Skip to main content
ScIU Indiana University Bloomington
Here at ScIU, we believe in providing all IU scientists with a voice. Check out our ScIU Guest Contributor Posts below!

Entries by Guest Contributor

AI: Revolutionizing the landscape of mental health treatment

Posted by

An AI generated image of an elderly man sitting on a couch with a humanoid looking robot.

[An AI generated image of an elderly man sitting on a couch with a humanoid looking robot.”]

If you’ve been plugged into the news recently, you might have heard a thing or two about artificial intelligence (AI). Whether it conjures up talking robots or 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger films, artificial intelligence has become an increasingly popular topic. But, you might be wondering, what exactly is AI? In a broad sense, artificial intelligence refers to the ability of machines to mimic human cognitive functions, such as learning and problem-solving. In the realm of mental health, AI is rapidly emerging as a game-changer, offering exciting possibilities for diagnosis, treatment, and overall accessibility of care…

Perks of being a wallflower: Scratching the surface of PTSD

Posted by

[A bright white primrose growing out of a crack in a stone wall.]

I have always appreciated the depth and emotion portrayed within the film Perks of Being a Wallflower, which hits on uncomfortable issues in a beautifully cinematic way. While there are a multitude of scenes Icould analyze, I’d like to focus on a clip towards the very end of the movie, in which Charlie (the main character) experiences a flashback that, in my interpretation, can be attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD…

The brain and moral decision making

Posted by

[A person holding up a heart on one side and a brain on the other side of their head.]

How do we separate right from wrong in moral decision making? Some moral decisions, like whether or not to commit murder, seem like easy and intuitive moral decisions. However, we are often caught in moral dilemmas in our lives where the “right” thing to do is not as clear…

Debunking myths about therapy

Posted by

[Anonymous psychologist and client in a therapy session.”]

Embarking on the journey of mental health therapy can be a truly transformative experience. However, it’s not uncommon for misconceptions to cloud the path to healing. Despite the increasing demand for mental health treatment, persistent myths still predominate. But here’s a spoiler alert: Therapy isn’t merely about sitting on a couch (or lying down) and pouring your heart out. It’s a dynamic process that goes beyond stereotypes…

Philosophy and moral decision making

Posted by

[An arrow pointing left labeled “Wrong Way” and an arrow pointing right labeled “Right Way.”]

Should you cheat on your exam to get a good final grade in your class? When is it okay to lie? If your child is going for an internship at your company, is it morally permissible to give them a leg up over other applicants? We make moral decisions every day, forming a moral personality from the choices we make about right and wrong…

Graphene: A single-layer magic material

Posted by

[A top view of the crystal structure of graphene. The carbon atoms occupy the vertices of the hexagons, which collectively form a honeycomb pattern.]

You’re likely familiar with graphite: the chalky gray material we often refer to as pencil lead. In recent years, graphite has been making headlines due to increased interest in its younger sibling: graphene, lauded as a supermaterial of the new age for properties that hold out the promise of novel technological feats. Graphene has the potential to replace silicon-based computer chips, improve the performance of touchscreens, realize ultra-sensitive biometric sensor devices, and even faster charging and increased storage capacity in batteries and capacitors…

How did we find out that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs?

Posted by

[A large fireball is being hurtled toward the earth as two small dinosaurs look on, possibly in fear.]

If you ask almost any kid today how the dinosaurs died, they’ll tell you an asteroid killed them, but this didn’t used to be the leading theory. When you look at key papers about the asteroid impact the kids are referring to, you’ll learn that it defined the transition from the Cretaceous to the Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary ~66 million years ago. Before the discovery of the asteroid, there wasn’t a single agreed upon theory on what caused the 5th global mass extinction…

The hunt for continuous gravitational waves

Posted by

[The collision of neutron stars produces a burst of gravitational waves.]

In 1916, Einstein predicted there are ripples in the fabric of space that travel through the universe at the speed of light. Today we know those ripples as gravitational waves. A century after Einstein’s prediction, science gave Einstein one of his biggest victories: the detection of gravitational waves. The detection came from gravitational waves emitted by black holes…

How gender is conveyed through speech

Posted by

[Recording microphone with pop filter lit in soft purple light.]

When we hear a voice, the speaker’s gender is one of the first things we notice about them. Even if we’re asked to categorize speakers based on dialect or accent, we still gravitate toward grouping them based on how we perceive their gender. In my lab, we study which specific physical properties of speech (known as acoustic cues) control how gender identity is perceived. The acoustic cues we examine are voice pitch (controlled by how quickly the vocal folds vibrate), voice resonance (a result of the size and shape of the throat and mouth), articulation (how we produce the consonant and vowel sounds in our speech), and intonation (the melody we produce with our speech)…

A study on grammar and the bilingual brain

Posted by

[A cartoon of the brain, with pictures of a heart, a thought bubble, music notes, numbers, a molecule, and words.]

We humans have a unique capacity to acquire language, even as adults. However, if you have ever used Duolingo, you might have realized that children are more successful at acquiring languages than adults. This observation is puzzling; since adults are smarter than children, shouldn’t it be the other way around? One set of explanations for this paradox focuses on parsing — that is, applying our knowledge of grammar as sentences unfold incrementally…

College of Arts + Sciences

Are you a graduate student at IUB? Would you like to write for ScIU? Email sciucomm@iu.edu