By Ivis García, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, Texas A&M University
Picture this: You’re looking to buy a place to live, and you have two options. Option A is a beautiful home in California near good schools and job opportunities. But it goes for nearly a million dollars – the median California home sells for US$906,500 – and you’d be paying a mortgage that’s risen 82% since January 2020. Option B is a similar home in Texas, where the median home costs…
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By Graeme Mack, Visiting Assistant Professor of History, University of Richmond
Americans have looked to the Declaration of Independence when they sought to remedy contemporary problems and create new visions for the country’s future.
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By Stuart Soroka, Professor, Communications and Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles
Accounts of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York City mayor have highlighted both his online presence and his ground game. Mamdani won the general election with 50.4% of the vote, a larger share than was predicted by most polls,…
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By Eric Lob, Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University
Iran has sought to bolster its economic and security relationships on the continent after a punishing year both at home and in the Middle East.
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By Giovanni Luca Cascio Rizzo, Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Southern California
Your hands aren’t just accessories to your words. They’re one of the most powerful tools you have to make your ideas resonate.
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By Tiziano Piccardi, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University
Reducing the visibility of polarizing content in social media feeds can measurably lower partisan animosity. To come up with this finding, my colleagues and I developed a method that let us alter the ranking of people’s feeds, previously something only the social media companies could do. Reranking social media feeds to reduce exposure to posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity affected people’s emotions and their views of people with opposing political views. I’m a
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By Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona
Most of the universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy. The majority of everything else is dispersed throughout space as tiny particles.
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By Eric Gilbertson, Associate Teaching Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Seattle University
In the middle of a chilly October night in 2025, my two friends and I suited up at the Cottonwood Creek trailhead and started a trek into the Sangre de Cristo mountains of Colorado. It was a little below freezing as we got moving at 1:30 a.m., and the Moon illuminated the snowy mountaintops above us. Our packs were a bit heavier than normal because we were hauling highly accurate surveying equipment to the summits of two peaks, each over 14,000 feet (4,267.2 meters). The peaks, Crestone and
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By Florian Walch, Assistant Professor of Music Theory, West Virginia University
With Mariah Carey and Wham! saturating airwaves with their holiday tunes, it’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas. But if all you want for Christmas is a reprieve from stereotypical Christmas music, you’re not alone. Despite the fact that they often rebel against conformity and commercialism, many countercultural musicians have been inspired to produce holiday tracks of their…
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By Jeremy David Engels, Liberal Arts Endowed Professor of Communication, Penn State
The late Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh often emphasized the interconnectedness of everything in this world. He explained how meditation can change our perceptions about the things we encounter in our daily lives by revealing this interdependence. Take the example of an apple: Before meditation, an apple is just a piece of fruit. During meditation, the meditator sees how deeply the apple is interconnected with the world…
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