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American Association for the Advancement of Science logoWarning: Brainiac alert!

The annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), among the largest yearly gatherings of scientists in the world, will be held this week in Chicago, and NIU expects to be well-represented.

NIU students, faculty and outreach staff will be attending various events at the meeting, held Thursday, Feb. 13, through Monday, Feb. 17, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago and Fairmont Chicago. This year’s theme is, “Meeting Global Challenges: Discovery and Innovation.”

NIU Distinguished Research Professor of Physics Gerald Blazey will be among the presenters.

On leave from NIU while serving as a senior policy advisor for the physical sciences in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Blazey will speak on the topic of “Graduate Education Modernization” during a panel session from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. Friday, Feb. 14, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.

Gerald Blazey

Gerald Blazey

OSTP has convened an informal discussion group to consider requirements, possible actions and outcomes for graduate education modernization. Blazey’s talk will share observations on emergent themes regarding graduate preparation for the 21st century workforce, diverse career paths, mentorship opportunities, harmonization and best practices.

NIU STEM Outreach will be featured during the conference’s Family Science Days events. K-12 students can explore interactive science exhibits, learn about cool science jobs and have their questions answered by scientists during these events from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 15, and Sunday, Feb. 16, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, purple level.

Pre-registration is recommended but not required.

This free community science showcase features hands-on demos, shows and other activities appropriate for K-12 children and their families.

NIU STEM Outreach will have a featured demonstration, titled “It’s Not Magic, It’s Science,” at 2:30 p.m. Sunday in the Riverside Center Exhibit Hall. The high-energy presentation illustrates the science behind everyday events.

A dozen NIU undergraduate and graduate students are presenting at poster competitions and the general poster sessions, held from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Hyatt’s Riverside Center.

Students presenting posters on Saturday include Eden Anderson, Steve Boi, Disa Brummet, Taylor Dupre, Alex Ekstrom, Nicholas Kirchner, Mercedes McWaters, Ashlyn Shellito, Josh Wardwell and Evan Wittke. Students presenting on Sunday include Shannon McCarragher, Ellen Raimondi and Mai Thao.

Alpha Omega Epsilon - Mu ChapterIn addition, the science sorority sisters of NIU’s Alpha Omega Epsilon are sending a contingent of volunteers to help at information counters and as technical aids in the presentation rooms. Student involvement in the prestigious annual meeting was sponsored by NIU’s Office of Student Engagement and Experiential Learning and the Division of Research and Innovation Partnerships.

Several high-level NIU administrators also will be attending the annual meeting, including Interim Executive Vice President and Provost Lisa Freeman and Interim Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies Lesley Rigg.

Steve Ellis

Steve Ellis

NIU alumnus Steve Ellis has been named deputy director for operations of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Ellis, who holds a master’s degree in geography from NIU, is a veteran land manager.

In his new role – the agency’s senior career position – Ellis will oversee operations for the management of more than 245 million acres of public lands, primarily in the West, as well as nearly one-third of the nation’s subsurface mineral estate. He has been acting in this position since July 2013.

“Steve has a deep knowledge of the BLM and a genuine commitment to fairness and balance. He has worked at all levels of the organization and in posts ranging from Alaska to Idaho to D.C.,” Principal Deputy Director Neil Kornze said. “His commitment to our country’s public lands and the people who depend on them is exceptional. The BLM and our public lands will be well served with Steve in this crucial position.”

Ellis, who has spent 21 years as a line officer in the BLM and the Forest Service, most recently served as BLM-Idaho state director.

Among other Forest Service positions held by Ellis, he was the forest supervisor for the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest in Oregon. Ellis has also held numerous jobs throughout the BLM, including acting associate district manager in Las Vegas, district manager of Oregon’s Lakeview District and acting deputy state director in Alaska.

Bureau of Land Management patchHe has extensive wildfire experience in the West, including serving as an incident commander and has worked as a budget officer in the agency’s headquarters office in Washington, D.C. During his time in the nation’s capital, Ellis was selected and served as a Congressional Fellow in the U.S. Senate.

