Posts categorized Society & Culture

A new pilot study finds that children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) and their families benefit from a multi-component intervention, with the biggest change seen on the parents’ abilities to respond to their children’s needs.

At the “Breaking Boundaries: Video Games in Teaching, Learning, Research, and Design” event, students and scholars discussed the impact of video games and online games on learning and culture, while getting a chance to play.

To mark Jefferson’s birthday, Thomas Slaughter’s class is in for a rare treat: a historically accurate lunch, culled from the actual Monticello cuisine and prepared according to recipes taken directly from Thomas Jefferson’s Cookbook and Dining at Monticello.

Study shows children also benefit when mothers receive therapy for depression. Part of the improvement is a result of shifting the mother’s vantage point with time-limited therapy that focuses on resolving symptoms and interpersonal issues.

The works of Romantic era poet and artist William Blake pervade modern writing, music, film and TV. The William Blake Archive, newly redesigned, has digitized nearly 7,000 images from Blake’s creations, making them more accessible than ever to scholars and fans.

Trained as a scholar of medieval literature, Gregory Heyworth has become a “textual scientist.” He recovers the words and images of cultural heritage objects that have been lost, through damage and erasure, to time. To rescue them, he and collaborators on the aptly named Lazarus Project use a transportable multispectral imaging lab—the only one in the world—to make the undecipherable, and even the invisible, legible again.

In his lecture “Locker Room Talk: Pussies, Guns, and Video Gaymers,” William Cheng, assistant professor of music at Dartmouth College, will explore some of the challenges of conducting field research in online arenas such as multiplayer games and Internet threads.

This initiative will provide grants of up to $1,000 for 12 local youth teams. “This project is intended to address the root causes of hate and incivility,” says Kit Miller, director of the institute.

For those suffering from dysphoria­—general unhappiness or elevated depressive symptoms—a Rochester study has found that experiencing or even just anticipating uplifting events in daily life was related to feeling less depressed that same day.

On April 6, 1917, Congress voted to declare war on Germany, joining the bloody battle—then optimistically called the “Great War.” Rochester political scientist Hein Goemans explains why Germany was willing to risk American entry into the war.