Collaboration in mathematics has a long history.

Kim Plofker, associate professor of mathematics at Union College, examines this.

Faculty Bio:

Kim Plofker is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Union College in Schenectady, New York. She received her doctorate from the Department of the History of Mathematics at Brown University in 1995. Her research focuses on the history of mathematics and astronomy in India and its connections with Islamic and early modern European science. Kim Plofker’s books include Mathematics in India (Princeton, 2009); (with Anuj Misra and Clemency Montelle) The Sanskrit Astronomical Table Text Brahmatulyasarini (Brill, 2021); and (with Clemency Montelle and Glen Van Brummelen) From Samarqand to Jaipur: Evolving al-Kashi’s Approximation to the Sine of One Degree (Springer, 2025).

Transcript:

When you took math tests in school, the teacher told you to keep your eyes on your own paper. But the history of mathematical sciences in the real world is full of professional scientists glancing at their neighbors’ work, and often expanding it through ingenious discoveries of their own. In the days before modern physics and the automated clocks, calendars and computers arising from it, timekeeping methods and models of the universe were major scientific enterprises, and often quite controversial. Mathematicians from many different schools and cultures competed to develop theoretical models and computational techniques that were the most efficient, the most empirically accurate, or just the most impressively clever. And when they encountered a foreign visitor doing some interesting math in a different language, they called in a translator and got to work exchanging ideas.

My current research focuses on a group of scholars in early 18th-century India, including Hindu and Muslim court astronomers writing in Sanskrit and Persian respectively, as well as European Jesuit missionaries bringing printed books in Latin. This was barely a century after the trial of Galileo by the Inquisition, so scientific hypotheses about the earth orbiting the sun instead of vice versa, and planets moving in elliptical orbits, were still somewhat debatable issues even in European astronomy. The Indian court astronomers were intrigued by these ideas although maybe not totally convinced, while the European visitors in turn were fascinated by some of the ingenious mathematical methods of their hosts. My colleagues and I are reading the manuscripts they created to find out more about how they put their ideas together.

Read More:

[Springer Nature] - From Samarqand to Jaipur Evolving al-Kāshī’s Approximation to the Sine of One Degree

What do green clay tennis courts have to do with climate change?

Jonathan Lambert, visiting assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Climate Science at New York University, says it’s more than you might think.

Faculty Bio:

Jonathan Lambert is a geochemist and paleoclimatologist in the interdisciplinary-focused Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU. His research themes are twofold - past climate change and modern climate solutions. In his paleoclimate research, he uses fossil plankton to reconstruct ocean conditions in the Pacific over the past 1.5 Million years. In his climate solutions work, he evaluates carbon dioxide removal strategies such as enhanced rock weathering, and develops new teaching and outreach approaches for emerging climate solutions. He teaches interdisciplinary seminars on ancient earth extremes, local climate change, and climate solutions. Dr. Lambert believes that engaging students of all backgrounds and interests in climate change education, outreach, and research is a bridge to better environmental understanding and contributes to lowering climate anxiety through the power of practical knowledge.

Transcript:

If you have seen one of the thousands of green clay tennis courts in America, you have witnessed a climate change mitigation technique called enhanced rock weathering. This is a natural process in which rocks like basalt undergo chemical weathering which converts atmospheric carbon dioxide into stable bicarbonate ions that do not contribute to global warming.

Crushing these rocks and spreading them over large areas expedites weathering, and dozens of startups are applying this technique on farmland. Research is expanding on other suitable areas for enhanced weathering, and for our study we quantified its climate impact on green clay tennis courts – the American counterpart of the red clay courts common in Europe. As opposed to the crushed brick of red clay, all green clay courts are built using weatherable metabasalt.

We used a database of 17,000 green clay courts and built a model to calculate the gross carbon sequestration at each court given the rocks’ grain size, chemical composition, and local air temperature. We also calculated carbon emissions associated with mining and transportation of material to each court during construction and maintenance.

In total, we found that all courts in the US sequester a net total of approximately 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year – equivalent to the emissions of 4,200 passenger cars. Additionally, compared to the more common concrete courts, green clay courts emit at least 1.6 times less carbon dioxide from construction.

Green clay courts therefore have high climate mitigation potential, and one simple opportunity to increase their carbon sequestration is to shift the proportion of newly built courts to favor clay over concrete. Additional climate benefits can be found by using smaller grain size materials for new clay courts, and by rigorously tracking and iterating on court maintenance practices.

Read More:

[NYU] - Green Clay Courts Serve Up Environmental Solutions by Absorbing Carbon Dioxide

Pavia Lab at UW

Carbon dioxide removal by enhanced weathering on American green clay tennis courts

Revisiting the history of the National Alliance of Black Feminists provides a new lens through which to view intersectionality.

Victoria Fields, doctoral candidate and instructor of record in Communication at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, explores this.

Faculty Bio:

Victoria T. Fields is an award-winning educator and scholar. She is currently a doctoral candidate and instructor of record in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Victoria is also a graduate assistant for instructional design at the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Higher Education, where she crafts content for Gardner Institute academies and co-leads faculty workshops on topics such as engaged pedagogy, moral imagination, and civic engagement in the classroom. Victoria’s research focuses on the rhetoric of Black women, archival rhetorics, and social movements. In 2025, Victoria was the recipient of the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award from the Association for American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Her work has been published in Volume 11 of the Eastern Michigan University McNair Scholars Journal and Bloomsbury Press, along with co-authorship in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, the Sociology of Sport Journal, and Political Communication.

Transcript:

As Black women were excluded from leadership in both the Black Freedom Movement and mainstream white feminism, they turned to one another to form independent organizations and advance critiques of racism, sexism, and capitalism—grounding their intersectional oppression within their lived experiences.

One of the organizations that arose was the National Alliance of Black Feminists, or NABF, a nonprofit organization, active between 1976-1981 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. NABF was committed to achieving full equality for Black women in America. NABF was led by founder and executive director Brenda Eichelberger, who was a guidance counselor in the Chicago Public Schools.

NABF used media to promote and generate critical awareness of Black women’s intersectional oppression. Their efforts are seen in public appearances on the Phil Donahue Show, published essays in the Chicago Defender, women’s news for a Change…and Essence Magazine. In addition, NABF led, organized, and facilitated consciousness-raising sessions, conferences, and assertiveness training for Black women. These rhetorical strategies functioned as key sites of NABF’s engagement in political education and organizing, yet the NABF has been understudied and undervalued within dominant historical and feminist scholarship.

