UMass Amherst anthropologist Sonya Atalay has received a major fellowship award to master the endangered Anishinaabemowin language of Native American Ojibwe tribal communities, in order to expand research and understanding of ancient tribal knowledge and practices that are under an increasing threat of becoming lost forever.
A new documentary, “Raising Shrimp,” has been named an official selection of the Blue Ocean Film Festival, where it will screen on Nov. 6. It explores aquaculture and its impacts, particularly environmental concerns of shrimp farming and what consumers should know about this most popular seafood.
A new book co-authored by a distinguished Boston neurologist and a University of Massachusetts Amherst mathematician takes readers behind the scenes at Harvard Medical School’s neurology unit to show how a seasoned diagnostician faces down bizarre neurological defects and life-altering disorders including Parkinson’s disease and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). In Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole: A Renowned Neurologist Explains the Mystery and Drama of Brain Disease (St. Martin’s Press, Sept. 30), Harvard Medical School neurologist Dr. Allan Ropper and Brian Burrell, senior lecturer of mathematics and statistics at UMass Amherst and author of six books, including 2005’s Postcards from the Brain Museum, share real-life stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations.
Scientists trying to improve the power conversion efficiency of organic solar cells were long hampered by drawbacks of metal electrodes. Now comes a more efficient, easily processable and lightweight solar cell that can use any metal for the electrode, breaking down this barrier.
Khaja Muneeruddin is one of three promising young scientists to recently receive the 2014-15 Global Fellowship Award from the United States Pharmacopeial Convention, dual publishers of the official pharmacopeia and National Formulary, the book of directions for identifying compound medicines.
New research published by the UMass Amherst Labor Center raises questions about the legitimacy of popular corporate ratings systems and industry “best-of” lists. In “The Corporate Rating Sham: The Case of T-Mobile,” Tom Juravich, professor of sociology, evaluated the various awards and recognitions received by the mobile telephone carrier from 2011-13. Upon examining these award programs’ selection and evaluation criteria, the quality of the data used, and the independence of the rating programs, Juravich and research assistant and co-author Essie Ablavsky concluded that these ratings and awards cannot be seen as objective measures of corporate performance. Instead, they believe that they are best viewed as marketing promotions operating in the guise of contests and competitions.
A new report from the UMass Amherst Political Economy Research Institute and the Center for American Progress shows that the United States can cut its carbon pollution by 40 percent from 2005 levels and create a net increase of 2.7 million clean energy jobs in the process, reducing the unemployment rate by 1.5 percentage points.
Computer systems engineers have a three-year NSF grant to create a new instrument for the national research community known as a cloud laboratory. CloudLab will allow scientists to run huge or complex experiments on an enormous and flexible new shared network of reliable, secure, fast computers.
A team of materials chemists, polymer scientists and device physicists this week report a breakthrough technique for controlling assembly of nanoparticles over multiple length scales that may allow cheaper, ecologically friendly manufacture of organic photovoltaics and other electronic devices.
Climate scientists at UMass Amherst have a three-year NSF grant to study an extremely thick, immobile area of ice that may once have covered much of the Arctic Ocean during glacial periods, providing new insights into its possible role in, and mechanisms of, abrupt past climate change.
Scientists want to design new materials that have desired physical properties rather than relying on these to emerge naturally. Now origami-based folding methods may “tune” the physical properties of thin sheets, leading to micro machines that can snap into place to perform mechanical tasks.
A grant from the American Heart Association will support studies to uncover the molecular mechanisms of skeletal muscle fatigue. This will advance understanding of muscle function and lead to new drug therapies for people with fatigue, including 5.7 million Americans living with chronic heart failure.
Challenging risk assessment methods used for decades by toxicologists, a new review of the literature suggests that oral gavage, the most widely accepted method of dosing lab animals to test chemical toxicity, does not accurately mimic how humans are exposed to chemicals in everyday life.
A new study, among the first in humans, is underway to investigate whether phthalate (plastics) levels in expectant fathers have an effect on the couples’ reproductive success, via epigenetic modifications of sperm DNA. Phthalates are detectable in nearly 100 percent of the U.S. population
A new study of how biodiversity arises shows how a mutation in a single gene in development can lead to different consequences not only in jaw shape, but how this leads to different feeding strategies. It is among the first to show how one genetic change influences trait development and function.
The University Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has received a gift of six original never-before-exhibited Andy Warhol prints from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
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