The Conversation

Headcovers have always been political in Iran – for women on all sides

Written by Eliz Sanasarian, Professor of Political Science and Gender and Sexuality Studies, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Iranian newspaper headlines about the protests that started with death of Mahsa Amini.Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

A friend and I were strolling through Tehran’s streets one afternoon when she was approached by a member of the “morality police,” an agency tasked with enforcing modesty laws in public. First, the...

How to steer money for drinking water and sewer upgrades to the communities that need it most

Written by Andrian Lee, Water Policy Specialist, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Raw sewage bubbles up in the front yard of a home in Jackson, Mississippi, on Oct. 20, 2021.Rory Doyle/The Washington Post via Getty Images

When storms like Hurricane Ian strike, many people have to cope afterward with losing water service. Power outages mean that pumps can’t process and treat drinking water or sewage, and heavy stormwater...

Nobel-winning quantum weirdness undergirds an emerging high-tech industry, promising better ways of encrypting communications and imaging your body

Written by Nicholas Peters, Joint Faculty, University of Tennessee

Devices like this experimental apparatus can produce pairs of photons that are linked, or 'entangled'.Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Unhackable communications devices, high-precision GPS and high-resolution medical imaging all have something in common. These technologies – some under development and some already on the market all...

Effort to recover Indigenous language also revitalizes culture, history and identity

Written by Daryl Wade Baldwin, Executive Director, Myaamia Center, Miami University

Myaamia Heritage Program students get a lesson from Daryl Baldwin, executive director of the Myaamia Center at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.Scott Kissell, Miami University, CC BY-ND

When the federal government set up boarding schools in the 19th century to assimilate Native American children into American culture, one of the objectives was to...

New satellite mapping with AI can quickly pinpoint hurricane damage across an entire state to spot where people may be trapped

Written by Zhe Zhu, Assistant Professor of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Connecticut

New satellite mapping techniques can quickly locate washed out and damaged areas.Ricardo Arduengo / AFP via Getty Images

Hurricane Ian left an extraordinarily broad path of destruction across much of South Florida. That was evident in reports from the ground, but it also shows up in satellite data. Using a new method, our team of spatial and...

Our Homo sapiens ancestors shared the world with Neanderthals, Denisovans and other types of humans whose DNA lives on in our genes

Written by Joshua Akey, Professor at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, our *Homo sapiens* ancestors shared the landscape with multiple other hominins.The Washington Post via Getty Images

When the first modern humans arose in East Africa sometime between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago, the world was very different compared to today. Perhaps the biggest difference was that we –...

A Pennsylvania prison gets a Scandinavian-style makeover – and shows how the US penal system could become more humane

Written by Jordan Hyatt, Associate Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, Drexel University

Prisoners and staff share responsibility for taking care of the fish tank at the 'Little Scandinavia' housing unit in a Pennsylvania prison. Commonwealth Media Services

The United States has the largest number of people incarcerated in the world – about 25% of all people imprisoned worldwide are in American prisons and jails.

Overcrowding, v...

Investing in indoor air quality improvements in schools will reduce COVID transmission and help students learn

Written by Patricia Fabian, Associate Professor of Environmental Health, Boston University

An air scrubber in a classroom at the E.N. White School in Holyoke, Mass.AP Photo/Charles Krupa

As fall temperatures cool across the U.S., many schools will struggle to ventilate classrooms while also keeping students and teachers comfortable and healthy. Children and teachers spend over six hours a day in classrooms during the school year, often...

Census data hides racial diversity of US 'Hispanics' – to the country's detriment

Written by Ramona L. Pérez, Professor of Anthropology, San Diego State University

President Biden Joe Biden speaks at a Hispanic Heritage Month 2022 reception at the White House. Just who counts as 'Hispanic' in the U.S. is an open question.Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

As I opened a recent email from my local grocery store chain advertising Hispanic Heritage Month – it runs from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 each...

Hijab rules have nothing to do with Islamic tenets and everything to do with repressing women

Written by Deina Abdelkader, Associate Professor of Political Science, UMass Lowell

Thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets to protest the death of Mahsa Amini.AP Photo/Emrah Gurel

The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was held by Iran’s morality police for not complying with the country’s hijab rules has drawn global attention to the repression of women in Iran. Neighboring Saudi Arabia, a Sunni...