Posts categorized Society & Culture

This tiny book was acquired by the Smithsonian in 1925. It’s made up of 147 folios of parchment, or treated animal hide, stitched together. The “over text”—the visible text—is of an Armenian prayer book, suspected to date from the 15th century. But there is also an “under text”—a work that was erased to recycle the parchment for the over text. The Smithsonian has turned to University of Rochester professor Gregory Heyworth and his Lazarus Project to help solve the mystery of what that long-ago effaced text might be.

Teenagers in the US don’t get enough shut eye, and the consequences of this epidemic of sleep deprivation are extensive. But researchers at the University of Rochester have found that a simple solution yields solid results: setting a bedtime and sticking to it.

Rochester professor of economics Narayana Kocherlakota expects to be disappointed this week, as the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee has signaled that it will make no changes to an eight-year-old policy statement for meeting inflation and unemployment goals.

For the last three summers, Rochester undergraduates have worked to analyze and preserve the ancient forts along the coast of Ghana, while exploring the historical and cultural context of the structures they study.

Peter Christensen, an associate professor of art and art history at the University of Rochester, has a new role as a juror advising the United Nations in its work designating UNESCO World Heritage sites.

New Rochester research makes considerable progress towards understanding what triggers mothers with substance use disorders to treat their children harshly, and how parents and medical care providers can predict parenting difficulties.

A new study shows the extent to which people will change their own opinions to conform to a stranger’s, or lie about their number of past sexual partners, when the sexual systems of the brain have been activated.

Past studies have attempted to gauge the success of nonmonogamous relationships. Now a Rochester team has studied the distinctions and nuances within various types of nonmonogamous relationships and found that solid communication is key.

“There’s a lot of evidence that in the last eight years or so the Fed has lost control,” says Narayana Kocherlakota, the Lionel W. McKenzie Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester.

In her book, historian Brianna Theobald traces the long history of efforts by federal and local authorities to manage the reproductive lives of Native families, and the widespread activism that arose as a result.