Scientific Sense ®

Identifying genetic factors that contribute to the increased risk of congenital heart defects in infants with Down syndrome, The Genetic Basis of Turner Syndrome Aortopathy, and Conference summary: What we have learned and where we are headed Prof. Cheryl Maslen, who is professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. Her Research focuses on the genetic basis of congenital cardiovascular defects with a focus on rare disorders that greatly increase risk for these defects. In particular Turner syndrome and Down syndrome.

The first neurons of the human cerebral cortex, Tactile perception recruits functionally related visual areas in the late-blind, What synesthesia isn’t, and I Haven’t a Clue! Expectations Based on Repetitions and Hints Facilitate Perceptual Experience of Ambiguous Images Sir Colin Blakemore is Professor of Neuroscience at City University of Hong Kong. His research has focused on vision, development and plasticity of the brain, and on neurodegenerative diseases. He is a member of 12 scientific academies, including the Royal Society and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and his honors include both the Faraday Prize and the Ferrier Prize from the Royal Society.

Dynamic mRNA Transport and Local Translation in Radial Glial Progenitors of the Developing Brain, Prolonged Mitosis of Neural Progenitors Alters Cell Fate in the Developing Brain, and Pathogenic DDX3X Mutations Impair RNA Metabolism and Neurogenesis during Fetal Cortical Development Prof. Debby Silver is Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University School of Medicine. Her lab studies embryonic brain development

Online Neural Connectivity Estimation with Noisy Group Testing, and Naturalistic decision-making:  continuous, open-world, and recursive Prof. John Pearson is Assistant Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University. His research focuses on the application of machine learning methods to the analysis of brain data and behavior.

Formation of supermassive black holes by direct collapse in pre-galactic haloes, Quasi-stars: accreting black holes inside massive envelopes, Evolution of supermassive stars as a pathway to black hole formation, and Strongly magnetized accretion discs: structure and accretion from global magnetohydrodynamic simulations Prof. Mitch Begelman is Professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder and a Fellow of JILA, a joint research institute of the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.   He studies aspects of how black holes form, grow, and interact with their surroundings, from a theoretical perspective.

Review of the Evidence on, and Fundamental Questions About, Efforts to Improve Executive Functions, Including Working Memory, and ideas to redesign the education system. Prof. Adele Diamond is Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of British Columbia and Head of the Program in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at UBC. Prof. Diamond’s specialty is executive functions, which depend on the brain’s prefrontal cortex and interrelated neural regions.

Cosmology at a crossroads, the legacy and development of the Hubble constant, and The Carnegie-Chicago Hubble Program: An Independent Determination of the Hubble Constant Based on the Tip of the Red Giant Branch Prof. Wendy Freedman is professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. Professor Freedman is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society. She is a recipient of the American Philosophical Society's Magellanic Prize and co-recipient of the Gruber Cosmology Prize.

How Efficiency Shapes Human Language, Color naming across languages reflects color use, Large-scale evidence of dependency length minimization in languages, and Information processing and cross-linguistic universals Prof. Ted Gibson is a professor of Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prof. Gibson’s research examines how language is processed, and how language processing constraints constrain language structure (words and sentences).

Persons as Things, and Treating like a child : Philosophical treatment of people and relationships Prof. Mark Schroeder is professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. He is interested in the ways in which rationality, reasons, value, and other 'evaluative' or 'normative' categories are related to the mundane, physical world in which we live, in which things are round, red, or left of one another.

Demand Conditions and Worker Safety: Evidence from Price Shocks in Mining, Regulation by Shaming: Deterrence Effects of Publicizing Violations of Workplace Safety and Health Laws, and The Labor Market Effects of Legal Restrictions on Worker Mobility Prof. Matthew Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Duke University. Through his research, he seeks to understand how regulations, policies, and other institutions shape working conditions in the U.S.