Revisiting the NABF allows us to uncover the depth and complexity of their rhetorical strategies and contributions to what we now recognize as “intersectionality.” NABF’s work rested on the premise that Black feminism is infused with humanism, linking their identity as Black women to humanity, one that has historically been subject to surveillance, regulation, and violence. They recreated the Bill of Rights through a Black feminist lens—insisting that dignity, agency, and liberation are inseparable.

While the NABF was short-lived, the Alliance reframed ephemerality not as failure but as an intentional and responsive space for Black feminist organizing. The NABF’s legacy offers a living template of constructive engagement guiding our collective journey toward liberation.

Victoria Fields, doctoral candidate and instructor of record in Communication at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, explores the history of the National Alliance of Black Feminists.

Tuesday

Jonathan Lambert, visiting assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Climate Science at New York University, says green clay tennis courts can be used for climate mitigation.

Wednesday

Kim Plofker, associate professor of mathematics at Union College, examines the history of collaboration in mathematics.

Thursday

Amaryllis Tsiknia, neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Southern California, may have found a clue for early Alzheimer’s detection.

Friday

Nancy Huang, professor at the Institute of Biosciences and Technology at Texas A&M University, determines how one aggressive form of cancer can be set off by an accident in our cells.

Catch up with The Academic Minute from 8/3 - 8/7

Monday

Nikki Keene Woods - Wichita State University
Why Patient Trust Determines Whether Technology Improves Care During Pregnancy

Dr. Nikki Keene Woods is an applied behavioral scientist and public health professor. She joined WSU in 2012. She has master’s degrees in behavioral science and public health in addition to a PhD in Behavioral Psychology from the University of Kansas. She is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) and the local chapter the Kansas ACHE. Her research centers on maternal/child health, with an emphasis on advancing health outcomes for women and underserved populations through applied interdisciplinary research. She has led or co-led numerous federally and state-funded projects, including a National Institutes of Health grant on wearable devices for fetal heart rate monitoring, a PCORI grant to improve women’s health, and authored more than 40 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Keene Woods’ scholarship integrates community-engaged methods and applied data analytics to improve population health outcomes in Kansas and beyond.

Tuesday

Heidi VanRavenhorst-Bell - Wichita State University
Measuring Performance of the Mighty Human Tongue

Dr. Heidi VanRavenhorst-Bell has an established interdisciplinary line of research in clinical exercise physiology and orofacial myology. Her work in promoting healthy tongue muscle performance through physical activity has been internationally recognized and showcased on NPR’s Science Friday with Ira Flatow. Her research also includes R&D and product validation in the health & fitness industry.

Wednesday

JaeHwan Byun - Wichita State University
Rethinking Learning with AI

Dr. JaeHwan Byun is an Associate Professor in the School of Education, College of Applied Studies at Wichita State University. He joined WSU in 2015 and currently serves as Program Chair for the Master of Education in Learning and Instructional Design and Director of the Applied AI in Education Research Lab. Dr. Byun’s work focuses on how educators and learners can engage in learning experiences that are engaging, infused with meaning, and experienced as coherent and complete. Building on longstanding work in educational technology, his current scholarship foregrounds generative AI (GenAI) in education, including studies of teacher adoption and needs, design-based approaches to educator preparation, and how GenAI can function as “design material” that reshapes instructional activity and learning paradigms.

Thursday

Waruna Seneviratne - Wichita State University
Automated Toolless Manufacturing of Composite Structures in Space

Waruna Seneviratne is the Director of the Advanced Technologies Lab for Aerospace Systems (ATLAS) at the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR), Wichita State University. With over 25 years at NIAR, he leads a diverse research portfolio in advanced manufacturing, inspection, durability, damage tolerance, certification, and aging of composite aircraft structures—supported by agencies including the FAA, DoD, DHS, NASA, and major aerospace manufacturers.

Friday

Nick Solomey - Wichita State University
Helping NASA Study Energy From The Solar Core

Nickolas Solomey’s research is in the area of experimental particle and astroparticle physics, in the past he worked extensively on quark flavor physics by rare decays of hadrons, CP violation with Kaons, the study of nuclear states of matter and hadronic interaction physics. He was the co-spokesman of the Fermilab E907 experiment.

The Academic Minute airs on the WAMC Northeast Public Radio network at 7:30 a.m. and 3:56 p.m. weekdays.

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On Wichita State University Week: What can we learn about the core of the Sun?

Nick Solomey, professor at the Farimount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, looks for answers.

Faculty Bio:

Nickolas Solomey’s research is in the area of experimental particle and astroparticle physics, in the past he worked extensively on quark flavor physics by rare decays of hadrons, CP violation with Kaons, the study of nuclear states of matter and hadronic interaction physics. He was the co-spokesman of the Fermilab E907 experiment. He is also author of the book The Elusive Neutrino, and continues as editor of the Conference series on Hyperon, Charm and Beauty Hadrons, and has over 200 referred articles in physics research. His current experiments include neutrino experiments of NOvA and DUNE at Fermilab, and he is the PI of a new NASA project Neutrino Solar Orbiting Laboratory that aims to do unique neutrino science with a neutrino space-craft. Since 2018 he has been NASA Innovation Advanced Concept Fellow.

Transcript:

In 2016, I brought what many considered a “crazy” idea to NASA. It relates to neutrinos, which are mysterious subatomic particles that can go through matter as if it’s not there. Neutrinos should be massless, but we’ve proven they have mass. Most neutrino detectors are massive and experiments must be conducted underground. I suggested studying solar neutrinos, and noted that a small detector would be powerful enough to allow us to learn more about the solar neutrinos produced inside the Sun’s core.

At the time, NASA was preparing to launch a spacecraft that would travel close to the Sun. Named the Parker Solar Probe, it entered space in 2018 and is still making close passes by the Sun.

Solar neutrinos fly directly to and through the Earth at nearly the speed of light, and the number of these particles increases dramatically closer to the Sun—about 1,000 times higher at seven solar radii than at Earth. A detector placed there becomes effectively 1,000 times more powerful. Building a 250-killigram detector would result in, by far, the largest terrestrial solar neutrino experiment ever.

The detector would allow us to study the nuclear fusion core of the Sun in unprecedented detail, and to investigate neutrino properties in new ways, including measuring how solar neutrinos change with distance.

We’re now preparing to launch a .1 kg test detector into low-Earth polar orbit, with funding to operate it for one year. Ultimately, we hope to propose a small spacecraft carrying an approximately 250 kg detector close to the Sun. Operating for 5 to 10 years, such a mission would dramatically improve our understanding of the Sun’s fusion core—the source of the energy that sustains life on Earth.

