We made it into 2021 (at least 6 days in before a major incident). We’re back for the 11th iteration of the Science Colloquium with the Diversity in STEM Colloquium! Students can enroll in the colloquium for 4Cr (Intro/Adv, Lib) natural science study (GSCI 1500). And, as always, it is a public forum, and ESC faculty and staff, and the local community are invited to attend and participate.
Schedule for Spring 2021:
1. February 2nd – Dr. Aimee Hollander (Nichols State University) -‘Increasing student success in general education biology courses and observations in student success during COVID-19′
Traditionally Biology courses are taught building on concepts of very tiny matter like atoms, molecules and cells and working up to organism, tissues and organ systems. This is how most Biology textbooks are written and traditional curriculum is taught. However, in general education courses where we face many challenges such as student’s lack of interest and knowledge of how to study areas outside their major, we need to reassess the way we teach these courses. Therefore, we redesigned Biology 106 and taught the curriculum backwards from traditional curriculum. The same concepts and book chapters were covered in a semester as a traditional course however I started with information that was more appealing and easier to conceptualize for a non-major student such as body systems. Once students mastered how to study this material, they were more successful at mastering abstract concepts like organismal development and classification. We observed using linear regression that students enrolled in my Biology 106 course were two times more likely to pass my course compared to other instructors based on the way the course was taught.
2. February 16th – Dr. Audeliz Matias (SUNY Empire State College)
3. March 2nd – Dr.Kristy Biolsi (St. Francis College/Center for the Study of Pinniped Ecology & Cognition)
4. March 16th – Dr. Guillaume Rieucau (Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium)
5. March 30th – Dr. Peter Park (SUNY Farmingdale College)
6. April 13th -TBD
The Science Colloquium will be virtual this spring. All presentations (unless otherwise noted) are from 5-6PM. If you wish to attend, please e-mail me (Kevin.Woo@es.edu) for the link.
For those who would like to participate in the colloquium either as a student, attendee, or a speaker, please contact me.
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Can you believe it? We’re back for the 10th iteration of the Science Colloquium (yes, nearly a whole decade)! And, this year, we’re presenting the Diversity in STEM Colloquium! Students can enroll in the colloquium for 4Cr (Intro/Adv, Lib) natural science study (GSCI 1500). And, as always, it is a public forum, and ESC faculty and staff, and the local community are invited to attend and participate. This year, we’ll be hosting the colloquium during the Fall 2019 term, and go on a little hiatus (for a return in the Spring 2021 term).
Schedule for Fall 2019:
1. September 10th – Dr. Eric Ramos (CUNY Hunter College/CUNY Graduate Center)
2. September 24th – Dr. Punita Bhansali (CUNY Queensborough Community College) – ‘The Investigation of Factors that Guide the Formation of Mammalian Retina’
The eye is a complex sensory organ that is critical to an organism’s ability to navigate through its environment. Vision begins in a tissue called the retina, which is located in the inner surface of the eye. This multilayered sheet of cells transforms light into a biological signal that is sent to the brain to begin the process of visual perception. The development of the retina and its connections to the brain is comprised of a tightly controlled set of elaborate processes. I am interested in the external and internal factors in the eye during embryonic development that guide the formation of specific retinal cell types and their axons. For example, how does a precursor cell in the eye become a photoreceptor rather than a retinal ganglion cell? During my talk, I will briefly discuss projects that I’ve been involved in that investigate different aspects of mammalian retinal development.
3. October 8th – Dr. Samantha Cheng (American Museum of Natural History) – ‘The Past, Present, and Future of Calamari: Science of Sustainable Squid Fisheries’
Marine fisheries resources support the livelihoods and food security of millions of coastal inhabitants worldwide. In particular, as fin-fish stocks have dramatically crashed over the years, cephalopod (e.g. octopus, cuttlefish, and squid) fisheries are growing in popularity. However, compared to other fished species, we don’t know that much about cephalopod ecology and biodiversity – which hampers effective and sustainable management and conservation. Exciting approaches such as genomic technologies have potential to help us investigate cephalopod diversity, identify areas for spatial management, and predict how they will be affected by environmental change. I will share research on squid fisheries from the center of marine biodiversity, the Coral Triangle, as well as California, as well as discussions on how we can better integrate science into conservation decisions.
4. October 29th -Dr. Grace Pai (CUNY Guttman Community College) – Education for All: Through the Eyes of those Out-of-School in Rural Sierra Leone
As schooling becomes a sociocultural norm across the world, how do out-of-school children and their parents perceive and experience the notion of education for all? Using data from 101 qualitative interviews with out-of-school children, their parents and local leaders in three villages of rural Sierra Leone, this paper shows that an unintended consequence of universalizing education has been the silent “problematization” of the act of not going to school, along with the stigmatization of those who are out of school. For instance, children who formerly worked and played with their peers on equal grounds are suddenly aware of their social and cognitive deficiencies. Children who are not in school are often seen by parents, leaders and even the children themselves as “idlers” and “thieves” who are not “useful” to the community. Ultimately, this paper argues that the notion of a democratic “education for all” can overlay a new divisive form of identity – educational identity – paradoxically creating new social inequalities that contradict the intended effect of a universal education policy.
5. November 12th – Ms. Pua’ala Pascua (American Museum of Natural History) – The Good Life: Exploring Local Measures of Well-Being
At the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation of the American Museum of Natural History (CBC), we are working to understand how to manage land and seascapes using approaches that explicitly start with and build on local values, knowledge systems, and needs, and recognize the feedbacks between human well-being and ecological health. Through our efforts, we aim to center local realities and bridge disconnects between local, national, and global efforts to sustainably manage natural resources. One valuable aspect of our work is convening and connecting groups on the topic of locally and culturally attuned indicators of well-being. In this interactive discussion, we will explore ideas of what well-being might look like in various communities around the world. What does the good life look like in the place you call home? We will share lessons learned on this topic through ongoing collaborations with Indigenous Peoples and local community members in the Pacific and around the world. We hope these discussions spark further interest and conversations on the role of locally and culturally attuned perspectives (and their resulting metrics/indicators) in the natural sciences and resource management fields.
6. December 3rd –Dr. Gina Torino (SUNY Empire State College) – Homeless Microaggressions: Initial Scale Construction and Implications
Homeless youth are at higher risk for trauma, school dropout, justice system involvement as well as physical and mental health issues including substance abuse. In this talk, Dr. Torino will discuss her recent co-authored article entitled, “The Association of Racial and Homelessness Microaggressions and Physical and Mental Health in a Sample of Homeless Youth.” She will focus on describing the development of a new scale measuring homeless microaggressions as well as the association between microaggressions and health/well-being in a sample of homeless youth.
The Hudson Street location of the Metropolitan Center is located at: 325 Hudson Street, New York, NY. All presentations (unless otherwise noted) are from 5-6PM, in the Multipurpose Room (Room 344).
For those who would like to participate in the colloquium either as a student, attendee, or a speaker, please contact me.
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We’re back for the 9th iteration of the Science Colloquium! And, this year, we’re presenting the Women & Diversity in STEM Colloquium! Students can enroll in the colloquium for 4Cr (Intro/Adv, Lib) natural science study (GSCI 1500). And, as always, it is a public forum, and ESC faculty and staff, and the local community are invited to attend and participate.
