Patrick Forber, Tufts University – Evolution of Spite

Evolutionary theorists, by contrast, are studying what might be viewed as the brighter side of spite, and the role it may have played in the origin of admirable traits like a cooperative spirit and a sense of fair play –…
The health care of prisoners is a topic familiar to the The Academic Minute. Where the previous segment focused on the positives of expanding health care for the incarcerated, Dr. William Alex Pridemore, criminologist at Georgia State University, discusses the…
If you’ve seen the Academy Award winning film Amadeus, you’ll recall the laborious depictions of Mozart as he composed his musical masterpieces using pen and ink. Dr. Ching-Hua Chuan, assistant professor of computing at The University of North Florida, is…
The image of the sleep-deprived parent tending to a middle-of-the-night feeding is a common one when you think about caring for an infant child. However, as Dr. Hawley Montgomery-Downs, a psychologist at West Virginia University, will tell us, fragmented sleep…
That smart-phone in your pocket is one amazing device. Dr. Radu Sporea, The Academic Minute‘s resident technology guru, discusses the astonishing intricacies of technology that we often take for granted. Dr. Radu Sporea is Royal Academy of Engineering Academic Research Fellow in…
The goal of effective marketing is to target potential consumers. Dr. Amit Bhattacharjee, a professor of marketing at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, discusses the unintended consequences of a marketing plan that is too effective. Dr. Amit Bhattacharjee is a…
Being a single parent is tough. Being an unemployed single parent is even tougher. Dr. Jennie Brand, associate professor of sociology at UCLA, takes a look at the effects of job loss on single mothers. Dr. Jennie Brand is a…
“Our work shows that co-evolution can yield new and unique behavior at the population scale,” explained Joshua Weitz in a recent article about his biological research. Joshua Weitz, associate professor in the School of Biology at the Georgia Institute of…
A recent NPR piece discussed the threat of climate change on bird populations and what that signals in our changing environment. Frank Thompson, a professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences at the University of Missouri’s School of…