2025’s extreme weather had the jet stream’s fingerprints all over it, from flash floods to hurricanes. An environmental geosciences professor explains these unusual patterns:
The Conversation
2025’s extreme weather brought intense flash flooding, but no hurricane landfalls in the US – the jet stream is a big reason why
The US had a rare year without a hurricane make landfall, but it saw too much extreme rainfall and flash flooding across the country.
Sir Isaac Newton's followers turned abstract mathematics into coffeehouse spectacles, selling tickets and branded instruments. It wasn’t so different from what scientists do today on TikTok, explains a marketing scholar trained in economic sociology.
The Conversation
Science has always been marketed, from 18th-century coffeehouse demos of Newton’s ideas to today’s TikTok explainers
Science has always been part of a marketplace of ideas, where claims vie for audiences, resources and belief, and where power, persuasion and statu...
92% of Gen Z workers want jobs where they can discuss mental health openly. A new study reveals what employers need to do to keep high performers with chronic mental illness engaged and productive.
The Conversation
Best way for employers to support employees with chronic mental illness is by offering flexibility
Employers that don’t support employees with mental illness risk missing out on the talents and skills that such employees can provide.
The NIH has funded research underlying about 99% of newly approved medicines while saving the pharmaceutical industry nearly $3 billion per drug in development costs. A proposed 40% budget cut threatens this engine of American innovation and economic growth.
The Conversation
How the NIH became the backbone of American medical research and a major driver of innovation and economic growth
The agency’s budget has grown steadily since the 1960s, fueling an industry that creates lifesaving medicines and attracts billions of dollars in...
When the universe was born, there were almost equal amounts of matter and antimatter. They met and annihilated each other. Fortunately, just a tiny bit more regular matter survived to make stars, planets and all of us. A physicist explains:
The Conversation
How are dark matter and antimatter different?
Normal matter – which makes up everything we see and touch – isn’t the only type of matter present in the universe.
From civil disobedience to networked whistleblowing: What national security whistleblowers reveal in an age of crackdowns
The Conversation
From civil disobedience to networked whistleblowing: What national security truth-tellers reveal in an age of crackdowns
Whistleblowers’ stories show how accountability is shifting from formal legal institutions to solidarity networks built outside the state.
President Trump’s deadline for Ukraine to accept his peace plan came and went, but setting a deadline isn’t necessarily the ideal strategy. A scholar of just war philosophy argues that proposed plans have ignored a crucial element: justice must be built into any lasting agreement.
The Conversation
Getting peace right: Why justice needs to be baked into ceasefire agreements – including Ukraine’s
Just war theory, a centuries-old field of ethics, deals with how and when to start conflicts. It can also guide decisions about how and when to end...
Christmas trees costs are way up, to between $50 and $870 this year in Denver. A researcher there who studies the psychology of consumption explains why prices have roughly doubled over the past decade.
The Conversation
Christmas trees are more expensive than ever in Colorado — what gives?
Most Christmas trees are imported from other states, which drives up costs.
“I believe that the founders of our nation would be horrified by the contemporary use of the pardon power, which represents a far cry from the unifying act of mercy it was intended to be.” - Stewart Ulrich, political scientist, Sam Houston State University
The Conversation
Pardons are political, with modern presidents expanding their use
Trump and Biden have issued pardons at a faster clip than their predecessors. Many of their decisions appear to have been political or personal in ...
School districts are rushing to adopt "one chatbot per child" models, but decades of research shows learning is fundamentally social. Here’s why isolating students with AI tutors may undermine the classroom interactions that actually support brain development.
The Conversation
The ‘one chatbot per child’ model for AI in classrooms conflicts with what research shows: Learning is a social process
AI tutors are often held up as an ideal, but prioritizing individualized teaching can detract from the benefits of learning in social environments.