Printmaking Students Create Herbarium Specimens Portfolio
Printmaking Students Create Herbarium Specimens Portfolio
Gavrilets Paper in Nature Communications
Sergey Gavrilets recently had paper on “altruistic bullies” come out in Nature Communications:
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140326/ncomms4526/full/ncomms4526.html
The work has been discussed in Time Magazine: “Science Proves It: Greed Is Good”
http://time.com/41680/greed-is-good-science-proves/
and in Science Daily: “Altruistic side of aggressive greed”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140326092600.htm
as well as in several international venues. Congrats Sergey!
Complex Societies in PNAS
Sergey Gavrilets has a new open-access paper in PNAS, which is getting a great deal of media attention in places like Nature (links below). The paper is entitled, “War, space, and the evolution of Old World complex societies.”
Significance: How did human societies evolve from small groups, integrated by face-to-face cooperation, to huge anonymous societies of today? Why is there so much variation in the ability of different human populations to construct viable states? We developed a model that uses cultural evolution mechanisms to predict where and when the largest-scale complex societies should have arisen in human history. The model was simulated within a realistic landscape of the Afroeurasian landmass, and its predictions were tested against real data. Overall, the model did an excellent job predicting empirical patterns. Our results suggest a possible explanation as to why a long history of statehood is positively correlated with political stability, institutional quality, and income per capita.
Press Coverage:
| Austrian Tribune | Nature |
| The Conversation | Pacific Standard |
| El Mundo | Popular Mechanics |
| Huffington Post | Science World Report |
| Los Angeles Times | Smithsonian |
| National Monitor | Wired |
Nature paper on White Nose Syndrome
Photo from Indiana State University press release
UTK EEB postdoc Justin Boyles recently coauthored a Nature article establishing Geomyces destructans as the infectious agent causing White Nose Syndrome, a disease that destroy entire colonies of bats.
EEB undergrads in science writing workshop with Nature editor
EEB undergraduates Sarah Wood, Danny Lusk, and Alix Pfennigwerth were invited to attend a science writing workshop with ‘Nature’ Magazine Editor M. Mitchell Waldrop.
EEB undergrads in science writing workshop with Nature editor
EEB undergraduates Sarah Wood, Danny Lusk, and Alix Pfennigwerth were invited to attend a science writing workshop with ‘Nature’ Magazine Editor M. Mitchell Waldrop.