Scientific Sense ®

The Neo-Fisher Effect: Econometric Evidence from Empirical and Optimizing Models, Multiple equilibria in open economies with collateral constraints, and, Does the Commodity Super Cycle Matter?   Prof. Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe is professor of Economics at Columbia University. She is also a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research and a Research Associate at the National Bureau...

Does Money Talk? Market Discipline through Selloffs and Boycotts, Adapting to Radical Change: The Benefits of Short-Horizon Investors, Public Attention to Gender Equality and Board Gender Diversity, Forced Asset Sales and the Concentration of Outstanding Debt: Evidence from the Mortgage Market, and Is There a Zero Lower Bound? The Effects of Negative Policy Rates on Banks and Firms   Prof. Ma...

Better luck next time: Learning through retaking, Retaking in high stakes exams: Is less more?, Taking PISA seriously: How accurate are low stakes exams?, and Does class size matter? How, and at what cost?   Prof. Kala Krishna is Professor of Economics and Liberal Arts Research at Penn State University. Her research interests span international trade and development.

The First Habitable-zone Earth-sized Planet from TESS, A giant planet candidate transiting a white dwarf,  The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) Mission Concept, and The Venusian Lower Atmosphere Haze as a Depot for Desiccated Microbial Life: A Proposed Life Cycle for Persistence of the Venusian Aerial Biosphere. Prof. Sara Seager is Professor of Planetary Science at the Massachusetts I...

Characterizing Earth Analogs in Reflected Light: Atmospheric Retrieval Studies for Future Space Telescopes, Do Metal-rich Stars Make Metal-rich Planets? New Insights on Giant Planet Formation from Host Star Abundances, and Hot Jupiters: Origins, Structure, Atmospheres Prof. Jonathan Fortney is professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is interested i...

Large-scale machine learning, non-convex optimization and high-dimensional statistics. In particular, she has been spearheading the development and analysis of tensor algorithms for machine learning.   Prof. Animashree Anandkumar is Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Caltech.

Scientific Sense ® by Gill Eapen: Survival with an asymmetrical brain: Advantages and disadvantages of cerebral lateralization, Development and function of lateralization in the avian brain, A right antenna for social behavior in honeybees, and A function for the bicameral mind Prof. Lesley Rogers is emeritus professor at the University of New England in Australia.  She is a Fellow of the Australi...

What's Art? Prof. Carol Gould is a Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, where she teaches primarily Aesthetics, Philosophy of Psychiatry, and Ancient Greek Philosophy, areas in which she publishes widely. Dr. Ian Williams wis a biochemist at the Universities of Bristol and Oxford and received an MFA from Bennington College in Vermont. He worked for Pfizer for twenty years headin...

How does the brain work?   Prof. Patricia Churchland is Professor Emirita at the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests span many areas including morality, neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

Animal Liberation, Morality, Race, Religion, the Journal of Controversial Ideas and the Golden Ass. Prof. Peter Singer who is Professor of BioEthics at Princeton University.  He works mostly in practical ethics, and is best known for Animal Liberation and for his writings about global poverty.

Dissecting X-ray-Emitting Gas Around the Center of Our Galaxy, AzTEC Survey of the Central Molecular Zone: Increasing Spectral Index of Dust with Density, and Chandra large-scale mapping of the Galactic Centre: probing high-energy structures around the central molecular zone. Prof. Daniel Wang is Professor of Astronomy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research interests span examin...

Chaotic dynamics of stellar spin in binaries and the production of misaligned hot Jupiters, Black Hole and Neutron Star Binary Mergers in Triple Systems: Merger Fraction and Spin-Orbit Misalignment, Secular chaos in white-dwarf planetary systems, Giant planet scatterings and collisions: hydrodynamics, merger-ejection branching ratio, and properties of the remnants, and Jupiter's Dynamical Love Num...

