Author: TheConversation

By Iain Boyd, Professor of Aerospace Engineering, University of Michigan Flying faster than the speed of sound still sounds futuristic for regular people, more than 15 years after the last commercial supersonic flights ended. The planes that made those journeys, the 14 aircraft collectively known as the Concorde, flew from 1976 to 2003. It traveled three times faster than regular passenger aircraft, but the airlines that flew it couldn’t make a profit on its trips. The reason the Concorde was unprofitable was, in fact, a side effect of its speed. When the plane sped up past the speed of...

By Monica H. Swahn, Professor, Epidemiology and Public Health, Georgia State University The news about the tragic deaths of several American tourists in the Dominican Republic in May 2019 has created an outcry and a media frenzy. As of June 30, there were at least nine deaths with similar circumstances in the past few months. The FBI and Dominican authorities are investigating, and one theory is that alcohol was the cause of these deaths. The FBI has reportedly taken samples of alcohol for testing, and the hotels where some tourists died have removed alcohol from the minibars in the...

By Katherine Breward, Associate Professor, Business and Administration, University of Winnipeg Companies seek a competitive edge by hiring talented people, yet many capable workers are overlooked because they have autism. People with autism are unemployed at disproportionate levels. As a result, companies are missing out on employees able to make valuable contributions. And society at large is affected since the situation creates inequities and financial dependence. So why is it happening? Largely because autism is poorly understood and managers are ill-informed about how to accommodate affected workers. Fortunately, recent research has provided us with many strategies to make workplaces...

By Stian Rice, Food Systems Geographer, Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Prison inmates are picking fruits and vegetables at a rate not seen since Jim Crow. Convict leasing for agriculture – a system that allows states to sell prison labor to private farms – became infamous in the late 1800s for the brutal conditions it imposed on captive, mostly black workers. Federal and state laws prohibited convict leasing for most of the 20th century, but the once-notorious practice is making a comeback. Under lucrative arrangements, states are increasingly leasing prisoners to private...

By Arash Javanbakht, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University People have always used fear for intimidation of the subordinates or enemies, and shepherding the tribe by the leaders. Recently, it appears that President Trump has used fear by suggesting in a tweet that four minority congresswomen go back to the places they came from. There is a longstanding history of employing the fear of “the others,” turning humans into illogical ruthless weapons, in service to an ideology. Fear is a very strong tool that can blur humans’ logic and change their behavior. Fear is arguably as old as...

By Jon Hale, Associate Professor of Education, University of South Carolina America recently marked the 65-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education – a landmark case intended to abolish the “separate-but-equal” doctrine of racial segregation in schools. But the racial makeup of today’s schools actually owes itself to a series of other court decisions – including one issued 45 years ago on July 25, 1974. The Milliken v. Bradley decision sanctioned a form of segregation that has allowed suburbs to escape being included in court-ordered desegregation and busing plans with nearby cities. The...