Opinion

Opinion: Climate change, the Anthropocene, and the Plantationocene

Environment, Opinion / /

As we grapple with the consequences of anthropogenic climate change, some scientists and researchers have tried to nominalize the cause of today’s environmental degradation. The term “Anthropocene” has been used to emphasize humanity’s impact on the environment, suggesting that humans are the major force of environmental change in this geological epoch. In 2016, the Anthropocene […]

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Opinion: The need to tackle bias in the sphere of artificial intelligence

Opinion, Psychology, Technology / /

Artificial Intelligence (AI), one of the greatest advancements humans have developed to date, has the power to augment the growth of healthcare, education, media, and job training — as well as physical and mental health. However, AI cannot ultimately improve any of these areas if the supporting data encodes biases in race, gender, and ethnicity.

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Opinion: How research about culture and the brain runs into racism and the importance of cross-disciplinary communication

Opinion, Psychology / /

Academics mostly keep to themselves. They stay in their offices or labs, and they venture out to classrooms or conferences with (hopefully) interested audiences and other people who understand their passions and frustrations. They spend months or years collecting evidence and formulating theories to be able to share them with their colleagues and advance the

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Opinion: The search for the magnetic monopole & physicists’ obsession with Symmetry

Opinion, Physics / /

At the end of the 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell condensed centuries of work in the study of electricity and magnetism into four eloquent and simple equations. Maxwell’s equations describe electric and magnetic fields as a yin and yang, ebbing and flowing through space. A change in one field creates a swirl in the other,

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Opinion: Why Northeastern should become climate resilient

Environment, Opinion / /

According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “without … a sharp decline in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, global warming will surpass 1.5 [degrees Celsius] in the following decades, leading to irreversible loss of the most fragile ecosystems, and crisis after crisis for the most vulnerable people and societies.” As 2030 fast

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Opinion: A profile of the alt-right and modern American conservatism

Opinion, World / /

A deadly rally in Charlottesville, a slew of mass shootings, a divisive general election, and an insurrection based on unfounded claims of voter fraud. The United States is more openly divided than it has been since the Civil War, and the extremist right wing of the country has become emboldened over the years. During the

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Opinion: What the 2020 US presidential election means for the future of STEM

Opinion / /

In most messaging intended to encourage voter turnout, we are reminded of the “issues on the ballot.” From Roe v. Wade to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), many key issues are used as justification to vote for the candidate who supports one’s own stance. For many Americans, this rhetoric works because 20 million people have

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Opinion: The pandemic of health literacy

Health, Opinion / /

The emergence of social media within the last decade has revolutionized modern society, allowing individuals to stay connected from distant parts of the world. However, like with many revolutionizing technologies, with great power comes great responsibility. Lacking proper guidance, platforms allowing individuals to post as they wish had created vast amounts of false information circulating

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