Tag: asked

MONEY, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

We Asked 4 Experts: Would Gas Tax Breaks Make A Big Difference When Prices Are Skyrocketing?

With gasoline prices trending over US$4 per gallon nationwide, politicians are feeling the heat. In response, Maryland and Georgia have temporarily waived their state gasoline taxes to reduce the burden on consumers. Other states are considering similar actions, and some members of Congress have called for suspending the federal gas tax. The Conversation asked four experts whether gas tax waivers are an effective way to provide economic relief to U.S. households, and what other impacts these measures could have. Not a windfall Jay Zagorsky, Senior Lecturer in Markets, Public Policy and Law, Boston University As an economist who has studied gasoline prices, I doubt that waiving gas taxes will meaningfully lower prices at the pump. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine boosted gasoline prices dramat...
2021: ‘What Lies Beyond The Standard Model?’ Physicists Asked
TECHNOLOGY

2021: ‘What Lies Beyond The Standard Model?’ Physicists Asked

If you ask a physicist like me to explain how the world works, my lazy answer might be: “It follows the Standard Model.” The Standard Model explains the fundamental physics of how the universe works. It has endured over 50 trips around the Sun despite experimental physicists constantly probing for cracks in the model’s foundations. With few exceptions, it has stood up to this scrutiny, passing experimental test after experimental test with flying colors. But this wildly successful model has conceptual gaps that suggest there is a bit more to be learned about how the universe works. I am a neutrino physicist. Neutrinos represent three of the 17 fundamental particles in the Standard Model. They zip through every person on Earth at all times of day. I study the properties of interactions...
We Asked 6 Education Experts – How Should Schools Teach Kids About What Happened At The US Capitol On Jan. 6?
EDUCATION

We Asked 6 Education Experts – How Should Schools Teach Kids About What Happened At The US Capitol On Jan. 6?

Teachers scrambled to create lesson plans to help students make sense of the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol right after it happened. It’s a fraught task. Even the news media wasn’t sure what to call this unprecedented attack on U.S. democracy. Was it a coup? A riot? An act of domestic terrorism? Likewise, it’s not clear where lessons should begin. The Conversation U.S. asked six education experts how teachers – and parents – can help young people comprehend, analyze and process what happened. Don’t avoid the topic Dr. David Schonfeld, director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and professor of clinical pediatrics, University of Southern California Educators may worry they don’t know the right thing to say and will unnecessarily ...
We Asked Five Health Experts – Would You Eat Indoors At A Restaurant?
HEALTH & WELLNESS, IN OTHER NEWS

We Asked Five Health Experts – Would You Eat Indoors At A Restaurant?

Earlier this fall, many of the nation’s restaurants opened their doors to patrons to eat inside, especially as the weather turned cold in places. Now, as COVID-19 cases surge across the country, some cities and towns have banned indoor dining while others have permitted it with restrictions. Still other geographies have no bans at all. The restaurant and hospitality industry has reacted strongly, filing lawsuits challenging indoor dining bans and, in New York state, pointing to data that showed restaurants and bars accounted for only 1.4% of cases there – far lower compared with private gatherings. We asked five health professionals if they would dine indoors at a restaurant. Four said no – and one had a surprising answer. The Conversation, CC BY Not an option Dr. Laurie Archbald-Pannon...
To stop police shootings of people with mental health disabilities, I asked them what cops – and everyone – could do to help
HEALTH & WELLNESS

To stop police shootings of people with mental health disabilities, I asked them what cops – and everyone – could do to help

When Joe Prude called the police on his brother, he was asking for help: Daniel Prude, who suffered from mental health problems, had run almost naked out of his Rochester, New York, house into the snow. When officers arrived, new video footage shows, the March 23 encounter quickly turned violent, and Prude died from asphyxiation under a hood officers had put over his head. Two years prior, in 2018, Shukri Ali Said of Georgia also wound up dead after leaving her house during a mental health crisis on April 23, 2018. Police, called in to help, found Said standing at an intersection holding a knife. Officers shot her five times in the neck and chest, killing her. That same month, in New York, officers answered a 911 call about a black man waving something that looked like a gun. In fact, it...
We asked kids to send us their burning questions – here are 5 of our favorites from 2019
Journalism

We asked kids to send us their burning questions – here are 5 of our favorites from 2019

But why? But why?Out of the mouths of babes… comes a never-ending stream of questions. So this year, The Conversation US jumped on a great idea dreamed up by our colleagues in Australia and launched a series of articles meant to answer questions kids ask, but that everyone probably wonders about. The Conversation’s editors collect children’s questions and then look for scholars who can provide clear answers based on their own research and expertise. Below are a few of our favorite “Curious Kids” articles from the past year. And whatever your age, if you have a question you’d like an expert to answer in 2020, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. Curiosity has no age limit! Why is money green? This one could only have come from an American kid. Marek, age 12, asked the question; ...
To stop police shootings of people with mental health disabilities, I asked them what cops – and everyone – could do to help
IN OTHER NEWS

To stop police shootings of people with mental health disabilities, I asked them what cops – and everyone – could do to help

After Shukri Ali Said left her house during a mental health crisis on April 23, 2018, her sister called 911 for help. Police found Said standing at an intersection holding a knife. Officers shot her five times in the neck and chest, killing her. That same month, in New York, officers answered a 911 call about a black man waving something that looked like a gun. In fact, it was a pipe. But when Saheed Vassell, a 34-year-old father with mental illness who was well known in his Brooklyn community, pointed it at police, they shot him dead. Vassell and Said are among the hundreds of people with intellectual disabilities or mental illnesses in the United States killed by police every year. According to The Washington Post, 142 of the 752 people shot by police so far in 2019 have had a mental i...