USA Archives

Thinking through livelihood: How a peasantry of princely Rājpuţāna became educated and activist rural citizens of Rajasthan, India

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R. Thomas Rosin, Professor Emeritus, explores how folk knowledge and partnerships among tenant farmers in the desert region of Rajasthan, India supported peasant activism and rebellion in the decades around Indian Independence. Demanding livelihoods involving computation and ethno-hydrology prepared them for formal education. Gandhi’s Satyagraha (non-violent resistance) campaigns in British India inspired them as citizens to overturn their domination as […]

Post-quantum secure encryption and cybersecurity education

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Encryption systems that are capable of surviving quantum computer attacks are urgently required, but the cybersecurity talent gap militates against securing cyberinfrastructure. Dr Aydin Aysu, Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University, is advancing the research and teaching of post-quantum secure encryption. He has developed a quantum-secure encryption system together with a new graduate program on hardware security and is […]

How treatment epidemiology can shape future healthcare research

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Dr Aisling Caffrey is an Associate Professor of Health Outcomes at the College of Pharmacy, University of Rhode Island. For over a decade, Dr Caffrey has been studying the treatment of diseases in real-world clinical practice, an area Dr Caffrey has termed ‘treatment epidemiology’. Dr Caffrey’s expertise is in comparative effectiveness and safety research, where she studies the benefits and harms of healthcare interventions, […]

Subcellular dissection of plant immunity towards bacteria

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In the plant kingdom, disease is an exception rather than a rule. That is because plants have an immune system. A plants’ immune system consists of several signalling pathways that act together to counteract microbial pathogens. However, there is not enough known about the subcellular pathways that allow proteins to move within and out of the plant cell and ward […]

A new frontier for hate

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James Hawdon, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention at Virginia Tech, USA, has spent many years studying online hate, including hate speech and other forms of cyberviolence. His work has examined how hate speech gets produced, how the hate groups and individuals that produce it become radicalised, how it spreads across the […]

Controlled cortical impact: The animal model that may change brain injury

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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the leading causes of disability and death around the world. To compound this problem, many patients go on to develop anxiety and with little known about the pathophysiology behind this complication, long-lasting and effective treatments are lacking. Using an animal model known as the controlled cortical impact (CCI) model, Dr Ann Marini and […]

Changing climate: A ‘threat multiplier’ for foodborne and waterborne infectious diseases and antibiotic resistance

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Aliyar Fouladkhah examines the risks of foodborne pathogens like Listeria monocytogenes.

Dr Aliyar Cyrus Fouladkhah of Tennessee State University is an Assistant Professor in Public Health Microbiology. His laboratory explores preventive measures for the spread of infectious diseases, antibiotic resistance, and food security in the landscape of changing climate. His research aims to provide better understanding of the ecology, epidemiology and effectiveness of control measures of enteric and environmental pathogens at […]

When complex systems fail: The mammalian dive response and sudden unexpected death

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The mammalian dive response (MDR) conserves oxygen when a person is swimming or diving. Usually the MDR serves as a built-in safety feature of the body. Sometimes, though, the MDR interacts with other factors to cause sudden unexpected death. In particular, risk of death increases when the MDR is combined with a heart condition called long QT syndrome. In a […]

Cooperation with autonomous machines through culture and emotion

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As robots become ubiquitous to society, human-machine cooperation becomes unavoidable.

People tend to be less cooperative with machines than with humans. Dr Celso de Melo, a computer scientist with the US Army Research Laboratory, and Dr Kazunori Terada, an Associate Professor at Gifu University, Japan, demonstrate how incorporating simple cultural and emotional cues, such as virtual faces showing positive or negative emotion, can help mitigate unfavourable bias toward machines and […]

Climate change is driving the expansion of zoonotic diseases

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The team researches the spread of zoonotic diseases such as the Zika virus.

Climate change is expanding the range of many infectious diseases. In particular, vector-borne diseases, such as dengue or malaria, are advancing. Predictions of risk for zoonotic diseases need to take into account both biological and abiotic factors. Dr Jeanne M. Fair and her colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, USA, are pioneering a multidisciplinary approach to the problem. […]