The pull of energy markets – and legal challenges – will blunt plans to roll back EPA carbon rules

By Hari Osofsky Et Al

On Oct. 10, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt formally announced a repeal of the Clean Power Plan, regulation intended to curb greenhouse gas emissions from existing coal- and natural gas-fired power plants. This follows a...

What the Harvey Weinstein case tells us about sexual assault disclosure

By Bianca Fileborn

Explosive reports from The New York Times and The New Yorker in recent days have revealed decades of alleged sexual harassment and assault perpetrated by high-profile Hollywood movie executive Harvey Weinstein. In the wake...

What's behind the huge increase in breast cancer rates in China?

By Jin-Li Luo

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in China, according to the latest data from Chinas national cancer registry. An analysis of the data reveals that the cancer has increased at a rate of around 3.5% a year...

End of the road for traditional vehicles? Here are the facts

By Matthew Watkins

New sales of petrol and diesel cars will be banned by 2040 in the UK, which has since been joined by France. Sweden and Scotland will impose the ban by 2032, and Norway by 2025. Coupled with increasing concern over the...

Evolutionary biology can help us understand how language works

By Michael Dunn

As a linguist I dread the question, what do you do?, because when I answer Im a linguist the inevitable follow-up question is: How many languages do you speak? That, of course, is not the point. While learning languages is...

New 'race disparity audit' means little unless we consider where people live

By Laura Vaughan

In an attempt to challenge the disparities in the way people from different backgrounds are treated in Britain, the government has launched a race disparity audit. A new website called Ethnicity Facts and Figures presents...

New Star Wars trailer revealed – but is the Force still strong with this one?

By Keith M. Johnston

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy not that far away, the trailer for Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace opened with the promise that every generation has a legend. Although it was not ultimately the film many fans...

When VR meets reality – how live concerts could be enhanced by 21st-century opera glasses

By Augusto Esteves

What do Coldplay, Stevie Wonder and the Imagine Dragons all have in common? The answer, and well done if you got this right, is that they have all had recent live shows broadcast in virtual reality. Music fans with VR...

The chemicals in firefighting foam aren't the new asbestos

By Ian Musgrave

This weeks ABC Four Corners episode investigated contamination at defence force sites and surrounding aquifers with chemicals called perfluoroalkyl acids or PFAAs. Around 18 sites are reported to be affected, with the...

Despite the charged atmosphere, Frydenberg and Finkel have the same goal for electricity

By Tony Wood

Globally in the past seven years, the cost of wind-powered generation has more than halved. Domestically, solar PV costs have dropped more than 50%. By 2020, costs of battery technologies are expected to fall 40-60% and...

Nobody reads privacy policies – here's how to fix that

By Florian Schaub

Have you ever actually read an apps privacy policy before clicking to accept the terms? What about reading the privacy policy for the website you visit most often? Have you ever read or even noticed the privacy policy...

How the coffee industry is about to get roasted by climate change

By Sylvain Charlebois

Fall is always a good time to create new habits, and coffee chains know it. These days, they are desperately trying to find any excuse to get you to drink their java. Many chains used National or International Coffee...

Economist who helped behavioral 'nudges' go mainstream wins Nobel

By Jay L. Zagorsky

The 2017 Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to University of Chicagos Richard Thaler for his work in behavioral economics, which is the integration of economics with psychology. While the award was not a total...

No chance of US gun control despite Las Vegas massacre; NZ left gains two seats after special votes

By Adrian Beaumont

In the last decade, there have been many horrific gun crimes in the US, where at least 10 people have been murdered in the one incident. However, the National Rifle Association has successfully fought all efforts to impose...

The caste politics curse that India just can't shake off

By Afroz Alam

India is still not able to do away with its caste politics as demonstrated by recent attacks on members of lower caste in south-western state of Gujarat during a festival. Yet Narendra Modis ruling Bhartiya Janata Party...

How a billion-dollar insurance industry protects Florida's risky real estate game – for now

By Zac Taylor

Yet, since 1886, the Sunshine State has been hit with almost twice as many hurricanes as the next two states, Texas and Louisiana. Currently, 2.4m people and 1.3m homes sit just 1.2 metres above the high tide line and sea...