Ellis grew up on a family farm in Illinois. He and his wife, Linda, a family nurse practitioner, have raised three children. He is a licensed private pilot, and with his wife enjoys riding and packing horses in western Idaho and eastern Oregon.

Date posted: February 10, 2014 | Author: | Comments Off on Bureau of Land Management taps NIU alum

Categories: Alumni Faculty & Staff Liberal Arts and Sciences

Joel Heilmann

Joel Heilmann

The NIU mock trial team finished fifth out of 14 teams during a recent University of St. Francis Invitational.

NIU finished ahead of such teams as Notre Dame, DePaul and the University of Illinois-Springfield.

Junior Joel Heilmann, NIU’s team captain, was awarded an “outstanding attorney award,” while Mike McCarthy won an “outstanding witness award.”

“Student teams are assigned one case to work on per year, and the teams are not scored by the verdict but by their performance and the work they do,” said political science professor Mitch Pickerill, NIU’s mock trial team coach.

Pickerill started the team two years ago after several students approached him about setting up a program. Currently, seven students are on the team.

During the University of St. Francis Invitational, the students had to try both the defense and the prosecution sides of their fictional criminal case.

“The case was pretty complicated, so we had to work hard to immerse ourselves in the rules and details of the case in order to do a good job,” Heilmann said. “Since my role was an attorney, I had to direct witnesses and cross examine others along with delivering the closing argument.”

Mike McCarthy

Mike McCarthy

This is Heilmann’s first year on the team. He said the competition is fun – and valuable.

“Students learn a lot of legal techniques, like how to talk to a judge and persuade a jury,” Pickerill said. “They also learn other valuable skills, like confident public speaking, problem solving, self-discipline and teamwork.”

The American Mock Trial Association (AMTA) serves as the governing body for all intercollegiate mock trial competitions. NIU is one of the 350 colleges and universities that will have the chance to participate in one of AMTA’s regional tournaments.

NIU team members will compete at the regional level in Joliet, where will try cases in the Will County Courthouse against other universities from across the Midwest.

Students interested in joining the mock trial team should contact Pickerill at pick@niu.edu.

Date posted: February 4, 2014 | Author: | Comments Off on NIU mock trial team makes strong argument

Categories: Faculty & Staff Latest News Liberal Arts and Sciences Students

NIU professors Jennifer Schmidt (left) and Lee Shumow

NIU professors Jennifer Schmidt (left) and Lee Shumow

Oh, if science teachers only knew what their students were really thinking about during lessons.

Well, Northern Illinois University researchers actually figured out a way to tap into high school students’ thoughts during class time, and there were plenty of surprises and valuable insights.

So many, in fact, that the three-year research project studying students’ motivation to learn science has resulted in a new book that has the educational community buzzing.

Penned by Lee Shumow and Jennifer Schmidt, both professors in NIU’s Department of Leadership, Educational Psychology and Foundations, the book is aptly titled “Enhancing Adolescents’ Motivation for Science.” It provides a collection of research-proven strategies on how to motivate students and is accompanied by an information- and video-packed companion website.

The book has received rave reviews, and although just recently published, it’s fast becoming a go-to guide for science teachers.

“As I read the book, I began to revisit the traits of what a ‘master teacher’ should be and the pedagogical principles upon which this is based,” said Mike Mieszala, an environmental science teacher at Warren Township High School in Gurnee. “It was a great chance to take a step back, reflect and assess my teaching.”

A national priority

Producing more college graduates in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is national priority. Despite huge demand and large-scale predicted job growth in STEM fields, only 16 percent of American high school seniors are proficient in mathematics and interested in a STEM career.

STEMfest

STEMfest

Against this backdrop, the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided about $1.5 million in funding for the NIU professors’ initial study into student motivation, related research, the new book project and assistance with book distribution. About 2,500 books are being distributed free of charge.

Authors Schmidt and Shumow are on the teaching circuit, speaking at educational conferences nationwide and leading in-depth professional development sessions for area school teachers (including at a Friday, Feb. 7, conference at NIU).

“During our research, we heard from many teachers who thought of motivation as a trait, not a state,” Schmidt said. “In fact, teachers can do a lot to impact how excited students are about science, but they need to be armed with motivational strategies.”

