All Reviews Archives - Princeton Insights

August 23, 2023August 23, 2023

With a high cackle and a scold: how an avian alarm system changed our understanding of animal communication

Review written by Natalie Wong (2025, EEB)

The question of what drives animals to cooperate with one other is a compelling one. After all, such behavior contradicts the notion lodged in popular imagination that nature is dominated by ruthless Darwinian battles among feral creatures. Yet, these instances of cooperation serve as a reminder that looking out for others is not limited to the Homo sapiens realm. Several explanations for cooperation in social animals exist, but perhaps the most well-established is kin selection: the idea that organisms can indirectly boost their own fitness by performing actions that help ensure the survival of those with whom they share genetic information.

August 9, 2023August 9, 2023

Belayer: Modeling Layered Tissues in Spatial Transcriptomics

Review by Tamjeed Azad (COS, G1)

All the marvelous biology we see, from the smallest bugs to the largest trees, is driven by behavior, function, and characteristics of individual cells. The activity of these cells is driven by molecules called proteins, and different cells derive their different characteristics by which specific proteins they use to carry out necessary biological processes. The proteins that are built within cells are determined by which genes of an organism’s DNA are decoded and transcribed into RNA, the blueprint for protein construction. Modern techniques in genetics measure which genes in a tissue are transcribed, in an effort to infer the drivers of such tissues’ biological activity and thus elucidate which functional characteristics are important in a given tissue. Spatially resolved transcriptomics, a subset of these methods, lets biologists and practitioners view which genes are transcribed and to what level (called gene expression) but in a spatial context, making it clear what location within a tissue slice each gene is expressed.

July 11, 2023July 11, 2023

What tiny worms can teach us about reproductive decline (and how to prevent it)

Review by Abigail Stanton (MOL, G3)

At first glance, Caenorhabditis elegans might not look like much. Measuring in at about 1 mm, these laboratory worms have much simpler biology than your average human. However, this simplicity makes them convenient subjects to study the most basic functions of life because their entire lives from birth to reproduction to death play out over the course of weeks instead of decades. The Murphy Lab in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton uses these worms to ask questions about the aging process: what happens at a molecular level that causes us to age, and how can we promote longer, healthier lives?

June 16, 2023June 16, 2023

A Bird’s Eye View of the Impacts of Climate Change on Desert Environments

Review written by Anne Larsen (2026, EEB)

There is a widespread misconception that deserts, arid and extreme in climate, are unaffected by climate change. The truth is that deserts are disproportionately impacted by climate change and are projected to see great changes in the distributions of fauna and the behavior of such species due to current warming trends[1]. Though both cold and warm deserts will be affected by these changes, warm deserts have already sustained damage. Indeed, the surprisingly diverse region has suffered much due to climate change, and the ecosystem harbored by this biome constantly lives at its physiological limits[2]. Further changes to these regions would create conditions even more extreme than those to which these species have already adapted, possibly leading to extinction[3].

March 30, 2023August 9, 2023

RuI3 Like You’ve Never Seen Before: Synthesizing a New Quantum Spin Liquid Candidate

Review written by Mulan Yang (Chemistry, G3) and Brianna Hoff (Chemistry, G3)

One of the main goals of materials science is to develop new materials for fulfilling the various applications we see all around us, from the batteries required to keep our phones running to the plastics we use to store food and drinks. One particular niche is quantum materials science, which focuses on the study and development of materials whose electrons behave differently from how we would expect based on classical models. Quantum materials are especially exciting to study because they have the potential to store information in their electrons more effectively, which is the basis of quantum computing. Finding the perfect material that can be employed in quantum computers would allow tremendous data processing at incredible speeds.

February 27, 2023February 27, 2023

Noncommunicable Diseases and Socioeconomic Status in Turkana, Kenya w/ Grad Student Benjamin Muhoya

In this episode of Brains, Black Holes, and Beyond, Thiago Tarraf Varella sit down with Benjamin Muhoya, a graduate student in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department to learn more about his research. Benjamin discusses his research in hospitals prior to coming to Princeton, his research looking at the evolutionary perspective of the trends noncommunicable diseases among different socioeconomic backgrounds in Turkana, and some exciting research results coming out soon.

This episode of Brains, Black Holes, and Beyond (B cubed) was produced under the 147th board of the Prince in partnership with the Insights newsletter.

For more information about Benjamin's research, check out the original insights article linked below.