Schedule for Spring 2019:
1. January 22nd – Dr. Punita Bhansali (CUNY Queensborough Community College) – ‘The Investigation of Factors that Guide the Formation of Mammalian Retina’
The eye is a complex sensory organ that is critical to an organism’s ability to navigate through its environment. Vision begins in a tissue called the retina, which is located in the inner surface of the eye. This multilayered sheet of cells transforms light into a biological signal that is sent to the brain to begin the process of visual perception. The development of the retina and its connections to the brain is comprised of a tightly controlled set of elaborate processes. I am interested in the external and internal factors in the eye during embryonic development that guide the formation of specific retinal cell types and their axons. For example, how does a precursor cell in the eye become a photoreceptor rather than a retinal ganglion cell? During my talk, I will briefly discuss projects that I’ve been involved in that investigate different aspects of mammalian retinal development.
2. January 29th – Dr. Allie Brashears (CUNY LaGuardia Community College) – ‘From Calories to Color – How Energy Drives Evolution’
Evolution acts on all life. The elegance of evolutionary theory lies in its ability to explain life’s magnificent diversity, from prehensile elephant trunks to furry beetle legs, in terms of the simple idea of differential reproductive success – or making more babies that survive than your neighbor. Yet reproduction takes energy, and especially for heterotrophs like animals, the ways in which they gain, lose, and spend energy can mean the difference between life and death, and thus fundamentally shape their behavior and physiology. My research questions focus on understanding these energetic interactions between animals and their environments, with the aim of providing insight into the mechanisms of evolution.
3. March 13th – Dr. Kestrel Perez (St. Joseph’s College) – ‘Growth rate and maternal investment: how important are these factors for marine fish?’
Mortality rates during the early life stages of fish are commonly high. Thus, factors that cause these mortality rates to vary can have a significant impact on recruitment into the adult population. Here, I will present research evaluating the effect of growth rate, swimming ability, and maternal investment on early life stage fish success. First, I measured the intensity of selection for larger size in fish early life history across a wide taxonomic range of fish species. Interesting, selection strongly favors larger size at age. Despite the apparent benefit of larger size at age in fish, many trade-offs associated with faster growth rates have been documented. Similarly to previous research, I found that faster growth in fish results in reduced swimming ability that continues to manifests over a prolonged period. Lastly, I measured the effect of maternal diet on subsequent offspring survivorship and performance. I found that egg fatty acid content was linked to some performance traits measured. Importantly, a larval diet that was enriched in fatty acids could compensate for some of the initial deficiencies.
4. March 26th – Dr. Allyson Sheffield (CUNY LaGuardia Community College) – ‘Stars Around the Milky Way: Cosmic Space Invaders or Victims of Galactic Eviction?’
The Milky Way is a dynamic galaxy: the outer reaches of the galaxy contains intricate webs of structure in the form of thin streams and diffuse clouds of stars. While some of these structures can be attributed to the Milky Way pulling in smaller satellite galaxies, an alternate scenario is that the structures formed in the Milky Way and were evicted to their current location due to the accretion of a satellite galaxy. In this case, the the accretion event caused the Milky Way’s disk to oscillate and ring! I will discuss how the chemical abundances of stars in the Milky Way can serve as a way of unraveling their origin.
5. April 2nd – Dr. Grace Pai (CUNY Guttman Community College) – ‘Education for All: Through the Eyes of those Out-of-School in Rural Sierra Leone’
As schooling becomes a sociocultural norm across the world, how do out-of-school children and their parents perceive and experience the notion of education for all? Using data from 101 qualitative interviews with out-of-school children, their parents and local leaders in three villages of rural Sierra Leone, this paper shows that an unintended consequence of universalizing education has been the silent “problematization” of the act of not going to school, along with the stigmatization of those who are out of school. For instance, children who formerly worked and played with their peers on equal grounds are suddenly aware of their social and cognitive deficiencies. Children who are not in school are often seen by parents, leaders and even the children themselves as “idlers” and “thieves” who are not “useful” to the community. Ultimately, this paper argues that the notion of a democratic “education for all” can overlay a new divisive form of identity – educational identity – paradoxically creating new social inequalities that contradict the intended effect of a universal education policy.
6. April 16th – Dr. Gina Torino (SUNY Empire State College) – ‘Homeless Microaggressions: Initial Scale Construction and Implications‘
Homeless youth are at higher risk for trauma, school dropout, justice system involvement as well as physical and mental health issues including substance abuse. In this talk, Dr. Torino will discuss her recent co-authored article entitled, “The Association of Racial and Homelessness Microaggressions and Physical and Mental Health in a Sample of Homeless Youth.” She will focus on describing the development of a new scale measuring homeless microaggressions as well as the association between microaggressions and health/well-being in a sample of homeless youth.
The Hudson Street location of the Metropolitan Center is located at: 325 Hudson Street, New York, NY. All presentations (unless otherwise noted) are from 5-6PM, in the Multipurpose Room (Room 344).
For those who would like to participate in the colloquium either as a student, attendee, or a speaker, please contact me.
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We’re back for the eighth iteration of the Science Colloquium! And, this year, we’re presenting the Women in STEM Colloquium! Students can enroll in the colloquium for 4Cr (Intro/Adv, Lib) natural science study. And, as always, it is a public forum, and ESC faculty and staff, and the local community are invited to attend and participate.
Schedule for Spring 2018:
1. January 30th – Dr. Allie Brashears (CUNY LaGuardia Community College) – ‘From Calories to Color – How Energy Drives Evolution’
Evolution acts on all life. The elegance of evolutionary theory lies in its ability to explain life’s magnificent diversity, from prehensile elephant trunks to furry beetle legs, in terms of the simple idea of differential reproductive success – or making more babies that survive than your neighbor. Yet reproduction takes energy, and especially for heterotrophs like animals, the ways in which they gain, lose, and spend energy can mean the difference between life and death, and thus fundamentally shape their behavior and physiology. My research questions focus on understanding these energetic interactions between animals and their environments, with the aim of providing insight into the mechanisms of evolution.
2. February 13th – Dr. Shana Caro (Columbia University) – ‘Dishonest Offspring and Neglectful Parents’
In species where parents care for their offspring, success as a parent—and survival as an offspring—depend on parents’ correctly choosing how to distribute food. Many species have evolved elaborate begging displays and vocalizations to help guide this distribution of food. But families may be in conflict over how parents should split their investment: parents may prefer an even division of resources, or may prefer feeding either the strongest or weakest offspring, while individual offspring may prefer to get more than their fair share. My research looks at how this conflict shapes parent-offspring communication, which can tell us about the evolution of both communication systems and parental care.
3. March 13th – Dr. Audeliz Matias (SUNY Empire State College) – ‘Tales from Impact Craters on Venus & Mars’
During the last decades, impact cratering has been recognized as an important surface process of planetary bodies. Thus, analysis of impact craters can provide clues about the timing, extent and nature of tectonic and surface processes on other planets. Modification of expected characteristics in a crater or its material documents local surface properties, as well as tectonic and/or volcanic activity. In this presentation you will learn how impact craters are used as indicators of tectonic and volcanic activity on Venus and of ground-ice on Mars.
