In the U.S., more than half of people who are released from prison return behind bars within five years. Researchers Shawn Bushway and David Harding of the University at Albany (SUNY) set out to understand why by following the paths of 100,000 convicted felons in Michigan from sentencing onward. The unique design of their natural experiment lends power to the study’s findings – that parole, above all else, plays a key role in driving prison’s revolving door.

As researchers push ever closer to putting autonomous vehicles on the road in large numbers, Texas A&M mechanical engineer Srikanth Saripalli explains how their designers will need to figure out how to make computers the ultimate defensive drivers.

In the wake of foreign interference in the 2016 election, some have said government should clamp down on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Not so fast, media scholar Paul Levinson argues. He argues that any sort of government encroachment on these sites would be a slippery slope.

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