The Department of Political Science in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis ranks second in the nation in a new study of faculty research productivity published by the American Political Science Association.

Conducted by Michael Peress, an associate professor of political science at Stony Brook University, the study used citations in Google Scholar to track the quantity, quality and impact of political science research published by individual faculty at the nation’s top 47 political science departments as ranked by U.S. News & World Report.

In considering the productivity of departments as a whole, Washington University’s second-place ranking placed it just behind Columbia University and just ahead of Stanford University in research impact. The department’s strong showing was led by James L. Gibson, the Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government in Arts & Sciences, who ranked first in the nation in two categories.

“A major reason for this is the remarkable performance of Professor James Gibson,” said Matthew Gabel, political science chair. “The same study identified him as the top scholar in the entire discipline for research output in the most impactful and selective journals.”

The post Political science faculty rank high for research productivity appeared first on The Source.

Drastic climate changes shaped the timeline for rich deposits of early human ancestor fossils found in a network of South African caves known as the “Cradle of Humankind,” suggests a new study co-authored by paleoanthropologists at Washington University in St. Louis.

“This is a really important study that should transform our understanding of the timing of important events in human evolution,” said David Strait, professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University and a study co-author.

“Much of what we know about early human evolution comes in the form of fossils from South African caves, but up until now we’ve had only a coarse understanding of the geological age of those fossils,” Strait said. “Now, as a result of this work, we have a much better understanding of how and when early humans evolved across a landscape and in relation to environmental change.”

Published online Nov. 21 in the journal Nature, the study was conducted by an international team of scientists from South Africa, Australia and the United States. It was led by Robyn Pickering, an isotope geochemist at the University of Cape Town, who began dating the cradle cave fossils 13 years ago as part of her doctoral research.

“The bulk of the work in this paper was done by Robyn,” said co-author Terry Ritzman, assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences and of neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “David and I are paleoanthropologists, meaning that we study the fossil record of human evolution. We helped Robyn sort out some of the broader implications of this work for understanding how, when and why our early ancestors and close relatives evolved.”

The Cradle of Humankind is a World Heritage Site northwest of Johannesburg that includes complex fossil-bearing caves. It’s the world’s richest early hominin site and home to nearly 40 percent of all known human ancestor fossils, including the famous Australopithecus africanus skull nicknamed Mrs. Ples.

Until now, it has proven difficult to precisely date these fossils and assess their evolutionary history, owing to the disordered nature of the collapsed cave sediments in which the remains were preserved.

Pickering and colleagues instead analyzed the thick flowstones that surround the fossil-bearing sediments, which can be dated by measuring their trace radioactive isotopes. Flowstones, such as stalactites and stalagmites, form in caverns when flowing waters deposit dissolved minerals. The authors find that flowstones were deposited in six intervals between 3.2 and 1.3 million years ago. These, they suggest, represent wetter periods, in which there was more water to deposit the flowstones and the caves were more likely to be closed off to incoming sediments and hominin remains, allowing flowstones to form uninterrupted, but leaving gaps in the fossil record.

When the climate became drier, however, vegetation cover would have diminished, increasing surface erosion and opening the caves to outside sediments and the preservation of hominin remains. Although the wet periods may have left gaps in the fossil record, the authors note that the flowstones nevertheless offer valuable insights into past changes in the climate.

“Unlike previous dating work, which often focused on one cave — sometimes even just one chamber of the cave — we are providing direct ages for eight caves and a model to explain the age of all the fossils from the entire region,” Pickering said. “Now, we can link together the findings from separate caves and create a better picture of evolutionary history in southern Africa.

“The flowstones are the key,” Pickering said. “We know they can only grow in caves during wet times, when there is more rain outside the cave. By dating the flowstones, we are picking out these times of increased rainfall. We therefore know that during the times in between, when the caves were open, the climate was drier and more like what we currently experience.”

This means the early hominins living in the cradle experienced big changes in local climate, from wetter to drier conditions, at least six times between 3 and 1 million years ago. However, only the drier times are preserved in the caves, skewing the record of early human evolution.

Until now, the lack of dating methods for cradle fossils made it difficult for scientists to understand the relationship between East and South Africa hominin species. Moreover, the South African record has often been considered undateable compared to East Africa, where volcanic ash layers allow for high resolution dating.

Andy Herries, professor of archeology at La Trobe University in Australia and a co-author of the study, notes that “while the South African record was the first to show Africa as the origin point for humans, the complexity of the caves and difficultly dating them has meant that the South African record has remained difficult to interpret.”

“In this study, we show that the flowstones in the caves can act almost like the volcanic layers of East Africa, forming in different caves at the same time, allowing us to directly relate their sequences and fossils into a regional sequence,” Herries said.

The results return the cradle to the forefront and open new opportunities for scientists to answer complex questions about human history in the region.

“Robyn and her team have made a major contribution to our understanding of human evolution,” said Bernard Wood, a leading paleoanthropologist and professor of human origins at the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology at George Washington University. Wood is not an author on the study.

“This is the most important advance to be made since the fossils themselves were discovered,” Wood said. “Dates of fossils matter a lot. The value of the southern African evidence has been increased many-fold by this exemplary study of its temporal and depositional context.”

Editor’s note: This story contains material from news releases issued by the University of Cape Town and the journal Nature.

Source: Robyn Pickering, Andy Herries, Jon Woodhead, John Hellstrom, Helen Green, Bence Paul, Terrence Ritzman, David Strait, Benjamin Schoville & Phillip Hancox. U–Pb-dated flowstones restrict South African early hominin record to dry climate phases. Nature, Nov. 21, 2018. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0711-0

Funding: The research was supported by grants from the Australian Research Council (DECRA DE120102504); the National Science Foundation (BCS 0962564); the University of Melbourne McKenzie Post-Doctoral Fellowship (0023249); and an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT120100399) and Discovery Project (DP170100056).

The post Dating the ‘Cradle’: New timeline sheds light on early human history appeared first on The Source.

The National Climate Assessment, released the day after Thanksgiving, offers motivation and opportunity to bring climate topics into the classroom at every grade level.

Even the youngest students are ready to learn about climate science, according to Michael Wysession, professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and executive director of the Teaching Center.

Wysession, who has co-authored more than 30 textbooks, helped write a position statement on teaching climate science adopted by the board of directors of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) in September 2018. The NSTA has a membership of more than 50,000 teachers and other educators at the K-12 grade levels.

It is extremely important to teach children about the science of climate and climate change, and the roles humans play in affecting them, the NSTA statement said.