4. March 27th – Dr. Jillian Bellovary (CUNY Queensborough Community College) – ‘Multimessenger Signatures of Massive Black Holes in Dwarf Galaxies’
Inspired by the recent discovery of several nearby dwarf galaxies hosting active galactic nuclei, I will present results from a series of cosmological hydrodynamic simulations focusing on dwarf galaxies which host supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Cosmological simulations are a vital tool for predicting SMBH populations and merger events which will eventually be observed by LISA. Dwarf galaxies are the most numerous in the universe, so even though the occupation fraction of SMBHs in dwarfs is less than unity, their contribution to the gravitational wave background could be non-negligible. I find that electromagnetic signatures from SMBH accretion are not common among most SMBH-hosting dwarfs, but the gravitational wave signatures can be substantial. The most common mass ratio for SMBH mergers in low-mass galaxy environments is ~1:20, which is an unexplored region of gravitational waveform parameter space. I will discuss the occupation fraction of SMBHs in low-mass galaxies as well as differences in field and satellite populations, providing clues to search for and characterize these elusive giants lurking in the dwarfs.
5. April 10th – Dr. Linda Jones (SUNY Empire State College) – ‘Use of Dendroanalysis to Identify, Analyze, and Reconstruct Patterns of Environmental Change’
One of the challenges we face in our attempts to interpret environmental change—extent, degree, rates, and extremes—is that humans have been observing natural environment system dynamics for a relatively short period of time, relative to the entirety of Earth’s history. To expand our period of observation, researchers use proxy data, including data acquired through the analysis of tree rings, to reconstruct climate and ecological histories, analyze historical and current patterns of environmental change, and inform predictive environmental change models. In this presentation, I discuss the possibilities and limitations related to the use of tree ring analysis in the study of environmental change.
6. April 17th –Dr. Gina Torino (SUNY Empire State College) – ‘Manifestations of Gender Microaggressions’
Gender-based microaggressions refer to the subtle and often unconscious verbal, behavioral, and/or environmental indignities directed towards women. These daily experiences of sexism can range from very subtle to more overt, as in sexual harassment or unwanted touching. Because gender microaggressions cover a spectrum of experiences, a deeper understanding of this complex construct is needed. The purpose of the present study was to create a scale to measure gender microaggressions experienced by women. To do this, two studies were completed. In study 1, an exploratory factor analysis with principal components analysis was conducted to narrow down the initial themes and potential scale items. In study 2, a confirmatory factor analysis was utilized to determine the number of factors to be retained. Nine factors yielded a fit for the final measurement model: 1) Silencing; 2) Sexual Objectification; 3) Assumption of Lower Status Profession; 4) Denial of Societal Sexism; 5) Media’s Influence on Appearance; 6) Assumption of Domesticity; 7) Assertiveness = Bitchiness; 8) Assumption of Marriage/Children; and 9) Assumption of Gender Stereotyped Knowledge/Interests. Implications for counseling and future research directions are discussed.
The Hudson Street location of the Metropolitan Center is located at: 325 Hudson Street, New York, NY. All presentations are from 5-6PM, in the Multipurpose Room (Room 344).
For those who would like to participate in the colloquium either as a student, attendee, or a speaker, please contact me.
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We’re back for the seventh iteration of the Science Colloquium! Students can enroll in the colloquium for 4Cr (Intro/Adv, Lib) natural science study. And, as always, it is a public forum, and ESC faculty and staff, and the local community are invited to attend and participate.
Schedule for Spring 2017:
1. January 31st – Dr. Kristy Biolsi (St. Francis College/C-SPEC) – ‘Seals in the Wild, Sea Lions in the Lab, and Psychology in the Classroom: Weaving an Interdisciplinary Research Program’
While many fields are interdisciplinary, research into marine mammal behavior is especially complex. One must understand the biology, ecology, general behavior patterns, and cognitive capabilities of the species that one studies. The Center for the Study of Pinniped Ecology and Cognition (C-SPEC) conducts research on seals and sea lions in both laboratory and field based methodologies utilizing interdisciplinary perspectives. This talk aims to discuss C-SPEC’s current investigations and to use that as a basis for discussing the importance of cross-talk between differing research areas.
2. February 14th – Dr. Daramola Cabral (SUNY ESC) – ‘Public Health Research in Action: Community Participatory Research Challenges and Opportunities’
The ultimate goal of this research is to decrease breast cancer morbidity and mortality among African American women in San Francisco. We aimed to identify and describe, from the patient’s perspective, factors in their personal and social environment, as well as in the health care delivery system that create barriers to timely,
adequate follow-up of abnormal mammograms. Factors in the personal and social environment of women, as well as in the health care delivery system, are associated with inadequate follow-up of mammographic abnormalities. In pursuing this area of research, we seek to answer a perplexing question and address an area of concern voiced by the African American community; that is, why is the breast cancer mortality rate higher in African American women compared to whites, and what role does inadequate follow-up play in explaining these racial/ethnic disparities?
3. February 28th – Dr. Andrea Baden (CUNY Hunter College) – ‘Molecular ecology of Malagasy lemurs’
In recent decades, the advent of molecular genetic techniques has allowed field biologists and primatologists to investigate features of primate social systems that are not easily observed. I firmly believe that the best work in molecular ecology comes from a close integration of laboratory and field research. Using examples from my own work with Malagasy lemurs (e.g., Varecia variegata), I will illustrate how I have used genetic and behavioral data collected from my field site in southeastern Madagascar to address larger anthropological issues in wild nonhuman primate populations, including 1) patterns of natural and anthropogenically influenced dispersal; 2) how these patterns influence genetic structure both within and between populations; and 3) whether and how patterns of kinship within populations can influence social behavior and reproductive strategies. Results from this work help to advance the field by testing long-standing sociobiological, life history and population genetics theories, and can ultimately inform conservation strategies in Madagascar’s ever-changing landscape.
4. March 14th – Dr. Benjamin Taylor (CUNY LaGuardia Community College – ‘How signals and cues coordinate foraging in social wasps’
A social insect colony is a cooperative, coordinated biological unit composed of individual organisms. To coordinate group tasks, individuals within a colony must exchange information, which can be broadly categorized into either cues or signals. While signals have been shaped by natural selection specifically for the purpose of conveying information, cues only do so incidentally, as a byproduct of other behavior. Foraging is a particularly important group task because food is positively correlated with colony growth and reproduction. Much of the progress in understanding how social insects coordinate group foraging has been made on groups such as honey bees and ants, which use food-recruitment signals to lead nestmates to highly-profitable resources. In contrast, no evidence for a food-recruitment signal exists within the social wasps. How, then, does a colony of wasps coordinate foraging behavior to make economical foraging decisions? Here, I describe three foraging studies in the social wasp, Vespula germanica. In the first study I looked at colony-level responses to food influx, finding that colony-level foraging effort increases with food. Furthermore, higher-quality food enhances foraging effort, but the presence of strong olfactory and gustatory cues associated with the food does not. In the second study I asked whether olfactory cues may be a means by which wasps can skew foraging efforts toward higher-quality resources. Indeed, intranidal information in the form of olfactory cues provides a mechanism that allows wasps to differentially exploit higher-quality resources. In the third, I tested several hypotheses on the function of gastral drumming, a mechanical signal in social vespine wasps. I found that gastral drumming is not a hunger signal, as several previous authors hypothesized. Instead, it plays a role in regulating foraging activity in Vespula germanica by recruiting nestmates to forage. This is the first evidence of a nest-based food-recruitment signal in the social wasps.
