The Conversation

Nazi genocides of Jews and Roma were entangled from the start – and so are their efforts at Holocaust remembrance today

Written by Ari Joskowicz, Associate Professor of History, Jewish Studies and European Studies, Vanderbilt University

Franz Roselbach, a Roma survivor of the Holocaust who was sent to Auschwitz when he was 15, attends a ceremony at the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 2006. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

When the United Nations passed a resolution to designate Jan. 27 International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it did not define the Holocaust. The 2005...

How to protect your data privacy: A digital media expert provides steps you can take and explains why you can’t go it alone

Written by Nathan Schneider, Assistant Professor of Media Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

You probably know you're being tracked online, but what can you do about it?Malte Mueller/fStop via Getty Images

Perfect safety is no more possible online than it is when driving on a crowded road with strangers or walking alone through a city at night. Like roads and cities, the internet’s dangers arise from choices society has made. To...

From New York to Jakarta, land in many coastal cities is sinking faster than sea levels are rising

Written by Pei-Chin Wu, Ph.D. Candidate in Oceangraphy, University of Rhode Island

Infrastructure can increase vulnerabilities to coastal cities like New York.GlennisEhi/Getty Images

Sea level rise has already put coastal cities on notice thanks to increasing storm surges and even sunny day flooding at high tide. These challenges will continue to grow because global projections point to a mean sea level rise of at least one foot...

A newly identified ‘Hell chicken’ species suggests dinosaurs weren’t sliding toward extinction before the fateful asteroid hit

Written by Kyle Atkins-Weltman, Ph.D. Student in Paleoecology, Oklahoma State University

Birdlike dinosaur *Eoneophron infernalis* was about the size of an adult human. Zubin Erik Dutta

Were dinosaurs already on their way out when an asteroid hit Earth 66 million years ago, ending the Cretaceous, the geologic period that started about 145 million years ago? It’s a question that has vexed paleontologists like us for more than 40...

Humans are depleting groundwater worldwide, but there are ways to replenish it

Written by Scott Jasechko, Associate Professor of Water Resources, University of California, Santa Barbara

Circular irrigation for growing hay and alfalfa near Corcoran, Calif. − a water-intensive system that relies on groundwater pumping. George Rose/Getty Images

If you stand at practically any point on Earth, there is water moving through the ground beneath your feet. Groundwater provides about half of the world’s population with drinking...

In an ancient church in Germany, a 639-year organ performance of a John Cage composition is about to have its next note change

Written by Rob Haskins, Professor of Music, University of New Hampshire

A crowd gathers around the organ at St. Burchardi Church in Halberstadt, Germany, to witness an October 2013 note change.Peter Förster/Picture Alliance via Getty Images

Composers count themselves lucky when musicians continue to perform their music after their death.

But the American avant-garde composer John Cage, who died in 1992, never...

Domestic woes put Kim Jong Un on the defensive – and the offensive – in the Korean Peninsula

Written by Ñusta Carranza Ko, Assistant Professor of Global Affairs and Human Security, University of Baltimore

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on a screen at the Seoul Railway Station on Aug. 24, 2023.Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

Kim Jong Un has had a busy and bellicose start to 2024.

On Jan. 14, the North Korean leader presided over the test of a “new solid-fuel hypersonic missile with intermediate range.” Two days later, during a speech at the...

Combining two types of molecular boron nitride could create a hybrid material used in faster, more powerful electronics

Written by Pulickel Ajayan, Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Rice University

Hexagonal boron nitride, also known as 'white graphene.'Robert Brook/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

In chemistry, structure is everything. Compounds with the same chemical formula can have different properties depending on the arrangement of the molecules they’re made of. And compounds with a different chemical formula but a similar...

Pictures have been teaching doctors medicine for centuries − a medical illustrator explains how

Written by James A. Perkins, Distinguished Professor of Medical Illustration, Rochester Institute of Technology

Artists reveal what cannot be seen.Henry Gray, Anthony Edwward Spitzka/Internet Archive via Flickr

“Medical illustrators draw what can’t be seen, watch what’s never been done, and tell thousands about it without saying a word.”

For decades, this slogan appeared on the website and printed materials of the Association of...

Healing from child sexual abuse is often difficult but not impossible

Written by Maria Khan, PhD, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Medicine & Psychiatry, West Virginia University

Most child sexual abuse involves people the children know.ajijchan via Getty Images

A mayor, a karate instructor, a former cop, an award-winning journalist and a pastor. All five of these individuals in positions of authority or trust made headlines within the past year in connection with childhood sexual abuse.

Beyond the headlines and whatever...