Science education at the K-12 grade levels is undergoing a revolution, according to Wysession, with most states shifting to a new way of teaching based upon the National Academy of Sciences’ Framework for K–12 Science Education and the ensuing Next Generation Science Standards. The framework identifies a small number of “Big Ideas” for the science standards to focus on, and one of these is global climate change.

“The Next Generation Science Standards emphasize children devising solutions to the challenges of global warming,” Wysession said. “But it will take study and understanding, and we need to do everything we can now to make sure that our students have the tools, interest and motivation they need to meet these challenges.”

Students in early grades can think about the steps they can take to help take care of the earth such as recycling, re-using materials and limiting waste, Wysession suggested.

Students in higher grades should learn about the science behind the greenhouse effect and how both natural factors and human activities change the climate. Students should also be critically analyzing the scientific validity of sources used in political debates about the causes of climate change, he said.

“As the recent National Climate Assessment report shows, the severe impacts of climate change are already affecting humans through severe weather events, decreases in agricultural production, damages to the national economy and destruction of the biosphere,” Wysession said.

“The report also points out that these impacts will be greatest for our children and their children — emphasizing the extreme importance of educating students about the ways that they can design solutions for the future challenges of climate change,” he said.

The post WashU Expert: Students at every grade need to learn climate science appeared first on The Source.

Scientists agree that it is no longer reasonable to assume the future will resemble the past, as far as Earth’s climate is concerned. The fourth National Climate Assessment, released Nov. 23, is clear: On a global scale, what efforts are being made to mitigate and adapt to the the future are insufficient to forestall devastating effects on our ecology, our health or our cultural well-being.

Released on Black Friday to less fanfare than a 10-percent-off deal, the assessment also lays bare the potential costs that the world — including the United States — could face absent swift and sweeping change.

While the top office in the nation disputes the evidence-based claims of the report, Washington University in St. Louis experts from all corners of academia long have been studying climate change in the context of their own fields. Here is a sampling of their assessments:

The Brown School’s Lora Iannotti on malnutrition

“Regions with the highest prevalence of stunting, a chronic form of malnutrition, are those also experiencing the negative impacts of extreme weather events such as drought and floods,” said Lora Iannotti, associate professor at the Brown School and associate dean for public health.

“So-called ‘small holders’ produce 80 percent of food in developing countries and often lack resources, infrastructure and safety nets to respond to these events,” she said. “Most are dependent on rain-fed agriculture and have seen diminishing production in the wake of climate change.

“Climate change through multiple mechanisms, such as increased infection and other health implications, reduced access to high quality foods, or diminished food production and lost income, will compound the poverty-malnutrition consequences if trends continue.”

Read more here.

The School of Engineering & Applied Science’s Daniel Giammar
on mitigation

“Thanks to this report, we can now weigh the cost of climate change versus the cost of mitigation,” said Daniel Giammar, the Walter E. Browne Professor of​ Environmental Engineering​ in the School of Engineering & Applied Science.

“We currently have three main ways to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” Giammar said. “We can use more renewables, a shift we have been slowly making in the United States. We can transition from coal to natural gas, which helps,” he said, “though isn’t a long-term solution.

“Then there’s carbon capture and sequestration,” or capturing carbon and storing it in a way that keeps it from entering the atmosphere, where it would otherwise contribute to warming, he said.

Giammar noted that this approach has already been demonstrated at scale with projects that have sequestered more than one million tons of carbon dioxide underground, and this is an approach that his research group has studied. 

At the moment, the main barrier to implementation is economics, he says, because it’s free to emit carbon dioxide.

“The report looks at the costs of doing nothing,” Giammar said. “The benefits of mitigation are now quantified. It’s a good guide for what determining we’re willing to pay.”

Read more here.

The School of Law’s Maxine Lipeles
on current destructive, delaying policy

The administration’s climate policies are putting the U.S. at risk.

“Since President Trump took office, he has been directing and supporting efforts to weaken limits on greenhouse gas emissions and to protect the coal industry from market forces, which have made coal-fired electricity more expensive than renewable energy,” said Maxine Lipeles, senior lecturer in law and director of the Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic.

“While this thorough, lengthy report was released over the Thanksgiving weekend, when many were more focused on family and football than on news, it will undoubtedly get considerable attention in the lawsuits challenging climate-related rollbacks,” she said.

“The courts typically give agencies considerable discretion to exercise judgment, but the agencies have to show a rational basis for their decisions and the well-documented science in this report calls for tighter, not weaker, limits on greenhouse gas emissions.”

Read more here.

Olin Business School’s Glenn MacDonald on economic numbers

“Forecasting long term trends in climate is a difficult exercise, but at least there is some data underlying the forecast,” said Glenn MacDonald, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for Research in Economics and Strategy at Olin Business School.

“But predicting how countries, businesses, consumers and technology will adapt to climate change over an extended period, and how such adaptations will impact climate change itself, is a much greater challenge since our experience is so limited. For this reason, this economic forecast should be thought as one example of what might happen.”

Perhaps, MacDonald said, it’s more useful to look at it from a risk-management approach.

Read more here.

Arts & Sciences’ Michael Wysession on climate at every grade level

Even the youngest students are ready to learn about climate science, according to Michael Wysession, professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences and co-author of a position statement on the topic adopted by the National Science Teachers Association in September 2018.

“The Next Generation Science Standards emphasize children devising solutions to the challenges of global warming,” said Wysession. “But it will take study and understanding, and we need to do everything we can now to make sure that our students have the tools, interest and motivation they need to meet these challenges.”

“As the recent National Climate Assessment report shows, the severe impacts of climate change are already affecting humans through severe weather events, decreases in agricultural production, damages to the national economy and destruction of the biosphere,” Wysession said.

 “These impacts will be greatest for our children and their children — emphasizing the extreme importance of educating students about the ways that they can design solutions for the future challenges of climate change,” he said.

 Read more here.

The post WashU Experts on the Climate Assessment appeared first on The Source.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. Or just stick with recycle.

A plant relies on cellular machinery to recycle materials during times of stress, but that same machinery has a remarkable influence on the plant’s metabolism even under healthy growing conditions, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Autophagy is a process that helps to break down damaged or unwanted pieces of a cell so that the building blocks can be used again. In humans, autophagy is connected to a number of crippling diseases. In plants, it’s often associated with aging, or a response to nutrient starvation.

In a new publication in the journal Nature Plants, researchers led by Richard Vierstra, the George and Charmaine Mallinckrodt Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences, describe the effects of autophagy on metabolism in maize (commonly referred to as corn) plants using a uniquely comprehensive set of modern “-omics” technologies.

