP

As the new coronavirus pandemic sends the economy into a tailspin, Patrick Rooney, an economist at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, and Jon Bergdoll, a philanthropy statistician, explain what usually happens to giving during...

Buildings grown by bacteria -- new research is finding ways to turn cells into mini-factories for materials

Written by Wil Srubar, Assistant Professor of Architectural Engineering and Materials Science, University of Colorado Boulder

A block of sand particles held together by living cells.The University of Colorado Boulder College of Engineering and Applied Science, CC BY-ND

Buildings are not unlike a human body. They have bones and skin; they breathe. Electrified, they consume energy, regulate temperature and generate waste. Buildings are organisms – albeit inanimate...

Ancient Greeks purged city-states of disease as they would a human body – and it was the most vulnerable that suffered

Written by Meghan Henning, Assistant Professor of Christian Origins, University of Dayton

The Plague of Athens.Michiel Sweerts/ Los Angeles County Museum of Art/Wikipedia

With the spread of the coronavirus, the world is becoming pointedly aware of the extent to which human beings are interconnected. The rapid spread of the virus has highlighted how much we are dependent upon one another, not just for basic biological needs, but also for...

Coronavirus, los niños y las escuelas: experta en salud pública contesta 4 preguntas

Written by Aubree Gordon, Professor of Public Health, University of Michigan

Una escuela cerrada en la ciduad de New Rochelle, Nueva York, 11 de marzo, 2020.AP Photo/Chris Erhmann

Nota de Editor: La Organización Mundial de la Salud ha declarado una pandemia por coronavirus, y mas casos han sido anunciados en diferentes estados. El cierre de escuelas, como el cierre estatal de escuelas en Ohio, Oregon, Maryland, Nuevo...

When restaurants close, Americans lose much more than a meal

Written by Rebecca L. Spang, Professor of History and Director, Liberal Arts and Management Program (LAMP), Indiana University

The Big Texan restaurant, Amarillo, Texas.Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress

Arnold Schwarzenegger tweeted a video of himself on March 15 saying: “No more restaurants.” Seated in his palatial kitchen with two miniature horses, Whiskey and Lulu, beside him, the former California governor pronounced: “We don’t go out, we...

Workers left out of government and business response to the coronavirus

Written by Thomas Kochan, Professor of Management, Co-Director of the MIT Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research, MIT Sloan School of Management

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Walmart CEO Doug McMillon at a White House press conference joining government and corporate officials – but no representatives of workers.AP Photo/Alex Brandon

As the coronavirus crisis unfolds, workers and families around the country are finding out how weak the U.S. social safety net is.

Nearly three...

We are entering a recession – but what did we learn from the last one?

Written by Ken-Hou Lin, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin

Families recovered from the Great Depression much more quickly than the Great Recession.Bettmann/Getty Images

As the coronavirus continues to spread around the world, it is abundantly clear that the global economy is entering a recession – the first we’ve seen since 2008.

Some officials have compared the last period of economic decline...

3 ways the coronavirus pandemic is changing who we are

Written by Arie Kruglanski, Professor of Psychology, University of Maryland

The pandemic has made us into breaking news junkies.Getty/Olivier Douliery / AFP

For most Americans, the coronavirus pandemic represents a completely unprecedented circumstance, as novel as it is life-changing. No event in recent history has affected us as profoundly and pervasively.

Not only does it remind us of our physical fragility, it...

COVID-19 treatment might already exist in old drugs – we're using pieces of the coronavirus itself to find them

Written by Nevan Krogan, Professor and Director of Quantitative Biosciences Institute, University of California, San Francisco

There are 20,000 FDA approved drugs. One of them might fight COVID-19, if we can find it. Peter Dazeley/The Image Bank via Getty Images

Why don’t we have drugs to treat COVID-19 and how long will it take to develop them?

SARS-CoV-2 – the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19 – is completely new and attacks cells in a novel...