Palestinian Artist Reflects Homeland’s Struggles
Arab American News – January 27, 2017
Visual artist Manal Deeb uses her Palestinian heritage as a basis for her artwork— uncovering the many struggles of Palestinians while integrating Arabic calligraphy to show the influence culture and religion has on their lives. “My artwork presents a twist to modern art through a combination of digital art and calligraphy,” Deeb told The AANews. “[It] not only portrays the barriers and endless struggles Palestinians experience on a daily basis… One can say that [it] echoes the voice of the people. It shakes the walls and the stiff shackles that society imposes on minorities and gender roles. My use of calligraphy allows me to incorporate culture, language and religion and their impact on society.” Deeb studied studio arts at the University of Illinois in Chicago and received her bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in psychology of art from George Mason University in Virginia. Her interest in psychology stemmed from the relief art had given her, as she did not have to speak— her art spoke for her.
From Robotics to SynBio: Imperial College London will Open Brand New Hackspaces
Labiotech – February 6, 2017
Imperial College London has a history of fostering the translation of research into products, mainly through its commercialization and investment partner Imperial Innovations. Now, the university has announced plans to invest £5M in the creation of new interdisciplinary hackspaces, including a space exclusively dedicated to molecular sciences and an entire building in its White City Campus to inventions created by a community of staff, students, alumni and commercial partners. The new hackspace, which will open at The Invention Rooms, will provide access to commercial prototyping resources and unique technology created at Imperial that isn’t commercially available yet. The facilities will cover projects ranging from robotics to synthetic biology and molecular fabrication.
Collaboration between Doctors, Artists Could Improve Care
The Cavalier Daily – February 6, 2017
The Medical Center Hour’s annual Moore Lecture featured Jay Baruch, an associate professor of emergency medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University, last Wednesday. Baruch stressed the necessity of interdisciplinary expertise when approaching the uncertainty and ambiguity associated with modern day medicine — specifically expressing the importance of inter-professional collaborations with artists, writers and humanities scholars. The complex medical needs of patients only increases as time progresses, program moderator and Assoc. Prof. of Medical Humanities Marcia Day Childress said. As sheer factual knowledge fails to satisfy these challenges, healthcare providers must think creatively. “Future physicians must also possess the skills of a creative artist, because for many doctors on the clinical frontline, medicine is actually a science-using creative act, an enterprise which deeply engages one with the uncertainty, ambiguity and even mystery of the world we live in,” Childress said.
Caltech and The Huntington Library Partner, Bringing Together Multidisciplinary Researchers
Pasadena Now – February 7, 2017
Caltech and The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens are barely a mile apart and have long served as twin anchors of Pasadena’s intellectual and cultural life. Indeed, Caltech co-founder George Ellery Hale played a key role in the establishment of both institutions and believed keenly in the value of humanities instruction for science and technology students. It’s fitting, then, that over the years these two institutions have partnered and benefited from each other’s intellectual and scholarly resources. The most recent of these efforts, the Caltech-Huntington Humanities Collaborations (CHHC), launched in the fall of 2016, brings scholars together again across the institutions for a series of two-year multidisciplinary research modules, under the overall direction of Caltech professor of English and dean of undergraduate students Kevin Gilmartin and Steve Hindle, W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research at The Huntington. Violence and Order Past and Present,” the theme chosen for the 2016–2018 module, looks at the roles violence has played in political and social order as well as the customs and cultural attitudes that have governed its use.
How Walking in Nature Changes the Brain
The New York Times – July 22, 2015
A walk in the park may soothe the mind and, in the process, change the workings of our brains in ways that improve our mental health, according to an interesting new study of the physical effects on the brain of visiting nature. Most of us today live in cities and spend far less time outside in green, natural spaces than people did several generations ago. City dwellers also have a higher risk for anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses than people living outside urban centers, studies show. But just how a visit to a park or other green space might alter mood has been unclear. Does experiencing nature actually change our brains in some way that affects our emotional health? That possibility intrigued Gregory Bratman, a graduate student at the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford University, who has been studying the psychological effects of urban living. In an earlier study published last month, he and his colleagues found that volunteers who walked briefly through a lush, green portion of the Stanford campus were more attentive and happier afterward than volunteers who strolled for the same amount of time near heavy traffic.