Read More:

In-Space Neutrino Detection

On Wichita State University Week: Reducing lift-off weight can be crucial for spaceflight.

Waruna Seneviratne, director of the Advanced Technologies Lab for Aerospace Systems (ATLAS) at the National Institute for Aviation Research, explores one way to do so.

Faculty Bio:

Waruna Seneviratne is the Director of the Advanced Technologies Lab for Aerospace Systems (ATLAS) at the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR), Wichita State University. With over 25 years at NIAR, he leads a diverse research portfolio in advanced manufacturing, inspection, durability, damage tolerance, certification, and aging of composite aircraft structures—supported by agencies including the FAA, DoD, DHS, NASA, and major aerospace manufacturers.

In 2019, he founded the NIAR ATLAS Manufacturing Innovation Center to create a makerspace-style environment for accelerating advanced manufacturing research and prototyping. He also leads the Manufacturing for Affordable Sustainable Composites (MASC) initiative, sponsored by the Air Force Research Lab, which focuses on integrating in-process inspection technologies into manufacturing. His team’s automated fiber placement (AFP) inspection system received the 2023 JEC Composites Innovation Award for Digital, AI & Data. In 2024, his work on thermoplastic injection overmolded aircraft window plugs—adapting automotive technologies for high-rate aerospace production—earned both the Best Technical Paper Award at SAMPE and the CAMX Innovation Award.

Waruna serves on the Technical Oversight Committee for NASA’s Advanced Composites Consortium (HiCAM) and the Executive Steering Committee for the Office of Naval Research’s Composites Manufacturing Technology Center through The Composites Consortium. He is a recipient of NASA’s Group Achievement Award (2022) for his contributions to the Advanced Composites Project, and the “Turning Goals into Reality” Honor Award (2002) for his work with the AGATE Alliance.

Before joining NIAR, Waruna worked as a stress analyst on the Airbus A380 program, ensuring compliance with FAA and EASA certification standards. He holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Wichita State University and has lived in Wichita for over 30 years.

Transcript:

Today’s space structures are built to survive one of the most violent environments imaginable—launch. As a result, they are often overdesigned, carrying extra mass, cost, and complexity just to endure those few critical minutes. At the same time, everything we send to space must fit within the space of a payload bay. This constraint forces engineers to fold structures into compact, origami-like forms—packed with joints, motors, and deployment mechanisms that add weight, introduce risk, and create potential points of failure.

But what if we didn’t have to build everything on Earth?

What if we could build them in space instead?

To meet this challenge, a new approach is emerging: Automated Tool-less Manufacturing, or AToM. This system uses two coordinated robotic arms to fabricate high-performance thermoplastic composite structures directly in space. Working together, they place continuous fibers with precision, creating strong, lightweight, three-dimensional parts—without molds, without ovens or autocalves, and without the constraints of traditional manufacturing.

Think of it as additive manufacturing—but engineered for structural strength with continuous fiber composites.

The impact is transformative. By eliminating tooling and reducing dependence on multiple launches, AToM removes traditional limits on size, weight, and complexity. Structures no longer need to fold or deploy—they can be built exactly as designed, with fewer joints and far less mechanical complexity and weight.

And this isn’t theoretical. At the NIAR ATLAS Manufacturing Innovation Center, this technology has already demonstrated the ability to rapidly produce aerospace-quality composite structures on-site.

Even more, the thermoplastic materials used are recyclable—opening the door to a circular manufacturing economy in space, where every resource matters.

From orbit to the Moon, to Mars and beyond, this technology redefines not just how we build—but where we build.

Read More:

Advanced Technologies Lab for Aerospace Systems - ATLAS

New Technology Can Create Composite Structures in Space

In-Situ Consolidation Thermoplastic Process Development for Toolless Automated Fiber Placement Manufacturing in Space

On Wichita State University Week: Should we change the way we think about using generative AI for learning?

JaeHwan Byun, associate professor in the College of Education, explores this question.

Faculty Bio:

Dr. JaeHwan Byun is an Associate Professor in the School of Education, College of Applied Studies at Wichita State University. He joined WSU in 2015 and currently serves as Program Chair for the Master of Education in Learning and Instructional Design and Director of the Applied AI in Education Research Lab. Dr. Byun’s work focuses on how educators and learners can engage in learning experiences that are engaging, infused with meaning, and experienced as coherent and complete. Building on longstanding work in educational technology, his current scholarship foregrounds generative AI (GenAI) in education, including studies of teacher adoption and needs, design-based approaches to educator preparation, and how GenAI can function as “design material” that reshapes instructional activity and learning paradigms.

Transcript:

Today, many see GenAI as a quick tool to get answers. A shortcut. This view misses its real potential and leads to widespread concerns about cheating and shallow learning.
My research, conducted with my colleague Dr. Mara Alagić, proposes a new paradigm called Generativism. We argue that real learning with GenAI isn’t about the answer it gives you. It’s about the cognitive work you do with that answer.
We define this deep learning in a cycle: You prompt. The GenAI generates. And then, the most important part begins: the critique.
That critique then becomes a new prompt to ask GenAI. This process iterates, until you and the AI build a refined learning outcome. This is a moment of critical reflection followed by action.
The GenAI acts as a partner that challenges your thinking. Your job isn’t to simply accept its answer. Your job is to question it, validate it, and refine it. That reflective, iterative process is the learning in the era of GenAI.
This process creates a dynamic learning space. The AI provides a “scaffold” that pushes you just beyond what you already know. In this model, the GenAI isn’t a simple tool. It’s a semi-autonomous partner and collaborator.

Therefore, the learner cannot be a passive receiver. They must become the orchestrator of this complex process.

The “ah-ha” moment is this: The true goal of GenAI in education is not to deliver information. It is to provoke the critical reflection and deep engagement needed to build real, lasting understanding.
For the younger generations who will inevitably live with this technology, this means teaching them how to think critically is more important than ever.

Read More:

College of Education

On Wichita State University Week: Your tongue matters more than you might think.

Heidi VanRavenhorst-Bell, chair and associate professor in the Department of Human Performance Studies, explores why.

