We’ve all seen it on a TV crime series – fingerprints taken from a crime scene are put into a computer, instantaneously matched to a person of interest, and “Voila!” The crime is solved. As with many aspects of TV crime drama, however, fingerprint analysis is more complicated in real life. The reason? According to… Read more »
Cutting-Edge Science at IU
How cutting edge technology can help us understand animal migration
Scientists have long been interested in understanding animal migration, but gathering migration data proved difficult in the past. For example, the process of catching and recapturing migratory songbirds using mist nets is a laborious process. In the past, recovering songbirds produced data only about the breeding location and their migration destination, and rarely about the migration itself. Studying… Read more »
Single molecule magnets: The data storage of the future
This post is from ScIU’s archives. It was originally published by Josey Topolski in January 2017, and has been lightly edited to reflect current events. The storage capability of hard drives has been increasing exponentially over the past 60 years. The IBM 350 RAMAC disk released in 1956 was able to store 2000 bits (a unit… Read more »
From feeling lost to feeling triumphant: An interview with Ph.D. Candidate Sophia Vinci-Booher
Sophia Vinci-Booher is a graduating Ph.D. student and soon-to-be postdoctoral researcher in IU’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. She has spent the last 5 years here completing graduate coursework and conducting research in order to earn her Ph.D, and she is now one of the leading researchers in the field of functional brain development…. Read more »
Star clusters: Star families come in all ages, shapes and sizes
This post is from ScIU’s archives. It was originally published by Maria Tiongco in September 2016, and has been lightly edited to reflect current events. Have you ever taken time to gaze at the stars on a clear night, either with a casual eye or a telescope? If so, you might have seen the famous… Read more »
Feeling stressed? Researchers at IU are studying how stress reshapes the brain
This post is from ScIU’s archives. It was originally published by Rachel Skipper in January 2017, and has been lightly edited to reflect current events. This post is also part 1 of a two part series. Check out part 2 here! Imagine it’s 9:45 am. You have a meeting across town in 15 minutes and you… Read more »
New Research on the Prevalence of Consensual Non-Monogamy
This post is from ScIU’s archives. It was originally published in February 2018, and has been lightly edited to reflect current events. When you do an image search for dating or relationships, the results almost entirely focus on two people, usually in an implied heterosexual relationship. Most popular TV shows and movies focus on the… Read more »
Sexual science: An interview with Justin Garcia
“Our sexuality is becoming digital,” notes Dr. Justin Garcia, a leading expert in modern human mating. While new modes of sexuality and romance bring benefits, they also invite ethical questions. Take the phenomenon of “sexting,” the transmission of sexual images and messages via mobile phone or other electronic media. After discovering that sexts are shared… Read more »
An astronomer’s sleep schedule
This post is from ScIU’s archives. It was originally published in July 2017, and has been lightly edited to reflect current events. If you aren’t in the field of astronomy, it may be hard to understand what we astronomers do. Surely we don’t set up small telescopes in our backyard to do research—most locations are… Read more »
Perks of the job
This post is from ScIU’s archives. It was originally published in October 2016, and has been lightly edited to reflect current events. What does summer vacation look like for a scientist? For some, summer break is much-needed time to catch up on research projects and writing, but for many of us, summer centers around one… Read more »