Beer yeast: Unraveling the origin story with genetics
Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or brewer’s yeast, has been used to make beer for thousands of years. To reconstruct the history of modern ale strains, Rochester biologist Justin Fay and his colleagues sequenced the genome of modern brewer’s yeast.
Crisis at the border? Anthropologist looks at Central American migration
Professor and author Daniel Reichman gives an overview of the last 40 years of Central American migration to the United States, and describes a system that is far more complicated than what’s often presented in the news.
Has the Renaissance warped our view of the Middle Ages?
The picture of the Middle Ages as “awful, smelly, stinky, [and] dangerous” is not accurate, says medievalist and University of Pennsylvania professor David Wallace, this year’s Ferrari Humanities Symposia visiting scholar.
A national pastime must have a national presence
As the baseball season opens, the league is looking to change some rules to speed up the game. English lecturer and baseball authority Curt Smith presents his own five-point plan to save the sport he loves.
Should higher education go digital?
From smartphones and social media to augmented spaces and virtual reality —three Rochester professors discuss the role digital technologies play in our learning.
Can the laws of physics untangle traffic jams, stock markets, and other complex systems?
Gourab Ghoshal is using the fundamental laws of physics to untangle the complex systems behind human behavior, urban planning, and social networks.
Saving the lost text of a Torah scroll
Professor Gregory Heyworth and his digital media students are using different wavelengths of light to reveal illegible text that could create a sacred, tangible link with Jewish congregations lost to the Holocaust.
Watching for ‘bright lines’ during the Trump presidency
In a study spanning the first 18 months of the Donald Trump presidency, the non-partisan Bright Line Watch research group found large areas of agreement as to what constitutes critical democratic principles, but little agreement over which have been violated.
Playing Ben Affleck’s daughter
Maddy Wary is a mathematics and brain and cognitive sciences dual major from Hawaii. But during Spring Break this week, she makes her onscreen debut in Triple Frontier, a Netflix action thriller.
‘A very different status and kind of career’
The Rochester Women series continues with the story of Sylvy Kornberg ’38, ’40M (MS), a biochemist most often cited as the wife and the mother of Nobel Prize-winning scientists, but who played a critical role in the discovery of DNA replication.