Faculty Bio:

Dr. Heidi VanRavenhorst-Bell has an established interdisciplinary line of research in clinical exercise physiology and orofacial myology. Her work in promoting healthy tongue muscle performance through physical activity has been internationally recognized and showcased on NPR’s Science Friday with Ira Flatow. Her research also includes R&D and product validation in the health & fitness industry. Dr. Bell has developed a systematic network purposed toward bridging the gap between healthcare and fitness. Her entrepreneurial background has further led to three start-up companies, secured intellectual property and established a platform to mentor students aspiring to be the next leaders in the field. Besides serving as Chair and Associate Professor of the Department of Human Performance Studies at Wichita State, Bell is the undergraduate coordinator for Exercise Science, manager of the Human Performance Laboratory, a Faculty Fellow for the Dorothy and Bill Cohen Honors College, and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Transcript:

Eight muscles. One tongue. And it might be the hardest-working muscle group you never think about. That is, unless you bite it. The tongue helps us speak, chew, swallow, and even keep the airway open during sleep. But for more than one in three people, tongue and facial movement patterns don’t work as efficiently as they should—what clinicians call orofacial myofunctional disorders, or OMD.

Here’s the tricky part: in clinic, tongue performance measures are often recorded with tools that capture only a slice of what the tongue does. One challenge is slippage of the oral device within the mouth. The tongue’s anterior and posterior have different muscle fiber composition and functional roles, so even small shifts can change what’s actually measured. We tested and patented an oral-safe anti-slip patch, and participants reported better stability without meaningful changes in the pressure values, which is clinically important. Another area of consideration during assessments is head posture. Research shows even the simplest change in position may shift lingual measures.

Measuring tongue motion and force in real life—not just during brief clinical visits—presents challenges, too. PARROT, a patented research prototype, could address this. Fitting like a palatal mouthpiece, it wirelessly captures spatial positioning of the tongue within the oral cavity, while also mapping how hard and for how long the tongue is pressing against various structures. The scientific goal? Attain objective, repeatable data that can improve screening, guide therapy, and support telepractice.

A deeper physiology question involves fascia, which links human body structures from the tip of the tongue down the tips of the toes. Manipulating fascia and other physiological factors through physical activity and targeted stretching are shown to favor tongue strength or endurance.

So, the next time you swallow, yawn, talk or even exercise… remember: your tongue is doing a quiet biomechanical ballet.

Read More:

Department of Public Health Sciences

[Science Friday] - When Your Tongue Needs A Tuneup

On Wichita State University Week: Technology can only help if people are willing to use it.

Nikki Keene Woods, professor and chair of Public Health Sciences, reveals why some may not trust devices that could help them.

Faculty Bio:

Dr. Nikki Keene Woods is an applied behavioral scientist and public health professor. She joined WSU in 2012. She has master’s degrees in behavioral science and public health in addition to a PhD in Behavioral Psychology from the University of Kansas. She is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) and the local chapter the Kansas ACHE. Her research centers on maternal/child health, with an emphasis on advancing health outcomes for women and underserved populations through applied interdisciplinary research. She has led or co-led numerous federally and state-funded projects, including a National Institutes of Health grant on wearable devices for fetal heart rate monitoring, a PCORI grant to improve women’s health, and authored more than 40 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Keene Woods’ scholarship integrates community-engaged methods and applied data analytics to improve population health outcomes in Kansas and beyond.

Transcript:

When we think about new health technology, we often assume that better tools automatically lead to better care. But when it comes to care during pregnancy, that is not always the case.

In my research, my team and I studied how women feel about using wearable devices that allow health care providers to remotely monitor a baby’s heart rate. These tools have great potential, especially for women in rural areas or communities with limited access to prenatal services.

We surveyed women of reproductive age to understand what would make them willing or hesitant to use a remote fetal heart monitoring device. What we found was both practical and revealing.

First, acceptance depended heavily on whether the technology fits into everyday life. Women were not opposed to technology, but they were clear about their expectations. Comfort and size mattered. Most women said the device would need to be small and fit easily into their daily routines.

Second, age mattered in unexpected ways. Women in their thirties and forties were more accepting of the technology than younger women. We often assume that being younger automatically means being more comfortable or accepting of health technology, but pregnancy has a way of rewriting those assumptions. During pregnancy, trust, experience, and perceived risk may matter more than comfort with technology.

Finally, privacy and accuracy were concerns as some women worried about who would have access to their data, and whether inconsistent readings might increase anxiety instead of providing reassurance.

The takeaway is simple but important. If we want technology to improve care during pregnancy and reduce disparities, we have to design it with women. It’s about adding technology thoughtfully, in ways that make care feel more supportive, more human, and improve quality. Listening to women’s experiences and concerns is not a barrier to innovation. It is how innovation succeeds.

Read More:

Public Health Sciences at Wichita State University

Monday

Nikki Keene Woods, professor and chair of Public Health Sciences, says technology can only help if people are willing to use it.

Tuesday

Heidi VanRavenhorst-Bell, chair and associate professor in the Department of Human Performance Studies, explores the mighty human tongue.

Wednesday

JaeHwan Byun, associate professor in the College of Education, asks if we should change the way we think about using generative AI for learning.

Thursday

Waruna Seneviratne, director of the Advanced Technologies Lab for Aerospace Systems (ATLAS) at the National Institute for Aviation Research, determines how to reduce lift-off weight for space flight.

Friday

Nick Solomey, professor at the Farimount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, looks to learn more about the core of the sun.

Catch up with The Academic Minute from 7/27 - 7/31

Monday

Esti Blanco-Elorrieta - New York University
Putting a Number on Bilingual Experience

I am an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University. In my research, I combine insights from monolingual and multilingual individuals, who process language through speech or sign, to inform an inclusive and comprehensive neurobiology of language. My research combines data from neuroimaging, computational and behavioral methods with theoretical insights from linguistics, psychology and neuroscience.

Tuesday

Aaron Barbey - Notre Dame University
Intelligence Emerges When the Whole Brain Works As One

Aron Barbey is also the director of the University of Notre Dame Human Neuroimaging Center and the Decision Neuroscience Laboratory.

Barbey’s research investigates how intelligence emerges from the network organization and dynamics of the human connectome, applying methods from cognitive neuroscience, experimental psychology and computer science. His work aims to achieve a deeper understanding of the neural foundations of intelligence and to enable scientific innovation in cognitive enhancement, neurorehabilitation and biologically inspired artificial intelligence.

Wednesday

Erin M. Kenney - Hartwick College
Taking a Closer Look at the Impact of Parent-Child Conversations

Erin M. Kenney is an assistant professor of psychology at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York.

Dr. Kenney’s interdisciplinary work includes time as an early childhood teacher, administrator, professor, and researcher. Her areas of expertise include developmental psychology, early childhood education, parent-child conversation.

Kenney’s dedication to bridging the gap between developmental science and developmentally appropriate practice includes a commitment to research practices that center participants as knowledge producers and values community engagement. She and the members of the Family and Developmental Studies Research Lab study a variety of topics including parent-child conversation, neurodiversity, and personal intelligence.