Underpaid, overworked and drowning in debt: you wonder why young people are voting again?

By Paul Whiteley

The 2017 general election was highly unusual as far as the youth vote was concerned. The Labour party won 65% the lions share of the youth vote. The nearest comparisons are with 1964 and 1997. In both those years, Labour...

How Blade Runner 2049 prepares us to welcome robots for real

By Michael Burdett Et Al

The idea of dangerous, inhumane artificial intelligence taking over the world is familiar to many of us, thanks to cautionary tales such as the Matrix and Terminator franchises. But what about the more sympathetic...

Bare cupboards and nobody to help buy food: the forgotten welfare gap in older age

By Kingsley Purdam

Welfare reform and austerity in the UK has led to reductions in public spending on services that support older people. Age UK has highlighted how nearly one million older people have unmet social care needs. This is of...

Why people stay in disaster-prone cities

By Gina Yannitell Reinhardt

The 2017 hurricane season has brought unprecedented destruction to the Caribbean and southern United States. As millions of people around the world have watched these events unfold from afar, no doubt some have found...

What the Nobel Prize tells us about the state of economics

By Fabrizio Carmignani

While we dont yet know who will win this years Nobel Prize for economics, taking a look at the top contenders gives great insight into where the field of economics is and where it is heading. The big takeaway is a clear...

Let's face it, we'll be no safer with a national facial recognition database

By Bruce Baer Arnold

A commitment to share the biometric data of most Australians including your driving licence photo agreed at Thursdays Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting will result in a further erosion of our...

Are self-driving cars the future of mobility for disabled people?

By Srikanth Saripalli

Self-driving cars could revolutionize how disabled people get around their communities and even travel far from home. People who cant see well or with physical or mental difficulties that prevent them from driving safely...

'Blade Runner''s chillingly prescient vision of the future

By Marsha Gordon

Can corporations become so powerful that they dictate the way we feel? Can machines get mad like, really mad at their makers? Can people learn to love machines? These are a few of the questions raised by Ridley Scotts...

Why is Melanie Joly ignoring the crisis in Canadian journalism?

By Sara Bannerman

Although we now live in a vast internet landscape with immense amounts of content, the diversity and quality of the news media we consume continues to be a concern.. Large sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google should...

The government's new gas deal will ease the squeeze, but dodges the price issue

By Samantha Hepburn

The deal signed this week by the federal government and the nations biggest three gas producers will ease Australias gas supply squeeze, but it will do nothing to address the current high prices. Under the contract,...

Jobs, tax and politics: three ways electric vehicles will change our world

By Hussein Dia

China, the worlds largest car market, is working on a timetable to stop the production and sale of vehicles powered by fossil fuels. India has declared its intention to make all new vehicles electric by 2030. Like...

The data is mixed but worrying signs from mortgagees

By Richard Holden

Vital Signs is a weekly economic wrap from UNSW economics professor and Harvard PhD Richard Holden (@profholden). Vital Signs aims to contextualise weekly economic events and cut through the noise of the data affecting...

Theresa May's speech and the challenge to expand English social housing

By Kenneth Gibb

Amid the drama of Theresa Mays conference speech was the announcement of new funding for social housing and a new generation of council houses in England. This follows long-term under-investment in social and affordable...

How to avoid war and conflict – with a little help from social psychology

By Ken Rotenberg

The posturing of US President Donald Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un give rise to a terrifying realisation: that we are moving closer to a nuclear war. The recognition that such a war could be our last raises the...

What it's like to transition on to Universal Credit

By Sharon Wright Et Al

Originally designed with the intention of making work pay by smoothing out transitions between paid work and welfare, Universal Credit is now being widely criticised for failing to deliver on its promises. Despite calls by...

Alternative facts do exist: beliefs, lies and politics

By Lochlan Morrissey

This piece is republished with permission from Perils of Populism, the 57th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, presenting an in-depth analysis of the rise of...

Catalonia's referendum unmasks authoritarianism in Spain

By Monica Clua Losada

I have long worried about the rise of authoritarianism in the European Union. The Spanish governments violent crackdown during the Catalonia referendum on Oct. 1 is the latest crisis to challenge EU institutions....

