Member

Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at New England Aquarium, Roger Williams University one of four winners internationally

BOSTON – The Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium and Roger Williams University won a prestigious award recently to develop technology that will help port inspectors find illegally hidden wildlife and help stem wildlife trafficking in the U.S. They are one of four grand prize winners to receive the inaugural Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge award from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The Aquarium’s Michael Tlusty and Roger Williams’s Andrew Rhyne submitted their proposal to USAID’s Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge, which is funding a combined $900,000 to the Aquarium, New York University, University of Washington, and the National Whistleblower Center to design innovative science and technology solutions to combat illegal marine and terrestrial wildlife trafficking. More than 300 groups applied for the award internationally.

“We are delighted to be part of a worldwide effort to develop effective solutions to this growing and widespread problem by developing technology that can stop traffickers at the point of entering our country and causing damage, ecologically and economically,” said Tlusty, who works with Rhyne on aquaculture research and the aquarium fish trade.

Click to read more…

A unique new study of young adults finds that negative experiences on Facebook may increase the risk of depressive symptoms, suggesting that online social interactions have important consequences for mental health.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — In the first study of its kind, public health researchers show that young adults who reported having negative experiences on Facebook — including bullying, meanness, misunderstandings or unwanted contacts — were at significantly higher risk of depression, even accounting for many possible confounding factors.

“I think it’s important that people take interactions on social media seriously and don’t think of it as somehow less impactful because it’s a virtual experience as opposed to an in-person experience,” said lead author Samantha Rosenthal, an epidemiology research associate in the Brown University School of Public Health who performed the research as part of her doctoral thesis at Brown. “It’s a different forum that has real emotional consequences.”

Click to read more…

Titled ‘Brown University president: A safe space for freedom of expression,’ guest column comes at a time of fierce debate about the capacity of universities to prepare students for confronting difficult, complex issues.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The Washington Post published in its newspaper today, Sept. 6, a guest column titled “Brown University president: A safe space for freedom of expression” by Brown President Christina Paxson.

The column is framed as an opening address for the new academic year for students entering college across the country at a time of fierce debate about the capacity of colleges and universities to truly prepare students for confronting difficult, complex issues that face society today. The column previews themes Paxson will share with the campus in greater depth during Brown’s 253rd Opening Convocation, which will be held at 4:00 p.m. on the College Green.

Click to read more…

New Associate Professor of Printmaking Megan Foster is inspired by “weird science” and the everyday.

When she was interviewing for a full-time faculty position in Printmaking – her major department when she was a student at RISD – newly hired Associate Professor Megan Foster 00 PR was asked to envision her “dream course,” a class for advanced students that would incorporate new technology with traditional printmaking techniques. She proposed a studio in which students would create stop-motion animations using multiple handmade prints and a scanner, a technique that’s become quite popular in the printmaking world.

“I’ve always crossed disciplines in my teaching and my own work,” Foster says, “and I’m excited to work with RISD students. I’ll be teaching at a level I couldn’t reach anywhere else.”

Since Foster earned her BFA in the department, she has returned regularly as a visiting critic while teaching full-time at the City College of New York and working as a master printer at Columbia University. A staunch believer in RISD’s hands-on approach, she says that “people outside the fine arts world still rely on those who can make things with their hands. Printmaking has always been a medium that pushes technology and mass production,” she adds, “but it’s coming back around to limited editions and specialized techniques like etching. And there’s a lot more respect for the medium in the larger art world today as well.”

Click to read more…