5. March 28th – Dr. Allyson Sheffield (CUNY LaGuardia Community College) – ‘Contributions to the Galactic Stellar Halo from In-Situ, Kicked-Out Disk, and Accreted Stars’
Where did stars in the Milky Way’s halo form? The LCDM model predicts that the Milky Way’s halo was built in a “bottom-up” fashion, and this view is now generally accepted due to overwhelming evidence of the relics of past mergers. It is still uncertain, however, what fraction of the halo is made up of such accreted debris. Close to the time of accretion, a group of stars formed in a particular satellite of the Milky Way will show coherence spatially, kinematically, and chemically. In the inner halo where dynamical timescales are short, spatial coherence will become blurred quickly, although kinematical and chemical coherence remain. Kinematics alone may still lead to ambiguity, as a merger event can cause stars formed in the Milky Way to redistribute into rings in the halo (“kicked out” disk stars) and these rings can be difficult to distinguish from accreted satellite stars. Thus, to get a more complete profile of a star’s formation history, both kinematical and chemical information are needed.
I will report chemical abundances for a sample of M giants in the inner halo of the Milky Way. Abundances are derived for a-elements and neutron capture elements. By analyzing the multi-dimensional abundance space, the formation site of the halo giants – in-situ, kicked-out disk, or accreted – can be assessed. Additionally, I will report results from a study to understand the origin of a diffuse cloud of stars known as Triangulum-Andromeda.
6. April 18th – Dr. Gina Torino (SUNY ESC) – ‘Manifestations of Gender Microaggressions’
Gender-based microaggressions refer to the subtle and often unconscious verbal, behavioral, and/or environmental indignities directed towards women. These daily experiences of sexism can range from very subtle to more overt, as in sexual harassment or unwanted touching. Because gender microaggressions cover a spectrum of experiences, a deeper understanding of this complex construct is needed. The purpose of the present study was to create a scale to measure gender microaggressions experienced by women. To do this, two studies were completed. In study 1, an exploratory factor analysis with principal components analysis was conducted to narrow down the initial themes and potential scale items. In study 2, a confirmatory factor analysis was utilized to determine the number of factors to be retained. Nine factors yielded a fit for the final measurement model: 1) Silencing; 2) Sexual Objectification; 3) Assumption of Lower Status Profession; 4) Denial of Societal Sexism; 5) Media’s Influence on Appearance; 6) Assumption of Domesticity; 7) Assertiveness = Bitchiness; 8) Assumption of Marriage/Children; and 9) Assumption of Gender Stereotyped Knowledge/Interests. Implications for counseling and future research directions are discussed.
The Hudson Street location of the Metropolitan Center is located at: 325 Hudson Street, New York, NY. All presentations are from 5-6PM, in the Multipurpose Room (Room 344).
For those who would like to participate in the colloquium either as a student, attendee, or a speaker, please contact me.
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We’re back for the sixth iteration of the Science Colloquium! Students can enroll in the colloquium for 4Cr (Intro/Adv, Lib) natural science study. And, as always, it is a public forum, and ESC faculty and staff, and the local community are invited to attend and participate.
Schedule for Spring 2016:
1. January 26th – Dr. Viviana Acquaviva (CUNY New York City College of Technology) – ‘Learning about the Universe with Data Science’
A galaxy’s Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) is a chart of the brightness of a galaxy as a function of wavelength. It contains information about, for example, the galaxy’s stellar population age, stellar mass, distance from Earth, and star formation history. In the last decade, large galaxy surveys have provided us with an unprecedented volume of data for many galaxies billions of light years away, and it has become increasingly crucial to improve the tools we use to extract information from these data. I will present two examples of how supervised machine learning algorithms can be used to learn about the Universe’s history. In the first one, we show how we can discriminate between nearby and faraway galaxies in order to improve our knowledge of dark energy, the mysterious source of the present accelerated expansion of the Universe. In the second, we attempt to recover the history of metal enrichment (the production and dissemination of elements heavier than helium, which astronomers improperly call “metals”) through cosmic time.
2. February 16th – Dr. James Booth (CUNY City College) – ‘Extreme NYC Weather: Connecting the Ground-Station Events to the Large Scale Storms’
New York City and the Northeastern United States are subjected to multiple types of weather hazards. These events range from windstorms to flooding to heat waves. From an atmospheric science prospective, an important question is: what are the synoptic-scale weather features responsible for these events and have they changed over the recent past? In this talk, I will address these questions for three specific types of extremes: (1) wintertime windstorms, (2) storm surge, and (3) inland precipitation. For this analysis the strongest events are identified in weather station records using Extreme Value Theory. Then, using the existing physical understanding of the storms, we associate the extreme events with extratropical and/or tropical cyclones. The life cycles and track locations of these storms are analyzed, and these will be discussed in the context of the recent snowstorm, Jonas. Additionally, the work creates probabilistic estimates of the most common pathways for the storms that cause the different hazards.
3. March 1st – Dr. Debra Kram-Fernandez (SUNY Empire State College) – Social Workers’ Attitudes Towards Recovery Among People with Serious Mental Illness’
Growing numbers of researchers have been studying mental health practitioners’ adoption of the Recovery Perspective and its operational model Psychiatric Rehabilitation. However, prior to my dissertation (2011), social workers had not been studied as a separate group. This is interesting as social workers provide the majority of services to consumers with serious mental illness in numerous capacities from direct care provision to state commissioners of mental health (Kirk, 2005). The study I will discuss examined social workers’ beliefs, practices, goals and adoption of the Recovery Perspective and Psychiatric Rehabilitation model. Participants will learn about differences between a medical perspective and a recovery perspective on serious mental illness. We will also discuss factors that might make practitioners more or less likely to subscribe to one or the other.
4. March 15th – Daniel Mann (CUNY Brooklyn College) – ‘Language universals and cross-species comparisons: A multi-component approach to understand the nature of human language’
Human language is a complex system that is comprised of several sub-systems (e.g., phonology, syntax, etc.) and relies on numerous domains of cognition (e.g., vocal imitation, theory of mind, etc.). However, there is considerable debate among language scientists as to whether or not there is anything that is unique to the linguistic system. That is, is there any mechanism that is both specific to language and unique to humans, and if so, what is it (Hockett 1960, Hauser et al. 2002; Fitch 2010)? The sonority sequencing principle (SSP), a putative language universal which relates to how sounds are organized with respect to each other, has been argued to be a potential candidate for uniqueness (Berent et al. 2007; Berent 2013). However, the evidence in support of this hypothesis is equivocal and certain aspects, particularly related to non-humans, remain unexplored.
To address both the linguistic-specific and the species-specific issues in relation to the SSP I have taken a multi-component and interdisciplinary approach. For the former, I have gathered data from a wide range of unrelated languages and analyzed their historical development. Typological and historical research give us insight into language by offering countless “natural experiments” (Blevins 2004). The data from languages across the world suggest that the SSP is not a reflection of linguistic-specific constraints, but is epiphenomenal from non-linguistic biases in cultural acoustic transmission. For the latter question, I propose an experiment testing budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulates) on the SSP. This will be first experiment to directly test whether the SSP is based in human-specific mechanisms or is the result of broadly shared perception of physical acoustic signals.
5. March 29th – Dr. Kim Hewitt (SUNY Empire State College) – ‘Rethinking What it Takes for Science to Succeed’
Learning Objectives:
1. to understand some of the complex cultural factors that determine how science develops
2. to examine some examples from the history of pharmacology to understand how science and the way it is applied is located within specific historical and cultural contexts
What does it take for science to succeed? Another way of asking this question is what influences affect how scientific discoveries are put into action? Using historical and contemporary examples from pharmacology, this presentation will ask students to consider various factors that affect the ways science is applied including technology, government support, private sector profits, political agendas, cultural values and moral stances.
