A healthy athlete dies of complications from heatstroke during training. The medical examiner finds a legal botanical dietary supplement played a “significant role” in the death. How are regulatory agencies able to respond? What are dietary supplements and how are they regulated in the United States? How do I find information about dietary supplements I want to take? Continue reading “Dietary Supplements: Stories of Regulation, Safety, and Evidence”

Aaron Freeman dives in with Brian Murphy, Ph.D., to get to the bottom of antibiotic hunting in our waters. The program will take place at the Radler on Tuesday, July 11. Take a watch and join us live at the program.

Antarctica is the coldest, highest and driest of all seven continents. It is one and a half times the areal size of the continental United States, with the vast majority of its landmass covered in thick ice sheets.

Continue reading “Extreme Science: The U.S. Antarctic Program”

The arts provide a key avenue of insight into ancient human behavior and symbolic evolution. In this lecture we will review some of the evidence and analysis of how our ancestors of the later Ice Age used the material and visual world to create meanings, to develop and solidify social relationships, and to become “effective world settlers.” The scope of what we call “Paleolithic art” will be a focus because it is such a well-preserved collection of material and so many new and exciting ways of studying it have developed over the past years. Continue reading “Making Things Meaningful in the Ice Age”

Robbert Dijkgraaf, Institute for Advanced Study Director and Leon Levy Professor, will discuss the re-publication of “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge” (Princeton University Press), which features IAS Founding Director Abraham Flexner’s classic essay of the same title, first published in Harper’s magazine in 1939. Continue reading “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge”