Articles on the Web

Articles on the Web

By Sara Birmingham
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, July 2, 2014

Janis Whitlock, BCTR research scientist; Denyse Variano, family and consumer sciences issue leader, CCE Orange County; and Suzan Sussmann, parenting educator, CCE Orange County discuss their partnership to create support groups and educational materials for teens who self-injure. Photo by Mark Vorreuter

Janis Whitlock, BCTR research scientist; Denyse Variano, family and consumer sciences issue leader, CCE Orange County; and Suzan Sussmann, parenting educator, CCE Orange County discuss their partnership to create support groups and educational materials for teens who self-injure. Photo by Mark Vorreuter

When Natalie Bazarova, Cornell assistant professor of communication, wanted to study how and what people share on social networks, she turned to experts on the ground – Cornell Cooperative Extension parent educators – to connect with local families. Not only did these practitioners shape her research design, Bazarova said, at project’s end she had a network of partners to help “increase social media literacy and Internet competency in local communities.”

Tasha Lewis, assistant professor of fiber science and apparel design, presents her research priorities to the group. Photo by Mark Vorreuter

Tasha Lewis, assistant professor of fiber science and apparel design, presents her research priorities to the group. Photo by Mark Vorreuter

At the Research Navigator Initiative workshop on campus June 25-26, Bazarova and nine other faculty members joined 19 extension educators from eight counties to explore how to broaden pathways between research and the real world. The Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR), part of the College of Human Ecology, sponsors the trainings to bridge the “two cultures” of research and practice, according to Karl Pillemer, the Hazel E. Reed Professor of Human Development, who helped found the workshops, which have reached 100 CCE educators and executive directors since 2010.

“There are tremendous benefits for both our researchers and outreach specialists from working together,” Pillemer said. “Researchers can ground their studies in the real-world experience of extension educators, and field staff participate in creating new knowledge that they can use in their daily work in communities.”

Jennifer Tiffany, Ph.D. ’04, executive director of CCE New York City, BCTR director of outreach and community engagement, and CCE associate director, called the workshop “a think-tank type context, in which we all could work creatively on developing more systematic, bidirectional translational research practices.”

Throughout the workshop, researchers and practitioners repeated a common goal: to initiate ground-up projects driven by community needs as well as more traditional top-down research originating from campus. “We usually see things as flowing from the research to the practice,” said John Eckenrode, BCTR director and professor of human development. “We want to reverse the arrows.”

At a panel discussion, CCE Orange County educators Denyse Variano and Suzan Sussmann and BCTR research scientist Janis Whitlock demonstrated a successful research-practice partnership. Three years ago, after a presentation by Whitlock about her findings on adolescent self-injury, Variano and Sussmann reached out to her for help educating families about the issue. The partnership has led to continuing programming on nonsuicidal self-injury, including support groups and educational outreach.

Such successes demonstrate the ability of campus researchers and community practitioners to bridge the gap between their worlds, Pillemer said. “We try to put into practice something that is often discussed, but less frequently acted on: connecting scientists on campus with community partners to conduct research that is truly relevant to practice needs,” Pillemer said.

Faculty presenters included Tasha Lewis, Ph.D. ’09, assistant professor of fiber science and apparel design; Carol Devine, Ph.D. ’90, professor of nutritional sciences; and Marianella Casasola, associate professor of human development.

Sara Birmingham ’15 is a student communications assistant for the College of Human Ecology.

Related Links:
College of Human Ecology
Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research
Translational Research Tools

 

Traditionally, scholars viewed intelligence as a set of basic mental skills to be assessed by an IQ test, in much the same way that a yardstick measures height—but Robert Sternberg, professor of human development in Cornell's College of Human Ecology, believes this approach shortchanges people who perform poorly on tests and harms society by leaving their talents unrecognized and undeveloped. He has traveled to remote locations in Africa, Asia, Alaska, and elsewhere to develop alternatives to conventional measures of intelligence. Read more

 

Why do our eyes open wide when we feel fear or narrow to slits when we express disgust? According to new research, it has to do with survival.

Cornell neuroscientist Adam Anderson and colleagues concluded that expressions of fear and disgust altered the way human eyes gather and focus light.

They argued that these changes were the result of evolutionary development and were intended to help humans survive, or at least detect, very different threats. Read more

 

Breakthroughs in how we understand the human brain's structure and internal communication networks are helping scientists track neurological changes over time.

