The Academic Minute

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Astronomy to Zoology www.academicminute.org

  1. 9h ago

    Ryan Griffiths, Syracuse University - The Case Against Breaking Up America Why Secession Would Make Things Worse, Not Better

    Would secession work in America? Ryan Griffiths, professor in the Department of Political Science at Syracuse University, looks into why or why not. Faculty Bio: Ryan Griffiths focuses on the dynamics of secession and the study of sovereignty, state systems, and international order. He teaches a variety of courses in international relations. His two recent books include: (1) The Disunited States: Threats of Secession in Red and Blue America and Why They Won’t Work (Oxford University Press, 2025); and (2) Before Colonization: Non-Western States and Systems in the Nineteenth Century (Columbia University Press, 2025, with Charles Butcher). Previously, he taught at both the University of Sydney in Australia and at John Hopkins University. He earned a Ph.D. in international relations and comparative politics at Columbia University in 2010. Transcript: There is a growing interest in secession between Red and Blue America. A 2023 Axios poll found that 20% of Americans support a national divorce, and a 2025 Times/Siena poll found that 64% of Americans think the country is too politically divided to solve the nation’s problems.The key factor driving this interest in secession is polarization. Whether it is the Red-State secessionists, the California Independence Party, or the Texas Nationalists, they all point to unstoppable polarization and political dysfunction as the reason secession is necessary. Secession occurs when part of a sovereign state breaks away to form its own recognized sovereign state. In my research, I argue that while polarization is a serious problem in America, secession is not the solution. Roughly half of secessionist movements turn violent, and most of them fail to gain independence. When they do secede peacefully, it is when specific conditions hold: there is a distinct and regionally concentrated nation, with clear internal borders, and a special administrative status that justifies why that nation can secede when others cannot. None of these conditions hold in America.The attempt to divide America into two or more countries would almost certainly produce great violence. The so-called red and blue populations are intermixed. Trying to unmix that population and would create a cascade of hyper-polarization and ideological conflict. I argue that rather than turning to secession as a solution to America’s problems, the better choice is to target the roots of polarization and seek common ground. Read More: [Oxford University Press] - The Disunited States [Columbia University Press] - Before Colonization Non-Western States and Systems in the Nineteenth Century This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org

  2. 1d ago

    Lawrence Chua, Syracuse University - Architecture as Chronopolitical Infrastructure

    How space are designed can lead to longer wait times for some. Lawrence Chua, associate professor of Architectural History at Syracuse University, explores why. Faculty Bio: Lawrence Chua is a historian of the modern built environment with an emphasis on the trans-regional histories of Asian architecture and urban cultures. He is the author of Bangkok Utopia: Modern Architecture and Buddhist Felicities, published in the University of Hawai’i Press’ Spatial Habitus series in 2021. His current research project, “Untimely Interventions,” investigates the ways modern architecture structured colonial and nationalist perceptions of time and sovereignty in Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos from 1893 to 1958. The study frames modern built-forms as “chronopolitical infrastructure”—material sites where the historical consciousness and territorial logic of empire were actively constructed. Through archival and field-based research, it examines temples, museums, monuments, and exposition pavilions as mediated structures through which colonial powers and indigenous regimes shaped national imaginaries. Dr. Chua is also writing a history of “mid-century modern” architecture from the perspective of the 1955 Afro-Asian Conference at Bandung and editing a collection of translations of primary source documents from the early history of the architectural profession across Asia. Dr. Chua’s scholarship has also appeared in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, October, the Journal of Urban History, Fabrications, the Journal of Architecture, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, and Southeast of Now. He currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. He is co-editor of the ArchAsia book series for Hong Kong University Press. He also serves as co-chair of the Race and Architectural History Affiliate Group of the Society of Architectural Historians.Dr. Chua was most recently a scholar in residence at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. He has been a Marie S. Curie Junior Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität and a research fellow at the Getty Research Institute, the Center for Khmer Studies, and the International Institute of Asian Studies at Universiteit Leiden. At Syracuse University, he teaches courses in the histories of global modern architecture, Chinese architecture, Buddhist architecture, postcolonial utopias, and monuments, memory, and melancholia. As a Faculty Fellow in the Special Collections Research Center 2024-2025, he developed a course on the spatial histories of LGBTQ+ communities in Syracuse. Dr. Chua has taught courses in the history and theory of architecture and urbanism as well as studio courses at Hamilton College, New York University, and Chulalongkorn University. He received his PhD in the History of Architecture and Urban Development from Cornell University in 2012. In addition to his scholarship and teaching, he is a founding board member with the artists Julie Mehretu and Paul Pfeiffer, of Denniston Hill, a not-for-profit arts center. Transcript: What if power isn’t just exercised through space—borders, buildings, highways—but through time itself?Take an airport terminal. Its long corridors are designed around an ideal walking speed. Security checkpoints create waiting as an architectural condition—ropes, scanners, holding areas. Departure gates synchronize passengers to global time zones, while detention rooms and passport control stretch time into hours or days for others. And from above, the control tower coordinates it all.This is chronopolitical infrastructure: architecture that organizes who moves quickly, who waits, and whose time is valued. The same building can accelerate executives through priority lanes while slowing migrants, service workers, or asylum seekers through layered delays.During the twentieth century, architects and planners increasingly designed buildings around political timelines—speed, efficiency, productivity, and development. Those assumptions hardened into concrete, circulation paths, and zoning codes.Seeing architecture as chronopolitical infrastructure reminds us that time is not abstract, it’s designed. And if time has been designed to serve power, it can also be redesigned to support care, repair, and more just futures. Read More: [Taylor & Francis] - Perfecting Siam: Sovereignty, Sacred Space, and Territory at Wat Rachathiwat [University of California Press] - A Tale of Two Crematoria: Funeral Architecture and the Politics of Representation in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bangkok This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org