6. April 19th – Dr. Gina Torino (SUNY Empire State College) – ‘Racial and Gender Microaggressions’
Does racism still exist? If so, what forms does it take? How might someone unknowingly communicate biases? This colloquium will explore these questions and many others. Specifically, the presentation will focus on research investigating the incidence of Asian-American microaggressions. Microaggressions have been defined as, “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative…slights and insults.” (Sue, Capodilupo, Torino, Bucceri, Holder, Nadal, & Esquilin, 2007). Implications for future research and clinical practice will be discussed.
The Hudson Street location of the Metropolitan Center is located at: 325 Hudson Street, New York, NY. All presentations are from 5-6PM, in the Gallery (Room 544).
For those who would like to participate in the colloquium either as a student, attendee, or a speaker, please contact me.
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We’re back for the fifth iteration of the Science Colloquium! Students can enroll in the colloquium for 4Cr (Intro/Adv, Lib) natural science study. And, as always, it is a public forum, and ESC faculty and staff, and the local community are invited to attend and participate.
Schedule for Spring 2015:
1. February 17th – Dr. Paul Velazco (American Museum of Natural History) – ‘Historical Diversification in the Neotropics: Evolution and Variation of Noctilionoid bats’
Bats are the only true flying mammals and belong to one of the most successful mammalian orders, the order Chiroptera. Bats include about 20% of all mammals and are outnumbered only by the rodents. An important group of bats is the superfamily Noctilionoidea that includes seven families: Myzopodidae, Mystacinidae, Thyropteridae, Furipteridae, Noctilionidae, Mormoopidae, and Phyllostomidae. These groups vary tremendously in diversity, with Phyllostomidae having 100 times the number of species as the smaller families (e.g., Furipteridae or Myzopodidae). Here I will talk about three genera of Noctilionoid bats in particular: Platyrrhinus, Sturnira, and Thyroptera. The first two belong to the family Phyllostomidae and are the most speciose genera of the family. This family, endemic to the Neotropics, is the most ecologically diverse family within Mammalia, containing species variously specialized for insectivory, carnivory, omnivory, nectarivory, polinivory, frugivory, and even sanguivory. Thanks to their great diversity and its radiation into most areas of endemism, Platyrrhinus and Sturnira make an excellent group for exploring historical biogeography. With the help of morphological and molecular techniques I uncovered hidden diversity in both genera. I evaluated the times of divergence of the different clades and inferred the ancestral areas and directionality of the dispersal events. Another member of the superfamily Noctilionoidea is the genus Thyroptera. Species of Thyroptera are insectivorous foliage-roosting bats that inhabit lowland moist forests from Mexico to southeastern Brazil. Thyropterids are easily distinguished from all other Neotropical bats by the presence of a circular adhesive disk on the sole of the foot, an oval or circular disk attached by a short pedicle to the base of the thumb. These structures help them to cling smooth surfaces, and to remain inside young coiled banana and Heliconia leaves, where they roost. Recent inventory work in northeastern Peru has documented the local co-occurrence of four species of Thyroptera, one new to science. The discovery of this new species shed light on the natural history and diversity of this elusive and charismatic group of bats.
March 3rd – Dr. Audeliz Matias (SUNY Empire State College/Center for Distance Learning) – ‘Tales from Impact Craters on Venus & Mars’
During the last decades, impact cratering has been recognized as an important surface process of planetary bodies. Thus, analysis of impact craters can provide clues about the timing, extent and nature of tectonic and surface processes on other planets. Modification of expected characteristics in a crater or its material documents local surface properties, as well as tectonic and/or volcanic activity. In this presentation you will learn how impact craters are used as indicators of tectonic and volcanic activity on Venus and of ground-ice on Mars.
March 17th – Dr. Viviana Acquaviva (New York City College of Technology) – ‘Learning about the Universe from distant galaxies’
Galaxies are great tools to study the evolution of the Universe, because they have existed for 90% of its life and they are very luminous. By studying the properties of galaxies and their evolution through cosmic time, we can gather information about how the Universe has been expanding, what is the mysterious dark energy, whether gravity is correctly described by General Relativity, and what are the main astrophysical phenomena that regulate the growth of structures. In this talk, I will describe how I use modern data analysis techniques to infer properties of galaxies such as age, mass, and star formation history, and how machine learning and data mining tools can be used to optimally select data from very large galaxy surveys.
March 31st – Dr. Claudia Brumbaugh (CUNY Queens College) – ‘Attraction Preferences: Where does Attachment Security Rank’
Research has shown that people select securely attached individuals as their first choice when asked to choose among secure or insecure partner prototypes. Despite this pattern, not everyone chooses a secure partner in real life. The goal of the reported studies was to examine factors that lead people to select insecure mates. Specifically, the roles of flattery, appearance, and status were assessed. In the first study, we found that flattery increased attraction to insecure partners. Study 2 showed that men preferred physical beauty over security. In Study 3, anxious women were attracted to high-status insecure men. These findings help explain why people may sometimes end up with insecure partners despite their professed preference for secure companions.
April 14th – Dr. Joseph Dodds (University of New York Prague) – ‘Feeling the Heat… What is Ecopsychoanalysis?: Psychoanalysis and Climate Change in the Three Ecologies’
What role can psychoanalysis play in understanding the ecological crisis and climate change? In our era of anxiety, denial, paranoia, apathy, guilt, rage, terror and despair in the face of climate change, there is an urgent need for a psychoanalytic approach to ecology, and an ecological approach to psychoanalysis. Drawing on the presenter’s book Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos (Dodds 2011) an ecopsychoanalytic approach suggests the need to move our psychoanalytic perspective beyond the confines of the family and even wider social system, to include relations with the other than human world, a move begun by Searles (1960, 1972). In contrast to the schizoid fragmented space of the university, divided into every narrower sub-fields, climate change forces us to think transversally, about a world of unpredictable, multiple-level, highly complex, nonlinear interlocking systems. How does a phantasy impact on an ecosystem, and vice versa? There is a need for a way of thinking able to integrate the disparate strands of analysis, related to what the psychoanalyst Bion (1984) calls the work of ‘linking’, connected with the alpha-function and the dreamwork. The philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (2003) combined with the sciences of complexity and chaos can build on psychoanalytic perspectives to offer a new framework, or rather a ‘meshwork’ (DeLanda 2006), able to integrate Guattari’s (2000) ‘three ecologies’ of mind, nature and society.
Ecopsychoanalysis is a new transdisciplinary approach to thinking about the relationship between psychoanalysis, ecology, the ‘natural’, and the problem of climate change. It draws on a range of fields including psychoanalysis, psychology, ecology, philosophy, science, complexity theory, aesthetics and the humanities. This paper seeks to introduce the main coordinates of this perspective, with the aim of helping to open up a psychoanalysis of ecology, and an ecological approach to mind, phantasy and the dynamics of the therapeutic process. How can we, as individuals, societies and as a species, bear the anxiety involved with attempting to ask the question, how are we to survive?
The Hudson Street location of the Metropolitan Center is located at: 325 Hudson Street, New York, NY. All presentations are from 5-6PM, in the Gallery (Room 544).
For those who would like to participate in the colloquium either as a student, attendee, or a speaker, please contact me.
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We’re back for the fourth iteration of the Science Colloquium! Students can enroll in the colloquium for 4Cr (Intro/Adv, Lib) natural science study. And, as always, it is a public forum, and ESC faculty and staff, and the local community are invited to attend and participate.