Among some of the authors’ quick suggestions to educators:

  • Survey students and even their parents to identify student interests, and tie those interests to science lessons to make them more meaningful.
  • Regularly highlight the relevance and utility of science in daily life.
  • It’s more important to challenge students rather than to give them easier lessons where success is assured. Challenged students are more engaged.
  • Don’t tell students, “You’re so smart.” Research shows that such praise can inadvertently discourage students when they struggle and lead them to conclusions such as, “I’m just not a science person.” It’s better to encourage students to embrace the values of hard work and persistence when encountering a challenge.

Mining the thoughts of students

Science-in-the-Moment logoThe research project leading to the new book was known as Science-in-the-Moment (SciMo). Led by Schmidt, the team included senior researcher Shumow, other NIU professors, outside advisers and about dozen NIU graduate students. They studied 244 high school students and 13 science teachers at one school during the 2008-09 academic year.

The research team members videotaped 100 hours of classroom lessons and dissected “every utterance from the teachers’ mouths.”

They mined the thought processes of students by arming them with beepers that would go off at random intervals during classroom instruction. Once alerted, students completed a checklist gauging their concentration, feelings about the lesson and motivation to learn.

“Our methodology gave us access to what was going on in students’ heads,” Shumow said.

“Interestingly, students sometimes said they were having fun and enjoying themselves but also indicated they weren’t learning anything and the lessons were not important to them. So teachers were misled into believing students were into it. We also were able to observe a lot of missed opportunities to pique the students’ motivation.”

Science and gender

The researchers also discovered interesting gender differences.

Book cover of “Enhancing Adolescents' Motivation for Science”For instance, the study found that science teachers spend 39 percent more class time directly addressing boys. Compounding the problem is that girls already are bored, disengaged and stressed in science classes when compared to boys.

Consequently, while girls perform academically on a par with boys, they still feel less competent than they actually are.

“Girls’ motivation in science is a lot more fragile,” Schmidt said. “Teachers need to do more to convince female students of their ability and also to provide them with more role models in science.”

Eighty-eight inspirational videos

After the research was completed in 2011, Schmidt and Shumow embarked on the Empowering Teachers to Enhance Adolescents’ Motivation for Science (E-TEAMS) project, which produced the new book and companion website.

“There was no other book geared specifically for science teachers of adolescents on how to motivate,” Shumow said. “We learned a lot of things from our Science-in-the-Moment study that we realized teachers needed to know.”

Chock-full of information and lessons that complement the book, the website includes 88 brief video vignettes that demonstrate best practices or feature interviews with award-winning high school science teachers and with practicing scientists.

Those working scientists talk about the influence of high school teachers and parents on their career choices. They can serve as role models for students, particularly for adolescent girls who hear the stories of successful women in science-related fields.

“We hope to have an impact on the way teachers teach science so that it will be more engaging for students,” Schmidt said. “And we hope to help teachers understand they can have a big impact on student motivation.”

Date posted: February 3, 2014 | Author: | Comments Off on Motivation, motivation, motivation

Categories: Education Faculty & Staff Humanities Latest News Research

Ralph Strozza

Ralph Strozza

For the past decade, a successful alumnus has ensured that Northern Illinois University students in foreign languages have had access to state-of-the-art translation software.

Ralph Strozza, CEO and founder of Interpro Translation Solutions, Inc., an NIU graduate in French, Spanish and marketing, has twice donated Trados Studio licenses for 10 computer workstations in the foreign language department’s Learning Center.

“NIU is one of only a handful of universities in North America that has offered this technology to students and faculty,” said Katharina Barbe, chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at NIU.

Trados Studio 2014 Professional is a powerful tool for translating, editing, reviewing and organizing terminology. It is used by more than 190,000 translators worldwide.

Central to Trados is its Translation Memory (TM) technology. TM stores content that has been input by the translator. The translator then has access to this content for future translations. This access speeds up the translation process significantly, improving productivity and helping to maintain consistency. Furthermore, users can customize Trados for their own particular needs and tasks.

