In Focus

  • At a recent Faculty Lunch Seminar Series, Professor Joel Bernstein talked about his experience as an expert witness over the past two decades. The following exchange grew out of that presentation.

  • A study by Interim Dean of Arts and Science David Fitch and the Fitch lab was recently published in the journal Development, on the discovery of a new gene that helps to regulate the timing of the "juvenile-to-adult transition" or the "J/A" transition.

    In mammals, the J/A transition is often called puberty, but the J/A occurs in most other animals...

  • Most of us have been told by a teacher or parent, “If you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas” or (近朱者赤、近墨者黑) -- basically, ‘one takes the color of one’s company.’ It turns out this is also true of antisocial behavior and depression among adolescents, who gradually spend more and more parentally unsupervised time being influenced for greater or for worse, by their friends.

    ...
  • At a recent Faculty Lunch Speaker Series, Lena Scheen, whose research explores the social and cultural impact of China’s fast urbanization, focusing on Shanghai, talked about stumbling on a Pudong construction site that used to be where a 500-year-old temple stood. Fascinated by a group of elderly visitors who frequently pray and burn incense in front of the construction site, Scheen shared...

  • At last week's Faculty Lunch Seminar Series, Einat Natalie Palkovich, who lectures at NYU Shanghai, talked about children's literature and cognitive aesthetics. The following exchange grew out of that presentation.

    Tell us about your particular area of interest and what attracts you to it?

  • Child aggressive behaviors take many different forms. Reactive and proactive aggressions are two forms among many. Reactive aggression usually happens when one is provoked and emotional, thus react in an aggressive way. Proactive aggression happens when one uses aggression to achieve certain goals such as to gain a high status. The Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology published a paper in...

  • So how easy is it to collect and put together a profile of someone using existing data online?

  • Barbara Edelstein and Jian-Jun Zhang recently talked about their respective work and collaborations as part of the Faculty Luncheon Speaker Series. Almost as an after thought, they revealed just how must creative energy they bring to their students: this week, Barbara’s artworks just opened in a NY gallery and her solo show will open in Los Angeles in January, Jian-Jun is showing at 2...

  • Human beings are able to integrate and hold information across time, as well as rapidly and transiently respond to changing stimuli. For instance, to carry a conversation, our brain gets the meaning of words on a very short timescale, it integrates words to understand a sentence on a longer timescale, and finally it must also combine sentences to make sense of paragraphs and whole texts on...

  • A new entrepreneurship speaker series, organized by Professor Keith Ross, Dean of Engineering and Computer Science, and co-sponsored by the Program for Creativity and Innovation, was launched in September to encourage students to embrace their own ideas and work to realize them. This Friday night (5:00pm, Room 101), the series will feature two CEOs with over 10 years experience in public...

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