“Maize is a very important crop, and is very sensitive to nitrogen deprivation,” Vierstra said. “One of the largest costs to growing maize in terms of energy, expenditures and a farmer’s time is providing adequate nitrogen to fertilize the soil. Consequently, we were particularly interested in how autophagy plays a role in nitrogen distribution and growth under nitrogen-limiting conditions.”

It turns out that maize plants lacking a key gene for autophagy are profoundly different at a molecular level — even if they’re getting enough nutrients and appear to develop normally.

“This is the first report describing the effect of autophagy using four different
‘-omics’ approaches and successfully integrating them into a complete picture,” said Fionn McLoughlin, a postdoctoral researcher in Vierstra’s lab and first author of the new paper.

The group used state-of-the-art tools to compare and analyze the transcriptome, proteome, metabolome and ionome of maize seedlings grown with or without the autophagy-related gene ATG12, and fertilized with or without nitrogen.

“This integration allowed us to pinpoint cellular processes that are affected by autophagy,” McLoughlin said. “By comparing changes in transcript and protein abundances among the samples, we could also determine which proteins were either differentially synthesized or targeted for turnover (recycling) by autophagy.”

Once considered an undiscriminating, bulk recycling system, autophagy now is discovered to be highly selective. Only certain parts of the cell are specifically recognized and reused.

This new research helps identify the “targets” for recycling, and also demonstrates the ways in which plants that lack genes for autophagy are not able to maintain several basic cellular functions.

“Most profoundly, we observed a dramatic increase in lipid breakdown products, together with changes in secondary metabolism in the mutants, and revealed an unanticipated role of autophagy in protein homeostasis,” McLoughlin said. “To our surprise, as much as 25 percent of the maize proteome is influenced by autophagy, even under non-starvation conditions.”

The large, useful “-omics” datasets the researchers produced are published in the paper and can be mined by other scientists to help to develop marker metabolites/proteins that might be used to monitor the nutritional status of the plants in the field.

“Autophagy has a tremendous impact on a multitude of cellular processes that could be exploited to modify the content of lipids, oils, secondary metabolites and proteins for agronomic benefit,” McLoughlin said.

Read more in Nature Plants: Maize multi-omics reveal roles for autophagic recycling in proteome remodelling and lipid turnover (November 26, 2018)

Funding: National Science Foundation (IOS 1329956)

The post Plant’s recycling system important in sickness and in health appeared first on The Source.

A self-professed science geek, Anand Chukka arrived at Washington University in St. Louis eager to prepare for a career in medicine. As a December degree candidate, he has accomplished just that. He majored in biochemistry in Arts & Sciences; conducted medical research in labs in St. Louis, Boston and San Francisco; and serves as co-president of GlobeMed, a student-run nonprofit that addresses health inequities. 

But he also majored in American culture studies in Arts & Sciences, a decision that reaffirmed his passion for medicine and positions him to be a better doctor.

“I have learned that health is not just CRISPR and gene editing,” Chukka said. “It is economic policy and the criminal justice system. It’s housing ordinances and racial policies. My courses in American culture studies taught me to take a more holistic view. I understand now that culture shapes policy and policy shapes health outcomes.”

Chukka is one of a record 425 degree candidates who will be honored at the December Recognition Ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 8, at the Field House. John Drobak, the George Alexander Madill Professor of Real Property and Equity Jurisprudence at the School of Law and professor of economics in Arts & Sciences, will serve as grand marshal. Jim Carrington, president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, will be the guest speaker.

As a physician, Chukka wants to treat patients like the ones he served this past summer as a medical case worker at Southampton Street Shelter, which provides health care for homeless men in Boston. In his role, he did everything from enrolling patients in Medicaid to escorting them to their doctor appointments. The experience left him both heartbroken and hopeful. A patient that he worked with died of a heroin overdose; but others got treatment after Chukka helped enroll them in a methadone program.

“I was turned on to how homelessness, incarceration, poverty, mental illness and substance abuse disorder all intersect and cause a death spiral for a lot of people. Any of these entry points can lead to problems,” said Chukka, a Fox-Clark Civic Scholar with the Gephardt Institute. “But I also saw how effective community health workers can be. Basically, my job was just to make everything smoother. Yes, there are skills involved, but basically anyone can do this so long as they buy into its value. That’s what matters most.”

But before Chukka starts applying to medical school, he plans to spend the spring  semester in St. Louis addressing some of the issues he studied as a student. He will serve as an algebra tutor for Washington University’s Prison Education Project, which offers college courses to inmates of Missouri Eastern Correctional Center in Pacific, Mo., and will work with Close The Workhouse, a coalition that wants to end what it has identified as inhumane and abusive conditions at St. Louis’ Medium Security Institution, commonly known as the Workhouse.

Chukka said he has a stake in St. Louis now that he was taken courses such as “Urban America” and “Culture And Identity: Urban Ethnography In St. Louis” and marched in the protests that followed the Jason Stockley verdict. Stockley is a former police officer acquitted in the shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith. 

“I don’t think I could talk about health inequities if I hadn’t walked Euclid Avenue with my ‘Urban Ethnography’ class or heard from Jason Purnell (associate professor at the Brown School), whose Health Equity Works initiative is working to make St. Louis healthier and more inclusive,” Chukka said. “I’ve learned so much here. Now I want to do something.”

The post How a liberal arts education prepared one grad for medicine appeared first on The Source.

John E. McCarthy, chair and professor of mathematics and statistics, was elected as a fellow of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). McCarthy is the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Mathematics. He has worked at Washington University in St. Louis since 1991.

The society recognized McCarthy for his contributions to operator theory and functions of several complex variables.

McCarthy believes that mathematicians can bring a useful perspective to many areas of science. At Washington University, the number of mathematics and statistics majors has tripled in the past decade. Read more about the department in the Ampersand. 

Sixty-three mathematical scientists from around the world were named AMS fellows for 2018. The Fellows of the American Mathematical Society program recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication and utilization of mathematics.

The post McCarthy elected to American Mathematical Society appeared first on The Source.

Students from Washington University in St. Louis are among the representatives from nearly 200 countries around the world gathered in Poland through Dec. 14 for the latest round of global climate talks. The meetings are focused on the implementation of the 2015 Paris Agreement, and come on the heels of a new U.S. national climate assessment.

Each year since 2011, Washington University has sent a group of both graduate and undergraduate students to attend the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Student delegates closely follow a topic at the conference by attending events, sitting in on negotiations and speaking to diplomats and other students from around the world.

