The Academic Minute for 2015.11.16-11.20

Catch up with The Academic Minute from 11.16 – 11.20

Monday, November 16
Russell Ciochon – University of Iowa
Early Humans In Island Southeast Asia

Russell L. Ciochon is a professor of Anthropology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA. As a paleoanthropologist, he studies Homo erectus from a variety of perspectives and has greatly extended our knowledge of this human cousin with regards to habitat preferences and their migratory routes into Asia roughly 1.6 million-years ago.  He has worked at numerous sites across Asia including the Peking Man site of Zhoukoudian, China, and the Java Man site of Sangiran, Indonesia.  Additionally, Ciochon has also conducted field work in various locales including Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, the Siwaliks of India, China, and the Philippines.  He also maintains an interest in the early evolution of our order, including the Eocene primates of Myanmar, the Miocene apes of India and China, andGigantopithecus, the giant ape of Pleistocene Asia.  His research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the National Geographic Society.  He has published 19 books and well over 100 articles and book chapters.  Ciochon received his PhD in 1986 from the University of California at Berkeley under the pre-eminent paleoanthropologist, F. Clark Howell.

Tuesday, November 17
Charles Courtemanche – Georgia State University
Cheap Food & Obesity
Dr. Courtemanche is an Associate Professor of Economics in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. He is a health economist and applied microeconomist with particular research interests in the economics of obesity, public policies to expand insurance coverage, and big box retailers. His research has been published in a variety of journals including the Economic Journal, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Economic History, and Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Dr. Courtemanche has previously been a faculty member at the University of Louisville and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is also a Research Associate in the Health Economics Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Wednesday, November 18
Blaine Pfeifer – University at Buffalo
E. Coli

Dr. Pfeifer’s work seeks to influence cellular, metabolic, and process events required to produce new therapeutic products. As an example, he is studying how to engineer E. coli to generate new varieties of erythromycin, a popular antibiotic, which may ultimately be used to fight drug-resistant bacteria. Another project centers on generating potent anticancer agents through recombinant DNA technology. One target of interest is the anticancer drug Taxol.

Prior to arriving at the University at Buffalo, Dr. Pfiefer earned a PhD in chemical engineering from Stanford University and conducted postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Thursday, November 19
Ken Tankersley – University of Cincinnati
Migratory Patterns
UC’s Ken Tankersley is a leading Quaternary scientist focusing on archaeological problems associated with human migration, adaptation and natural resource use during periods of climatic, environmental and catastrophic change. Temporally, Ken’s research focuses on the Quaternary, the geological period of time during which humans evolved. He is a NSF funded researcher who directs two laboratories, the Court Archeological Research Facility and the Ohio Valley Archaeological Laboratory.

Friday, November 20
Minna Lyons – University of Liverpool
Late Nights & Mental Health
Dr Minna Lyons is a lecturer in psychology, with a special interest in evolutionary applications to human behaviour. After conducting her PhD research on altruism, she became increasingly interested in the other side of the coin- selfish and manipulative aspects of personality. In the recent years, she has studied the Dark Triad of personality, which centres around three closely related personality traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.  Rather than maladaptive, adverse personality traits could be evolutionarily adaptive in the right circumstances. In 2014, the research by Minna and her colleagues  on morningness-eveningness and the Dark Triad won the IgNoble Prize for Psychology.