The Conversation

Detecting deepfakes by looking closely reveals a way to protect against them

Written by Siwei Lyu, Professor of Computer Science; Director, Computer Vision and Machine Learning Lab, University at Albany, State University of New York

Are any of these faces real?meyer_solutions/Shutterstock.com

Deepfake videos are hard for untrained eyes to detect because they can be quite realistic. Whether used as personal weapons of revenge, to manipulate financial markets or to destabilize international relations, videos depicting people doing and saying things they never did or said are a...

Accelerating exoplanet discovery using chemical signatures 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...

Facebook's Libra may be quite attractive in developing countries

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

A customer and vendor exchange electronic money through a mobile phone in Uganda.Ndiwulira/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency has taken a lot of criticism from Western government officials and media commentators – but it’s not meant for them. A major target market for the Libra is users in developing...

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

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...