The University of Massachusetts Amherst, founded in 1863, is the flagship of the five-campus UMass system. Home to the Commonwealth Honors College, UMass Amherst incorporates modern teaching methods involving new communication and information technology, yet remains an immersive, residential campus serving more than 22,000 undergraduate and approximately 6,300 graduate students across a comprehensive array of academic programs.
True to its land-grant roots, UMass Amherst is engaged in research and creative work in all fields and is classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a doctoral university with the “highest research activity” or R1. Major areas of emphasis include climate science, food science, alternative energy, nanomanufacturing, polymer science, computer science and linguistics.
Together, students and faculty are deeply engaged in collaboration with communities — both regional and international — to improve their social and economic conditions.
Citizens and activists are using cheap off-the-shelf sensors to collect their own data on air pollution. It’s a promising trend, but these devices have serious technical limitations.
Protestors chant after a rally.
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
A survey of voters shows white racial identity is on the rise. Psychologists explain how it’s affecting the presidential election and how it will change American politics of the future.
Solar jobs now outnumber coal jobs in U.S. Is that reason enough for government policies to promote clean energy?
Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
Will government policy to promote clean energy be disastrous or a boon? A close look at the 2009 stimulus, which plowed $90 billion into energy, can tell us a lot.
What do you need to know about test score reports?
Mother image via www.shutterstock.com
De récents travaux montrent que les masques antipollution portés dans les grandes villes des pays en voie de développement n’offrent que très peu de protection contre les particules fines.
Face masks like these, modeled by students from the Peltier Aerosol Lab, vary widely in effectiveness against fine particle pollution.
Richard E. Peltier
Inexpensive cloth face masks, worn by many people in heavily polluted countries, offer only partial protection. Instead governments should warn people to avoid exposure and work to clear the air.
Piccadilly Circus plongé dans le « grand smog de Londres » en 1952.
Wikipédia
Une étude sur le grand smog qui frappa Londres en 1952 montre que l’exposition précoce à la pollution de l’air permet l’apparition ultérieure de crises d’asthme.
Why scholars need to talk about their research with the lay public.
AIDSVaccine
The American Sociological Association is starting a conversation to include “public communication” – work often largely ignored – in the assessment of a scholar’s contributions. Why does it matter?
Piccadilly Circus in smog, 1952.
Unknown photographer/Wikipedia
Data from London’s Great Smog of 1952 show that air pollution exposure in early life leads to striking increases in asthma rates. Millions in the developing world face similar risks today.
Victorian-era, middle-class black women who loved to read and write didn’t have many role models.
Jeffrey Green
When biographer Gretchen Gerzina came across an old British newspaper article calling Sarah E. Farro “the first negro novelist,” she wondered: who was Farro, and why had she been lost to history?
A bathroom in a Los Angeles school is marked for all genders.
REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
New White House guidelines on sex discrimination have caused backlash in some states and school districts. But it won’t last, according to researcher at UMass Amherst.
This clay facial reconstruction of Kennewick Man, carefully sculpted around the morphological features of his skull, suggests how he may have looked alive nearly 9,000 years ago.
Brittney Tatchell, Smithsonian Institution
A 9,000-year-old skeleton became a high-profile and highly contested case for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. How do we respectfully deal with ancient human remains?
Lorde performs at the Austin City Limits music festival.
Wikimedia Commons/Ralph Aversen
You don’t have to be a physician or anatomist to be curious about how bodies work. Exhibits of dead human specimens have been around for quite a while – capitalizing on our fascination with death.
A early chest, belonging to Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of The Bodleian Library at Oxford Unviersity.
mira66
Sex education in American classrooms tends to focus on physical acts, disease and pregnancy. It provides little support to teenage boys for their need for emotional intimacy.
The Free Syrian Army standing lookout.
Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters
On February 11 a Syrian ceasefire was signed in Munich. Few are optimistic it will hold. Why? Because, argues one Middle Eastern scholar, world leaders are ignoring key realities.
Public interest and peer pressure among countries are integral to enforcement of the Paris Agreement.
Mal Langsdon/Reuters
The Paris Agreement recognizes the reality of global environmental pacts: the private sector must lead transition to low-carbon technology and civil society must keep up the pressure to act.