Cover image: Berghia stephanieae. Point of Fort Jeudy, Grenada. 14 feet deep, 24 August 1986. Photo by Hans Bertsch. Reprinted with permission from The Slug Site. Article by Nora Lowe This year’s finals had me feeling especially sluggish, so when I heard that there would be a Biology Seminar on sea slug brains, I thought,…
Below the SURFace: Amherst Students Present Their Research
By Nora Lowe On September 8, the Science Center was cleared of furniture and filled instead with student researchers. This year’s cohort of Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) participants presented more than 80 posters as the culmination of their multiweek experience of rigorous scientific inquiry across nine departments, as well as in collaboration with parties…
Can Someone You’ve Never Met Be Your Friend? Sort Of.
Finishing Wednesday on Netflix felt kind of like losing a friend. After watching an episode per day for eight days, I had spent almost eight hours with the titular character, getting to know her macabre sense of humor. How is it possible that I can feel so close to someone that I’ve never even met,…
“Bringing Science to Light” to Light
Science and art, commonly considered distant disciplines, actually go hand in hand. In fact, they complement each other and propel one another forward. Science illustrators, therefore, play a very valuable role in bridging the gap between these subject areas. A recent New York Times article explains an environmental science-related example of this phenomenon: “Pairing illustrations…
Development of Luminescent Small Molecules for Cancer Imaging and Therapy
On October 21, 2022, Dr. Sierra Marker King, a candidate for the biochemistry professor position at Amherst College, led this week’s Cheminar. She presented her doctoral and postdoctoral research. She began her higher education at SUNY Broome Community College and obtained an associate’s degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences. From there, she graduated from SUNY…
Last Week of Simulating Antihydrogen Annihilation Distributions at CERN
Yesterday was my last day working at CERN, and I was kept busy until the last moment. I spent the morning testing recently built electronics, and then I helped install them in the Antimatter Factory in the afternoon. It’s hard to believe that I untied my safety shoes for the last time and that my…
The End of the Beginning: Thesis Progress, Applications, and Gnomes
Long time no see, everybody! It has definitely been a productive and exciting summer, and I cannot wait to tell you all about it! As I mentioned in my introductory post, this summer I worked on my psychology thesis. This project explores the emotions, threats, and prejudices that underlie evaluations of people who engage in…
Patterning the planarian head with nr4A
This article is a summary of this video: “Nuclear receptor NR4A is required for patterning at the ends of the planarian anterior-posterior axis”. https://jrnlclub.org/research-films/planarian-regeneration-patterning Regeneration is a fundamental process in biology that allows animals to “bounce back” from injury by synthesizing new tissue. While regeneration is an essential process for the maintenance of homeostasis in…
A Real Head Turner: Genes Affect Both Brain and Face Shape
The following article is based on a video posted to JRNLclub.com by Sahin Naqvi. A great part of psychology is how many connections it makes to other fields. One of the most common connections is to neuroscience. Although the following study is not related to my research in social psychology, it still offers some fascinating…
Perusing JRNLclub
I enjoyed looking through the talks on the JRNLclub website, even though their biomedical focus means that there is not much scientific overlap between their posted talks and my physics research. It’s fun to learn about research happening in other disciplines! For this post, I chose to focus on Michael Gomez’s talk, “Supply chain diversity…