Schedule for Spring 2014:
1. January 28th – Dr. Michelle Hersh (Sarah Lawrence College) – ‘Disease Ecology & Biodiversity: From Fungi to Ticks’
2. February 4th – Dr. Guillaume Rieucau (Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway) ‘Should I school or should I go: Explaining schooling behaviour and the formation of massive aggregations in marine fish with a mechanistic approach’
Marine ecosystems are the theater of spectacular massive fish aggregations where some pelagic fish species can reach shoal sizes up to several millions of individuals. Avoiding predation is generally seen as the prevailing explanation for why animals aggregate. However, it remains questionable whether the existing functional theory is suitable to explain large fish shoals formation. I will present how the commonly proposed ultimate mechanisms explain massive fish shoals. I will emphasize the importance to develop accurate predator-dependent models (i.e. different hunting modes) and the need to consider other factors than predation as well as taking into account the interplay between ultimate benefits (the whys) and proximate perspectives (the hows) to better understand large fish aggregations in nature. I will introduce the mechanistic basis for group formation and collective dynamic properties that account for groups reaching very large sizes. I will present recent results from the field of collective animal behavior that focuses on local, inter-individual interactions to give a firmer explanation for how animals (and humans!) large groups are formed, maintained and move. I will introduce the importance to consider the shift from global properties (group size) to local properties (local density or information transfer). Finally, I will present the results of an experimental study in a controlled environment (sea cage in a Norwegian Fjord) exploring the sensory modalities that mediate collective antipredatory responses of herring (Clupea harengus) when in a large school (60 000 fish!). Schooling fish can learn about predators using cues from different sensory modalities that emanate from predator’s swimming movement or from escape behaviors of companions. By combining cues from different modalities fish can improve the accuracy of antipredatory decisions. I tested the hypothesis that herring collective responses are threat-sensitive. I investigated whether cues about threat obtained visually or from the perception of water displacement, used independently or in an additive way, affected the strength of the collective avoidance reactions. The acquisition of observational data and quantitative measurements of fish behavior underwater are important challenges that researchers may face in their attempts to study aquatic organisms. I will present acoustics and high-resolution sonar as an efficient means to collect important information about large schooling fish dynamics and fine-scaled interactions with their predators in natural conditions.
3. February 25th – Dr. Jordan Wright (Metropolitan Center, SUNY Empire State College) – ‘Using Statistics to Understand Homonegative Microaggressions’
Microaggressions are everyday, often overlooked slights and acts of prejudice that minorities face quite often. For example, someone acting surprised that a Black man is in college (making the assumption that he would not likely be) would be a racial microaggression–while it is not a hate crime or an overt act of prejudice and aggression, it still communicates to that man that he is somehow ‘less than’ others. The bulk of theory and research has centered on racial microaggressions, about which a great deal has been written. When looking at the microaggressions that sexual minorities suffer, much less has been explored. Basing the initial group of possibilities of the microaggressions sexual minorities face on the analogous taxonomy of racial microaggressions, the Homonegative Microaggressions Scale (HMS) was developed to investigate the experience of and impact on LGB individuals dealing with microaggressions. Statistics were used to understand how microaggressions suffered by sexual minorities differ from those suffered by racial minorities.
4. March 11th – Dr. Mark Miyake (Hudson Valley Center, SUNY Empire State College) – ‘The Discourse on Race in the Bluegrass Music Community’
This book examines the discourse on race within the bluegrass music community and the ways in which this discourse shapes and is shaped by the self-identity, projected identity, and internal and external power structures of music production and practices of the community itself and of the broader discourse on American music in which it operates. This book focuses on the ways in which the historical discourses on race within the bluegrass music community represent the genre as a specifically White musical practice and tradition. While this representation is deeply rooted in over a century of patterns in the representations of bluegrass and related forms of music by the music industry, cultural historians, musicians, and others, it is the communal discourse itself that maintains this widespread and deeply held belief. By examining both this discourse and the conditions that have surrounded it since the founding of bluegrass music as a distinct self-identified music genre in the 1940s and 1950s, this book not only looks at the ways in which this history influences the current community, but also explores the ways in which historical discourse within this community often serves to generate and maintain community boundaries and practices.
5. March 18th – Dr. John Rowden (National Audubon Society) – ‘Changing the Face(s) of Conservation in America’
6. April 22nd – Dr. Gina Torino (Staten Island Unit, Metropolitan Center, SUNY Empire State College) – ‘Asian-American Microaggressions’
Does racism still exist? If so, what forms does it take? How might someone unknowingly communicate biases? This colloquium will explore these questions and many others. Specifically, the presentation will focus on research investigating the incidence of Asian-American microaggressions. Microaggressions have been defined as, “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative…slights and insults.” (Sue, Capodilupo, Torino, Bucceri, Holder, Nadal, & Esquilin, 2007). Implications for future research and clinical practice will be discussed.
The Hudson Street unit of the Metropolitan Center is located at: 325 Hudson Street, New York, NY. All presentations are from 5-6PM, in the Gallery (Room 544).
For those who would like to participate in the colloquium either as a student, attendee, or a speaker, please contact me.
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3rd Empire State College Science Colloquium is on! Students can enroll in the colloquium for 4Cr (Intro/Adv, Lib) natural science study. And, as always, it is a public forum, and ESC faculty and staff, and the local community are invited to attend and participate.
Schedule for Spring 2013:
1. January 29th – Dr. Amanda Sisselman (Empire State College) – ‘A Professor in the Community — Learning about research outside of the laboratory’
Conducting research in community settings is both exciting and challenging. Use of the real world and everyday settings as a “laboratory” provides a unique opportunity to learn about human behaviors and psychological phenomena, a window into communities we often know little about. In this interactive presentation, participants will learn about what it is like to conduct research in community settings, while learning a bit about the populations being studied. The concept of community research will be defined and explained, with examples provided. Two research studies will be discussed: one that documented services and effectiveness of School Based Health Clinics in New York City and one that is documenting the effectiveness of grassroots community based programs in supporting homeless individuals transition into a successful life in the community. Those who attend the presentation will be invited to actively participate in discussion and learning activities.
2. February 12th – Dr. John Rowden (New York City Audubon) – ‘CSI New York: What have our Citizen Science Investigations in Jamaica Bay shown us about this urban estuary?’
Observers are well aware that Jamaica Bay is an important spawning site for horseshoe crabs and stopover site for migrating shorebirds. In 2009 with the support of the National Park Service, New York City Audubon initiated a Citizen Science project to systematically monitor horseshoe crabs and migratory shorebirds at several sites in Jamaica Bay during the spring spawning and migratory season to 1) identify important sites and 2) track local population trends. To date, our citizen scientists have produced four years of data, which are illuminating how important the estuary is, as well as how it may be changing.
3. February 26th – Dr. Jeanmarie Molina (Long Island University – Brooklyn Campus) – ‘Exhuming the Corpse Flower: What can we Learn from Rafflesia’s Genome’
4. March 12th – Dr. David Lahti (CUNY Queens College) – ‘How a learned behavior evolves: Insights from birds’
How is the human mind shaped? People in different disciplines have long separated the answers to this question into two vague categories, one having to do with evolution in an ancestral environment, and the other having to do with experience in the current environment. Biologists now view the behavior and psychology of all animals, including humans, as the product of the interaction between these two kinds of inputs, between nature and nurture. We still know little, however, about how these influences combine during development. Birds provide an excellent model system for this kind of research, because many birds, like humans, learn much of their behavior including their vocal communication. Two studies illustrate how nature and nurture combine in the development and evolution of a learned behavior in birds. First, African weaverbirds must learn to recognize their own eggs, because they need to reject eggs that are laid in their nests by the brood parasitic cuckoo. They have refined anti-counterfeiting adaptations against the cuckoo, and these traits decay through evolution when the weavers are introduced to islands without cuckoos. The evolution of eggs in this species has affected their ability to learn the appearance of their eggs, causing a change in egg rejection behavior– thus a behavior has evolved genetically despite the fact that it is learned. Second, swamp sparrows, like other songbirds, learn to sing by imitating what they hear. Laboratory experiments, however, have shown that birds do not necessarily learn to sing exactly as they heard the songs, but in some respects (such as the speed of the song) the lab-reared birds sing more like wild birds despite never having heard a wild bird. Thus, in birdsong, the quintessential model of the science of learning, we find that learning is itself influenced by unlearned biases that must have been inherited. Both of these studies show that learned and inherited influences on behavior are intertwined, and because of this fact even learned behaviors can undergo genetic evolution.
