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Joseph Kahne, a UCR professor of education policy,  says a string of walkouts this week are part of a renewed period of student activism sparked by the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, George Floyd's murder and concerns about climate change. He hasn't seen such an upswing in student activism since the 1960s and 1970s.

Rich Carpiano, public health scientist and sociologist, suggests having a few masks on hand so you can rotate between them. That way, after wearing one mask, you can set it aside for a few days before picking it up again, allowing viral particles on the old mask to deactivate. 

In 1975, the late New Journalism pioneer and author Joan Didion delivered a commencement address at UCR. While the ending has been frequently quoted, the complete text has been "lost" in the bowels of the UCR library for almost 50 years, until now.

Joseph Kahne, a professor who studies civics education and its impact on civic engagement says, "schools, while not perfect, historically have been a place where young people can learn how to engage in democracy."

Given the ineffectiveness of vaccines against the omicron variant and the number of people worldwide who aren't vaccinated, medical sociologist Richard Carpiano believes the coronavirus isn't likely to become endemic, like the flu, any time soon. 

History professor Michele Renee Salzman writes that politicians must publicly acknowledge their responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack on the capital, and that if they cannot acknowledge their guilt they should be removed.

Anthropologist Nawa Sugiyama explains how actions from the past affect decisions in present day Mexico. Thousand-year-old underground sediments made people unconsciously follow the same construction patterns through time, he found.

Archaeologist Scott Fedick and plant physiologist Louis Santiago demonstrate that the Maya had nearly 500 edible plants available to them, many of which are highly drought resistant. These findings cast dought on drought as the reasons for the collapse of ancient Maya civilization.