Why clinical trials fail to validate efficacy of interventions predicted by observational studies of ‘risks’ for dementia-Alzheimer syndrome?, Bi-directional Association of Cerebrospinal Fluid Immune Markers with Stage of Alzheimer’s Disease Pathogenesis, and Cerebrospinal fluid protein markers suggest a pathway toward symptomatic resilience to AD pathology Prof John Breitner is Professor of Psych...

Are Power Plant Closures a Breath of Fresh Air? Local Air Quality and School Absences, The Effect of Coal-Fired Power Plant Closures on Emergency Department Visits for Asthma-Related Conditions Among 0- to 4-Year-Old Children in Chicago, 2009–2017, Valuing the Environmental Costs of Local Development: Evidence From Households in Western Nepal, Does improved risk information increase the value of c...

Global policies for the pandemic and India Covid Second Wave. Prof. Anup Malani who is a Professor at the University of Chicago Law School and Medical School. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research , a Senior Fellow at the Schaeffer Center and an editor at the Journal of Law and Economics .

American immigration and citizenship, Chinatown: Conflicting images and Contested terrain, and the 1903 Boston Chinatown raid. Prof. K. Scott Wong is Professor of History at Williams College where he teaches a variety of courses on Asian American history, American immigration history, History and Memory, War and Society, and the Sixties. He has written numerous articles and is the author of Americ...

Blindness and Human Brain Plasticity Prof. Ione Fine is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington. Her lab studies the mechanisms of plasticity in the human brain by linking changes in function to changes in neuroanatomical structure, with a particular focus on the effects of early sensory loss and prosthetic vision.

Condensed matter’s image problem, Electron pairing in the pseudogap state revealed by shot noise in copper oxide junctions, and Thermoelectric response from grain boundaries and lattice distortions in crystalline gold devices Prof. Douglas Natelson is professor and chair of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University. His research group focuses on the electronic, magnetic, and optical properties of n...

Biology, Culture, Emotion, Psychiatry, Ontology, Social construction, and Artificial Intelligence Prof. Jesse Prinz is Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York. He works primarily in the philosophy of psychology and ethics and has authored several books and articles, addressing such topics as emotion, moral psychology, aesthetics and consciousness.

Towards the neural population doctrine, Performance Limitations in Sensorimotor Control: Trade-Offs Between Neural Computation and Accuracy in Tracking Fast Movements, and Motor cortex activity across movement speeds is predicted by network-level strategies for generating muscle activity Prof. Shreya Saxena is as an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Fl...

Progressive Circuit Changes during Learning and Disease Prof. Alison Barth is Professor in Life Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research is focused on understanding how experience assembles and alters the properties of neural circuits in the cerebral cortex, in both normal and disease states.

A selective role for dopamine in stimulus–reward learning, Mapping sign-tracking and goal-tracking onto human behaviors, and The paraventricular thalamus is a critical mediator of top-down control of cue motivated behavior in rats. Prof. Shelly Flagel is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and the Interim Co-Director of Michigan Neuroscience Institute at the University of Michigan. Her laboratory...

Power Effects on Cognitive Control: Turning Conflict into Action, Power effects on implicit prejudice and stereotyping: The role of intergroup face processing, Power Effects on Instrumental Learning: Evidence From the Brain and Behavior, Less Power, Greater Conflict, Power reduces the goal gradient effect, and Psychological power alters cognitive efficiency. Prof. Petra Schmid is Assistant Profess...

Restoring Purpose in Behavior and Achieving natural behavior in a robot using neurally inspired hierarchical control. Prof. Henry Yin is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. His lab studies neural mechanisms underlying goal-directed actions.

The neurobiological foundation of memory retrieval and neuronal competition: microcircuit mechanisms define the sparsity of the engram Prof. Sheena Josselyn is a Senior Scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children and Professor of Psychology and Physiology at the University of Toronto.  She is a Canada Research Chair in Brain Mechanisms underlying Memory, is a Senior Fellow in the Canadian Ins...