ScIU Conversations in Science at Indiana University: Indiana University Bloomington

Graphene: A single-layer magic material

By: Guest Contributor

You’re likely familiar with graphite: the chalky gray material we often refer to as pencil lead. In recent years, graphite has been making headlines due to increased interest in its younger sibling: graphene, lauded as a supermaterial of the new age for properties that hold out the promise of novel technological feats. Graphene has the potential to replace silicon-based computer chips, improve the performance of touchscreens, realize ultra-sensitive biometric sensor devices, and even faster charging and increased storage capacity in batteries and capacitors...

Love math, but don’t care too much

By: Tongyao Zhang

$[A child playing with number toys on a table.]$ As part of my job as a researcher and graduate student in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, I invite parents and children to play math games in our lab. As I lead parents and children through studies about how children learn, I've seen very different attitudes in parents towards math. Some parents would happily talk about numbers and inferences in their daily interactions, and they make a lot of attempts to start a conversation about math...

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence: A crash course in machine learning

By: sciutern

Artificial intelligence continues to make the news, especially with technologies like ChatGPT – an AI Chatbot – and DALL-E – an image-generating software – becoming increasingly accessible to the public. Reports of modified syllabi in colleges and universities and sentient chatbots may have piqued your interest recently, and for a good reason! AI has gradually become embedded in our daily lives as an influential tool for COVID-19 contact tracing, national security, healthcare, and much more...

#PrimatesAreNotPets: A social media animal welfare campaign

By: Chloe Holden

Have you ever seen “#PrimatesAreNotPets” floating around Twitter and other social media platforms? There’s a good reason this hashtag is becoming more prominent on the internet; primatologists, animal welfare activists, and conservationists are pushing to bring attention to the illegal pet trade and the devastation that it wrecks on the animals and their natural habitats. Primates aren’t the only exotic animals affected by the illegal pet trade, but they provide an excellent example of what removing a species from an ecosystem can do both at home and in the wild...

Switching it up: Using sneaker culture to teach chemistry to PEERs

By: Jakyra Simpson

When you look at the statistics of the amount of underrepresented, underserved, and marginalized students pursuing Chemistry degrees. As it’s been said, “The Math ain’t Mathin’,” and there is, therefore, a need to incorporate new teaching styles (pedagogies) that are inclusive and culturally relevant...

Back to the Stone Age: Monkey see monkey do

By: Chloe Holden

Primate archaeology is a fast growing field. While archaeology usually refers to the study of the human past through the excavation of past tools, remains, and civilizations, primate archaeology unearths the technological (tool use) past of our primate relatives as well as observes tool use by primates in real time. Each year, scientists make new discoveries about primates and their behaviors that prompt questions about the full extent of our primate relatives' cognition and how it relates back to our own cognitive evolution...

How computer science aids psychology: Cognitive modeling of natural objects

By: Mingjia Hu

Could you imagine that a computer program can infer the nutritional content of some food item from reading articles on related topics? How about an algorithm that can give medical diagnoses based on radiological images? Although these abilities sound like science fiction, they are becoming closer to reality thanks to the recent integration of computer science and cognitive science...

People get “brain drain” when smartphones merely exist in room

By: Tongyao Zhang

Have you – at least for a moment – ever imagined throwing your smartphone out the window, especially when you are trying to focus on your work? Now you might have a justification for your impulse. Behavioral scientists recently found that if your smartphone is merely present in your room, and even if you are not consciously thinking of it, you may still be distracted...

The cognitive process behind categorizing objects