  3. 2d ago

    Jason Davis, Syracuse University - Does This Person Even Exist?

    Are you talking to a real person? How do you know? Jason Davis, research professor and co-director of the Newhouse Synthetic Media Lab at Syracuse University, examines these questions. Faculty Bio: Dr. Jason Davis is a research professor in the office of Research and Creative Activity at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and co-director of both the Newhouse Synthetic Media Lab and the Emerging Insight Lab. At Syracuse University, Dr. Davis research focuses on the development of AI tools for the detection of synthetic media and disinformation well as STEM focused communication and professional development.Prior to joining Syracuse University, Dr. Davis was director of Business Development and Operations at the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he developed research partnerships in the area of upstream and downstream biologics manufacturing and served as Academic co-chair for the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL) workforce development committee. Prior to RPI, he served as global training and development leader at General Electric’s Global Research Center, and as a principal scientist leading research efforts in water purification technologies, CO2 capture, nano-particle drug delivery and DNA and RNA stabilization technology. Prior to his role at GE, Davis was a Senior Research Scientist at Curia Global where his research focused on drug discovery in the areas of oncology, Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes.Davis’s current research focuses on the detection of misinformation and disinformation using AI/ML tools and the development of detection systems for synthetic media including text, images, audio and video as well as explainability frameworks for AI and Human-in-the-Loop decision making.Dr. Davis holds more than 10 patents in the areas of diabetes, water purification technology, anti-fouling coatings, and RNA sample stabilization technology.Davis earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry from McGill University, and a B.Sc. in Biochemistry (with honors) from Laurentian University. Transcript: Over the past year my collaborator Dr. Gina Luttrell and I have been asking a deceptively simple question: Can humans still tell if a person even exists? To answer this question, we first wanted to find out if people could tell when a short profile was written by a machine rather than a human. To find out, we assembled one hundred profiles, half authored by real journalism students and subject matter experts, and half generated by four different large language models. We asked people to read the profiles and label them as “human” or “synthetic.” The result was striking. Participants were correct only 54% of the time, just a shade above the 50% level that equates to random guessing.At the same time, we built an AI detector trained on a separate set of 3,000 profiles. When we ran that detector over the same hundred profiles, it correctly identified 46 of the 50 synthetic profiles and 42 of the 50 human profiles, for an overall accuracy of 88%. What do these numbers tell us? First, as large language models become more fluent, human heuristics, or the gut reactions we take for granted, for spotting deception erode quickly. Second, with the arrival of generative AI, the need to determine if something is real or synthetic represents a new layer of complexity for humans to navigate. Our research suggests breaking this task into three distinct components can help: The first is Detection: Is the content human-generated or synthetic? Second is Attribution: Is it coming from who it says it’s coming from? Finally, Characterization: What is the intent? Is it malicious deception, genuine content, or something in between?By developing robust, trained AI analytics with clear, human readable evidence, we can assist humans with the first two tasks and help preserve digital trust and transparency. This lets us return to the deeply human task of deciding if the content is good or bad and what to do about it.As AI creates new challenges in digital trust and transparency, it also illuminates a broader reality: that perhaps the safest path forward is collaboration, not competition, between humans and machines. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org

  4. 3d ago

    Colleen Heflin, Syracuse University - New SNAP Rules Threaten the Ability of Older Adults to Retire and Live With Dignity

