The Academic Minute for 2016.09.26-09.30

Academic Minute from 9.26 – 9.30

Monday, September 26th
Stephen Kane – San Francisco State University
Second Earth Candidates
Stephen Kane has been researching planets around other stars for more than 20 years and has discovered and characterized hundreds of exoplanets, including Kepler-186f, which is the smallest planet yet to have been found in the Habitable Zone of a star. His work covers a broad range of exoplanet detection methods, and he is an expert on the topic of planetary habitability and the habitable zone of planetary systems.

Tuesday, September 27th
Richard Stevens – University of Connecticut
Artificial Lighting and our Health
Dr. Stevens has been working for a long time trying to help figure out why people get cancer. One of his major interests has been in the possible role of iron overload. Largely on the basis of his work, published in the Journal of National Cancer Institute and the New England Journal of Medicine, the Swedish food industry decided to cease iron fortification of flour in the early 1990s. A perplexing challenge, which Stevens began to engage in the late 1970s, is the confounding mystery of why breast cancer risk rises so dramatically as societies industrialize. He proposed in 1987 a radical new theory that use of electric lighting, resulting in lighted nights, might produce “circadian disruption” causing changes in the hormones relevant to breast cancer risk. Accumulating evidence has generally supported the idea, and it has received wide scientific and public attention. For example, his work has been featured on the covers of the popular weekly Science News (October 17, 1998) and the scientific journal Cancer Research (July 15, 1996).

Wednesday, September 28th
Stephanie Pfirman – Barnard College
Games and Climate Change
Stephanie L. Pfirman, Professor of Environmental Science and Alena Wels Hirschorn ’58 and Martin Hirschorn Professor of Environmental and Applied Sciences, joined the faculty of Barnard College in 1993, and serves as co-Chair of Barnard’s Department of Environmental Science.  She holds a joint appointment with Columbia University where she is a member of the faculties of the Earth Institute and the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Adjunct Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.  Prior to joining Barnard, Professor Pfirman was a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund and co-developer of the award-winning exhibition, “Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast,” produced jointly with the American Museum of Natural History.  She has worked for the House of Representatives, as a staff scientist, for the US Geological Survey, as an oceanographer, and for the GeoMarine Research Institution (GEOMAR) in Kiel, Germany, as an Arctic researcher.  Her PhD is from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution joint program in Oceanography and Oceanographic Engineering and she has BA with high honors in Geology from Colgate University.

Professor Pfirman’s scientific research focuses on the Arctic environment, in particular on the nature and dynamics of Arctic sea ice under changing climate.  Her previous research activities have included melting and surging glaciers and pollution transported by sea ice.  In 2010, Pfirman was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the Section on Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences.

Thursday, September 29th
Jaume Padilla – University of Missouri
Fidgeting
Jaume Padilla, Ph.D., serves as an assistant professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri. Padilla’s research focuses primarily on understanding the physiological and molecular mechanisms by which physical inactivity and obesity-associated insulin resistance lead to impaired vascular function. Padilla earned a bachelor of arts in exercise sciences from the University of Lleida in Spain; a master of science in adapted physical activity from the University of Leuven in Belgium; and a doctorate in clinical exercise physiology from Indiana University. Padilla also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in vascular biology from the University of Missouri.

As lead author of the study, “Prolonged Sitting-induced Leg Endothelial Dysfunction is Prevented by Fidgeting,” his work recently was published in the American Journal of Physiology Heart and Circulatory Physiology.

Friday, September 30th
Yellowlees Douglas – University of Florida
What You Read Influences How You Write
Dr. Yellowlees Douglas is an associate professor of management communication in the Hough Graduate School of Business at the University of Florida. In addition to her publications on reading, writing, and persuasion, she is also the author of The Reader’s Brain: How Neuroscience Can Make You a Better Writer.