“Any student considering a professional career as a translator who is not familiar with this technology will be at a considerable disadvantage,” Barbe said. “More and more companies and organizations are requiring their translators to use Trados. NIU students and graduates who have received even rudimentary training in how to use this software will have a better chance at being hired than students unfamiliar with it.”

Foreign language department faculty in French, German and Spanish include hands-on training with Trados in their 400-level and graduate translation courses. Over the years, professional translators from Interpro Translation Solutions trained not only faculty members but also students in the use of the technology.

Date posted: January 31, 2014 | Author: | Comments Off on Ensuring it doesn’t get ‘lost in translation’

Categories: Alumni Faculty & Staff Latest News Liberal Arts and Sciences Students

Angela Grippo

Angela Grippo

Following through on that New Year’s resolution to exercise more often will not only beef up your biceps, it will also help your brain.

So says NIU psychology professor Angela Grippo.

Grippo blogs on the topic today on the Psychology Today website, discussing research (including some of her own) that demonstrates how exercise improves both our mood and ability to cope with stress.

NIU psychology professors, including David Bridgett and Joe Magliano, are regular Psychology Today contributors. They’ve been blogging monthly on the site for the past year.

Recent topics have included “The Science Behind the New Year’s Resolution,” “When Does Teasing Go Too Far?” and “How Old Are You? On the Job, It’s Not So Obvious.”

Date posted: January 22, 2014 | Author: | Comments Off on How exercise boosts both body and mind

Categories: Campus Highlights Faculty & Staff Humanities Liberal Arts and Sciences Research Science and Technology

Fragments: Haiti Four Years After the EarthquakeFragments: Haiti Four Years After the Earthquake,”a new exhibit at the NIU Anthropology Museum, invites visitors to explore the lives and living conditions of Haitian people living “under the tents” since the 2010 earthquake.

Visitors can enter a tent provided for people displaced from their homes by the earthquake and view artifacts of tent life. Reproductions of a dwelling in one of Port-au-Prince’s shantytowns, a school room and a cot invite all visitors to experience life as a Haitian today. Visitors also will meet Haitian activists trying to make a difference and learn how they can help.

An opening reception is scheduled for Friday, Jan. 24, at the Anthropology Museum in Cole Hall. Refreshments will be available beginning at 6 p.m. President Doug Baker will begin the official opening ceremony at 7 p.m., followed by Vice President Ray Alden. Live music will be provided by Haitian artist Jan Sebon.

Several speakers will represent the Haitian community, including Lesly Conde, the consul general from the Haitian Consulate in Chicago; Elsie Hernandez, director of the Haitian American Museum of Chicago and Judge Lionel Jean-Baptiste, co-founder of the Haitian American Congress.  The opening ceremony will conclude with a performance by Haitian artist Kantara Souffrant.

haiti-maxonThe Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake in Haiti rates among the deadliest disasters in history. While precise figures remain elusive, the seismic event claimed as many as 316,000 lives. The disaster also was one of the most widely covered events in modern history. International media attention helped raise $2 billion in private donations and $5.6 billion in official funds for the two years following the earthquake.

But what happened? Where did the money go? Four years after the earthquake, media attention on Haiti has significantly diminished. Living conditions there have improved only slightly and are among the worst in the world; 280,000 people are still living under tents in scores of camps.

“We hope that this exhibit will truly help people understand, to come to understand Haiti’s reality today and contribute a little bit to unmasking the lies told about Haiti,” said Patrice Florvilus, a human rights attorney from Haiti.

The exhibition at the Anthropology Museum is based upon a decade of research by Mark Schuller, an NIU professor of anthropology and NGO Leadership Development and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti. Schuller’s research on NGOs, gender, globalization and disasters in Haiti is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Science Foundation and has been widely published. He is excited to take his activist research to this new medium of a museum exhibit.

“This exhibit has the potential to move people in ways that only a hands-on experience can. Putting it together has been inspiring,” Schuller said.

Mark Schuller

Mark Schuller

The exhibition is generously sponsored by Cordogan, Clark and Associates. At NIU, the exhibition and its programming are supported by campus partners at the Center for NGO Leadership and Development, the Center for Black Studies, Center for Latino and Latin American Studies and the Women’s Studies Program. In addition, the Anthropology Museum recognizes support from the Haitian American Museum and the Haitian Consulate in Chicago.

