By Elvis Genbo Xu and Xiaoyu Duan | – Little pieces of plastic can now be found everywhere: from table salt, drinking water and food, to the deep seas, far deserts and most remote mountains. While it’s not surprising to find plastics and microplastics in urban environments where they’re used every day, their appearance in […]
Can the Collapse of West Antarctica’s Ice Sheet and massive Sea Level Rise be Avoided?
By Dan Lowry, Mario Krapp, and Nick Golledge | – ( The Conversation) – Rising seas are already making storm damage more costly, adding to the impact on about 700 million people who live in low-lying coastal areas at risk of flooding. Scientists expect sea-level rise will exacerbate the damage from storm surges and coastal […]
How Finding that immigrants don’t reduce the wages of native-born workers won the Nobel Prize
By Arvind Magesan | – Applied economists spend a large fraction of their time trying to squeeze meaningful answers — causal effects — out of observational data. Unlike the natural sciences, we can’t run experiments in order to answer the big questions in our field. If we want to know, for example, how raising the […]
Yemen: Will talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran offer hopes for an end to bitter seven-year civil war?
By Simon Mabon | – Recent statements from Iran and Saudi Arabia have provided hope that a pathway might be emerging to an end to the bitter seven-year civil war in Yemen which has killed an estimated quarter of a million people and left millions more homeless. On September 21, officials from Saudi Arabia and […]
Solar panels on half the world’s roofs could meet its entire electricity demand – new research
By Siddharth Joshi, James Glynn and Shivika Mittal | – Rooftop solar panels are up to 79% cheaper than they were in 2010. These plummeting costs have made rooftop solar photovoltaics even more attractive to households and businesses who want to reduce their reliance on electricity grids while reducing their carbon footprints. But are there […]
Could Lebanon, Looted and mismanaged by its Plutocrats, become a Failed State?
By Tony Walker | – In the midst of a pandemic that has wrenched the world off its axis, Lebanon’s precipitous decline has not received the attention it deserves given the country’s strategic importance. Bordering Syria to its north and east, and Israel to its south, Lebanon occupies a critical space in the Eastern Mediterranean. […]
Afghan women have a long history of taking leadership and fighting for their rights
By Wazhmah Osman and Helena Zeweri | – Ever since the Taliban recaptured Afghanistan, the question in much of the Western media has been, “What will happen to the women of Afghanistan?” Indeed, this is an important concern that merits international attention. The Taliban has already imposed many restrictions on women. At the same time, […]
Why ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Day is Replacing ‘Columbus Day’
By Susan C. Faircloth | – Columbus Day celebrations in the United States – meant to honor the legacy of the man credited with “discovering” the New World – are almost as old as the nation itself. The earliest known Columbus Day celebration took place on Oct. 12, 1792, on the 300th anniversary of his […]
Who are Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi, Climate Emergency Modelers who won Physics Nobel Prize?
By David Randall | – As a climate scientist myself, I was excited to learn that Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi have been awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize for Physics. I first met Manabe when I was a graduate student in the early 1970s, so I was particularly pleased that the prize recognizes […]