What is freedom?
/
Josiah Leong shares a poetic reflection on addiction and addiction research.
Read More
Can jumping spiders hear with their leg hair?
/
For years, we thought we had one advantage over the jumping spiders: the ability to hear. Now, fascinating new research suggests that Mother Nature leveled the playing field by giving some spiders a bizarre way to sense its enemies. It’s a feature, not a bug.
Read MoreSleeping with the Cavefishes
/
As a graduate student, I would give my right arm to be a fully functioning human being with little to no sleep. Alas, even Aristotle in 350 BCE observed a seemingly simple truth -- all animals sleep. Much to the frustration of sleep scientists, we still do not fully understand why we need sleep or why there is so much variation between species in sleep behavior. We are, however, beginning to gain an understanding of what may be regulating sleep and how it may have evolved over time, in some cases even making use of unusual model organisms such as Astyanax mexicanus, or the Mexican cavefish.
Read MoreA Pathway Towards Alzheimer’s Disease Treatments: Understanding the Role of ApoE in Human Neuron Physiology
/
More than five million individuals are affected by Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) in the United States. This dementia is the sixth leading cause of death nationwide, and one of every three seniors dies from AD or a related dementia…
Research has primarily sought to understand the biology underlying early-onset familial Alzheimer’s, using genes with well-defined autosomal dominant mutations. However, familial early-onset AD occurs in less than ten percent of Alzheimer’s Disease cases. The majority of cases are sporadic, late-onset, and associated with “risk genes”, particularly APOE.
Read MoreWhen the Brainstem Gets Excited About Walking
/
When we’re walking from place to place, we have full control of when and how fast to go. But how does the brain tell the leg muscles to start walking? Speed up? Slow down?
Read MoreStrategies addressing a “chilly climate” transform women’s experience, relationships, and achievement in engineering
/
In STEM fields women are underrepresented both in numbers of senior faculty and participation metrics [1,2,3]. Women leave STEM fields at all transition points, a phenomenon known as “the leaky pipeline.” … In this post, we highlight a study by Professor Gregory Walton and his colleagues, where they characterize feelings of exclusion, and attempt to mitigate these feelings through the development of simple intervention strategies [6].
Read MoreWhite People in Black Bodies: How to Reduce Implicit Bias for a Long Time
/
From courtroom sentencing to graduate school admissions, from voting on the president to choosing who to sit next to on the bus, our biases play a role in the decisions we make and the actions we take. Most interventions designed to combat implicit bias do not hold up over time or simply do not reduce bias. Amidst these unsuccessful interventions, Mel Slater’s group at the University of Barcelona found one method that did reduce implicit bias of white people against black people and whose effects persisted for an unusually long time.
Read MoreRandomized controlled trials of interventions to reduce gender bias in academic hiring
/
Biased beliefs about the abilities of underrepresented groups in science can lead to inequality in hiring, promotions, admissions, funding, and more. Given that diversifying the STEMM academy is both just and beneficial to scientific progress, it’s hard to argue against efforts to promote diversity in hiring. In light of this issue, two groups of researchers recently sought to develop and rigorously test evidence-based interventions for counteracting natural human biases, with the specific goal of decreasing the bias against women in the academic STEMM faculty hiring process.
Read MoreThe Anxious Circuit
/
Anxiety is a feeling we all face on a daily basis about our jobs, our relationships, and even the meaning of our lives. But when normal anxiety gets so severe that it interferes with daily functioning it becomes generalized anxiety disorder, a psychiatric diagnosis that 28% of people in the United States will suffer from during some period in their life, costing the economy billions of dollars annually. But where is the seat of anxiety in the brain? In this article (Tae et al. 2011 Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09820) we will explore one of the first studies to ever identify a possible circuit for this important and pervasive feeling...
Read MoreNurturing the Study of Nature
/
While demand in recent years for skilled workers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) has grown at a staggering rate, men have claimed a larger share of those positions and earnings compared to women (U.S. Department of Commerce). Biased hiring practices may explain the struggles of recent graduates, but men outnumber women at every point in the STEM pipeline. To better understand the disappearance of women in STEM, Daniel Grunspan and his colleagues at the University of Washington took a closer look at an important checkpoint in scientific careers: undergraduate introductory biology courses
Read More