5. March 26th – Dr. Guillaume Rieucau (Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway) – ‘Stay in school: The whys and hows of massive aggregations in marine fish’
Marine ecosystems are the theater of spectacular massive fish aggregations where some pelagic fish species can reach shoal sizes up to several millions of individuals. Avoiding predation is generally seen as the prevailing explanation for why animals aggregate. However, it remains questionable whether the existing functional theory is suitable to explain large fish shoals formation. I will present how the commonly proposed ultimate mechanisms explain massive fish shoals. I will emphasize the importance to develop accurate predator-dependent models (i.e. different hunting modes) and the need to consider other factors than predation as well as taking into account the interplay between ultimate benefits (the whys) and proximate perspectives (the hows) to better understand large fish aggregations in nature. I will introduce the mechanistic basis for group formation and collective dynamic properties that account for groups reaching very large sizes. I will present recent results from the field of collective animal behavior that focuses on local, inter-individual interactions to give a firmer explanation for how animals (and humans!) large groups are formed, maintained and move. I will introduce the importance to consider the shift from global properties (group size) to local properties (local density or information transfer). Finally, I will present the results of an experimental study in a controlled environment (sea cage in a Norwegian Fjord) exploring the sensory modalities that mediate collective antipredatory responses of herring (Clupea harengus) when in a large school (60 000 fish!). Schooling fish can learn about predators using cues from different sensory modalities that emanate from predator’s swimming movement or from escape behaviors of companions. By combining cues from different modalities fish can improve the accuracy of antipredatory decisions. I tested the hypothesis that herring collective responses are threat-sensitive. I investigated whether cues about threat obtained visually or from the perception of water displacement, used independently or in an additive way, affected the strength of the collective avoidance reactions. The acquisition of observational data and quantitative measurements of fish behavior underwater are important challenges that researchers may face in their attempts to study aquatic organisms. I will present acoustics and high-resolution sonar as an efficient means to collect important information about large schooling fish dynamics and fine-scaled interactions with their predators in natural conditions.
6. April 16th – Dr. Gina Torino (Empire State College) – ‘The Impact of Microaggressions’
Does racism and sexism still exist? If so, what forms does it take? How might someone unknowingly communicate biases? This colloquium will explore these questions and many others. Specifically, the presentation will focus on research investigating the manifestations of microaggressions, which have received recent attention in the psychological literature. Microaggressions have been defined as, “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative…slights and insults.” (Sue, Capodilupo, Torino, Bucceri, Holder, Nadal, & Esquilin, 2007). Implications for future research and clinical practice will be discussed.
The Hudson Street unit of the Metropolitan Center is located at: 325 Hudson Street, New York, NY. All presentations are from 5-6PM, in the Gallery (Room 544).
For those who would like to participate in the colloquium either as a student, attendee, or a speaker, please contact me.
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2nd Empire State College Science Colloquium is on! Students can enroll in the colloquium for 2Cr (Intro/Adv, Lib) natural science study. And, as always, it is a public forum, and ESC faculty and staff, and the local community are invited to attend and participate.
Schedule for Spring 2012:
1. January 31st – Dr. Susan Elbin (New York City Audubon) – ‘Up to Our Knees in Mud’
The New York Harbor is home to nine species of long-legged wading birds. NYC Audubon has been monitoring their nesting colonies since 1982. During the past four years, we have been focused on the rest of the story: Where in the city are the birds finding food to raise their young? Wading birds are important predators on fish and crustaceans, and their presence serves as a biological indicator of the health of the harbor. Dr. Elbin will present what has been learned to date from observing these magnificent birds.
2. February 14th – Dr. Dustin Rubenstein (Columbia University) – ‘Environmental uncertainty and the evolution of complex sociality: patterns, processes, and mechanisms’
Family-living, or cooperative breeding, not only occurs in a broad range of animals, it also varies widely in form from simple to complex societies. Although the inclusive fitness benefits of helping relatives ultimately set the stage for the evolution of cooperative breeding, environmental factors have long been thought to influence the reproductive costs and benefits of helping relatives, as well as the incidence of this behavior across species and regions. Cooperatively breeding birds typically live in heterogeneous environments where spatial variation in territory quality and resource availability can influence reproductive decisions and behaviors. However, temporal environmental variability may also play an important and under-appreciated role in the evolution and maintenance of family-living. I will discuss the diversity of cooperatively breeding species in birds and then examine how both resource heterogeneity and environmental uncertainty influence the evolution of this complex social behavior. I will demonstrate that environmental variability in time and space not only influences individual behavioral decisions, but also broad-scale patterns of social diversity across species and regions. Finally, I will discuss some of the physiological and genetic mechanisms that animals living in unpredictable environments use to cope with climatic uncertainty.
3. February 28th – Dr. Audrey Chang (New York University) – ‘Sex & Genome Evolution’
Males and females have different interests during reproduction: while males typically want to maximize the number of mating partners, females usually seek to optimize offspring quality. Under certain conditions, sexual conflict can lead to coevolutionary arms-races between the sexes (i.e., males and females are constantly trying to gain an advantage over the other during reproductive interactions). Sexual conflict and sexually antagonistic coevolution is thought to be responsible for diverse traits and behaviors in animals, such as traumatic insemination and toxic ejaculation by males or multiple mating and sperm selection by females. I will discuss the phenomenon and genetics of sexual conflict and how it contributes to the evolution of genes, morphology, and behavior. Additionally, I will present some of the approaches that I have taken using microscopic Caenorhabditis roundworms to investigate how sexual conflict affects genes and genome evolution.
4. March 27th – Dr. Sarit Golub (Hunter College) – ‘Biomedical Approach to HIV Prevention: Review of the Evidence and Implications for Practice’
Can the medications developed to treat HIV-positive individuals be used to prevent the spread of new infections? This talk will review recent studies which provide support for two new biomedical strategies for HIV Prevention: (a) Treatment as prevention; and (b) Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP). We will explore the inherent benefits and challenges to these new biomedical approaches, and discuss their implications at the individual, community, and global levels.
5. April 10th – Dr. Ana Carnival (City College) – ‘Understanding diversity patterns in the Brazilian coastal forests: Bayesian computation meets correlative models and evolutionary physiology’
My lab employs the tools of bioinformatics to guide biodiversity research in the South American tropics. In studies of the Brazilian Atlantic forest and its endemic frogs, I have used correlative models of species and habitat distributions under current and paleoclimates to guide Hierarchical Approximate Bayesian Computation models of historical demography. Such combination of tools validated a hypothesis-testing framework to the study of the historical processes responsible for the spatial re-shuffling of genetic diversity in coastal Brazil during the Last Glacial Maximum and the Holocene. As we are now furthering our paleoclimatic studies and gathering phylogeographical data from species restricted to higher elevations, we realize the need to refine available forest models as to fully capture the history of the biome and identify distinct types of shifting forest refugia through time. In this talk, I present and discuss these results. When analyzed jointly, these new environmental analyses and molecular data from amphibians and reptiles point to the central role of species’ physiological constrains in shaping biological responses to Late Quaternary climate change, hence defining current diversity patterns in the tropics.
