THE CONVERSATION
THE CONVERSATION US launched as a pilot project in October 2014. It is an independent source of news and views from the academic and research community, delivered direct to the public. Our team of professional editors work with university and research institute experts to unlock their knowledge for use by the wider public. We aim to help rebuild trust in journalism. All authors and editors sign up to our Editorial Charter. All contributors must abide by our Community Standards policy. We only allow authors to write on a subject on which they have proven expertise, which they must disclose alongside their article. Authors’ funding and potential conflicts of interest must also be disclosed. Failure to do so carries a risk of being banned from contributing to the site. The Conversation started in Melbourne Victoria and the innovative technology platform and development team is based in the university and research precinct of Carlton. Our newsroom is based in Boston but our team is part of a global newsroom able to share content across sites and around the world. The Conversation US is a non-profit educational entity.
Marlene Walk, IUPUI
The United States has a long tradition of volunteering. Back in 1737, for instance, Benjamin Franklin co-founded the nation’s first volunteer fire brigade in Philadelphia. And this custom is still going strong. About 77.4 million Americans volunteered...
Gabriel A. Silva, University of California San Diego
Despite their names, artificial intelligence technologies and their component systems, such as artificial neural networks, don’t have much to do with real brain science. I’m a professor of bioengineering and neurosciences interested...
Bill Maurer, University of California, Irvine and Daniel Tischer, University of Bristol
In all the hype that has surrounded its Libra currency, Facebook has been able to distract attention away from an important issue. Libra is being hyped as Facebook’s...
Alexis Elder, University of Minnesota Duluth
Good friendships seem worth celebrating. But for many of us, tensions can appear from time to time between being a good friend and doing “the right thing.” When faced with, for example, a situation...
Scott Shackelford, Indiana University
High-profile data breaches at companies like British Airways and Marriott get a lot of media coverage, but cybercriminals are increasingly going after community groups, schools, small businesses and municipal governments.
Just in the Midwest, hospitals, libraries, voter...
David L. Blustein, Boston College
On the surface, the well-being of the American worker seems rosy.
Unemployment in the U.S. hovers near a 50-year low, and employers describe growing shortages of workers in a wide array of fields.
But looking beyond the...
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, University of Oxford
I have just taken an entire website and gigabytes of data offline. It covered a highly successful series of conferences on the data economy. It brought together thought leaders and key decision-makers from around the...
Joseph Reagle, Northeastern University
People who identify with the “Quantified Self movement” are, as expressed in the movement’s motto, seeking “self-knowledge through self-tracking.” They want to know how to sleep better, stay fit or have a more productive morning. They...
The way my mom imagined it, midlife was going to be great: counting down days until retirement, spending winters in Florida and checking off destinations on her bucket list. But it hasn’t turned out that way.
Instead of more time...
Jose M. Mestre, Universidad de Cádiz, and Kimberly A. Barchard, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Emotional intelligence can mean the difference between behaving in a socially acceptable way and being considered to be way out of line. While most people...