Tom

I have several blogs that I check for updates throughout the day or on the weekend.  They tend to be articles on random interests of mine.  One specific blog, called io9, specializes in science and science fiction material.  Since I consider myself a bit of a science geek and I am a huge Sci-Fi fan (I have all 4 Alien movies, both Predator movies, and both Alien Vs Predator movies), most of these articles are right up my alley.

Last week I noticed an article on this blog titled, The Strange Case of the Woman who Felt no Fear.  This article was especially fascinating for me as a Psychology student, as fear is one of those interesting and somewhat mysterious emotions.  I decided I wanted some more information, and clicked on the link to check out the actual paper that was published.  That is when I noticed the following;

Authors:

• Justin S Feinstein – University of Iowa

• Ralph Adolphs -  California Institute of Technology

• Antonio Damasio -  University of Southern California

• Daniel Tranel – University of Iowa

It is extremely cool to be able to see our University’s name showing up in print and our faculty being recognized for some of the amazing advances in their field.  The work of these men on fear may be paving the way for advances in the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), an issue that continue to be at the forefront for our military as we continue fighting wars on multiple fronts.  All of our professors are contributing to research projects, in everything from studies on fear to robotic systems for NASA and space exploration.  It is yet another advantage that we as a large public school have for our students.  Many students have the opportunity to work in these research labs and contribute to published papers as early as their first semester on campus.

Want even more proof?  Well maybe this paper which was published around 2005 will be interesting to you.  Feel free to take a look at the authors on the paper.

Photoinitiation and Monomer Ordering Phenomena in Polymerizations Conducted in Lyotropic Liquid Crystalline Phases

This was during my time as a chemical engineering student, working in a research lab for my first year of college.  Pretty cool, huh?

Pictured Above: Me doing science freshman year

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 21st, 2010 at 12:13 pm and is filed under General, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.