In conjunction with the exhibition, which is open through May, the Anthropology Museum will host several international speakers.

  • On Monday, Feb. 24, the museum will explore the issue of housing and human rights with Florvilus and Jean-Baptiste, a Cook County Circuit Court Judge and co-founder of the Haitian Congress to Fortify Haiti.
  • In March, journalist Ben Depp and activist Alexis Eckert will explore the lives of Haitians living “under the tents.”
  • In April, for sexual assault awareness month, the museum will welcome Malya Villard-Appolon, the 2012 CNN Hero of the Year and associate director of KOFAVIV, an organization that helps victims of sexual violence in Haiti.

Monthly programming is made possible in part by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Illinois General Assembly.

For more information on the dates and locations of all programs, call (815) 753-2520 or email AnthroMuseum@niu.edu.

Date posted: January 16, 2014 | Author: | Comments Off on Museum exhibit focuses on Haiti earthquake

Categories: Communiversity Events Faculty & Staff Global Humanities Latest News Liberal Arts and Sciences On Campus Research

Dhiman Chakraborty

Dhiman Chakraborty

Northern Illinois University physics professor Dhiman Chakraborty is preparing to reprise his popular talk on the mysterious Higgs boson for the DeKalb community.

For decades, the Higgs boson was the holy grail of particle physics. Its detection confirms the existence of the Higgs field, which permeates the universe and gives particles mass. Without the Higgs boson and field, nothing would exist – no animals, oceans, planets or stars.

Chakraborty gave a presentation on the elementary particle to a packed house last month at an Irish pub in Geneva. His next talk will be from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11, at O’Leary’s Restaurant and Pub, 260 E. Lincoln Hwy. in DeKalb.

The free event (with food and drinks available for purchase) is part of the STEM Café series run by NIU STEM Outreach. It will provide a layman’s perspective on the profound nature of the theory predicting the Higgs and talk about how scientists confirmed the theory experimentally.

Chakraborty leads a group of NIU scientists and students who are members of the ATLAS collaboration at CERN, one of the European laboratory’s two experiments that jointly discovered the Higgs boson last year.

“This discussion is geared for the general public,” said Chakraborty, who received NIU’s top honor for research, the Presidential Research Professorship, in 2011.

Famously dubbed the “God particle,” the Higgs boson took thousands of scientists nearly five decades to discover, at a cost that one journalist estimated at $13.25 billion.

STEM Cafe logo: Feed your mind!Over the past 19 months, there has been plenty of hype about “the Higgs,” beginning with the boson’s discovery in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. In November, the Nobel Prize in physics went to Peter Higgs and Francois Englert, two of the scientists who developed theories in the 1960s that predicted the elementary particle.

Over the past two decades, Chakraborty has helped shed light on the building blocks of our universe, making contributions to scientific understanding of the subatomic world, the discovery of the top quark at Fermilab and the pursuit of the Higgs.

“My talk will include a discussion about where scientists will go from here experimentally and what benefits these efforts bring to our everyday lives,” Chakraborty said.

“Although producing material benefits is not the primary objective of basic research, I believe the audience will be surprised to learn how particle physics benefits society in a variety of ways,” he added. “They will also be surprised by how much work this research requires and how rigorous and precise we have to be to make these discoveries.”

Geared for the general public, NIU’s monthly STEM Cafés present cutting-edge research in science, technology, engineering and math, followed by question-and-answer sessions led by NIU’s STEM experts.

For more information, contact Judith Dymond at (815) 753-4751 or jdymond@niu.edu.

Date posted: January 15, 2014 | Author: | Comments Off on STEM Café tackles mysterious Higgs boson

Categories: Communiversity Events Faculty & Staff Liberal Arts and Sciences Research Science and Technology

NIU husband-and-wife team Mitch Irwin and Karen Samonds observe a lemur in Madagascar.

NIU husband-and-wife team Mitch Irwin and Karen Samonds observe a lemur in Madagascar.

What won’t Mitch Irwin do in the name of science?

