Redesigning jobs to protect workers' mental health

Inside the black box of Amazon returns

Simone Peinkofer, Michigan State University

Returns are becoming a costly sustainability problem for retailers and the planet. A supply chain expert explains.

How the exposure of highly classified documents could harm US security – and why there are laws against storing them insecurely

Gary Ross, Texas A&M University

The indictment identifies categories of risk to the United States and its allies due to his alleged mishandling of classified documents. A scholar of intelligence studies examines four of them.

Refugees are living longer in exile than ever before, with complex consequences for them and their host communities

Sharif A Wahab, Indiana University

As conflicts last longer, the number of refugees and other displaced people is on the rise.

Wildfire smoke and dirty air are also climate change problems: Solutions for a world on fire

Drew Shindell, Duke University

So much pollution goes into the air today that even without wildfire smoke, 99% of the global population breathes unhealthy air.

Events in Bolivia and Brazil may signal a turning point for the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis in Latin America

Matthew Casey-Pariseault, Arizona State University

Public outrage over alleged abuse has been muted in much of Latin America for years, partly because the church remains one of the region’s most powerful institutions – but that may be changing.

Why this year’s summer solstice matters so much for a new religious movement mired in controversy

Simranjit Khalsa, University of Memphis

3HO was founded in 1969, and SDI followed five years later. What are they, and what is the significance of the 2023 summer solstice for their followers?

Seeing dead fruit flies is bad for the health of fruit flies – and neuroscientists have identified the exact brain cells responsible

Christi Gendron, University of Michigan

When fruit flies see other dead fruit flies, their life spans are cut short. Other species also undergo analogous physiological changes when seeing their dead.

Forensic evidence suggests Paleo-Americans hunted mastodons, mammoths and other megafauna in eastern North America 13,000 years ago

Christopher R. Moore, University of South Carolina

A forensic technique more often used at modern crime scenes identified blood residue from large extinct animals on spearpoints and stone tools used by people who lived in the Carolinas millennia ago.

How Black Americans combated racism from beyond the grave

David B. Parker, Kennesaw State University

Tombstones that used the honorifics ‘Mr.’ and ‘Mrs.’ restored a sense of dignity to people who had been denied it in life.

Mystique, minimalism and cataclysm: Cormac McCarthy’s fiction was a dark counter-narrative to American optimism

Paul Giles, Australian Catholic University

Cormac McCarthy, who has died aged 89, was a major American writer with a distinctive voice. In McCarthy’s world, war and violence are primordial realities.

‘If you want to die in jail, keep talking’ – two national security law experts discuss the special treatment for Trump and offer him some advice

Linguists have identified a new English dialect that’s emerging in South Florida

El Niño is back – that’s good news or bad news, depending on where you live