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General Science

The Cosmic Compass: How birds Master the Skies

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[Image of mass group of birds flying through the sunset sky.]

Every year, the skies come alive as billions of birds begin their migration. From the Arctic Tern, with its remarkable marathon around the Earth to the quaint journey of the Dusky Grouse, the avian spectrum is a captivating display of nature’s variability. How do these travelers embark on such extraordinary journeys, navigating through continents and oceans with such precision?

Extremophiles: The alien-like creatures of Earth

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[An image of a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park. The hot spring is a reddish-orange color in the foreground. The colors transition to a blue and green background, from which a vapor is rising.]

The discovery of extremophiles – organisms that thrive in extreme environments – completely changed scientists’ perspectives on the conditions necessary for life. These evolutionary marvels provide context for the origins of life, evolution, and are maybe the best case for the possibility of the existence of life on other planets with extreme environments….

PhD Mom: Baby development

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[Pictured is a 4-month-old baby laying on his stomach on a bed while smiling at the camera and playing with a rattle toy and a teething toy.]

I’ve been doing this mom thing for about 2 years now and along the way I’ve gotten a chance to not only watch my child grow from being a squishy potato of a newborn into a boisterous, opinionated, and hilarious toddler, but I’ve also learned some cool things about baby cognition and child development along the way…

Miss Understanding: Discussing myths about sleep health

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[A woman is laying on a bed with her head on a pillow with her eyes closed.]

Scientists have finally figured out exactly how much sleep humans need: “Just five more minutes!” KIDDING! We’re not here to perpetuate unhelpful sleep habits (yeah – uh – sorry, that snooze button probably isn’t doing much for you); we’re here to talk about the science behind a topic that all people can relate to: sleep…

The neural foundation of psychopathology is complex

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[A person unwinding and rolling up the tangled wire, pulling the tangled wire is in the brain.]

Since the “Decade of the Brain,” neuroscientists and clinical psychologists have been particularly interested in understanding how the brain contributes to psychopathology (commonly referred to as mental illness or mental disorder). However, despite all the resources poured into pursuing questions along these lines, there is little overlap in research findings between studies; it remains difficult to effectively translate neuroscience research into clinical practice, arguably the ultimate goal in studying the brain basis of psychopathology.

Why do people look like their names?

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[Many artistic shapes of human faces.]

There must be times when you have just met a person who introduced herself as “Susan,” and you think to yourself: “Ha! I knew she was ‘Susan!’” You might think that this feeling of being right is illusory. But in fact, you might not be blind-guessing – at least you were not surprised by her name. Let’s take another example.  Look at the man’s face below – most people may feel surprised if his name turns out to be “Bob,” but are less surprised if he is “Andy” or “Timothy”…

Pink for girls…?

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[Pink baby clothes and pink baby shoes.]

We’ve all seen it before: little girls dressed head to toe in pink, surrounded by dolls, glitter, and unicorns. It seems like a natural inclination for girls to dress pink all over. I myself, as a girl, favored cold colors all the time, and my mother even wondered if there was something wrong with me. It sounded like I was not qualified to be a girl. Does a girl have to like pink? This question haunted me all the way through my childhood…

Love math, but don’t care too much

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[A child playing with number toys on a table.]

As part of my job as a researcher and graduate student in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, I invite parents and children to play math games in our lab. As I lead parents and children through studies about how children learn, I’ve seen very different attitudes in parents towards math. Some parents would happily talk about numbers and inferences in their daily interactions, and they make a lot of attempts to start a conversation about math…

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence: A crash course in machine learning

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[An image of a human head; through the head are a series of orange wires forming a network reminiscent of the circuits on a computer chip.]

Artificial intelligence continues to make the news, especially with technologies like ChatGPT – an AI Chatbot – and DALL-E – an image-generating software – becoming increasingly accessible to the public. Reports of modified syllabi in colleges and universities and sentient chatbots may have piqued your interest recently, and for a good reason! AI has gradually become embedded in our daily lives as an influential tool for COVID-19 contact tracing, national security, healthcare, and much more…

#PrimatesAreNotPets: A social media animal welfare campaign

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[A capuchin monkey hanging from a branch high up in the tree.]

Have you ever seen “#PrimatesAreNotPets” floating around Twitter and other social media platforms? There’s a good reason this hashtag is becoming more prominent on the internet; primatologists, animal welfare activists, and conservationists are pushing to bring attention to the illegal pet trade and the devastation that it wrecks on the animals and their natural habitats. Primates aren’t the only exotic animals affected by the illegal pet trade, but they provide an excellent example of what removing a species from an ecosystem can do both at home and in the wild…

College of Arts + Sciences

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