Irwin, a Northern Illinois University anthropologist, went to great lengths to collect data in Madagascar for a fascinating new study that sheds light on why primates live long lives.

An international team of scientists working with primates in zoos, sanctuaries and in the wild examined daily energy expenditure in 17 primate species, from gorillas to mouse lemurs, to test whether primates’ slow pace of life results from a slow metabolism.

Using a safe and non-invasive technique known as “doubly labeled water,” which tracks the body’s production of carbon dioxide, the researchers measured the number of calories that primates burned over a 10-day period. Combining these measurements with similar data from other studies, the team compared daily energy expenditure among primates to that of other mammals.

For his part, Irwin dosed and tracked lemurs in Madagascar, which he has studied over the past 14 years with his wife, NIU biological sciences professor Karen Samonds. They accomplished the initial injection during routine capture and health exams, but needed periodic fluid samples over the following week to get a measurement.

No easy task: collecting urine samples from lemurs.

No easy task: collecting urine samples from lemurs.

“It was pretty tricky for our teams because we had to catch urine from the lemurs on the go, which was all but impossible,” Irwin says. “We settled on a technique using plastic bags attached to 12-foot bamboo poles. Usually the lemurs would urinate too high in the forest canopy, and we’d get nothing. But with perseverance we got enough samples to contribute to the database.”

The new research shows that humans and other primates burn 50 percent fewer calories each day than other mammals. The study, published in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” suggests that these remarkably slow metabolisms explain why humans and other primates grow up so slowly and live such long lives.

The study also reports that primates in zoos expend as much energy as those in the wild, suggesting that physical activity might have less of an impact on daily energy expenditure than is often thought.

“I think the research will have broad impact,” Irwin says. He’s listed as an author on the PNAS study, but says the research was primarily driven by anthropologists Herman Pontzer of Hunter College in New York and Dave Raichlen of the University of Arizona.

“I had known them for years, and they knew that capturing lemurs was part of my ongoing research, so it was a good fit,” Irwin says.

Most mammals, like the family dog or pet hamster, live a fast-paced life, reaching adulthood in a matter of months, reproducing prodigiously (if we let them), and dying in their teens if not well before. By comparison, humans and their primate relatives (apes, monkeys, tarsiers, lorises and lemurs) have long childhoods, reproduce infrequently and live exceptionally long lives.

Primates’ slow pace of life has long puzzled biologists because the mechanisms underlying it were unknown.

Students practiced data collection techniques on free-ranging captive lemurs before heading to the forest.“The results were a real surprise” says Pontzer, lead author of the study. “Humans, chimpanzees, baboons and other primates expend only half the calories we’d expect for a mammal. To put that in perspective, a human – even someone with a very physically active lifestyle – would need to run a marathon each day just to approach the average daily energy expenditure of a mammal their size.”

This dramatic reduction in metabolic rate, previously unknown for primates, accounts for their slow pace of life. All organisms need energy to grow and reproduce, and energy expenditure can also contribute to aging. The slow rates of growth, reproduction, and aging among primates match their slow rate of energy expenditure, indicating that evolution has acted on metabolic rate to shape primates’ distinctly slow lives.

“The environmental conditions favoring reduced energy expenditures may hold a key to understanding why primates, including humans, evolved this slower pace of life,” Raichlen says.

“What’s particularly interesting is that primates use the same amount of energy as other mammals of the same size when resting,” says co-author Adam Gordon, an anthropologist at the University at Albany. “So primates’ later age at maturity and extended life span are related to total energy expenditure, rather than to baseline energy needs as one might expect.”

Perhaps just as surprising, the team’s measurements show that primates in captivity expend as many calories each day as their wild counterparts. These results speak to the health and well-being of primates in world-class zoos and sanctuaries, and they also suggest that physical activity may contribute less to total energy expenditure than is often thought.

Samonds and Irwin helped found Sadabe, an NGO developing innovative ways to promote the healthy coexistence of humans and wildlife in Madagascar.

Samonds and Irwin helped found Sadabe, an NGO developing innovative ways to promote the healthy coexistence of humans and wildlife in Madagascar.

