The Conversation

Get a flu shot now – for your benefit and your neighbors'

Written by Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert, Commissioner of Health and Hospitals of Rockland County, Fellows Ambassador New York Academy of Medicine, Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Public Health, New York Medical College, Certified Physician Executive, Assistan

A nurse in Atlanta reaches for a vial of vaccine to prepare for an injection. David Goldman/AP Photo

If you do nothing else the next few days, get a flu shot.

The best time to get a flu shot is by the end of October, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises. Considering the severity of last year’s flu, it is especially important...

Yes, eating meat affects the environment, but cows are not killing the climate

Written by Frank M. Mitloehner, Professor of Animal Science and Air Quality Extension Specialist, University of California, Davis

Cattle grazing on public lands near Steens Mountain, Oregon.BLM/Greg Shine, CC BY

As the scale and impacts of climate change become increasingly alarming, meat is a popular target for action. Advocates urge the public to eat less meat to save the environment. Some activists have called for taxing meat to reduce consumption of it.

A key claim...

Spread of self-driving cars could cause more pollution – unless the electric grid transforms radically

Written by Peter Fox-Penner, Director, Institute for Sustainable Energy, and Professor of Practice, Questrom School of Business, Boston University

A cleaner future with autonomous vehicles is not a sure thing.AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

The world is on the cusp of dramatic changes in the ways people own, operate and power their means of transportation.

Known as the “three revolutions,” a term coined by UC Davis transportation professor Daniel Sperling, the new trends are: electric...

Foundations are making climate change a bigger priority

Written by Morten Wendelbo, Research Fellow, American University

When subsistence farmers become climate refugees, who will help them pay the cost of relocation? gregorioa/Shutterstock.com

Twenty-nine mostly U.S.-based philanthropic institutions, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation plan to spend an unpre...

Tanzanian president bluntly attacks contraception, saying high birth rates are good for economy

Written by Kristen Carey, PhD Candidate in History, Boston University

Tanzania was one of the first sub-Saharan African nations to embrace family planning as a national development priority.US Air Force, CC BY-SA

Tanzanian President John Magufuli has suspended advertising by family planning organizations until further review, raising outcry among human rights groups and causing unrest within Tanzania’s health...

Collaboration, not fighting, is what the rural West is really about

Written by Steven C. Beda, Instructor of History, University of Oregon

Harney County, Ore., sign.Wikimedia/Ken Lund, CC BY-SA

Dick Jenkins is a fourth-generation rancher living in Oregon’s most remote county. I wanted to know why he continues living in a rural community, even though life elsewhere might be easier.

“Taking care of [the land] is worth more than all the money in the world,” he told me....

My thoughts are my password, because my brain reactions are unique

Written by Wenyao Xu, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

A test subject entering a brain password.Wenyao Xu, et al., CC BY-ND

Your brain is an inexhaustible source of secure passwords – but you might not have to remember anything. Passwords and PINs with letters and numbers are relatively easily hacked, hard to remember and generally insecure. Biometrics are starting to take their place, with...

Republican women are just fine, thank you, with being Republican

Written by Christine A. Kray, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Rochester Institute of Technology

'Women for Trump' listening to President Donald Trump speak at a campaign rally in Wheeling, WV, in September.AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Republican women have faced a conundrum repeatedly in the last two years.

In the cases of Donald Trump, Roy Moore and Brett Kavanaugh, the question facing them has been whether to support a male Republican leader...

Hambre mundial aumenta por tercer año consecutivo debido al cambio climático

Written by Jessica Eise, Ross Fellow in the Brian Lamb School of Communication Doctoral Program, Purdue University

Un hombre camina por un invernadero al noreste de Uganda, donde se enseñan técnicas de agricultura sostenible, como cultivos resistentes a las sequías y plantación de árboles. Fotografía del 19 de octubre de 2017.AP Photo/Adelle Kalakouti

El hambre en el mundo ha aumentado por tercer año consecutivo,...

Democrats can't count on Latinos to swing the midterms

Written by Steffen W. Schmidt, Lucken Endowed Professor of Political Science, Iowa State University

Latinos make up 12 percent of all registered voters in the US, but less than half vote regularly.AP Photo/Isaac Brekken, File

Democrats are ready to turn out in record numbers for November’s midterm elections, surveys show, particularly women and older voters.

But not all members of the party are as motivated.

Democrats have “a Latino...