The Conversation

'Megadrought' along border strains US-Mexico water relations

Written by Robert Gabriel Varady, Research Professor of Environmental Policy, University of Arizona

Lake Mead, which serves seven U.S. states and three Mexican states, is drying up.Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The United States and Mexico are tussling over their dwindling shared water supplies after years of unprecedented heat and insufficient rainfall.

The Colorado River Basin.U.S. Geological Survey

Sustained drought on the middle-lower Rio Grande...

Infighting in the Southern Baptist Convention shouldn't be a surprise – the denomination has been defined by such squabbles for 400 years

Written by Susan M. Shaw, Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Oregon State University

Each local congregation of the Southern Baptist Convention is autonomous and self-governing. Disagreements take place frequently.Joe Raedle/Getty images

Concerned over the direction that some leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have recently taken, a number of pastors in the denomination have formed the “Conservative Baptist Network.&r...

A medical moonshot would help fix inequality in American health care

Written by Dana Goldman, Leonard D. Schaeffer Chair and Distinguished Professor of Public Policy, Pharmacy, and Economics, University of Southern California

Medical breakthroughs like the COVID-19 vaccines need to be matched with programs that tackle health inequality. John Cherry/Stringer via Getty

COVID-19 has put the American health care system’s deeply entrenched inequities into high relief. The social, economic and political structures that predated the pandemic’s public health crisis...

Benjamin Franklin's fight against a deadly virus: Colonial America was divided over smallpox inoculation, but he championed science to skeptics

Written by Mark Canada, Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Indiana University Kokomo

As a printer's apprentice in 1721, Franklin had a front-row seat to the controversy around a new prevention technique.ClassicStock/Archive Photos via Getty Images

Exactly 300 years ago, in 1721, Benjamin Franklin and his fellow American colonists faced a deadly smallpox outbreak. Their varying responses constitute an eerily prescient object lesson...

What's a ghost kitchen? A food industry expert explains

Written by Jeffrey Miller, Associate Professor of Hospitality Management, Colorado State University

The co-founder of a takeout business called The Bussdown plates a dish at the ghost kitchen he cooks out of in Oakland.Stephen Lam/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

While the phrase “ghost kitchen” may conjure up images of haunted houses, the reality is a bit more mundane.

Ghost kitchens are food prep operations with no...

Racism lurks behind decisions to deny Black high school students from being recognized as the top in their class

Written by Jamel K. Donnor, Associate Professor of Education, William & Mary

Was 'white fragility' the reason behind two Black Mississippi high schoolers' losing their valedictorian/salutatorian status?Sue Barr/Getty Images

Two Black students – Ikeria Washington and Layla Temple – were named valedictorian and salutatorian at West Point High School in Mississippi in 2021. Shortly afterward, two white parents ques...

Trustees' handling of Nikole Hannah-Jones' tenure application shows how university boards often fail the accountability test

Written by Felecia Commodore, Assistant Professor, Educational Foundations & Leadership, Old Dominion University

Demonstrators gather June 25, 2021, on University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill, N.C., to demand that the university offer tenure to award-winning investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. AP Photo/Jonathan Drew

University boards of trustees hold considerable power over the institutions they govern, but get attention only when...

5 children's books that teach valuable engineering lessons

Written by Michelle Forsythe, Assistant Professor of STEM Education, Texas State University

Engineering lessons can be found in many books kids already have at home or their local library. Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Most people think of the children’s classic “Charlotte’s Web” as a story of devoted friendship between a spider and a pig. But it can also be read as a story of a budding engineer...

Skip the fireworks this record-dry 4th of July, over 150 wildfire scientists urge the US West

Written by Philip Higuera, Professor of Fire Ecology and Paleoecology, The University of Montana

In heat and drought like the western U.S. and Canada are experiencing in 2021, all it takes is a spark to start a wildfire.Jim Watson/Getty Images

The heat wave hitting the northwestern U.S. and Canada has been shattering records, with temperatures 30 degrees Fahrenheit or more above normal. With drought already gripping the West, the intense heat...

US intelligence report on UFOs: No aliens, but government transparency and desire for better data might bring science to the UFO world

Written by Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona

The new government report describes 144 sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena.U.S. Navy

On June 25, 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a much-anticipated report on UFOs to Congress. The military has rebranded unidentified flying objects as unidentified aerial phenomena – UAPs – in part to avoid the...