Nathan Spreng, assistant professor at Cornell University's Department of Human Development, is using advancement in neuroimaging to better understand how the brain functions and changes as we age. His research currently focuses on large scale brain dynamics and their function in cognition.

One of the most exciting frontiers in this regard is the reconceptualization of the brain as a complex system of many large and constantly interacting networks of brain regions. Read more

By Linda B. Glaser
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, March 6, 2014

President Obama’s “Brain Initiative” aims to revolutionize brain research across the globe; two graduate students have launched an initiative to transform neuroscience research at Cornell. Their “cross-departmental neuroscience analysis group” held its first “Neurodinner” Feb. 13 in Corson-Mudd Hall, featuring make-your-own sandwiches, antipasto and conversation about neuroscience.

“There haven’t been avenues for people who do neuroscience across campus to get to know each other,” explained Joe DiPietro, a graduate student in neurobiology and behavior professor Joseph Fetcho’s lab. “This is a way for people to learn about the resources available to neuroscientists on campus and to create a better environment for collaboration – and for us all to become friends.” DiPietro organized the evening with Matt Lewis, also a graduate student in the field of neurobiology and behavior in the College of Arts and Sciences.

At the Neurodinner, graduate students, post-doctoral students, and faculty members from the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Human Ecology gave brief summaries of their research, illustrating how neuroscience research at Cornell occurs at every level, from micro to macro. Research projects ranged from studies of the nervous system at the level of individual neurons and proteins, to neural circuits and behavior, to the interaction of brain regions in insects, birds and mammals – as well as humans. A graduate student in the field of applied physics described his work developing better imaging tools, while engineers talked about applying neuroscience principles to machines and implementing properties of biological metabolism in robotic ecologies.

“An important goal of Neurodinner is to provide an avenue where people can bridge these different levels of analysis in neuroscience research,” said DiPietro. “The future of neuroscience is bridging the gaps between all these different areas.”

After introductions, attendees offered suggestions for future events that would include intellectual exchange and opportunities for socializing, as well as the chance to discuss research problems and hear perspectives from researchers in other fields.

While many Neurodinner participants described using similar techniques in their research – despite their widely divergent fields – others used novel equipment or approaches. Future Neurodinners will include presentations of laboratory techniques and equipment such as optogenetics (the use of light-sensitive proteins to control and monitor neurons), behavioral pharmacology (which studies the behavioral effects of psychoactive drugs) and Cornell’s new MRI machine.

Neurodinners will be held on the third Thursday of the month in Corson-Mudd Hall. The March 20 event will feature new faculty introducing themselves and their research and will include time for conversation.

Christiane Linster, professor of neurobiology and behavior and director of Cornell’s Program in Neuroscience, is also planning a symposium May 15 for Neurodinner participants and others to showcase their research.

Linda B. Glaser is staff writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.

Related Information

Neuroscientist Nathan Spreng, assistant professor of human development, co-authored an opinion piece in the Huffington Post, January 29th, highlighting the urgency for dementia research and treatments due to America's rapidly aging population.

Right now, approximately 4 million people have dementia in the United States. By 2030, this number will double, costing an estimated $400 billion in care. All of this money is used not for treatment, but to provide comfort and care during a slow and ugly period of decline. Spreng and his coauthor argue that the battle against dimentia is underfunded. Read more.

In U.S. counties where personal incomes cluster on opposite sides of the rich and poor spectrum, children appear to endure more neglect and abuse, according to new research by John Eckenrode and colleagues reported in Reuters, February 11th. Using statistical methods to gauge income inequality, the team found a steep rise in the rate of child maltreatment with rising inequality. The relationship held after researchers adjusted for poverty itself, and other factors such as the racial and ethnic makeup of regions, education levels and the number of people receiving public assistance income. Read more.

Valerie Reyna, professor of human development, found that intelligence agents were more likely to be biased by the wording or framing of risky choice problems than college students or other adults. Her research is quoted in this story in Psychology Today on January 28th.

Experts tend to rely on gist-based representations of situations rather than instead of verbatim ones, in other words, experts are more likely to think of things in a summarized form rather than think about the exact numbers in a step by step fashion. This helps them to make decisions more quickly and to sort relevant from irrelevant information when making decisions. The downside is that they may be more prone to decision-making biases. Read more.