By Rachael Jolley, Environment Editor, The Conversation
This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.
“Iran is experiencing not one environmental crisis but the convergence of several: water shortages, land subsidence, air pollution and energy failure. All added together, life is a struggle for survival.”
This is the situation inside Iran as described by Nima Shokri, an environmental engineer who works on global challenges related to the environment. Shokri highlights a rarely discussed factor in relation to this year’s massive…
(Full Story)
|
By Anthony Booker, Reader in Ethnopharmacology, University of Westminster
Some of the best-known medicines come from poisonous plants. The chemotherapy drug taxol comes from the yew tree, morphine from the opium poppy and digoxin from the foxglove. These plants can have lethal toxicity if taken in their raw form. Digoxin is prescribed to treat angina at doses a thousand times more dilute than most prescription medications, highlighting the plant’s extreme potency.
Many people consider herbal medicines a safe alternative to pharmaceuticals. And it’s true that many herbal medicines…
(Full Story)
|
By Darío Moreno-Agostino, Principal Research Fellow in Population Mental Health, UCL
It’s been almost five years since the end of the COVID lockdowns. Yet the world is still continuing to learn about how mental health changed during – and after – this unprecedented time.
My colleagues and I wanted to understand how mental health had changed across the life course of baby boomers and generation X – including during and beyond the pandemic.
We also wanted to understand if (and how) gender and socioeconomic inequalities had changed throughout these periods. Previous research we’d conducted had shown that large, existing gender inequalities in mental ill-health…
(Full Story)
|
By Vanessa Corcoran, Adjunct Professor of History, Georgetown University
Medieval texts and frescoes show how Francis of Assisi’s legends formed – and why his call to poverty and care for creation still resonates.
(Full Story)
|
By C. Clare Strange, Assistant Research Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, Drexel University
“The Real Housewives” reality TV series, which showcases the lives of a rotating cast of wealthy women in 11 cities in the U.S. and places in several other countries, is famous for its characters’ over-the-top drama and messy personal antics.
But there are also useful lessons that the characters’ lives and frequent run-ins with the law offer to casual observers and criminology students alike.
I developed the idea for The Real Housewives of Criminology…
(Full Story)
|
By Zeb Rocklin, Associate Professor of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology
Here’s why some people believe we’re living in a computer simulation of reality – like a giant video game in which we’re all the characters.
(Full Story)
|
By Amy Pope, Principal Lecturer of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University
During the 2026 Winter Olympics, athletes will leap off ramps, slide across ice and spin through the air. These performances will look different to my students who have studied physics through sports. These feats will be something the students have already measured, modeled or felt. As a physicist, I help my students see the games as a place where classroom lessons come to life.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how abstract ideas such as kinematics, forces, energy, momentum…
(Full Story)
|
By Sothy Eng, Associate Professor of of Family and Consumer Sciences, University of Hawaii
Family reunification is often framed as a cost, but evidence shows it functions as social infrastructure that supports work, well-being and economic stability.
(Full Story)
|
By John Babalola, Associate lecturer, University of Lincoln
Joshua Skoczylis, Lecturer in Criminology, University of Lincoln
West Africa has pursued one of the world’s most ambitious border liberalisation schemes in the past four decades. The Ecowas Free Movement Protocol, signed in 1979, enables citizens of 16 member states to cross international borders with minimal documentation. The intention was to promote economic integration and prosperity across the region.
For instance, Nigeria’s open borders…
(Full Story)
|
By Adeyemi Oladapo Aremu, Professor, North-West University
'Makhotso Lekhooa, Associate professor, North-West University
Mompati Vincent Chakale, Lecturer, University of Mpumalanga
Men’s sexual and reproductive health may be awkward to talk about, but there’s a need to do so. For example, about one-sixth of all couples worldwide have difficulty conceiving children, and in half the cases the man’s fertility is part of the problem. In South Africa, nearly 65% of men attending primary healthcare…
(Full Story)
|