Deciding to disclose information about a non-obvious disability at work is complicated and potentially risky, no matter what you do for a living. For people with a mental health issue, like bipolar disorder…
A properly designed cap and trade scheme could lift Illinois out of the fog.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Don Fullerton, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
So-called cap and trade may be a solution to a problem it was not intended to solve: state budget crises. Cap-and-trade policy was designed to address climate change by putting a “cap” on carbon dioxide…
Will the feds raid this Christmas tree?
Rick Wilking/Reuters
Abraham Lincoln said that those who shape public opinion exert an even greater influence than judges and lawmakers. In recent years popular sentiment – on issues like marriage equality and legalization…
Housing First is a program that offers housing to homeless drug users – regardless of whether or not they’re drug free – with a goal of social recovery.
Bryan Guilas/Flickr
Over the past decade, drug use in the US has risen dramatically, with heroin use reaching epidemic proportions. The country’s policy for combating abuse has involved incarceration, abstinence-only treatment…
‘Premium assistance’ at premium prices.
Jonathan Bachman/Reuters
Upon the signing of the Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010, the public was promised that all US citizens would receive health care coverage. As Vice President Joe Biden put it at the signing of the…
Rhinoceros, with horn still firmly attached.
Efraimstochter
Poaching rhinos for their horns is one of the most publicized conservation issues worldwide. From global trade bans and surveillance drones, to the involvement of celebrities such as British royal Prince…
This crowd wants their president out
David W Cerny/Reuters
The United States had just gone through a bruising election, but in Congress Democratic and Republican leaders gathered to unveil the bust of Vaclav Havel, the playwright and first post-Communist Czech…
Frederic Bazille’s Studio 9 Rue de la Condamine (left) and Norman Rockwell’s Shuffleton’s Barber Shop (right). The computer was able to detect similarities in the composition of both paintings. Yellow circles indicate similar objects, red lines indicate composition, and the blue square represents similar structural elements.
I was the lead of a team of computer scientists at Rutgers that published a paper this past August titled, “Toward Automated Discovery of Artistic Influence.” In that paper we reported on our research…
What is the optimum gender split for productivity?
Image sourced from www.shutterstock.com
Once commonplace, the phenomenon of all-female or all-male workplaces have largely gone the way of the buggy whip. Many of the benefits of this increased diversity might be difficult to measure and quantify…
Hollywood’s version of Stephen and Jane Hawking.
Working Title Films
Declan Fahy, American University School of Communication
Early in The Theory of Everything, the student Stephen Hawking strides across the grounds at Cambridge University in the 1960s, his face dreamy. He is lost in thought about the nature of time. Then he…
Will this relationship get better or worse?
Petar Kujundzic/Reuters
Foundation essay: This article is part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays are longer than our usual comment and analysis articles and take a wider look…
Treatment can be prevention.
Image of pill via nito/Shutterstock
Ever since combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) was introduced in 1996, HIV has been transformed from a fatal diagnosis to a chronic and manageable condition for many people. ART made it possible for…
The People’s Bank of China recently cut interest rates to stimulate the economy. But it probably won’t fix the real problem.
Reuters
China’s central bank surprised most observers last month when it announced its first interest rate cut in more than two years. The move is intended to bolster growth in the world’s second-largest economy…
Rising costs, the growing difficulty of securing loans, and a lack of curating talent have made the blockbuster exhibition a hazardous enterprise.
Barney Livingston/Flickr
A blockbuster art exhibition can double the annual attendance of an art museum and pull in significant amounts of money. Bring Vermeer’s The Girl with a Pearl Earring to the Frick Collection in New York…
St Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch asked grand jury to do investigation
POOL New/ Reuters
Now that the grand jury has decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year old man, there remain many questions about this grand jury and generally…
Tons of social media there for the taking… but is it truly representative of real life?
Jürgen Pfeffer
Behavioral scientists have seized on social media and their massive data sets as a way to quickly and cheaply figure out what people are thinking and doing. But some of those tweets and thumbs ups can…
The collapse of Lehman Brothers was a pivotal moment in the most recent financial crisis. The next crash may feature another bank failure.
Reuters
The subprime crisis and the subsequent failure of Lehman Brothers came as such a shock – and the repercussions were so severe that when the time came to mount a response, policy makers were as surprised…
Purchase a plastic water bottle, and there’s a good chance that it will feature a “BPA-free” label. You might be seeing it more often because the industrial chemical Bisphenol-A has now been removed from…
Will there be brotherly love in Philadelphia next September?
Giampiero Sposito/Reuters
In late November, the Vatican confirmed that Pope Francis is going to visit the United States of America for the World Meeting of Families that will take place in Philadelphia at the end of September 2015…
Issuing the immigration executive order.
White House
There has been a tremendous amount of controversy surrounding President Barack Obama’s November 20 executive order concerning the implementation of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (as amended…
Police often rely on witnesses to finger the right guy, but eyewitnesses are far from perfect.
Lineup image via www.shutterstock.com.
Twenty eyewitnesses testified before the grand jury investigating the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. None of these accounts is fully consistent with any other. Moreover, eyewitnesses…
Fantasies shouldn’t be confused with wishes or behaviors.
Image of couple kissing via conrado/Shutterstock
Can we use unusual sexual fantasies to identify sexual deviancy? Is there a link between what people fantasize about and how they actually behave? Psychiatry’s two main diagnostic manuals list certain…
Is it a crime scene or just a store checkout? Could be both.
Marlith
Shoppers have launched into the holiday buying season and retailers are looking forward to year-end sales that make up almost 20% of their annual receipts. But as you check out at a store or click “purchase…
Just three of the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the Boko Haram in northern Nigeria
Stringer/Reuters
‘Am I still a citizen of Nigeria? The soldiers are watching or running while thousands are being slaughtered.’ – Mohammed, a graduate student at the University of Maiduguri speaking at a food distribution…
A Wal-Mart employee puts a bow on a discounted television ahead of Black Friday in Los Angeles.
Reuters
The manic nature of Black Friday has often led shoppers to engage in fistfights and other misbehavior in their desperation to snatch up the last ultra-discounted television, computer or pair of pants…