Organizational Unit:
Honors Program

Research Organization Registry ID
Description
Previous Names
Parent Organization
Parent Organization
Organizational Unit
Includes Organization(s)

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
  • Item
    Please Pay Attention Now (It Could Change Your Brain): The Neuroscience Behind How Mindfulness Can Help Us Change Bad Habits
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-03-07) Brewer, Judson
    In 2014, Time magazine declared a “mindful revolution” due to its growing popularity and the body of research suggesting that mindfulness may help to treat a number of health-related problems—from general stress to anxiety to addiction. However, little is known about the underlying psychological mechanisms and related brain processes. Dr. Brewer will present recent evidence that helps to unravel these mysteries, drawing from both clinical studies and more basic neuroimaging research involving novice and experienced meditators. He will discuss how these insights might apply to our own lives.
  • Item
    Growth, Innovation and the Accelerating Pace of Life From Cells and Ecosystems to Cities and Economies; Are They Sustainable?
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-03-11) West, Geoffrey
    Why do all companies and people die whereas cities keep growing and life continues to accelerate? Why do we stop growing, live on the order of 100 years and sleep 8 hours a day? And how are these related to innovation, wealth creation, social networks, urbanisation and global sustainability? Cities are the prime source of crime, pollution, disease, global warming, and energy and resource consumption but are also the hubs of innovation, wealth creation and power. Despite being our greatest challenge, there is no integrated, quantitative, predictive science-based framework for understanding their dynamics, growth and organization. Ideas for such a unified theory, inspired by a network-based framework for understanding diverse properties of organisms (including metabolism, growth, mortality, cancer) will be discussed. Like organisms, many characteristics of cities worldwide, including wages, patents, diversity, crime, disease and infrastructure, scale systematically and predictably with size, suggesting universal principles underlying their dynamics that transcend history, geography and culture. This has dramatic implications for growth, development and long-term global sustainability.
  • Item
    Brain Evolution: How Birds and Humans Learn to Sing and Talk
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-02-23) Jarvis, Erich D.
    Dr. Jarvis is interested in vocal learning as related to patterns of gene expression in various areas of the brain, especially in songbirds. He is currently studying the evolution of vocal communication and the relationships between songbird vocalizations and human language.
  • Item
    Hollywood Science: Good for Hollywood, Bad for Science?
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010-10-05) Perkowitz, Sidney
    There’s plenty of science in Hollywood’s science fiction and superhero films, but how much of it is real and how much is pure Hollywood? It’s hard to tell because these films often amp up a meaningful scientific premise to enhance reality, improve dramatic impact, or support stunning special effects. Examples include superhuman powers arising from favorable mutations, human clones used for spare body parts, and breakthroughs like intelligent robots, fusion power, and faster-than-light space travel. Dr. Perkowitz will show clips from a variety of science fiction films and examples from his book Hollywood Science to illustrate differences and connections between real science and Hollywood science.
  • Item
    How to Explain the Universe in Two Minutes or Less
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-03-11) Palca, Joe
    Since joining NPR in 1992, Joe Palca has covered everything from biomedical research to astronomy. He began his journalism career in television in 1982, working as a health producer for the CBS affiliate in Washington, DC, after receiving a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz where he worked on human sleep physiology. He has won numerous awards, including the National Academies Communications Award, the Science-in-Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Prize, and the 2008 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting. Recently he prepared a series of reports on the work of Charles Darwin in honor of the great naturalist’s bicentenary.
  • Item
    The Future of Science is Art: Or What We Can Learn About the Brain from a 19th-Century French Chef and Kanye West
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-10-01) Lehrer, Jonah
    Jonah Lehrer presented a talk on "The Future of Science is Art: Or What We Can Learn About the Brain from a 19th-Century French Chef and Kanye West." Lehrer is editor-at-large for Seed magazine and author of "Proust Was A Neuroscientist." A 2003 graduate of Columbia University and a Rhodes Scholar, Lehrer has worked in the lab of Nobel Prize–winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel and studied with Hermione Lee at Oxford. He has coauthored a peer-reviewed paper in Genetics and worked as a line cook at Melisse and at Le Cirque 2000, and as a prep cook at Le Bernardin.
  • Item
    The Crossroads of Science and the Arts
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-03-05) Lightman, Alan
    Alan Lightman, Adjunct Professor of Humanities at MIT, is a novelist, essayist, physicist, and educator. Lightman received his PhD in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1974. In his scientific work, Lightman has made fundamental contributions to the theory of astrophysical processes under conditions of extreme temperatures and densities. In particular, his research has focused on relativistic gravitation theory, the structure and behavior of accretion disks, stellar dynamics, radiative processes, and relativistic plasmas. His research articles have appeared in The Physical Review, The Astrophysical Journal, Reviews of Modern Physics, Nature, and other journals of physics and astrophysics. For his contributions to physics, he was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1989 and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science the same year. In 1990, he chaired the science panel of the National Academy of Sciences Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee for the 1990s. He is a past chair of the High Energy Division of the American Astronomical Society. In 1981, Lightman began publishing essays about science, the human side of science, and the "mind of science," beginning with Smithsonian Magazine and moving to Science 82, The New Yorker, and other magazines. Since that time, Lightman's essays, short fiction, and reviews have appeared in The American Scholar, The Atlantic Monthly, Boston Review, Daedalus, Discover, Exploratorium, Granta, Harper's, Harvard Magazine, Inc Technololgy, Nature, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Smithsonian, Story, Technology Review, and World Monitor. His novel Einstein's Dreams was an international bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages. In 1989, Lightman was appointed professor of science and writing, and senior lecturer in physics, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1991 to 1997, he headed the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at MIT.
  • Item
    Local Food: Sustainability is Participation
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-03-03) Katz, Sandor Ellix
    Eating local is more than a consumer experience. It means rebuilding a whole web of relations and demands not only interactions with farmers, but more of us becoming food producers directly involved with the sources of our food: plants, seeds, animals, microbes, earth. Get inspired to reclaim food, power, and dignity. Sandor Ellix Katz is a fermentation revivalist, activist, and author, who travels widely teaching and sharing fermentation skills. His passion for fermentation developed out of his overlapping interests in food, nutrition, and gardening.
  • Item
    Women, Work and Public Spaces: Conflict and Coexistence Among Karachi’s Poor
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-11-01) Ali, Kamran
    Kamran Ali works on issues of medicine, gender and colonialism in Egypt. Ali's work covers a number of interdisciplinary fields: Family planning programs in Egypt, Egyptian masculinity and male involvement in family planning decision making; the history of the labor movement in Pakistan; gender relations in Pakistan; social movements in Pakistan; tourism in the Middle East ; development; health; political economy; post-colonialism; Middle East; Egypt; South Asia. He has a joint appointment in Middle Eastern Studies and Anthropology at UT Austin.
  • Item
    Engaging Animals
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-04-05) Snæbjörnsdóttir, Bryndís ; Wilson, Mark
    Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson have been collaborating since 2001. Their work, characteristically rooted in the north, explores issues of history, culture and the environment in relation to the individual and his/her sense of belonging or detachment. This project is a survey of taxidermic polar bears existing in the United Kingdom today. In its methodology it actively sets out to track down these specimens. The project is designed to generate a discourse in which the audience is invited to consider their relationship not only to the polar bears themselves, but to the history of their collection, presentation and preservation.