Author: TheConversation

By Vivian Zayas, Associate Professor of Psychology, Cornell University The effects of the coronavirus pandemic will be “imprinted on the personality of our nation for a very long time,” predicted Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. No doubt in the future people will mourn those who have died and remember the challenges of this period. But how would COVID-19 shape people’s personalities – and into what? I am a psychology researcher interested in how people’s minds shape, and are shaped by, their life circumstances. Human beings are born into this world ready to...

By Kristin Lunz Trujillo, PhD Candidate in Political Science, University of Minnesota; and Matt Motta, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Oklahoma State University The availability of a vaccine for the novel coronavirus will likely play a key role in determining when Americans can return to life as usual. Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on April 30 announced that a vaccine could even be available by January 2021. Whether a vaccine can end this pandemic successfully, however, depends on more than its effectiveness at providing immunity against the virus, or how quickly...

By Ahmad Samarji, Associate Professor of Forensic Science Education & STEM Education and the Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Phoenicia University Most scientists and doctors in the coronavirus crisis are working to save the living. Those in the field of forensic pathology, however, focus on the dead. Ahmad Samarji, a Lebanon-based scholar of forensic science, reports on the extraordinary challenges facing coroners and pathologists in outbreak zones, where governments have to take “very limited but essential choices” to avoid a dangerous pileup of dead bodies. What is the role of forensic pathologists in a pandemic?...

By Chunjie Zhang, Associate Professor of German, University of California, Davis During one of my daily walks with my toddler, when we passed his favorite playground, I noticed a new sign warning that the coronavirus survives on all kinds of surfaces and that we should no longer use the playground. Since then, I’ve taken great pains to prevent him from touching things. This has not been easy. He loves to squeeze bike racks and graze tree trunks, jostle bushes and knock on picnic tables. He likes to run his fingers against bars around a swimming pool and pet the...

By Jay L. Zagorsky, Senior Lecturer, Questrom School of Business, Boston University The U.S. unemployment rate climbed from a half-century low of 3.5% to 4.4% in March – and is expected to go a lot higher. But the rate, as some predict, surpass the 25% joblessness the U.S. experienced at the peak of the Great Depression. As a macroeconomist who has tracked the labor force for decades, I’ve been wondering about this myself. There are actually two figures the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses to estimate employment levels in the United States. One is the unemployment rate, which comes...