Ten students are participating in this year’s talks, dubbed COP24.

Observers can follow the Washington University delegation on Facebook.com/wustlcop/, including observations shared by students such as Emma Waltman, a senior majoring in biology in Arts & Sciences.

“There are universities in the constituency from all over the world,” Waltman wrote. “It really is incredible to be among ambitious youth like ourselves as we all scramble to navigate our way through the complex world of international climate negotiations.”

At the opening session for COP24, Washington University’s Beth Martin, senior lecturer in environmental studies in Arts & Sciences, delivered a statement on behalf of the Research and Independent Non-governmental Organizations (RINGO), a group that is formally recognized as one of the conference’s major constituents.

“RINGO acts to foster an open, transparent and evidence-based UNFCCC process that welcomes diverse perspectives, and can play a key role in the dialogue between practitioners, scientists and policymakers,” Martin said.

Leading with science was also the focus of a special session on contributions of the research community to climate action. At this session, Martin gave a presentation that highlighted a number of experiential learning courses at Washington University, including a recent greenhouse gas study conducted as part of the university’s Sustainability Exchange program.

Martin highlighted the St. Louis Regional Greenhouse Reduction Commitment, signed in August 2018, that affirms the importance of the greenhouse gas reduction targets in the Paris Agreement — which are aimed at keeping global temperature rise this century below 2 degrees Celsius — and commits to local action to address climate change.

“Regionally we are working to honor the Paris Agreement, and our US commitment to the Paris Agreement,” she said.

The Washington University delegation to COP24 is supported in part by the International Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability (InCEES) and the Environmental Studies Program in Arts & Sciences.

The post Students participate in U.N. global climate summit appeared first on The Source.

Brian E. Blank, associate professor of mathematics and statistics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, died of heart failure Sunday, Dec. 9, 2018, at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. He was 65.

​Blank worked at Washington University in St. Louis for 38 years, starting as an assistant professor in 1980 and continuing as an associate professor since 1986.

Blank’s research interests in mathematics included representations of semisimple Lie groups and harmonic analysis on groups and symmetric spaces. He taught courses in calculus, statistics, analysis and other topics.

“Brian was very conscientious in everything he did,” said John McCarthy, chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. “As chair, I was most grateful that he did the teaching schedule. This not only meant solving the intricate problem each year of assigning instructors to courses (which required endless revisions throughout the spring), but he also assigned himself to teach any course that nobody else wanted to teach.”

Blank was an avid reader, and he contributed many book reviews over the years to the American Mathematical Society’s publication Notices of the AMS. Blank also co-authored several calculus textbooks with his Washington University colleague Steven G. Krantz.

Blank was born in Montreal, Canada, and earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics at McGill University in Montreal. He earned master’s and PhD degrees in mathematics at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

Blank is survived by his wife, Anne-Sophie Blank, a French teacher at Incarnate Word Academy; their children, Andrew Blank, of Columbus, Ohio, and Alexander Blank, of Montreal, Quebec; and his brother Gary Blank, also of Montreal. He was preceded in death by his parents, Louis and Gertrude Blank.

A funeral is planned for 1 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 13, at New Mount Sinai Cemetery at 8430 Gravois Road, St. Louis. Memorial contributions are suggested to St. Louis Children’s Hospital or to the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra.

The post Obituary: Brian E. Blank, professor of mathematics and statistics, 65 appeared first on The Source.

Jeffrey G. Catalano, professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been appointed the next executive editor of Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, the official journal of the Geochemical Society and the Meteoritical Society. His term will  begin Jan. 1.

Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta is a notable scientific journal that publishes research papers on a wide range of subjects in terrestrial geochemistry, meteoritics and planetary geochemistry. It is published 24 times a year by Elsevier Science Ltd.

At Washington University, Catalano’s current research is focused on aqueous geochemistry of terrestrial and planetary systems.

The post Catalano named executive editor of Geochemical Society journal appeared first on The Source.

Brett Wick, professor of mathematics, and three other mathematicians from the U.S., France and Australia, received a Discovery Project award for their collaborative international project, “Harmonic analysis: function spaces and partial differential equations.” Discovery Projects are funded by the Australian Research Council.

Harmonic analysis has been instrumental to several fields of mathematics, including complex analysis and partial differential equations which have many applications in engineering and technology. This project aims to solve a number of important problems at the frontier of harmonic analysis on metric measure spaces, as well as to develop new approaches and techniques for research in harmonic analysis and related topics.

Wick’s collaborators include Xuan Duong of Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia), Steve Hoffmann of the University of Missouri, and El Maati Ouhabaz of the University of Bordeaux (France). The project’s funding is more than $286,000 over the next three years.

The post Wick’s math collaboration wins international support appeared first on The Source.

Washington University in St. Louis seniors — tops in smarts, service and . . . sugar.

For the second straight year, a senior has won first prize in the annual St. Louis Post-Dispatch Holiday Cookie Contest. Last year, Cole Warner wowed judges with his pumpkin-white chocolate chip snickerdoodles. And this year, Gabbie Eyler is the People’s Choice winner for her chocolate turtle cookies, a chocolate sugar cookie rolled in toasted pecans and drizzled with chocolate and caramel.

Eyler started baking as a little girl. Her mother, Amy Eyler, associate professor of public health at the Brown School, would lift her onto the kitchen counter and let her mix in the ingredients for their chocolate chip cookies.

“She would always let me help and never got mad at me if I made a mistake,” Eyler recalled. “Baking became a special thing we would do together.”

Eyler stepped up her baking in college. She finds the ritual a great way to relieve stress and bring joy to family and friends. And, yes, maybe it offers an excuse to put off studying.

“I was reading an article in The New York Times about ‘procrastibaking’ and I was like, ‘Yep, that sounds about right,” said Eyler, who is majoring psychology in Arts & Sciences and plans to become an occupational therapist.

Eyler posts photos of her delicacies on her Instagram feed, @gabzgoodz. Current featured sweets include a double-layer chocolate cake with ganache, a strawberry-rhubarb tart and several varieties of her latest baking obsession, French macarons. The more challenging the recipe, the better.

“I tend to be a bit of perfectionist, which helps with recipes like the macarons,” Eyler said. “People can be intimidated by baking but I feel like I’m in my flow when I’m in the kitchen.”

Eyler rarely indulges in her own creations as she prefers salty to sweet. Instead, she gives them as host gifts or brings them to the hot yoga studio where she works. Don’t tell the instructors, but each turtle cookie packs 256 calories. 

