The Conversation

Marriage is not as effective an anti-poverty strategy as you’ve been led to believe

Written by Eleanor Brown, Professor of Law, Fordham University

Despite the popular guidance, marriage can be an economic risk for single parents with unstable partners.simarik/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Brides.com predicts that 2024 will be the “year of the proposal” as engagements tick back up after a pandemic-driven slowdown.

Meanwhile, support for marriage has found new grist in recent books,...

Making it personal: Considering an issue’s relevance to your own life could help reduce political polarization

Written by Rebecca Dyer, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology, Hamilton College

Thinking about issues’ impact on their own lives can help people envision more common ground.wildpixel/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Political polarization can be reduced when people are told to think about the personal relevance of issues they might not care about at first glance.

We, a social psychologist and an evolutionary psychologist,...

Potato plant radiation sensors could one day monitor radiation in areas surrounding power plants

Written by Robert Sears, Graduate Research Assistant in Plant Science, University of Tennessee

Fields of genetically modified potato plants could detect radiation. AP Photo/John Miller

While expanding nuclear energy production would provide carbon-free power and can help countries around the world meet their climate goals, nuclear energy could also come with some inherent risk. Radioactive pollution damages the environment, and it’s...

I’ve been studying astronaut psychology since Apollo − a long voyage to Mars in a confined space could raise stress levels and make the journey more challenging

Written by Nick Kanas, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco

Crew members in space will spend lots of time together during future missions to Mars. NASA via AP

Within the next few decades, NASA aims to land humans on the Moon, set up a lunar colony and use the lessons learned to send people to Mars as part of its Artemis program.

While researchers know that space travel can stress space crew members both...

What is Alaskapox? A microbiologist explains the recently discovered virus that just claimed its first fatality

Written by Raúl Rivas González, Catedrático de Microbiología. Miembro de la Sociedad Española de Microbiología., Universidad de Salamanca

Red-backed voles may be harboring Alaskapox.iNaturalist Ecuador, CC BY-NC-SA

Alaskapox, a virus in the same family as smallpox, cowpox and mpox, claimed its first fatality in January 2024 when an elderly Alaskan man died of the illness.

The virus, which was discovered in 2015, had previously resulted in only relatively mild illnesses in the six...

3D printing promises more efficient ways to make custom explosives and rocket propellants

Written by Monique McClain, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University

3D printing can be used to build with all kinds of materials – even those that go 'boom.'kynny/iStock via Getty Images

Imagine you’re driving to work on a rainy day, when a distracted, reckless driver hits your car out of nowhere. With a “boom,” an air bag deploys faster than you can blink your eyes to save your life.

That...

Carbon offsets bring new investment to Appalachia’s coal fields, but most Appalachians aren’t benefiting

Written by Gabe Schwartzman, Assistant Professor of Geography and Sustainability, University of Tennessee

For decades, railroad tracks carried coal from eastern Tennessee to power plants in the eastern U.S.Appalachian Voices, CC BY

Central Appalachia is home to the third-largest concentration of forest carbon offsets traded on the California carbon market. But while these projects bring new investments to Appalachia, most people in Appalachia are not...

Murderous mice attack and kill nesting albatrosses on Midway Atoll − scientists struggle to stop this gruesome new behavior

Written by Wieteke Holthuijzen, Ph.D. Candidate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee

Their 'island naïveté' means these seabirds are easy pickings when mice attack.USFWS - Pacific Region/Flickr, CC BY-NC

At the far end of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands lies Kuaihelani – also known as Midway Atoll – a small set of islands home to the world’s largest albatross colony. Over a million albatrosses return...

Separate water fountains for Black people still stand in the South – thinly veiled monuments to the long, strange, dehumanizing history of segregation

Written by Rodney Coates, Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Miami University

In this 1938 image, a Black boy uses a fountain marked 'colored' at a North Carolina county courthouse.Getty Images

No one knows for certain when public facilities like bathrooms and drinking fountains were separated by race.

But starting in the 1890s, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized “separate but equal” in P...

How politicians can draw fairer election districts − the same way parents make kids fairly split a piece of cake

Written by Benjamin Schneer, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

Unchecked, politicians are likely to try to grab as much electoral power as they can.Fabrice LEROUGE/ONOKY via Getty Images

Redistricting – the process of determining the boundaries of election districts in which people vote – is a key element of politics that has more of an effect than people might realize. One Republican political...