Thursday

Zihan Chen - Brown University
The Hidden Cost of a 1965 Medicare Rule

Zihan Chen is a PhD candidate in Health Services Research at Brown University. She studies Medicare policy, with a focus on post-acute and long-term care.

Friday

Sharaya Jones - George Mason University
Why Choosing Stuff to Share is an Ordeal

Sharaya M. Jones is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Costello College of Business. Sharaya received her PhD in Marketing from the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder, and her bachelor's degree from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on questions about how consumer perceptions shape consumer responses. In one stream of research, she examines how perceptions of congruity influence consumer responses such as donation behavior and new product appeal. In a second stream of research, she uncovers how consumers experience and make decisions for shared consumption, which are both heavily influenced by perceptions of group members’ preferences.

The Academic Minute airs on the WAMC Northeast Public Radio network at 7:30 a.m. and 3:56 p.m. weekdays.

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KTCU - Dallas-Ft. Worth, TX, KMPB - Dillon, CO, KUCR - Riverside, CA, KTSW - San Marcos, TX, WNAA - Greensboro, NC, WYPL - Memphis, TN, WERB - Berlin, CT, WITR - Rochester, NY, W257BL - Oneonta, NY, W226AC - Troy, NY, WAMC - Albany, NY, WCAN - Canajoharie, NY, W246BJ - Hudson, NY, WAMQ - Great Barrington, MA, WUSR - Scranton, PA, WSUM - Madison. WI, WLUR - Lexington, VA, RADIO READING SERVICE OF MS - Jackson, MS, W240CR - Peekskill, NY, W225BM - Scotia, NY, W299AG - Newburgh, NY, W280DJ - Beacon, NY, W295AA - Middletown, NY, W243BZ - Ellenville, NY,W296BD - Warwick, NY, WOSR - Middletown, NY, WLNA - Beacon, NY, WBNR - Beacon, NY,WCEL - Plattsburgh, NY, WANC - Ticonderoga, NY, KJZA - Kingman, AZ, KJZA - Kingman, AZ,KJZP - Kingman, AZ, KJZK - Kingman, AZ, WAMK - Kingston, NY, W271BF - Highland, NY, WRUN - Utica, NY, WGHQ - Beacon, NY, KAMU - College Station, TX, KRPS - Pittsburg, KS,WUIS - Springfield, IL, CISE - Wolseley, SK (Canada), KISU - Pocatello, ID, W215BG - Milford, PA, CRIS Radio - Windsor, CT, WUOW - Oneonta, NY, WRFA - Jamestown, NY, KXCV - Maryville, MO, WKCC - Kankakee, IL, WWES - Mt. Kisco, NY, KENW - Portales, NM, CISE - Wolseley, SK (Canada), W248AN - Cooperstown, NY, WRUC - Schenectady, NY, WGSU - Geneseo, NY, WAMK - Dover Plains, NY, Science Zone Radio, WSCL - Salisbury, MD, WSDL - Ocean City, MD, KRNW - Chillicothe, MO, WNUB - Northfield, VT, Armed Forces Radio, KNAU, AZ - Arizona Public Radio, KTWH, Two Harbors, MN, KTNA, Talkeetna, AK, WUFT-FM – Gainesville, FL, WBZC - Pemberton, NJ, KPBM, Poplar Bluff, MO, WLRH - Huntsville, AL, WITC - Cazenovia, NY, KUSU – Logan, UT, WRDL – Ashland, OH, KSLU-FM - Hammond, LA

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Making a decision about an activity for a group of friends can be stressful.

Sharaya Jones, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Costello College of Business at George Mason University, examines why emotions play a huge part in the process.

Faculty Bio:

Sharaya M. Jones is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Costello College of Business. Sharaya received her PhD in Marketing from the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder, and her bachelor's degree from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on questions about how consumer perceptions shape consumer responses. In one stream of research, she examines how perceptions of congruity influence consumer responses such as donation behavior and new product appeal. In a second stream of research, she uncovers how consumers experience and make decisions for shared consumption, which are both heavily influenced by perceptions of group members’ preferences.

Transcript:

Picture this: you’re picking a restaurant for date night, snacks for a movie night with friends, or a group activity for a trip. Why does it feel like a struggle to choose something that will work for everyone?

Seven experiments with over 2000 people revealed something surprising: these decisions aren’t actually harder than choosing for yourself – they’re more emotional. You feel a heightened sense of responsibility to avoid getting it wrong, and the less you know about others’ preferences, the less confident you feel that you’ll be able to make everyone, including yourself, happy. The anxiety is real and it shapes your choices.

It’s why people gravitate toward “most popular” labels and choose variety packs: those options are a safer bet when satisfying everyone – including yourself.

Here’s what’s exciting for brands right now: With AI and social media, we now have real-time signals about who a decision is for. Someone asking an AI “what book should I choose for my book club?” or commenting on a TikTok, asking their tagged friend “should we go to this?” are signals that smart brands can act on. Brands can create bundles or promote “crowd pleasers” for group decisions, as opposed to personalized picks for solo shoppers. These strategies not only help consumers but may also lead to higher conversion.

For consumers: ask people what they want and if that fails, give them some options to help them reveal their preferences. And if someone else is choosing for a shared experience, don’t shy away from stating your preferences. It will reduce their anxiety and make the whole experience better for everyone.

Read More:

[George Mason] - Why choosing stuff to share is an ordeal

[Sage Journals] - The Decision-Making Process and Impact of Individual Decisions for Joint Consumption

An old Medicare rule is keeping older adults in hospitals longer than necessary, so what can be done?

Zoey Chen, PhD candidate in health services research at Brown University, looks into this.

Faculty Bio:

Zihan Chen is a PhD candidate in Health Services Research at Brown University. She studies Medicare policy, with a focus on post-acute and long-term care.

Transcript:

Imagine this: an older adult falls at home and is hospitalized with a hip fracture. After two days, their doctor says they’re medically stable and ready to leave the hospital—to continue recovery in a nursing home with physical therapy and monitoring.

But they can’t leave.

Not because of their health—but because of a rule.

Medicare requires a minimum three-day hospital stay before it will cover care in a skilled nursing facility. This is known as the “three-day rule,” and it dates back to 1965.
More than half a century later, this rule still shapes care for millions of older adults. Many argue that the three-day threshold is arbitrary, rigid, and inefficient. However, we didn’t have strong evidence on how the rule actually affects care.

That changed in May 2023, when the rule was reinstated after being waived during the COVID-19 pandemic. This created a rare natural experiment.

