The transformation of the Thu Thiem New Urban Area in Ho Chi Minh City is the focus of a new exhibition in Vietnam by renowned artist Tiffany Chung that is based on research conducted in collaboration with Yale anthropologist Erik Harms.
Titled “an archaeology project for future remembrance,” the exhibition is on view at Galerie Quynh in Ho Chi Minh City. (more…)
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Nations that have freedom of information (FOI) laws in place tend to have lower incidents of corruption than those with no similar laws, a new University of Missouri study found. In comparing data from 168 countries, Edson Tandoc, Jr., a doctoral candidate in the MU School of Journalism also found that having an FOI law is linked to higher levels of human development. He says governments of many countries enact FOI laws in an effort to stop corruption, but while FOI laws work to reduce corruption over time, they are not a quick fix.
“Because it takes years for these laws to become fully effective, FOI laws should not be considered only as a corrective measure,” Tandoc said. “Countries without FOI laws should not wait for corruption to strike before they get serious about passing these laws because they will not cure the problems overnight.” (more…)
To determine how crowd behavior emerges from individual actions, William Warren, professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences, assembled his own crowds and engaged them in an unusual four-day experiment in Sayles Hall. The subjects were equipped with motion capture markers affixed like antennae to bike helmets.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — What must the staid-faced University luminaries in those portraits around Sayles Hall have thought while they watched this scene play out for four days last week? Over and over, two to 20 young men and women in bike helmets adorned with what appeared to be five large antennae walked back and forth across a cardboard-covered floor. En route to goals marked by numbers just beneath the portraits, they dodged each other and arrangements of cardboard pillars. Each time they generated patterns of foot traffic. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Whether the Higgs boson exists could be settled by the end of summer, say University of Michigan physicists involved in the search for the missing piece of particle physics’ Standard Model.
“We’re zooming in,” said Jianming Qian, physics professor in the College of Literature, Science & the Arts. “We are increasing the data set and improving our search algorithms. With certain luck, we may be able to discover it this summer, but it depends on nature.”
Qian is one of the 28 U-M researchers involved in experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland. He’ll spend most of his time through August in Geneva, where more than 1,000 scientists from around the world have been looking for Higgs since the collider turned on about four years ago. (more…)