“The completion of this non-invasive study of primate metabolism in zoos and sanctuaries demonstrates the depth of research potential for these settings. It also sheds light on the fact that zoo-housed primates are relatively active, with the same daily energy expenditures as wild primates,” said co-author Steve Ross, director of the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo.

“Dynamic accredited zoo and sanctuary environments represent an alternative to traditional laboratory-based investigations and emphasize the importance of studying animals in more naturalistic conditions.”

Results from this study hold intriguing implications for understanding health and longevity in humans.

Linking the rate of growth, reproduction and aging to daily energy expenditure might shed light on the processes by which our bodies develop and age. Meanwhile, unraveling the surprisingly complex relationship between physical activity and daily energy expenditure might improve our understanding of obesity and other metabolic diseases.

More detailed study of energy expenditure, activity and aging among humans and apes is already under way. “Humans live longer than other apes, and tend to carry more body fat” Pontzer says. “Understanding how human metabolism compares to our closest relatives will help us understand how our bodies evolved, and how to keep them healthy.”

Related:

 

Date posted: January 14, 2014 | Author: | Comments Off on NIU prof helps shed light on primate longevity

Categories: Faculty & Staff Global Humanities Latest News Liberal Arts and Sciences Research Science and Technology

A boy flees Paris during the Battle of France. The photograph is the work of Theresa Bonney and published in her “Europe’s Children, 1939-1943” book of photographs.

A boy flees Paris during the Battle of France. The photograph is the work of Theresa Bonney and published in her “Europe’s Children, 1939-1943” book of photographs.

Northern Illinois University faculty members have been named as recipients of three highly competitive funding awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

NIU received more grants in this latest award cycle than any other Illinois institution. NEH grants went to:

  • Heide Fehrenbach, a Board of Trustees Professor of history, who received a $50,400 Fellowship for University Teachers for her research project titled, “The Humanitarian Eye: Photography and the 20th-Century Quest to Save Innocents Abroad.”
  • Jeffrey Einboden, a professor of English, who received a $50,400 Fellowship for University Teachers for his research project titled, “Islamic Literacy in Early America: Muslim Sources of U.S. Authorship.”
  • And Jennifer Kirker-Priest, director of The Anthropology Museum at NIU, who received a $6,000 Preservation Assistance Grant for the museum.

The Fellowships for University Teachers support independent scholars pursuing advanced research. They are highly competitive, with an application success rate of less than 7 percent this year.

Only three fellowships were awarded to universities in Illinois, with NIU receiving two of them and the University of Chicago receiving the third.

Across all award categories, only seven awards were made to Illinois institutions.

“For our faculty and staff to have won three awards in one year speaks first to their own strengths and accomplishments, and second to the overall breadth and depth of our engagement in the humanities,” said Christopher McCord, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Heide Fehrenbach

Heide Fehrenbach

Fehrenbach has been recognized as one of NIU’s most accomplished scholars. This is her second NEH award and follows prestigious awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies and others, as well as her recognitions as an NIU Presidential Research Professor and NIU Board of Trustees Professor.

Her research project, “The Humanitarian Eye,” is a study of child-centered humanitarian imagery over the past century.

The book project explores how, since the late 19th century, humanitarians and image-makers have deployed photographic media to stir emotion, shape social values and stimulate response to distant suffering.

“It is conceived as an interpretative history of the rise and spread of humanitarian imagery and ethics, articulated via the symbolic figure of the child,” Fehrenbach said. “The project evolved from a set of undergraduate and graduate courses I have developed and taught at NIU since 2006 on the histories of human rights and humanitarianism, photography and film.”

Jeff Einboden

Jeff Einboden

For his NEH-funded research, Jeff Einboden combines two seemingly unrelated interests – early American literature and Middle Eastern languages – in an innovative and exciting project. His investigation of Islamic literacy in early America aims to uncover Islam’s formative impact on the nation’s literature.

“This project traces covert genealogies of Arabic and Persian influence on seminal American writers, extending from Revolutionary beginnings to the Civil War,” Einboden said.