What we found was surprising. After this rule was reinstated, more patients stayed in hospitals just over three days. And the increase was larger among patients with dementia or hip fracture, who were mostly likely to need post-hospital care in nursing homes. Patients didn’t use nursing homes any less, they were just staying in hospitals longer than medically necessary to qualify.

The result? Thousands of extra hospital days, higher costs for hospitals, and no clear savings for Medicare.

This highlights a bigger issue: healthcare is full of eligibility rules like this. They might be valuable, but if we don’t evaluate these rules carefully, they can end up creating bottlenecks—delaying care, increasing costs, and potentially harming patients.

Read More:

[National Library of Medicine] - Changes in Inpatient and Skilled Nursing Facility Care After the Medicare 3-Day Rule Reinstatement

How do children learn to talk about themselves and other people?

Erin M. Kenney, assistant professor of psychology at Hartwick College, looks into this using preschool-aged children.

Faculty Bio:

Erin M. Kenney is an assistant professor of psychology at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York.
Dr. Kenney’s interdisciplinary work includes time as an early childhood teacher, administrator, professor, and researcher. Her areas of expertise include developmental psychology, early childhood education, parent-child conversation.
Kenney’s dedication to bridging the gap between developmental science and developmentally appropriate practice includes a commitment to research practices that center participants as knowledge producers and values community engagement. She and the members of the Family and Developmental Studies Research Lab study a variety of topics including parent-child conversation, neurodiversity, and personal intelligence.
She earned her B.S. from the University of New England and her M.Ed. from the University of Hartford. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of New Hampshire.

Transcript:

We live in a world in which people are constantly judging other people.
My research seeks to understand how kids learn to talk about others by investigating parent-and-child conversations. I am interested in the influence that a parent’s own personal intelligence has on a child’s development of personal intelligence, often described as the capacity to reason about personalities, both one’s own and those with whom we come into contact.
Parent/child conversation research has existed for decades, but the act of including personal intelligence is brand new. It is all about understanding how children truly understand or interact with people, situations and other things that are different or similar to themselves.
Our work is aimed at better understanding how kids develop the ability to describe other people using personality trait terms. They’re asked to have a conversation with their parent describing recent positive and negative interactions with a peer or friend. How do they build that skill set to make those determinations of what a good or bad friend is?
The reason I went with three and four-year-olds is I used to be a preschool teacher. I understand that three- and four-year-old kids are very concerned with who’s doing the right thing, who’s doing the wrong thing. They’re also very much learning how to describe themselves and how to talk about other people--and my big question is: What are the mechanisms that underlie that?
It appears that parents have a huge role in terms of how children learn to talk about the world around them and our interviews reveal that most parents seem to be trying to do the best they can. Through this research, we can gain insights that may be able to help society understand how to better shape future generations to be less divisive and better able to label and understand personality related behavior.

Read More:

Psychology | Hartwick College

We are redefining our view of human intelligence.

Aron Barbey, the Andrew J. McKenna Family Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, looks at how our brain organizes information to do so.

Faculty Bio:

Aron Barbey is also the director of the University of Notre Dame Human Neuroimaging Center and the Decision Neuroscience Laboratory.

Barbey’s research investigates how intelligence emerges from the network organization and dynamics of the human connectome, applying methods from cognitive neuroscience, experimental psychology and computer science. His work aims to achieve a deeper understanding of the neural foundations of intelligence and to enable scientific innovation in cognitive enhancement, neurorehabilitation and biologically inspired artificial intelligence.

Over the course of his career, Barbey’s research group has won more than $26 million in research funding, with support from organizations including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Defense, the White House BRAIN Initiative, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and private industry sponsors such as Abbott Nutrition, Google Brain and PepsiCo.

Transcript:

General intelligence is our ability to solve problems across many areas of life, helping us go beyond what we’ve experienced, make sense of the unfamiliar, and adapt to new challenges. What’s remarkable is not just this capacity, but its source: a finite, fragile system, the human brain, a three-pound organ powered by less energy than a lightbulb. The question is how the brain’s finite architecture makes such flexible intelligence possible.

The answer may lie in how knowledge is organized in the brain. Rather than stored in one location, information is distributed across regions. The brain coordinates activity across these regions to construct mental models of the world. These models are built from reusable components of knowledge — information about people, objects, actions and events. Because these components can be combined in different ways across contexts, the brain can generate a variety of thoughts from a finite set of building blocks.

But if knowledge is distributed and its components can be recombined in many ways, what determines which combinations are possible? The answer may lie in the network of connections linking brain regions. Like a city’s map, this network defines the possible routes of communication between different parts of the brain.

Some regions communicate easily through direct connections, while others are more difficult to link. The brain’s flexibility arises from its physical wiring.

This redefines how we understand human intelligence. The brain does not simply process thoughts, it gives them their structure. By shaping which ideas can be linked, how easily they can be reached, and how efficiently they can be recombined, it makes general intelligence possible in a finite system. Intelligence, therefore, is the ability to move through a landscape of ideas whose terrain determines what can be even thought at all.

Read More:

[Notre Dame News] - Key to human intelligence lies in how brain networks work together

Decision Neuroscience Lab

Putting a figure on a person’s bilingual experience can be daunting.

Esti Blanco-Elorrieta, assistant professor of psychology and neural science at New York University, looks into one way to do so.

Faculty Bio:

I am an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University. In my research, I combine insights from monolingual and multilingual individuals, who process language through speech or sign, to inform an inclusive and comprehensive neurobiology of language. My research combines data from neuroimaging, computational and behavioral methods with theoretical insights from linguistics, psychology and neuroscience.

I obtained my PhD from New York University, where I worked at the Neuroscience of Language lab under Liina Pylkkänen’s supervision and completed my post-doctoral training at Harvard University, working in the Cognitive Neuropsychology lab under Alfonso Caramazza’s supervision. In 2019, I was recognized as a Forbes 30 under 30 scientist, and in 2025, I received the Early Career Award from the Society for the Neurobiology of Language.

Transcript:

For decades, bilingualism researchers have faced a deceptively simple question: how do we actually measure how bilingual someone is?

We often collect rich language histories, but when it comes time to analyze the data, there’s no standard way to turn all that information into a single, interpretable number. As a result, different studies define “language dominance” and “degree of bilingualism” in very different ways, making it hard to compare results across labs and populations.

In my research with my collaborator Jessica Chen, we set out to develop a simple, theoretically grounded way to quantify two things: how dominant someone is in one language versus another, and where they fall on the continuum from monolingual to highly multilingual.

