Posts Tagged School of Arts and Sciences

Monkeys are notoriously curious, and new research has quantified just how eager they are to gain new information, even if there are not immediate benefits.

Naked mole rats are small, hairless, subterranean rodents that have never been known to get cancer despite having a 30-year lifespan. A new protein discovered by biologist Vera Gorbunova may help explain why.

The Department of English has named N’jelle Gage and Guy Thorne of FuturPointe Dance the recipients of the 2014 Lillian Fairchild Memorial Award.

A collaboration between researchers from Canada, Europe, and Rochester has experimentally produced Möbius strips from the polarization of light, confirming a theoretical prediction that it is possible for light’s electromagnetic field to assume this peculiar shape.

In a paper to be presented this week at the American Association for Artificial Intelligence conference in Austin, Texas, computer science professor Jiebo Luo and his colleagues describe a computer program that can analyze “selfie” videos recorded by a webcam as the person engages with social media.

For ten years, this annual competition has showcased the artwork of undergraduate students exploring ideas of gender and sexuality. From January 23 through February 27, an exhibition in Rush Rhees Library features the 2015 jury’s top selections.

Rochester astronomers, along with colleagues at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands have discovered that the ring system that they see eclipse the very young Sun-like star J1407 is of enormous proportions, much larger and heavier than the ring system of Saturn.

Novartis, a multi-national pharmaceutical company based in Switzerland, honors two scientists each year who are “within 10 years of having established an independent academic research career in the areas of organic or bioorganic chemistry in the broadest sense.” The Novartis Early Career Award comes with a $150,000 grant over three years to continue the recipient’s research.

The Institute for Popular Music (IPM) celebrates the 50th year of the Rolling Stone’s breakthrough hit, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” with a special concert January 24. This musical tribute coincides with the launch of a free online course on “The Music of The Rolling Stones.”

In what they call a “weird little corner” of the already weird world of neutrinos, physicists have found evidence that these tiny particles might be involved in a surprising reaction. In an experiment conducted with the international MINERvA collaboration at Fermilab, physics professor Kevin McFarland and his students and colleagues provide evidence that neutrinos can sometimes interact with a nucleus but leave it basically untouched, resulting in a new particle being created out of a vacuum.