“Everything is OK in moderation,” Eyler said. “That’s my public health mother in me.”

Chocolate Turtle Cookies

The post Washington University senior wins cookie contest appeared first on The Source.

Graduate student and McDonnell International Scholars Academy scholar Po-Cheng Lin delivered the winning presentation at the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition held at the McDonnell Academy’s 7th International Symposium in Beijing.

Lin is a fourth-year graduate student in energy, environmental and chemical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science. As one of five finalists competing in the 3MT at the symposium co-hosted by Tsinghua University and Washington University, he won both the 3MT Judges’ and People’s Choice Prizes.

Lin is doing his thesis work in the lab of Himadri Pakrasi, professor in the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences and director of the International Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability. He is being co-advised by Fuzhong Zhang, associate professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering.

Visit the biology department website to view a video of Lin’s winning presentation and to read more about the competition.

The post McDonnell Scholar wins Three Minute Thesis competition appeared first on The Source.

If you’ve been to your neighborhood farmers market or seen a small “local” section pop up in your grocery store, you may have noticed a trend: People want to know where their food is coming from, and the agricultural industry is responding. The number of farmers markets in the U.S. has skyrocketed in recent years, but with an aging population of farmers, who’s supporting this growth?

Enter the new American farmer, a term used to describe a movement of younger people new to agricultural work who do it for different reasons than the conventional farmer. It’s a phrase used by Andrew Flachs, who recently earned his PhD in anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

In a new paper in the journal Rural Sociology, Flachs and Matthew Abel, a graduate student in sociocultural anthropology at Washington University, show how a new breed of American farmers are being drawn to the field by factors such as higher education, personal politics, disenchantment with urban life and the search for an authentic rural identity.

Flachs and Abel’s research identifies several hot spots where this movement is taking shape: the West Coast, central Texas and Oklahoma, central Florida and the Great Lakes region.

“We’re seeing these hot spots pop up in the peripheries of hip cities,” Flachs said. “Some of these places might seem obvious, like the West Coast and the northern Midwest around Madison, the Twin Cities and Chicago. But we also see some things that aren’t totally expected.”

Among the unexpected trends he found are that east Texas and the southern Midwest are becoming increasingly important for this kind of agriculture. Appalachia, which has historically been a hub, essentially disappeared from the map.

Flachs, who earned his doctorate from Washington University in 2016, spent the following year as a Volkswagen Foundation Exchange Postdoctoral Fellow with the Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies at Heidelberg University in Germany. He is now an assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University.

Both Flachs and Abel have been advised by Glenn Davis Stone, professor of anthropology and environmental studies in Arts & Sciences, whose research focuses on ecological, political and cultural aspects of agriculture, including sustainability, crop biotechnology and GMOs. While the term “new American farmer” has been around for awhile, our understanding of who fits that description has been evolving, Stone said.

“It is well known that alternative food production has surged in recent years, but we have a long way to go to understand what drives this new form of farming and how it varies across the country,” Stone said. “In this article, Flachs and Abel do a thoughtful job of making sense of the ‘new agrarianism’ and demonstrate fascinating patterning of hot spots and cold spots.”

Stone  also is a faculty lead for the food studies focus in anthropology and the Agri-Food Workshop, an interdisciplinary program for faculty and students with an interest in food-related studies. He said interest in food studies has been growing steadily around campus and especially so within anthropology.

“Although we certainly have not lost our interest in cultural variation around the world, this department has developed a remarkably strong research focus on our own backyard, including new forms of farming, wild resource collecting and foodways in North America,” Stone said.

In this study, Flachs and Abel build a model that counts how many traits associated with new American agrarianism appear in reports filed by counties across the nation. With agricultural census data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1997-2012, they considered factors such as average sales per farm; number of certified organic farms; owners under age 34; number of farms selling directly to individuals; proximity to farmers markets and more.

The findings show that newer farmers appear to thrive on the outskirts of cities that provide high demand and purchasing power, a large population and a healthy number of farmers markets.

“St. Louis is unfortunately out of a model like this that looks at national-level trends,” Flach said, “because it is surrounded by commodity agriculture in the Mississippi River Valley. However, Franklin County is relatively high scoring in our model, which makes sense as many of those farmers likely sell in St. Louis.”

The price of real estate is another important factor in determining where these markets can flourish. Rural developers have steadily increased farm real estate over the past few decades, which could deter newer farmers from settling down there. Concentrations of urban wealth drive up real estate costs in the city while simultaneously creating new niche markets, making space for younger farmers to exist between urban and rural landscapes.

Identifying where new and small farmers live and work will pave the way for further research on what’s motivating this budding sector of the agricultural economy. New American farmers occupy an important intersection of niche marketing strategies, environmental politics and rural demographic change that could have a significant impact on food production and social life in agrarian landscapes, according to the paper.

Flachs points out that many new American farmers approach agriculture with hopes to embody a nostalgic past where food and environments were healthier, but others may be simply trying to make a living as farmers amid dissatisfaction with conventional agribusiness. Although it’s easy to stereotype, it’s unlikely that all new American farmers fit this description.

“Sometimes, when we think about these farmers, we picture young people with liberal arts degrees looking for some kind of connection to the earth or wanting to work with their hands,” Flachs said. “What we found is that that’s probably not the most representative view of who these people actually are. I’m glad to have my stereotype broken up by the data.”

This story is based on material contained in a news release issued by Purdue University. The research was funded by Purdue, Washington University in St. Louis and the Volkswagen Foundation. Flachs can be reached at 765-494-2774 or aflachs@purdue.edu.

The post Young, hip farmers: Coming to a city near you appeared first on The Source.

Andrew Rehfeld, associate professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis, has been elected the 13th president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) following a national search to fill the role. Rehfeld, who also serves as president and chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis, has been a member of the Washington University faculty since 2001 and has served as director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Political Science and as a residential faculty fellow, among other leadership roles.

“Andrew Rehfeld is an outstanding leader,” said Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. “I have known him both as a distinguished academician at Washington University and as the leader of the Jewish Federation in St. Louis. He is a person of high integrity, is an articulate and compelling communicator, and works well with people at all levels. His leadership has had a positive impact on Washington University and on the entire St. Louis community and beyond. Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion has chosen its 13th President wisely, and I look forward to following the contributions of Dr. Rehfeld as he advances the mission of the College-Institute.”