We built our approach around two variables that decades of work show are fundamental: self-rated proficiency and age of acquisition. Age of acquisition matters because the brain’s capacity for language learning changes over development, and later exposure typically limits ultimate attainment. Proficiency matters because it reflects how well the language is actually represented and used.

We combined these factors into a formula that produces a continuous dominance score, ranging from perfectly balanced bilinguals to strongly dominant speakers of one language. We also introduced a multilingualism score that places individuals on a spectrum from monolingual to polyglot, while giving diminishing weight to each additional language, reflecting the fact that the jump from one to two languages is larger than from four to five.

We validated these measures in large datasets, including both healthy adults and bilingual individuals with aphasia, and showed that our simple formulas closely match much more complex statistical methods.

Our goal is to offer the field a transparent, biologically informed, and easily reproducible way to characterize language experience—so that when we talk about bilingualism, we’re finally speaking the same quantitative language.

Read More:

[NYU] - Neuroscientists Devise Formulas to Measure Multilingualism

Esti Blanco-Elorrieta, assistant professor of psychology and neural science at New York University, says putting a figure on a person’s bilingual experience can be daunting.

Tuesday

Aron Barbey, the Andrew J. McKenna Family Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, looks at how our brain organizes information.

Wednesday

Erin M. Kenney, assistant professor of psychology at Hartwick College, delves into how children talk about themselves and other people.

Thursday

Zoey Chen, PhD candidate in health services research at Brown University, examines how an old Medicare rule is keeping older adults in hospitals longer than necessary.

Friday

Sharaya Jones, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Costello College of Business at George Mason University, explores why emotions play a huge part in the process of choosing things for a group.

Catch up with The Academic Minute from 7/20 - 7/24

Monday

Kristin Bidoshi - Union College
What Does it Mean to Teach Language During War?

Kristin Bidoshi, professor of Russian in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, discusses this through language teaching in Ukraine.

Tuesday

Guillermina Seri - Union College
Democracy, Markets, Rights, and Emergency Rule

Guillermina Seri is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Union College, NY, where she teaches courses in political theory and Latin American Politics. Seri is the author of the books Seguridad: Crime, Police Power, and Democracy in Argentina (Continuum, 2012) and Neoliberalism and Unlawful Governance. The Crisis of Democratic Rights (University of Michigan Press, 2026), and co-editor of the volume Police Abuse in Contemporary Democracies (Palgrave, 2018.

Wednesday

Holli Frey - Union College
Tick, Tick… Boom! Unraveling the Secrets of Caribbean Volcanoes

Holli Frey is a professor of Geosciences from Union College (NY). She studies volcanoes, trying to understand the plumbing systems beneath them, looking for clues as to how and why they erupt. She is particularly interested in mineral chemistry and chronology and uses a variety of analytical tools to address fundamental questions about magma evolution.

Thursday

Stephen Schmidt - Union College
Making A [Tax] Effort for Black Students’ Education

Stephen Schmidt has been professor of economics at Union College since 1994, after completing his Ph.D. in economics at Stanford University. He was appointed the Kenneth B. Sharpe Professor of Economics in September 2019. His research interests include the economics of education, especially education finance, and the normative evaluation of economic outcomes and policies. He has published articles in American Economic Review (Papers & Proceedings), Journal of Public Economics, Contemporary Economic Policy, Economics of Education Review, Journal of Higher Education, Theoria, Restoration Ecology, Journal of Economic Education, Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, Southern Economic Journal, International Journal of Industrial Organization, and others. He teaches courses in econometrics, game theory, intermediate microeconomics, the economics of race, and normative economics, as well as the College’s first-year inquiry seminar.

Friday

Mariah Purol - Union College
What Happens to Our Love Lives When the Rest of Life Gets Messy

Mariah received her PhD in Social & Personality Psychology from Michigan State University in 2024. She is currently a faculty member in the Psychology department of Union College. Her work examines how both individuals’ and their partners’ characteristics influence their relationship satisfaction, life satisfaction, and well-being. To that end, she’s interested in how we create happy, satisfying lives as individuals (studying traits like gratitude and optimism), and as relationship members (studying constructs like interpersonal perceptions and personality in romantic relationships/friendships).

The Academic Minute airs on the WAMC Northeast Public Radio network at 7:30 a.m. and 3:56 p.m. weekdays.

It is also carried by:

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Funding support comes from the American Association of Colleges and Universities:

On Union College Week: What happens to our love lives when the rest of life gets messy?

Mariah Purol, assistant professor of psychology, examines this.

Faculty Bio:

Mariah received her PhD in Social & Personality Psychology from Michigan State University in 2024. She is currently a faculty member in the Psychology department of Union College. Her work examines how both individuals’ and their partners’ characteristics influence their relationship satisfaction, life satisfaction, and well-being. To that end, she’s interested in how we create happy, satisfying lives as individuals (studying traits like gratitude and optimism), and as relationship members (studying constructs like interpersonal perceptions and personality in romantic relationships/friendships).

Transcript:

We have lots of ideas about how life events, especially negative ones, might impact our romantic relationships. For example, what happens to a couple when one of them gets diagnosed with a chronic health condition? Has a parent pass away? Loses a child? Does relationship quality degrade in the face of these stressors, or do couples draw closer?
In a recent project, I examined the relationship trajectories of over 10,000 couples in the U.S., the Netherlands, and Switzerland. I did this by combining data from three longitudinal datasets, each of which had information about couples’ relationship quality—like their satisfaction, their levels of support, or their closeness— and the life events that they experienced together.
With this data, I examined how changes in relationship quality may be associated with the occurrence of these life events. Overall, it was extremely rare for negative life events to predict negative relationship outcomes (like decreased satisfaction). In a handful of cases, experiencing negative life events was associated with positive relationship outcomes. For example, individuals who experienced a potentially stressful life transition, like beginning a new job or experiencing a new negative health event, also reported feeling more support and responsiveness from their partner over time.
However, these effects were rare, and, when significant, the size of the effects were very small. It was much more common for the occurrence of these life events to be unassociated with changes in relationship quality. While this may seem surprising, these results emphasize a point relationships theorists have been making for decades: the presence of a negative event alone is not enough to make or break a romantic relationship.

On Union College Week: What can we do to improve education for Black students in majority white communities?

Stephen Schmidt, Kenneth B. Sharpe Professor of Economics, examines possible solutions.