“Exposing manuscripts previously neglected or lost, this project reveals the ‘Islamic literacy’ which inhabits the intimate fabric of American diaries, letters and marginalia, with authors from Ezra Stiles to Ralph Waldo Emerson privately appealing to Muslim sources as a means of catalyzing their emergent American identity,” he added.

Einboden’s 2014 NEH Fellowship will result in a scholarly monograph, which has recently been contracted to Oxford University Press.

Jennifer Kirker Priest

Jennifer Kirker Priest

The NEH Preservation Assistance Grant to Jennifer Kirker-Priest will provide a boost to NIU’s Anthropology Museum, which opened in its new Cole Hall home in 2012. The new location presents great opportunities for increasing the profile and impact of the museum.

Grant funds will support conservation training for museum staff, supplies to improve textile storage and environmental monitoring kits. New environmental monitoring equipment will be used to more rigorously monitor and prevent temperature and humidity fluctuations, which could harm museum collections.

“This preservation award is just another example of the ways in which Jennifer Kirker-Priest, her staff and her students have risen to the opportunity,” Dean McCord said. “They are creating a shining example of the ways in which the humanities and social sciences can promote student engagement and community engagement.”

 

Date posted: January 13, 2014 | Author: | Comments Off on NIU is NEH strong

Categories: Campus Highlights Did You Know? Faculty & Staff Global Grant Getters Humanities Latest News Liberal Arts and Sciences Research Students

The Anthropology MuseumThe National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded a Preservation Assistance grant to the NIU Anthropology Museum.

Grant funds will support conservation training for museum staff, supplies to improve textile storage, and environmental monitoring kits.

These competitive NEH grants are awarded after a rigorous peer-review process. The Textile Storage and Environmental Monitoring project, supported by this grant, is an important step in the Anthropology Museum’s strategic plan to better engage visitors, educate students and serve the university. New environmental monitoring equipment will be used to more rigorously monitor and prevent temperature and humidity fluctuations, which could harm museum collections.

Improvements to the storage of textile collections will involve both museum staff and students.  By implementing professional conservation standards and ensuring the preservation of the textiles, the Anthropology Museum is ensuring these collections can be available to the university and the region for exhibits, research and teaching.

Project progress will be shared on the museum Facebook page and website.

Founded in 1964 by the Department of Anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Anthropology Museum houses a permanent collection of more than 12,000 ethnographic and archaeological objects.

Collections emphasize Southeast Asia, but include textiles, baskets and ceramics from throughout the world.  With a dynamic schedule of exhibitions and programs in the newly renovated Cole Hall, the Anthropology Museum is a cultural destination for residents and visitors to DeKalb.

The museum is open Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturdays noon to 4 p.m. Admission is free and everyone is welcome.

Date posted: December 19, 2013 | Author: | Comments Off on NEH awards grant to Anthropology Museum

Categories: Community Faculty & Staff Latest News Liberal Arts and Sciences

Amanda Durik

Amanda Durik

Got a New Year’s resolution in mind? NIU Psychology Professor Amanda Durik offers three motivational science-based tips that could help you accomplish your goals.

Durik blogs on the topic this week on the Psychology Today website. (NIU psychology professors are regular contributors to the site.) She says accumulating research in the science of motivation suggests that three general strategies might help.

1)      Connect the desired behavior to core values.

“When people think about behaviors more abstractly, they find temptations less tempting,” Durik says. So, instead of thinking of behavior specifically (such as, throw out the cigarettes), it’s better to make the connection to more abstract personal values (such as, live a healthier life).

2)      Prepare in advance for the moment to act.

Individuals can create a link to desired behaviors by visualizing anticipated situations and planning to engage in specific behaviors.  For example, a smoker with the resolve to quit might think, “When I feel the urge to grab a cigarette, I’ll grab a piece of gum, instead.”

3)      Focus initially on progress made.

At least at first, Durik says, it’s best to focus on the gains you’ve made toward your goal, rather than how much more work needs to be done.  For instance, the recovering smoker should initially focus on how many smoking opportunities have been successfully avoided, rather than dwell on how many more there are to cope with in the future.

For Durik’s full blog entry, visit the Psychology Today website.

Date posted: December 19, 2013 | Author: | Comments Off on 3 tips to help with your New Year’s resolution

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