NYU Arts & Science

Discover Arts & Science - the academic heart of NYU. #WeAreArtsAndScience

A new report from NYU Arts & Science’s Center for Environmental and Animal Protection and the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School of high-risk, human-animal interactions at animal markets worldwide. “The polarized debate around COVID-19’s origins has created a deep level of mistrust and misinformation, which this report seeks to cut through and correct,” adds Dale Jamieson of NYU Arts & Science. Jamieson is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies; Director, Center for Environmental and Animal Protection; Affiliated Professor of Law, Medical Ethics, and Bioethics; Founding Director of Environmental Studies Program; and former Chair of the Environmental Studies Department, and Professor of Philosophy.

The Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU Arts & Science has established the Peter F. Collier Award for Ethics in Journalism, which will celebrate acts of journalism that meet the highest ethical standards in the face of pressure or incentives to do otherwise. The award, granted annually, will recognize achievements by student and local journalists and reporters who have a national or international impact. Nathan S. Collier, founder and chairman of the Collier Companies, is sponsoring the award in honor of his great grand uncle, Peter F. Collier, who emigrated from Ireland in 1866, became a book publisher, and founded the renowned magazine, Collier’s Weekly, in 1888. #WeAreNYUArtsAndScience https://lnkd.in/e6j4XH-6

NYU Arts & Science anthropologist James Higham contributed to research that made the cover of Science Magazine! After Hurricane Maria devastated Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico, researchers were surprised by how the rhesus macaques adapted. Rhesus macaques are known for being some of the most quarrelsome primates on the planet. However, when Hurricane Maria decimated much of the island's trees, instead of escalating aggression over scarce shade, the monkeys expanded their social networks and became less hostile. The new study suggests that this behavioral shift helped them survive in the changed environment, showing how social adaptation can be crucial in times of ecological crisis. The research underscores the broader implications for how animals—and potentially humans—respond to environmental challenges. Credit: Noah Synder-Mackler and Lauren Brent

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU Arts & Science has a new lecture series and master's award thanks to the Professor Emeritus Christopher Mitchell Endowed Fund. Professor Mitchell served as director of CLACS for over a decade. The annual lecture features distinguished speakers on Latin American topics, and the first Mitchell Prize was recently awarded to two outstanding master's students for their exceptional theses and academic achievements. https://lnkd.in/eCe6_fvQ

Have you ever considered how important your sense of smell is in communication? In humans, deficits in olfactory sensing are often associated with social isolation and neurological disorders. In ants, expanded odorant receptor genes allow ants to "talk" to one another. A new study shows how a protein that enables smell in ants also helps to stop cell death. The protein, Orco, is essential for smell neuron function and development in ants and fosters the insects’ social behavior. The study was published in Science Advances by NYU Arts & Science biologists Bogdan Sieriebriennikov, Olena Kolumba, Jakub Mlejnek, and Shadi Jafari in conjunction with researchers from the University of Florida. #WeAreNYUArtsAndScience

A new agreement between the Center for Quantum Information Physics (CQIP) at NYU Arts & Science, led by physicist Javad Shabani, and the Københavns Universitet - University of Copenhagen’s Novo Nordisk Foundation Quantum Computing Programme (NQCP), part of the Bohr Institute, will explore the viability of superconductor-semiconductor quantum materials, with the aim of accelerating the development of an optimal crystalline environment for hosting high-performance semiconductor spin and superconducting qubits and potentially other semiconductor-based quantum components on a chip. https://lnkd.in/ej8GcrQd

The Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program at NYU Arts & Science will soon become the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy (CMEP), its future secured by a generous $6,000,000 endowment thanks to The Navigation Fund and Polaris Ventures. Since its founding in 2022, Mind, Ethics, and Policy has stood at the forefront of academic inquiry into the nature and intrinsic value of nonhuman minds. CMEP works to advance understanding of the sentience and moral status of nonhumans, including animals and AI systems, and envisions a world in which all sentient and morally significant beings are treated with respect and compassion. CMEP’s founder and director is Jeff Sebo, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at NYU Arts & Science. https://lnkd.in/e82pkE5V

What's going on here? Understanding the origins of human diseases can start with the most minute observations. In both images, the red represents the nuclear envelope, and the green represents one of the heterochromatin regions, telomeres, in fission yeast. The left image shows wild-type cells: you can see the green is touching the red nuclear envelope. But in the right image that shows the sad1 mutant cells, the green is separated from the red. Through these images, NYU Arts & Science biologist Fei Li was able to prove that the Sad1 protein is important for tethering the heterochromatin region (green) to the nuclear envelope (red). Nature Communications, 2024, https://lnkd.in/eYB57F67

NYU Arts & Science chemist Alisha (Jonesy) Jones was named one of C&EN's Talented 12 for 2024. The publication chooses a dozen stand-out scientists each year from hundreds of reader nominations. Congrats Jonesy! https://lnkd.in/eK7tc5rP