How the Chinese cyberthreat has evolved

By Dorothy Denning

With more than half of its 1.4 billion people online, the worlds most populous country is home to a slew of cyberspies and hackers. Indeed, China has likely stolen more secrets from businesses and governments than any...

The opioid epidemic in 6 charts

By Andrew Kolodny

Drug overdose deaths, once rare, are now the leading cause of accidental death in the Unites States, surpassing peak annual deaths caused by motor vehicle accidents, guns and HIV infection. As a former public health...

Chilled proteins and 3-D images: The cryo-electron microscopy technology that just won a Nobel Prize

By Michael Cianfrocco Et Al

Many people will never have heard of cryo-electron microscopy before the announcement that Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson had won the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work developing this...

How to improve the skills of tomorrow's doctors

By J Damon Dagnone

Imagine youre inside an ambulance racing to the emergency room with the lights and sirens blaring. You and your nine-year-old daughter were in a car accident; she is unconscious and bleeding. The paramedic has initiated an...

World War Three is being waged in cyberspace

By Dr. Mike Sosteric

My introduction to advanced communication technology (i.e. the Internet and World Wide Web) came in 1999. Having grown up in the two-channel universe of the 1960s and 70s, I was agog at the power it represented. The...

Why we should listen to people angry about their taxes

By Shirley Tillotson

Is it too much to expect people to talk calmly and reasonably about tax changes? Yes. Yes, it is too much. As a historian of tax in 20th century Canada, I have read thousands of letters to ministers of finance, and they...

The immense challenge of desertification in sub-Saharan Africa

By Maud Loireau Et Al

Today, dry areas represent more than 41% of land on the globe and they are home to more than two billion people. They are the stage for the ongoing process of land degradation that is aggravated by climate fluctuations ...

The oil and gas sector needs to diversify if it wants to prosper

By Jerad A. Ford

One does not have to look far to see signs that the oil and gas industry has a bumpy road ahead. Demand might stay high for decades, but given the dizzying pace of technological change, who would bet on that? Take the...

Room sharing is the new flat sharing

By Christian Tietz

High rents and short-term rentals are driving people to organise themselves to share rooms with strangers in order to live in the city. Room sharing outside a family environment is also occurring in some professions. This...

Error correcting the things that go wrong at the quantum computing scale

By Thomas Stace

Computing power has grown exponentially over many decades, so why is the much-promised next leap of quantum computers taking so long to arrive? One reason is that the information in a quantum system is sensitive to...

Dissociative identity disorder exists and is the result of childhood trauma

By Michael Salter Et Al

Once known as multiple personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder remains one of the most intriguing but poorly understood mental illnesses. Research and clinical experience indicate people diagnosed with the...

Profile: Japan's controversial, shrewd and ambitious Shinzo Abe

By Ra Mason

As Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe campaigns in a snap election, he looks set to enter into an unprecedented third term in office, and become Japans longest serving postwar prime minister. So who is he? What is the...

Las Vegas: the US is racked with impossible divisions over rights and freedoms

By Todd Landman

In the immediate aftermath of the October 2 Las Vegas massacre the USs 273rd mass shooting in 2017 alone it seems neither President Donald Trump nor his Republican colleagues will entertain a review of current gun...

Uber can't be ethical – its business model won't allow it

By Murray Goulden

Following TfLs decision to withdraw Ubers license to operate in London, there has been a widespread picking over of the ride-hailing apps recent history and speculation about its future. A fairly common conclusion is that...

Is faster profit growth essential for a pick-up in wages growth?

By Saul Eslake

Do higher profits necessarily lead to higher wages? The answer, as borne out by the data below, might surprise you. In fact, wages growth is more likely to arise from smart policy settings that directly boost economic and...

The enduring power of print for learning in a digital world

By Lauren M. Singer Et Al

Todays students see themselves as digital natives, the first generation to grow up surrounded by technology like smartphones, tablets and e-readers. Teachers, parents and policymakers certainly acknowledge the growing...

Do tax cuts stimulate the economy more than spending?

By Dale O. Cloninger

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to boost the economy both by cutting taxes and investing more money in infrastructure. Usually, however, politicians and policymakers have favored one type of...