“During his 17-year tenure at Washington University, Andrew was a dedicated faculty member in political science and law, but perhaps more importantly, he played an integral role in forging relationships between the university and the local Jewish community; cultivating a sense of community among our Jewish students, faculty and staff; and fostering inter-religious dialogue across campus,” said Andrew D. Martin, chancellor-designate at Washington University. “While we are devastated to see him leave the Washington University and St. Louis communities, we are thrilled to see him take this next step, and are honored he devoted 17 years in service to the university.”

Read full HUC-JIR announcement

The post Rehfeld elected president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion appeared first on The Source.

The eye of the tiger is flying high above Antarctica once again.

Washington University in St. Louis announced that its SuperTIGER (Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder) instrument, which studies the origin of cosmic rays, successfully launched today from Williams Field at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

Cosmic rays are high-energy particles from beyond the solar system that are constantly bombarding the Earth through its atmosphere. SuperTIGER is designed to measure the rare heavy elements in cosmic rays that hold clues about where these particles are produced elsewhere in the Milky Way — and also might help explain how these energetic particles are accelerated to attain a speed that is close to the speed of light.

SuperTIGER is a collaboration among Washington University, Goddard Space Flight Center, California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Minnesota.

“This is a study of stubbornness and persistence,” said Brian Rauch, research assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University and principal investigator for SuperTIGER. The successful launch of SuperTIGER followed an entire 2017-2018 flight season stranded on the ice due to persistently uncooperative weather, as well as one previous launch attempt during December 2018.

The SuperTIGER instrument is carried aloft by a giant scientific balloon that flies at a maximum height of about 127,000 feet — nearly four times the typical cruising altitude of commercial airliners. At this height, the detectors on SuperTIGER fly above 99.5 percent of the atmosphere on Earth.

The instrument has flown once before: from December 2012 to January 2013, SuperTIGER made about 2.7 revolutions around the South Pole.

“The previous flight of SuperTIGER lasted 55 days, setting a record for the longest flight of any heavy-lift scientific balloon,” said Robert Binns, research professor of physics at Washington University who led the previous SuperTIGER effort in an interview with NASA last year. “The time aloft translated into a long exposure, which is important because the particles we’re after make up only a tiny fraction of cosmic rays.”

Data collected during the 2018 flight will be used to test emerging models of cosmic-ray origins in clumps of hot, massive and relatively short-lived stars known as OB associations, as well as testing models for determining which particles will be accelerated from such associations.

Scientific research balloons are launched in December and January because the sun never sets over Antarctica during these months. Constant sunlight keeps the helium in the balloons at a consistent temperature, ensuring that balloons are able to maintain a high altitude. Circular winds over Antarctica also tend to confine the balloons to the continent over extended periods of time.

Image: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Individuals who are interested in following SuperTIGER as the flight progresses can follow along on the Washington University team’s Twitter account, @SuperTigerLDB, or by following the Twitter handle @NASA.

The balloon that carries SuperTIGER is also transporting three, smaller experimental devices that are piggybacked onto its core scientific payload. This includes one experiment developed by Alex Meshik, research professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, to help solve a longstanding “xenon paradox.”

Washington University is also leading a second, high-energy physics balloon mission that is slated to launch in the next available window of good weather. X-Calibur will study X-ray binaries, systems where neutron stars and black holes each orbit a star.

The post Cosmic ray telescope launches from Antarctica appeared first on The Source.

Milica Banjanin, professor emerita of comparative literature in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, died Sunday, Dec. 9, 2018, shortly before her 80^th birthday.

Born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia), Banjanin immigrated to the United States in 1956 at the age of 17, living initially in New York but subsequently moving to St. Louis, where she obtained her bachelor’s degree from Washington University in 1961. She then earned a master’s degree from Columbia University, in 1963, and the following year returned to Washington University as an instructor in Russian.

In 1970, after completing her doctorate in comparative literature, Banjanin was promoted to assistant professor of Russian and became associate professor in 1976. She served on more than a dozen university committees, including the Faculty Council and the Committee for the Humanities, which she chaired in 1973. In 1986, she was appointed chair of Russian, a position she held until retiring in 2006.

An authority on 20th-century Russian culture and literature, Banjanin wrote numerous articles and book chapters. She received many honors during her career, including grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the International Research and Exchange Board and the Fulbright-Hays Program.

After retiring, she and Stanko Banjanin, her husband of 55 years, continued to host lively salon-style gatherings at their home in Clayton, with the discussions often carrying on until late in the evening.

A memorial will be held Feb. 17 at Washington University’s Whittemore House, 6440 Forsyth Blvd. In lieu of flowers, donations are suggested to the university’s Eliot Society or to the American Lung Association.

The post Obituary: Milica Banjanin, professor emerita, 79 appeared first on The Source.

Margaret Garb, professor of history in Arts & Sciences and co-director of the Washington University Prison Education Project (PEP), died Saturday, Dec. 15, 2018, after a long battle with cancer. She was 56.

An internationally recognized scholar of race and urban history, Garb was born in Trenton, N.J., and raised in an 18th-century farmhouse in Buckingham Township, Pa. Her father, who served as Bucks County president judge, was passionate about prison reform, especially for young offenders; her mother was a reproductive rights activist.

Garb studied at the Cordon Bleu in Paris before earning her bachelor’s degree in comparative religion from the University of Vermont. She then covered the police beat as a reporter in Chicago and later wrote for The New York Times and In These Times, among others.

Garb earned her master’s degree in history from the University of California, San Diego, and her doctorate from Columbia University in New York, where she studied with Eric Foner.

She joined the Washington University faculty in 2001, teaching courses on the American city and the history of poverty and social reform. Her numerous publications include the books “City of American Dreams: A History of Home Ownership and Housing Reform, Chicago 1871-1919” (2005) and “Freedom’s Ballot: African-American Political Struggles in Chicago from Abolition to the Great Migration” (2014).

Garb established PEP with Robert Henke, professor of drama, in 2014, thanks to a three-year grant from the Bard Prison Initiative. “As a teacher, I’ve spent years training and gaining certain kinds of skills,” she observed at the time. “It seemed worthwhile to think about how to use those skills most effectively to improve the society we live in.”

Today, PEP receives ongoing support from the Office of the Provost and is the only program of its kind nationally to be fully funded by its university. Courses have grown from two per semester to 17 during the 2018-19 academic year. The first PEP graduation ceremony will take place in May.

“Maggie was one of the most inspiring people I have ever met,” Henke said. “She was — and really still is — the heart and soul of the project. Our program will always be identified with her and her spirit.”

Garb recently held fellowships at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Collegium de Lyon in France. She also won a Fulbright Fellowship to study in the Philippines, though her illness prevented her from going. Last spring, she was featured on C-SPAN’s “Lectures in History” program, discussing the birth of the skyscraper.