RESOURCES:

Original Paper: Socioeconomic status effects on health vary between rural and urban Turkana

Princeton Insights coverage: Socioeconomic status effects on human health have evolved with industrialization

CREDITS:

Written and Hosted by Thiago Tarraf Varella

Edited and Sound Engineered by Senna Aldoubosh

Transcript by Ketevan Shavdia

Produced by Senna Aldoubosh

Original Princeton Insights coverage by Kimberly Sabsay (QCB, G3).

Subscribe to Brains, Black Holes, and Beyond on Spotify, Podcast Addict, or wherever you get your podcasts! And subscribe to the Daily Princetonian to get the latest news at Princeton!

For more from the Daily Princetonian, visit dailyprincetonian.com. For more from Princeton Insights, visit insights.princeton.edu. Please direct all corrections to corrections@dailyprincetonian.com.

January 6, 2023January 6, 2023

Jupiter's Auroras with Dr. Jamey R. Szalay

In this episode of Brains, Black Holes, and Beyond, Thiago Tarraf Varella sits down with Princeton researcher Dr. Jamey R. Szalay to discuss the science behind Jupiter's auroras. Dr. Szalay also discusses exciting NASA breakthroughs being made by the Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) in learning about Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.

This episode of Brains, Black Holes, and Beyond was produced by Princeton Insights in partnership with the 146th Managing Board of The Daily Princetonian. Insights show host Thiago Tarraf Varella is a graduate student in Department of Psychology at Princeton and can be reached at tvarella@princeton.edu.

To view the transcript for this episode, click “More Info” and then “Full Transcript” in the episode player.

Correction: A previous version of this description referred to the “Stellar Reference Unit” instead of the “Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) plasma instrument.” The 'Prince' regrets this error.

RESOURCES:

Original Paper: Water-group pickup ions from Europa-genic neutrals orbiting Jupiter

Princeton Insights coverage: Proton Outflow Associated With Jupiter’s Auroral Processes

CREDITS

Written and hosted by Thiago Tarraf Varella
Edited and Sound Engineered by Senna Aldoubosh
Transcript by Ketevan Shavdia
Produced by Senna Aldoubosh

Original Princeton Insights coverage by Cecilia Panfil (CHM, 2022) and Alexandra Libby (PNI, GS)

Subscribe to Brains, Black Holes, and Beyond on Spotify, Podcast Addict, or wherever you get your podcasts! And subscribe to the Daily Princetonian to get the latest news at Princeton!

November 18, 2022November 18, 2022

Understanding the arrow of time across scales and complexity

Review written by Qiwei Yu (G2, Biophysics)

The stream of time flows inevitably forward and stops for no one. This one-way direction defines an “arrow of time”, which we perceive through the lens of irreversible processes that occur in both inanimate and living worlds. Irreversibility is manifested at both microscopic and macroscopic scales, ranging from the dissolution of an ink droplet in water to the concerted flight of large flocks of birds.

November 3, 2022November 3, 2022

Isolation Disorganizes Typical Social Interaction and Whole-Brain Genetic Expression in the Bumblebee

Review written by Adelaide Minerva (PNI, G4) and Rebekah Rashford (PNI, G5)

Throughout the COVID pandemic, many of us were faced with profound levels of social isolation which took a toll on both our mental and physical health. This has been especially detrimental for children, whose brains and social skills are still developing. Normally, social experience in early life plays a crucial role in guiding this development; but what happens when that guidance is no longer present? Disruptions to the early social environment have been seen to negatively impact other social species besides humans, such as mice, fish, and some insects. Studying how social isolation may disrupt the development of these highly social species can provide insight into the neural mechanisms underlying both typical and aberrant behavior at a level of detail not currently possible in human subjects. Taking advantage of one of these highly social species, Dr. Yan Wang and colleagues in the departments of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and the Center for Biophysics at Princeton used bumblebees to measure the effects of early life social isolation on behavior, gene expression, and whole-brain neuroanatomy.

October 28, 2022October 28, 2022

Using Machine Learning to Better Understand Human Behavior

Review written by Paula Brooks (NEU, G6)

How similar are bears and bulls?

If you ask a biologist, she might say that they are pretty similar, since they are both four-legged mammals found in North America. However, if you ask an economist, he might say they are polar opposites, since they are used to describe distinct stock market conditions. The unique way in which individuals organize their semantic knowledge, or general information gained through life experiences, could cause two people to judge the similarity between two animals in very different ways.