The first time I traveled to the Amazon, in 2010, I had no idea what to expect. A doctoral student from the far-off Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte, I imagined that my field work – studying fish habitats in the largest tropical forest on Earth – would be all boat rides on immense rivers and long jungle hikes.

In fact, all my research...

As the National Rifle Association, the most influential gun rights advocacy group in the U.S., comes under pressure from victims’ groups and gun control advocates, internet companies like Amazon, Apple and YouTube are finding themselves uncomfortably...

One out of every 4 or 5. That’s how many students will display a significant mental health problem over the course of their lifetime.

Such students can be identified early with considerable accuracy if educators are given the right training and tools....

Every year at the Oscars, the cameras pan to the famed Hollywood sign and its bold white letters.

Ask someone today what the sign symbolizes, and the same words will likely crop up: Movies. Stardom. Glamour.

But as I point in my book on the Hollywood sign, the sign didn’t always represent fame and fortune. As the city...

When disaster strikes, it can change the fabric of a society – often through the sheer loss of human life. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami left 35,000 children without one or both parents in Indonesia alone. The Black Death killed more than 75 million...

Academia is in the midst of a crisis of relevance. Many Americans are ignoring the conclusions of scientists on a variety of issues including climate change and natural selection. Some state governments are cutting funding for higher education; the fe...

The Supreme Court on Feb. 26 heard arguments in a case that could deliver a devastating blow to organized labor.

The case concerns whether employees can be required to pay dues to a union even if they don’t belong to it, a debate that is similar to battles over...

Some 20 years ago, my colleague Dr. Chau Tran and I developed a way to simulate the trajectories of millions of basketballs on the computer.

We went to the coaches and assistant coaches at North Carolina State University, where we are based, and told them we had this...

Editor’s note: Government and academic investigators continue to probe reports from Cuba that, starting in 2016 and continuing through 2017, U.S. and Canadian diplomats and tourists may have been subjected to a “sonic weapon,” damaging...

Religious freedom legislation highlights political division in the U.S., pitting conservative Christians against LGBTQ people and their allies.

As sociologists who study sexuality and conservative Christianity in the U.S., we decided to investigate whether and why people support or oppose these...