Garb is survived by her husband, Mark Pegg, also a professor of history; a daughter, Eva Garb; and siblings, Emily and Charles Garb.

Memorial contributions may be made in Garb’s name to the Department of History. To do so, visit gifts.wustl.edu and enter “In memory of Margaret Garb” in the “Special instructions” field.

The post Obituary: Margaret Garb, professor of history, 56 appeared first on The Source.

In 1963, as public school desegregation battles raged across the South, three of the nation’s most prominent black leaders — Martin Luther King Jr., Julian Bond and Ralph Abernathy — quietly sought to enroll their own children in several of Atlanta’s most prestigious private schools, elite K-12 institutions, which, until then, had managed to remain all white.

“Our sole purpose in making application,” King stated at the time, “for our son, Martin III, was a sincere attempt to secure for him the best possible secondary education. This was not meant to be any sort of a test case, though we do desire for our son the experience of integrated schooling.”

While King may not have intended the application to be a test case, the school’s decision to deny admission would bring added momentum to forces pushing for the desegregation of elite private schools in Atlanta and elsewhere, suggests Washington University in St. Louis’ Michelle A. Purdy, author of a new book on the young blacks who broke the color barrier at the South’s most prestigious private schools.

The stories of these first black students remain important, Purdy argues, because lessons learned through their experiences are precursors to present efforts to foster diversity and inclusion within private schools and universities.

“In some ways, the book captures the mixing of worlds at a pivotal time in U.S. history because the mixing occurred both voluntarily and, in some ways, involuntarily,” said Purdy, assistant professor of education in Arts & Sciences. “It explores issues of race and identity, diversity and inclusion, education and equity that are as important now as they were then.”

While many historians have explored the bitter court-ordered desegregation of public schools following the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the equally dramatic story of the voluntary desegregation of prestigious, traditionally white, private schools remains largely untold.

Purdy’s book, “Transforming The Elite: Black Students and the Desegregation of Private Schools” (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), sets out to fill that void.

Focusing on the experiences of the first black students to desegregate Atlanta’s well-known The Westminster Schools, the book combines social history with policy analysis to recreate this overlooked history. It explores the political and social forces (and threats to tax-exemption) that led these schools to “voluntarily” embrace desegregation during the late 1960s and early 1970s, even as court-ordered desegregation was being bitterly contested in public schools.

Based on archival research and first-person interviews with former students, Purdy explains how and why elite private schools chose to embrace more black students and how that decision shaped the lives of the young black students who navigated entrenched racism on both institutional and personal levels.

While Westminster was not the first private school to desegregate, it was one of the first nationally recognized schools to face the desegregation challenge in the South. Its prestige and its location in Atlanta set the stage for it to become an influential national leader in private school desegregation.

With a sprawling 180-acre suburban campus and now one of the largest private school endowments in the nation, Westminster long has been an attractive option for Southern families who did not want to send their children to more established boarding schools in the Northeast. Located among luxurious homes in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood, the campus was distinguished by its white columns, grand double staircases and vaulted ceilings.

In the early 1960s, Atlanta was itself struggling to establish a new identity. Headquarters to huge corporations such as Coca-Cola, the city billed itself as the “unofficial capital of the New South” and “the city too busy to hate.” Atlanta was eager to avoid the violence that had marred desegregation efforts in other cities, but its culture remained rooted in white Southern traditions.

For King, Bond and Abernathy, all residents of Atlanta and leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Council in 1963, their efforts to break the private school color barrier ended with mixed results.

Breaking the barrier

Martin Luther King III was denied access to Atlanta’s Lovett School, causing a rift that led the school to sever its ties with the Episcopal Church, an early proponent of integration. Abernathy’s daughter was unable to pass the admission test to Atlanta’s Trinity private school, but Bond’s daughters were eventually accepted for enrollment there in the spring of 1963.

At Westminster, the color barrier would be broken not by the children of prominent black civil rights leaders, but by a small band of young black men and women from middle-class families who began there in the fall of 1967: Bill Billings, Dawn Clark, Isaac Clark, Janice Kemp, Michael McBay, Jannard Wade and Wanda Ward.

Most of the “fearless firsts” came from families with well-educated parents, including some that worked as teachers at local black colleges and schools. The products of strong education in Atlanta’s segregated black elementary schools, several had scored well enough on admissions tests to be offered scholarships from the Stouffer Foundation, a fund started by a Reynolds tobacco heir to support the education of young black men.

While Westminster opened its doors to black students, some white students were less than welcoming.

On his first day, McBay was forced to hide in the bathroom after being teased and harassed by a group of white students he believed to be football players. Other white students made a habit of putting the empty exoskeletons of emerged locusts (cicadas) in his hair, laughing when he had difficulty removing them from his afro.

The first black students arrived in an atmosphere still dominated by white Southern traditions, including a fall dance in which the school was decorated as a plantation and male students encouraged to dress in Confederate uniforms. The school’s annual Christmas Fund Drive included a slave auction fundraiser.

When the school decided to desegregate its women’s dormitory for the first time in 1970, it told white students to arrive a day early so they could be warned that two black girls would soon join their ranks. The black girls “were different,” they were told, but they should not be “afraid.”

Still, the school’s administration, at times, did its best to make institutional changes to support the desegregation process. It fired the school’s football coach after he used a racial slur to urge the team, including Wade, its first black player, to work harder.

Black students also had strong support from black staff at the school, including the president’s assistant who volunteered to drive Ward across town to southwest Atlanta. Willie Harris, the school’s black athletic trainer and bus driver, was a strong supporter of Wade and other black athletes at the school.

Years later, Purdy interviewed some of the school’s first black students, documenting how they went on to attend top-notch universities and build successful careers.

Dawn Clark enrolled at St. Andrews University and later earned an MBA from the University of Tennessee. McBay, Wade and Ward enrolled at Stanford University, Morehouse College, and Princeton University, respectively.

McBay later earned his medical degree from the University of California, Los Angeles and trained in emergency medicine nearby at King/Drew Medical Center. Ward earned a doctoral degree at Stanford and taught at the University of Oklahoma before launching a long career at the National Science Foundation.

Although she was not interviewed for the book, another early graduate, Lisa Michelle Borders, would attend Duke University and eventually become vice president of global affairs at Coca-Cola. Borders also was  president of the Women’s National Basketball Association and of the Atlanta City Council.