    Taxpayers will be footing the bill for reduced SNAP benefits for older adults. Colleen Heflin, professor of public administration and international affairs at Syracuse University, explains why. Faculty Bio: Colleen Heflin is a professor of public administration and international affairs. She is also a senior research associate in the Center for Policy Research and a research affiliate in the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health. She has served as associate dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and chair of the Public Administration and International Affairs Department.As a research and policy scholar for over twenty-five years, Heflin is regarded as a national expert on food insecurity, poverty and social policy. Heflin’s research has helped document the causes and consequences of food insecurity, identify the barriers and consequences of participation in nutrition programs, and understand the changing role of the public safety net in the lives of low-income Americans.Heflin has published over 80 research articles, and her work has appeared in leading journals such as the American Sociological Review, Demography, Social Problems, Health Affairs, Medical Care, and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Her research is regularly funded by the National Institutes for Health, U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation. From 2012-2017, Heflin was supported by a five-year award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service as Family Self-Sufficiency and Stability Research Scholar to explore how multiple program participation affects vulnerable families’ well-being.Heflin has experience engaging with federal policymakers, providing expert testimony before Congress, providing technical assistance to states working to improve access to food and nutrition assistance programs, and working with county agencies to redesign their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) application process. She founded the University of Missouri Federal Statistical Research Data Center and Missouri Population, Education and Health Center. She received the W. Richard Scott Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the American Sociological Association in 2014. Transcript: Nationally, one in five of all SNAP recipients are over age 60. Until now, older adults were not subject to work requirements like their younger counterparts. But provisions in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill limit SNAP benefits for adults ages 60 to 64 without a dependent or disability to three months within a 36-month period unless they can show that they are spending 80-hours per month in work, training, or volunteer activities. Work requirements for programs like SNAP and Medicaid do not lead to increased work but instead result in fewer people receiving benefits. Nonetheless, an even more onerous version of work requirements were expanded for other groups as well, including adults 55-59, those with children who reach age 14, veterans, the homeless, and foster care youth.Reducing older adults’ access to SNAP is particularly shortsighted given the strength of the evidence regarding SNAP’s effectiveness at reducing food insecurity, which already affects 1 in 10 adults over age 60 nationally. Since food insecurity is associated with poor health, the ability to consistently afford nutritious food is considered important enough that the Veterans Health Administration, among others, now regularly screen for food insecurity. Because SNAP participation is associated with $1,400 in health care savings per year, reducing access will increase health care costs in the long run. And the increased health care costs will largely be shouldered by taxpayers since the federal government covers medical costs after age 65 through Medicare and many SNAP participants qualify for Medicaid. It is already too difficult for older adults to obtain SNAP benefits. Currently, just over one in two adults age 60 and older who qualify for SNAP participate. Increasing work requirements is a step in the wrong direction and will decrease SNAP participation, increase food insecurity, and make it harder to cope with diabetes and hypertension, increasing the public costs of Medicaid and Medicare. Read More: [Russell Sage Foundation] - Food for Thought: Understanding Older Adult Food Insecurity This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org

  5. 6d ago

    Nancy Huang, Texas A&M University - Inside the Cell’s Secret Droplets

    One aggressive form of cancer can be set off by an accident in our cells. How do we fight this? Nancy Huang, professor at the Institute of Biosciences and Technology at Texas A&M University, examines. Faculty Bio: Yun (Nancy) Huang, PhD, is a professor at Texas A&M University Institute of Biosciences and Technology and Associate Director of the Center for Epigenetic and Disease Prevention (CEDP) in the Department of Translational Medical Sciences at the Naresh K. Vashisht College of Medicine. A principal investigator on grants from the National Institutes of Health, the CPRIT, the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association, Dr. Huang’s research focuses on investigating transcriptional regulatory mechanisms that support normal development and on how epigenetic defects contribute to pathological conditions, including aging and cancer. Her work involves advanced understanding of TET enzymes and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, pioneering tools to study the “sixth DNA base” and its role in gene regulation and disease. As a highly recognized scientist with over 120 publications and numerous awards, Dr. Huang leads innovative studies at Texas A&M’s Institute of Biosciences and Technology, supported by multiple major research grants. She received her medical degree from Zhejiang University School of Medicine and her doctorate in biochemistry from Georgia State University. She completed postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Medical School and La Jolla Institute. Transcript: Sometimes, a single glitch in our DNA can rewrite a cell’s destiny. In one rare and aggressive form of kidney cancer—called translocation renal cell carcinoma, or translocation kidney cancer—two genes that should never touch break apart and fuse together. That tiny accident sets off a biological chain reaction that turns normal kidney cells into unstoppable cancer factories.This disease mostly affects children and young adults, and one of its key culprits is a gene known as Transcription Factor E3, or TFE3. When TFE3 fuses with another gene, it creates a hybrid called a TFE3 oncofusion—a molecular impostor that rewires how genes are switched on and off. For years, researchers suspected these fusions somehow “supercharged” the cell’s control systems, but the underlying mechanism remained unclear.Now, scientists led by Dr. Lei Guo, Dr. Yubin Zhou, and Dr. Yun Huang, reports that many TFE3 fusion partners can bind to ribonucleic acid (RNA)—the messenger molecule that carries instructions from DNA.This RNA-binding ability lets the hybrid protein form microscopic droplet-like structures, known as biomolecular condensates, inside the cell nucleus. Within these droplets, TFE3 oncofusions pull together key gene-activation engines such as RNA polymerase II and paraspeckle component 1 (PSPC1), creating powerful “gene hubs” that drive cancer growth.Even more remarkably, the team designed a nanobody-based chemogenetic tool that can dissolve these droplets on demand. When they triggered it, the condensates broke apart—and tumor growth slowed sharply in both cultured cells and mice.By revealing how cancer cells weaponize these tiny droplets, the discovery opens a bold new way to disarm fusion-driven cancers—not by blocking genes, but by melting their molecular engines. Read More: [Nature] - RNA-mediated condensation of TFE3 oncofusions facilitates transcriptional hub formation to promote translocation renal cell carcinoma [Vital Record from TAMU] - Disrupting cancer’s secret hubs: A new way to halt tumor growth [EurekAlert!] - Disrupting cancer’s secret hubs: A new way to halt tumor growth This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org

