Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

Choosing a more sustainable web host

Posted 28 Jul 2014 / 6

I am in the process of considering a shift in my web hosting service. I was spurred to consider a shift by Olivia Hu, a former student of mine who is also working on a new theme for this site. My current host is Bluehost. I chose their services four years ago when I first Read More

A Major Post, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, Sustainable Energy, Sustainable Web Design, Web

Do humans form genetically similar social groups independent of kinship?

Posted 26 Jul 2014 / 1

Proponents of kin selection as the most parsimonious explanation of how cooperation evolves face a problem when it comes to humans: counter to the predictions of kin selection theory, humans aim a fair amount of altruism at non-kin. While we do not aim our helping behaviors solely at our relatives, we also do not randomly Read More

A Major Post, Altruism, Articles, Behavior, Cooperation, Genetics, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Kin Selection, Psychology, Radio & Podcasts, Reciprocity, Social Networks, Sociology

Do cancer cells play cooperate in the Prisoner’s Dilemma?

Posted 26 Jul 2014 / 0

PLoS One “Prisoner’s Dilemma in Cancer Metabolism” What is interesting here is that cancer cells must cooperate with each other in order to out-compete somatic cells against a staggering cost-to-benefit ratio. Generated by the extreme inefficiency of anaerobic metabolism, this ratio presents a supreme challenge to a developing tumor, which might be one factor explaining Read More

A Minor Post, Articles, Cooperation, Game Theory, Health & Medicine, Quantifying Costs and Benefits

The WmD Project has a logo

Posted 24 Jul 2014 / 0

I am finally getting chopping on The WmD Project, a new educational media series that I am going to start producing in the coming months. I like to have a logo for each of my projects; above is the logo that I constructed for this project. The images of Wallace and Darwin are from Wikimedia Commons. Read More

A Minor Post, The WmD Project

My Evolution 2014 talk is on YouTube

Posted 17 Jul 2014 / 0

One nice thing that organizers of the Evolution 2014 conference did was to offer the opportunity for presenters to have their talk recorded and archived. These recorded talks now have their own Evolution 2014 YouTube Channel, and my talk is included in this collection: This was an experiment for this conference, and I think that it came Read More

A Major Post, Conferences, Cooperation, Easy Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, Evolution Education, Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design, My publications, Science in Art & Design, Society for the Study of Evolution, Talks & Seminars, Teaching Tools

Recommendations for creating a more student-centered classroom

Posted 16 Jul 2014 / 0

Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America “Keys to a Successful Student-Centered Classroom: Three Recommendations“ This is a really nice guide for anyone who wants to do a large-scale course conversion to a student-centered learning approach. These recommendations are sound and valuable, although they may seem overly-obvious to anyone who has been practicing this kind Read More

A Minor Post, Assessment Methods, Ecological Society of America, Ecology Education, Higher Education, Teaching, Teaching Tools

Evolution 2014: Overall Impressions

Posted 02 Jul 2014 / 0

Great organization of a great conference I had a great Evolution 2014 conference, and that has a lot to do with how it was organized. Raleigh was a nice location for the conference: it has an intimate conference center, with enough food opportunities near that conference center. Although the transportation options getting to Raleigh are somewhat Read More

A Major Post, Conferences, Evolution Education, Professional Societies, Public Outreach, Science as a career, Society for the Study of Evolution