6. April 24th – Dr. Gina Torino (Empire State College) – ‘Research on Racial and Gender Microaggressions’
Does racism and sexism still exist? If so, what forms does it take? How might someone unknowingly communicate biases? This colloquium will explore these questions and many others. Specifically, the presentation will focus on research investigating the manifestations of microaggressions, which have received recent attention in the psychological literature. Microaggressions have been defined as, “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative…slights and insults.” (Sue, Capodilupo, Torino, Bucceri, Holder, Nadal, & Esquilin, 2007). Implications for future research and clinical practice will be discussed.
The Hudson Street unit of the Metropolitan Center is located at: 325 Hudson Street, New York, NY. All presentations are from 5-6PM, in the Gallery (Room 544).
For those who would like to participate in the colloquium either as a student, attendee, or a speaker, please contact me.
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The Science Colloquium will officially being in the Spring 2011 term on Tuesday, January 18th, 2011. Currently, the colloquium is offered as a 2Cr (Intro/Adv., Lib) Natural Science course, but is also open for members of the general public and Empire State College community to attend. Here, we will invite speakers who are engaged in scientific research or projects, and who will also speak about their area of expertise.
Schedule for Spring 2011:
1. January 18th – Dr. Guillaume Rieucau (Université Paul Sabatier) – ‘From group size effect to social information use: exploring the social behavior of Nutmeg mannikin’
In animal kingdom, a large number of species live and forage in group, a condition that requires behavioural responses that are specific to these social circumstances. When group size increases, animals generally decrease the time devoted to vigilance and increase their foraging rate. The increased foraging rate is thought to follow from increased safety from predators when group size increases. This increased safety then allows higher feeding rates because individuals can reallocate time spent in vigilance to foraging. However, increased foraging rates can also be due to increased competition for resources as the number of companions increases. Consequently the question remains whether the group size effect is a product of competition or anti-predation. The quality of animals behavioral decisions hinges on the accuracy of the information on which it is based. Animals need to sample their surrounding environment to collect information, which can be obtained personally or by tracking the behaviour of others: social information. While social information appears to be generally advantageous, it can also be detrimental and may even conflict with personal information.I will present the results of a series of experiences using the video playback technique exploring the group size effect and social information use in nutmeg mannikins (Lonchura punctulata), small social ground feeding finches. Firstly, we found that the increased feeding rate associated with an increased group size only resulted when the companions were feeding. Video playbacks of non-foraging companions neither decreased an individual’s use of vigilance nor did it release the full increase of feeding rate. We conclude that the group size effect reported in nutmeg mannikins is not a product of safety benefits of group living but may also arise from the costs imposed by competition for resources. Secondly, we tested the effect that the strength of social information, and its persuasiveness, can have on an animal’s decision to use it or not by conducting an experiment using single nutmeg mannikins which were offered a foraging choice following observation of videos of feeding or non feeding conspecifics. Our results show that birds provided with sufficiently persuasive social information will tend to reduce the weight of even highly reliable personal information. This provides the first experimental evidence consistent with the propagation of informational cascades in non-human animals, invoked to explain market crashes in economics or panic rushes in human crowds.
2. February 1st – Dr. Ashika Jain (Maimonides Hospital Medical Center) – Ultrasound: Not Just Another Baby-Finder!
3. February 15th – Dr. Matthew Rockman (NYU) – ‘Heritable variation: the search for its molecular basis and its evolutionary consequences’
Relatives tend to be more similar than unrelated individuals in almost every respect, and part of that excess similarity is due to the sharing of genes. For the past century, genetics has provided us with clear predictions about the patterns of similarity and differences among individuals as a function of their relatedness, and now molecular genetics is beginning to connect these patterns to the physical genes. The path from observable similarities to physical genes can be tortuous, however. I will discuss some of the difficulties encountered by efforts to map genes in humans, and I will present an alternative approach that relies on experimental model organisms to uncover the molecular basis for heredity. I will focus on my laboratory’s efforts to use a species of microscopic worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, as a model for discovering the molecular genetic differences among individuals that affect appearances, health, and behavior. One of the long-term goals of our gene mapping is to learn whether the molecular features of genes influence the ways that they contribute to evolution. Our worm research suggests that there may be some widely applicable rules that relate molecular genes to evolutionary outcomes.
4. March 1st – Dr. Kristy Lindemann-Biolsi (St. Francis College); ‘How Acoustic Signals Can Become Meaningful: Evidence of Emergent Mapping in a California Sea Lion’
Emergent mapping is one mechanism by which acoustic signals can become meaningful. In particular, this ability is evident in human language learning when a child immediately relates a novel spoken word to a novel object, therefore mapping the new label onto the new object. This process has been thought to underlie the vocabulary spurt that occurs at about two years of age in linguistically normal children, and it has been suggested that this ability might be absent in nonhuman animals. The present talk will focus on evidence that in fact a nonlinguistic, nonhuman animal subject, a California sea lion named Rio, can form emergent associations across the auditory and visual sensory modalities. The current evidence supports an argument that this ability is not language dependent, as has been previously suggested, and that emergent learning is a more general learning phenomenon.
5. March 15th – Dr. Aaron Kozbelt (Brooklyn College); ‘Skill and Creativity in Visual Art’
Even in our science-dominated age, visual art retains a mystical aura among both laypersons and researchers. Most adults draw poorly; in contrast, the works of artistic masters like Michelangelo and Matisse rank among the greatest human achievements. How we can possibly understand this level of accomplishment? In this talk, I discuss how an empirical approach to the psychology of art can inform age-old questions about the nature of art and creativity. Specifically, I focus on two questions: 1) What psychological processes enable skilled artists to see the world differently and to draw better than non-artists? 2) How can creativity in art emerge in the absence of an artist generating novel ideas – but, rather, by modifying the creative process itself? In addressing these questions, I attempt to demystify the nature of artistic skill and creativity, presenting a view that emphasizes rationality, control, and sound judgment.
6. March 29th – Ms. Susan Kaplan (Battery Park City Authority) – ‘Growing a Green Community’
NYC is a surprisingly green city in many ways, and Battery Park City has been at the forefront of much of the transformation. Hear about how Battery Park City Authority has accomplished this, what the Mayor is doing to green the rest of NYC, and what we can think about for the future of buildings.
7. April 12th – Dr. Preethi Radhakrishnan (LaGuardia Community College) – ‘Fruit-Fly sperm: Far more complex than you would have imagined’
Post-copulatory sexual selection, which comprises sperm competition and cryptic female choice occurs throughout the animal kingdom and has produced a wealth of adaptations in both males and females. These adaptations are particularly apparent in the evolution of the ejaculate. My talk will focus on how post-copulatory sexual selection influences both the number and quality of sperm, highlighting the complexity of sperm storage and sperm viability in Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruitfly.
The Hudson Street unit of the Metropolitan Center is located at: 325 Hudson Street, New York, NY. All presentations are from 5-6PM, in the Gallery (Room 544).
For those who would like to participate in the colloquium either as a student, attendee, or a speaker, please contact me.