Faculty Bio:

Stephen Schmidt has been professor of economics at Union College since 1994, after completing his Ph.D. in economics at Stanford University. He was appointed the Kenneth B. Sharpe Professor of Economics in September 2019. His research interests include the economics of education, especially education finance, and the normative evaluation of economic outcomes and policies. He has published articles in American Economic Review (Papers & Proceedings), Journal of Public Economics, Contemporary Economic Policy, Economics of Education Review, Journal of Higher Education, Theoria, Restoration Ecology, Journal of Economic Education, Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, Southern Economic Journal, International Journal of Industrial Organization, and others. He teaches courses in econometrics, game theory, intermediate microeconomics, the economics of race, and normative economics, as well as the College’s first-year inquiry seminar.

Transcript:

There is a racial divide in the United States economy, which means that people of different racial and ethnic identities don’t have the same economic prospects in life. One source of this divide is differences in education. Students of color, especially African-Americans, often don’t get the same level of education funding that other students get. One explanation for this pattern is stigmatization theory. It says that when members of a majority stigmatize a minority, they spend less on public services, since the stigmatized group cannot be excluded from the benefits of those services. My research examines the way school districts set spending levels to see if the patterns that stigmatization theory predicts are found in the data. In particular, I look to see whether the racial composition of a district’s student body affects spending levels differently when the adult voters in the district are dominantly White. There is good news, which is that in districts where the adult voters are less than about 90% White, education funding is higher when the student body contains more African-American or Hispanic students - presumably to address disadvantages children in those communities face. But, in districts with more than about 90% White voters, this effect is found only for Hispanic students, not for African-American students. Why are only African-American students, not Hispanic students, treated differently when districts have highly White voters? Stigmatization can explain this pattern. If White voters stigmatize African-American children - but not Hispanic children – and they can only act on this stigmatization when they are dominant in education politics, then we would see the pattern that we actually see in the data. What should we do? We can redraw district lines in ways that increase the diversity of voters, not just students, where that is possible. When it isn’t possible, state governments could provide funding that local voters are reluctant to provide.

Racial Stratification and Local Education Funding

On Union College Week: How do we unravel the secrets of volcanoes?

Holli Frey, professor of geosciences, examines tiny crystals to gather clues.

Faculty Bio:

Holli Frey is a professor of Geosciences from Union College (NY). She studies volcanoes, trying to understand the plumbing systems beneath them, looking for clues as to how and why they erupt. She is particularly interested in mineral chemistry and chronology and uses a variety of analytical tools to address fundamental questions about magma evolution. She has active field-based projects in the Caribbean (St. Vincent and Dominica) and Central Oregon (Tumalo Tuff) and previously did work in the western Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt and plutons in coastal Maine. She enjoys mentoring students, who are frequently co-authors on her publications. Her most recent work is on the eruptions of St. Vincent and she is a project partner of Dr. Jenni Barclay (University of Bristol) on a funded, collaborative grant, “Ex-X: Expecting the Unexpected (Understanding Dangerous Volcanic Transitions)”. This summer, Dr. Frey will take several students to Dominica, continuing to explore the eruptive history of the island. Dr. Frey received her B.A. in geology from Franklin and Marshall College and her PhD in geosciences from University of Michigan, supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Transcript:

In early 2021, the volcano La Soufrière in St. Vincent in the Caribbean rumbled to life after more than 40 years. Thick lava slowly oozed out at the summit, not a real threat to the 16,000 people living in its shadow.
Then, in April, everything changed. The shaking beneath the volcano shifted, prompting an evacuation. In less than 24 hours, powerful explosions began, sending ash high into the atmosphere. For two weeks, more than 30 explosions rocked the island, transforming the landscape and destroying more than 1000 homes.
So, what happened inside the volcano during that sudden transition?
To find out, we turned to the crystals locked inside the rocks that erupted in the first 48 hours. It was the smallest crystals – called microlites – that were key to understanding the volcano’s behavior. The microlites are like time capsules; they preserve clues about where magma has been and what it experienced on its journey to the surface. As these tiny crystals formed, they caused the magma to become more gas rich, increasing the pressure past a tipping point which caused the explosions.
What we found in the microlite chemistry tells a story of magma moving through two very different environments on its way to the surface.
The first crystals formed deep underground, more than fifteen kilometers beneath the volcano, where magma sat under intense pressure and water-rich conditions. Those crystals were carried upward, survivors from deep in the volcanic plumbing system.
The next series of microlites didn’t come from depth however. They crystallized as the magma was moving more quickly to the surface, after the initial throat clearing first blasts that destroyed the lava dome.
By reading the record preserved in the tiny crystals, we can better understand how quiet dome-building eruptions suddenly become explosive and hopefully improve how we anticipate hazards at active volcanoes.

Read More:

[Lyell Collection] - Petrology of the explosive deposits from the April 2021 eruption of La Soufrière volcano, St Vincent: a time-series analysis of microlites

[Union] - Frey Awarded NSF RAPID Grant

[U.S. National Science Foundation] - Award Abstract # 2132566 RAPID: The effusive to explosive transition of La Soufrière, St. Vincent: Insights from petrology and hygrometry

DangerousVolcanoes.org

On Union College Week: Why are democracies suspending the rights of their people?

Guillermina Seri, professor of political science, explores this.

Faculty Bio:

Guillermina Seri is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Union College, NY, where she teaches courses in political theory and Latin American Politics. Seri is the author of the books Seguridad: Crime, Police Power, and Democracy in Argentina (Continuum, 2012) and Neoliberalism and Unlawful Governance. The Crisis of Democratic Rights (University of Michigan Press, 2026), and co-editor of the volume Police Abuse in Contemporary Democracies (Palgrave, 2018).

Transcript:

We often assume democracies are safe havens for human rights, but my research tracks a troubling trend: Across a number of democracies, state abuses and police violence are starting to mirror the abuses linked to emergency measures that suspend rights in authoritarian regimes.
Drawing on media and archival research, I’ve found that while emergency powers used to be the tool of dictators in the 1970s, by the mid-2000s, democratic governments were actually using them more often than nondemocracies. These records challenge established beliefs in political science that democracies “almost never” suspend rights.
Why is this happening? One trend associated with the rise of emergency regimes is the subordination of politics to protecting markets. We’ve entered an era where protecting the market has become the state's highest priority—its Reason of State—often bypassing legal safeguards. This global experiment began under the military dictatorship of 1970s Chile, then extended through and from the Global North. Today, it thrives in the “chainsaw” economics of Javier Milei's Argentina by subjecting everyone and everything to a market rationale, even when it may undermine rights protections.
However, my research also highlights the democratic extraordinary moments when citizens reclaim voice and rights. These are the moments that open possibilities to strengthen democracy and take care of both people and the planet.

Read More:

[University of Michigan Press] - Neoliberalism and Unlawful Governance