Author: TheConversation

By Jin Lee, Associate Professor of Educational Foundations and Leadership, University of Louisiana at Lafayette Policy changes brought on by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which former President Donald Trump signed into law at the end of 2017, appear to have led many small-dollar donors to give less money to colleges and universities, or to stop giving altogether. Individual donations, whether from graduates or people who didn’t attend those colleges and universities, declined by 4% from US$44.3 billion in the 2017-2018 academic year to $42.6 billion two years later. That’s what my colleague, Sungsil Lee, and I found...

By Michael F. Gorman, Professor of Business Analytics and Operations Management, University of Dayton Ever wonder what those colorful signs with symbols and numbers on the backs of trucks mean? They are just one visible part of a web of regulations that aim to keep workers and the environment safe while shipping hazardous waste. Transporting hazardous materials such as dangerous gases, poisons, harmful chemicals, corrosives and radioactive material across the country is risky. But because approximately 3 billion pounds of hazardous material needs to go from place to place in the U.S. each year, it is unavoidable. With all...

By Devin Griffiths, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences “Dune,” widely considered one of the best sci-fi novels of all time, continues to influence how writers, artists and inventors envision the future. Of course, there are Denis Villeneuve’s visually stunning films, “Dune: Part One” (2021) and “Dune: Part Two” (2024). But Frank Herbert’s masterpiece also helped Afrofuturist novelist Octavia Butler imagine a future of conflict amid environmental catastrophe. It inspired Elon Musk to build SpaceX and Tesla and push humanity toward the stars and a greener future. And it is...

By Charles Colgan, Director of Research for the Center for the Blue Economy, Middlebury Institute of International Studies Ocean-related tourism and recreation supports more than 320,000 jobs and US$13.5 billion in goods and services in Florida. But a swim in the ocean became much less attractive in the summer of 2023, when the water temperatures off Miami reached as high as 101 degrees Fahrenheit. The future of some jobs and businesses across the ocean economy have also become less secure as the ocean warms and damage from storms, sea-level rise and marine heat waves increases. Ocean temperatures have been...

By Andrew Herbert, Professor of Psychology, Visual Perception, Rochester Institute of Technology Myopia, or the need for corrected vision to focus or see objects at a distance, has become a lot more common in recent decades. Some even consider myopia, also known as nearsightedness, an epidemic. Optometry researchers estimate that about half of the global population will need corrective lenses to offset myopia by 2050 if current rates continue – up from 23% in 2000 and less than 10% in some countries. The associated health care costs are huge. In the United States alone, spending on corrective lenses, eye...