The Conversation

Since the Great Recession ended in 2009, the recovery in jobs has lagged behind that of Corporate America.Corporate profits and business purchases of equipment and software returned to or near records within a year, yet unemployment remained stubbornly high – even though hiring usually tracks spending. Even today, with joblessness at 5.7%, the labor force participation rate has declined to 63% from 67% before the recession, signaling many adults have simply quit looking for work. And in many parts of the US, unemployment remains elevated.

There has been excitement among researchers in recent years that playing certain video and computer games may strengthen core components of cognition, helping us to make quicker decisions, think more fluidly, and avoid harmful distractions.

Two women recently had their research paper rejected by a science journal based on an incredibly sexist review of their work – an event that has caused outrage on social media. While the journal, PLOS ONE, has apologized and given the authors a second chance, not everyone is as lucky.The case provides an opportunity for journals to adopt an open peer-review system – a process in which scientists evaluate the quality of other scientists' work – so that reviewers cannot hide behind anonymity. But it also shows it is time to get tough on the widespread biases in universities.

We all know how irritating it is to have an inbox flooded with junk mail. Fortunately email providers these days contain filters to keep the junk mail at bay. As a result the junk mail folder tends to pile up with never-to-be-read emails.But, occasionally, an important email is snagged by the filter and is unduly ignored.We can think of the human genome as a server sending out a constant bombardment of emails. These messages are on average 2,000 letters long, and these “letters” are made up of different types of bases, some of which are packaged in the form of RNA.

Even before Jacqueline Ho enrolled in her first environmental studies course at college, her thinking about climate change had been shaped during her years growing up in Singapore reading books by the environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben.At college, ideas first planted by McKibben were reinforced in courses where she read classics by Aldo Leopold and Garrett Hardin, along with recent books by Van Jones and Elizabeth Kolbert.With these authors anchoring her understanding, it was easy for Ho to believe about climate change “that fossil fuel corporations were to blame, that we had a suite of low-carbon technologies we could deploy immediately, and that grassroots solutions held promise,” she recalls.

The latest article exploring sexism in academia suggests that it no longer exists. Some have already grumbled about flaws in the study’s design. But more than that, I simply don’t believe the finding because there is clear evidence that sexism still exists.

Infertility is becoming a public health issue in Europe. Declining birth rates over the past 50 years mean that Europe is only producing 1.6 children per woman – hardly satisfactory to compete on the global stage against increasing populations of fit and able youth from the emerging economies of India and China. And the problem is getting worse: couples reporting infertility in centers across Europe is increasing by 8-9% annually.

There is bad news for those planning to go to Mars in the near future: a study in mice has suggested that radiation in space could cause cognitive decline in astronauts. However, we know from past research that mental, social and physical exercise can boost cognitive functions. With planned Mars missions moving ever closer, it might be be worth exploring activity as a way to counter radiation damage.

Top image: Chandler Collins, CC BY-SAAlcoholic drinks should all carry calorie counts according to a leading UK public health doctor writing in the BMJ today, because of their contribution to obesity. Fiona Sim, Chair of the UK Royal Society for Public Health, writes that while adults who drink may be getting as much as 10% of their daily calories from alcohol, most people are unaware drinking contributes to their energy intake.

Economic sanctions and divestment campaigns are attractive but often flawed tactics for accomplishing international political goals.The social stigma the campaigns create often fails to match the economic pain these campaigns inflict, making the costs of resisting them for governments like Russia, Syria and Iran tolerable in most cases.Indeed, sanctions succeed less than a third of the time they are imposed, according to researchers at the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics, and divestment campaigns have an even less certain track record.

Self-driving cars are expected to revolutionize the automobile industry. Rapid advances have led to working prototypes faster than most people expected. The anticipated benefits of this emerging technology include safer, faster and more eco-friendly transportation.

Can earthquakes ever be predicted? This question is timely after the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Nepal recently. If authorities had more warning that the earthquake was coming, they may have been able to save more lives.While Nepal is a documented area of previous seismic activity, at the moment there is no technique that provides predictions of sufficient clarity to allow for evacuations at short notice. So if we cannot predict these events now, are there avenues of research to provide useful predictions in the future?