Posted 30 Nov 2022 / 0
I am excited about having participated in a wonderful STEAMplant project headed up by Art and Design Education graduate student Ana Codorean. The project focused on how to get local public school students thinking about interdependence and the ways in which natural dyes can be used in creative work. Encompassing an impressive breadth of scientific Read More
A Major Post, Art & Design, Coevolution, Community Ecology, Competition, Department of Mathematics & Science, Ecology, Ecology Education, Fashion, Green Design, Interactions, Mutualism, Pollination, Pratt Institute, Public Outreach, Reciprocity, Science in Art & Design, STEAMplant, Sustainability, Teaching
Posted 16 Nov 2018 / 0
Society for the Study of Evolution Letter RE: Scientific Understanding of Sex and Gender It is really exciting when one’s professional society stands up for an important issue, and this issue is near and dear to both my teaching interests and my heart. The idea that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — an agency Read More
A Minor Post, Professional Societies, Public Policy, Science (General), Sex and Reproduction, Social Norms, Society for the Study of Evolution
Posted 25 Oct 2018 / 0
Back in 2011, I worked with a talented Pratt Digital Arts graduate student name Jean Ho Chu to create a flash-based game that allowed players to explore Robert Axelrod’s seminal iterated prisoner’s dilemma simulations. I think that our game was pretty valuable, mostly thanks to Jean’s many innovative graphic and interactive creations. But culture ratchets Read More
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Educational Software and Apps, Game Theory, Teaching Tools
Posted 20 Sep 2018 / 0
Scientific American just released a great special issue on The Science of Being Human. It’s one of those nicely-integrated issues that Scientific American has become really good at creaating: from the graphics to the flow of the article topics, everything fits together into a nice three-part structure that explores a diversity of issues surround human evolution and our resulting Read More
A Minor Post, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Human Uniqueness, Periodicals
Posted 06 Sep 2018 / 0
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Responses to pup vocalizations in subordinate naked mole-rats are induced by estradiol ingested through coprophagy of queen’s feces” Okay, we all knew that naked mole rats are weird. The inbreeding, the eusociality in a mammal, and… well, the look. But this is a new wrinkle. Apparently mom is sending Read More
A Minor Post, Behavior, Kin Selection
Posted 06 Sep 2018 / 0
Science News “When this beetle mom disappears, her children become stronger and nicer” There are so many cool aspects to this study! First, it is amazing that lab evolution can produce this dramatic a change in both anatomy and behavior. These results are kind of like what we observe in artificial selection scenarios: there’s a lot Read More
A Minor Post, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Competition, Cooperation, Kin Selection, Parenting
Posted 30 Aug 2018 / 0
Nature “Fitness benefits and emergent division of labour at the onset of group living” Another Corina Tarnita study that elegantly converts empirical observations into an insightful model. If it doesn’t take a lot for already-social species to harness the power of “division of labor”, that begs an important question: why don’t more species show this Read More
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Group Selection
Posted 22 Aug 2018 / 0
Welcome to Brooklyn: it’s a great place to cycle if you know how to do so safely. In August of 2018 I was asked to give a one-hour workshop on urban cycling as part of Pratt’s new student orientation program. I figured that I should condense my thoughts on the why, how, when, where, and Read More
A Major Post, Altruism, Pollution, Pratt Institute, Sustainability, Sustainable Transportation, Urban Planning
Posted 24 Jul 2018 / 0
I have been in a bit of a publication lull for the last few years. It isn’t that I haven’t been engaged in a variety of scholarly activities, it is just that it has been awhile since any of them have reached the publication phase. I am hoping that things will begin to pick up Read More
A Major Post, Adaptation, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Communication, Cooperation, Emotion, Empathy, Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution, MSCI-261, The Evolution of Play, My publications, Periodicals, Play, Psychological Adaptation
Posted 12 Apr 2017 / 0
Why do people make art? Given that human art-making emerged tens of thousands of years ago and is such an integral part of most human societies, why we make art is an important question. Philosophers have been trying to answer this question for a long time. More recently, scientists have begun to explore explanations for human Read More
A Major Post, Adaptation, Archaeology, Art & Design, Communication, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Department of Mathematics & Science, Emotion, Empathy, Evolutionary Psychology, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Human Uniqueness, Memetic Fitness, Multilevel Selection, Play, Pratt Institute, Psychological Adaptation, Social Networks