“The first black students graduated from Westminster having courageously navigated the school’s racist and paradoxical school climate by excelling inside and outside the classroom,” Purdy concludes. “These students relied on their own educational experiences in mostly segregated black schools, their talents inside and outside of the classrooms, their work ethic, their families and communities, and the efforts of particular white and black individuals at Westminster.”

The post How color barrier fell at South’s elite private schools appeared first on The Source.

There is no secret to happiness, but there is a science to it, says Tim Bono, a psychology lecturer in Arts & Sciences who teaches courses on happiness at  Washington University in St. Louis.

In his recent book, “When Likes Aren’t Enough: A Crash Course in the Science of Happiness,” Bono explores how the often overlooked details of day-to-day life can have a sizeable influence on our personal sense of well-being and happiness.

Based on his own research and other scientific studies, Bono offers the following tips for getting and staying happier in the coming year:

Get outside, move around, take a walk. Research confirms that a few minutes of exercise in nature can boost both mood and energy levels. Exercise is key to our psychological health because it releases the brain’s “feel good” chemicals.

Get more happiness for your money. Studies show little connection between wealth and happiness, but there are two ways to get more bang for your happiness buck — buy experiences instead of things and spend your money on others. The enjoyment one gets from an experience like a vacation or concert will far outweigh and outlast the happiness from acquiring another material possession. Doing good things for other people strengthens our social connections, which is foundational to our well-being.

Carve out time to be happy, then give it away. People dream of finding an extra 30 minutes to do something nice for themselves, but using that time to help someone else is more rewarding and actually leaves us feeling empowered to tackle the next project, helping us feel more in control of our lives and even less pressed for time. This translates to higher levels of happiness and satisfaction.

Delay the positive, dispatch the negative. Anticipation itself is pleasurable, and looking forward to an enjoyable experience can make it all that much sweeter. Wait a couple of days before seeing a new movie that just came out, plan your big vacation for later in the summer and try to take time to savor each bite of dessert. On the flip side, get negative tasks out of the way as quickly as possible — anticipation will only make them seem worse.

Enjoy the ride. People who focus more on process than outcome tend to remain motivated in the face of setbacks. They’re better at sticking with major challenges and prefer them over the easy route. This “growth mindset” helps people stay energized because it celebrates rewards that come from the work itself. Focusing only on the outcome can lead to premature burnout if things don’t go well.

Embrace failure. How we think about failure determines whether it makes us happy or sad. People who overcome adversity do better in life because they learn to cope with challenges. Failure is a great teacher, helping us realize what doesn’t work so we can make changes for the better. As IBM CEO Thomas Watson once said, “If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.”

Sweet dreams. Get a full night’s sleep on a regular basis. Our brains are doing a lot of important work while we sleep, including strengthening neural circuits that enhance mental acuity and help us to regulate our moods when we are awake. Sleep deprivation can lead to cognitive impairment similar to that of intoxication, and often is the prelude to an ill-tempered day.

Strengthen your willpower muscles.  Just like exercising arm muscles strengthens our capacity to lift heavy things, exercising willpower muscles in small, everyday behaviors strengthens our ability to stay focused at work. Resist the temptation to check the cellphone for new text messages or emails while walking somewhere, or resist the temptation to get the candy bar when in the checkout line at the grocery store. That will allow  willpower muscles to become stronger and, in turn, resistant to temptations that could sidetrack us in other aspects of our lives.

Introduce variety into your day-to-day activities. Human beings are attracted to novelty, and we can get bored if we have to do the same thing over and over. Changing things up every once in a while by taking on new projects, or by doing the same task but with music in the background, or by interacting with different people, can be one way to introduce variety and remain motivated to complete a task.

Stop comparing yourself to others. It’s hard to avoid tuning into what everyone else is doing, who just got the latest raise or promotion, or who’s moving into a new house or going on a fancy vacation. But social comparison is one of the biggest barriers to our overall happiness and motivation. Redirecting attention to our own internal standards for success and making progress based on what’s realistic for us — instead of getting caught up in how we measure up to others — can go a long way for our psychological health and productivity.

Reach out and connect with someone. Nothing is more important for our psychological health than high-quality friendships. Find an activity that allows you to get together with friends on a regular, ongoing basis. A weekly happy hour, poker night or TV show ensures consistency and momentum in your social interactions. People with high-quality relationships are not only happier, they’re also healthier. They recover from illnesses more quickly, live longer and enjoy more enriched lives.

Limit time on social media. Facebook and Instagram often exaggerate how much better off others are compared with how we might feel about ourselves at the moment. Many studies have shown that too much time spent on social media usually is associated with lower levels of self-esteem, optimism and motivation while leaving people feeling — ironically enough — less socially connected to others.

Use your phone in the way phones were originally intended. The next time you are tempted to use your phone to scroll through social media, scroll through your list of contacts instead. Find someone to call or FaceTime. The happiness you derive from an authentic connection with another person will be far greater than any comments or likes you get on social media.

Practice gratitude. It’s easy to get bogged down with life’s inevitable hassles, so make an effort to direct attention to things that are still going well. On the way home from work, fill the time that could go toward ruminating over bad parts of your day with the things that went well. Study after study has shown gratitude to be one of the simplest yet most robust ways to increase psychological well-being.

And here are a few tips on how to actually make those New Year’s resolutions stick…

Identify an important reason why you are resolving to change something in your life (e.g., “I’m doing it for my kids” or “This is to improve my overall health”). Research shows that reminding yourself of how your daily behaviors fit into big-picture goals will keep you motivated to stay on track.

Acknowledge potential barriers that might get in the way of implementing your goals (you might get lazy, tired, forget or be lured away by another temptation), and then identify contingency plans for how you will respond in those moments: “When I start getting distracted in the middle of a big work project, I’ll give myself a quick break and then remind myself how rewarding it will feel to be finished with it.” Better yet, select environments that are free from distractions altogether. If you know you’re always tempted to surf the web while completing work, take your laptop to a place where there’s no wifi and leave your phone behind.

Set specific dates and times when you will incorporate the behavior — when you make a schedule for new behaviors you’d like to incorporate into your life, they require less psychological strength to implement. When you get in the habit of running every Tuesday and Thursday morning, the behavior becomes much easier to initiate because it simply becomes part of your routine, like brushing your teeth or taking the dog on a walk.

Make your goals measurable, break them up into smaller sub-goals, and the reward yourself each time you hit a particular milestone.  If your goal is to lose 50 pounds in the new year, treat yourself to a movie or other fun outing for each five pounds you lose.

The post Science-based tips for a better, happier New Year appeared first on The Source.