  6. Aug 13

    Amaryllis Tsiknia, University of Southern California - Novel Markers May Offer Early Clues to Alzheimer’s Risk

    We are always looking for new ways to detect Alzheimer’s disease early. Amaryllis Tsiknia, neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Southern California, may have found a clue. Faculty Bio: Amaryllis is a 4th-year neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Southern California. She completed her undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley with a degree in Cognitive Science, and then acquired her Master’s degree in Neuroimaging and Informatics. Her current research uses neuroimaging techniques to uncover how metabolic and vascular factors increase our risk for dementia with a special focus on type 2 diabetes mellitus. Transcript: Alzheimer’s disease is often discussed in terms of amyloid plaques and memory loss. But changes in how the brain manages blood flow and oxygen may also provide important early clues about risk.In our research, we studied older adults with and without cognitive impairment and looked at whether measures of cerebrovascular function were linked to known markers of Alzheimer’s risk.We used two noninvasive tools while participants rested quietly. One measured how fast blood moves through the major arteries in the brain. The other measured blood oxygen levels in the brain tissue near the surface of the cortex. We then used mathematical models to summarize how well the brain adjusts blood flow and oxygen levels in response to normal changes in blood pressure and carbon dioxide.What we found was notable. People with healthier vascular patterns, meaning blood vessels that behaved more like those seen in cognitively healthy aging, tended to have lower amyloid burden and larger hippocampal volume. The hippocampus is a brain region that is essential for memory, and smaller hippocampal volume is associated with greater Alzheimer’s risk.We also found that people with mild cognitive impairment or dementia showed poorer vascular indicators than cognitively normal adults.These findings suggest that cerebrovascular function is closely related to brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s risk and may be part of the disease continuum.Just as importantly, these measures are relatively low-cost and noninvasive compared with some other brain imaging approaches, and they do not require injections, radiation, or active participation during testing.This study does not prove cause and effect, but it supports ongoing work to test whether these vascular signals can help identify higher-risk individuals earlier and track brain health over time. Read More: [Keck School of Medicine at USC] - Novel markers of brain blood flow and oxygenation may offer early clues to Alzheimer’s risk This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org

  7. Aug 12

    Kim Plofker, Union College - International Math in 18th-century India

    Collaboration in mathematics has a long history. Kim Plofker, associate professor of mathematics at Union College, examines this. Faculty Bio: Kim Plofker is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Union College in Schenectady, New York. She received her doctorate from the Department of the History of Mathematics at Brown University in 1995. Her research focuses on the history of mathematics and astronomy in India and its connections with Islamic and early modern European science. Kim Plofker’s books include Mathematics in India (Princeton, 2009); (with Anuj Misra and Clemency Montelle) The Sanskrit Astronomical Table Text Brahmatulyasarini (Brill, 2021); and (with Clemency Montelle and Glen Van Brummelen) From Samarqand to Jaipur: Evolving al-Kashi’s Approximation to the Sine of One Degree (Springer, 2025). Transcript: When you took math tests in school, the teacher told you to keep your eyes on your own paper. But the history of mathematical sciences in the real world is full of professional scientists glancing at their neighbors’ work, and often expanding it through ingenious discoveries of their own. In the days before modern physics and the automated clocks, calendars and computers arising from it, timekeeping methods and models of the universe were major scientific enterprises, and often quite controversial. Mathematicians from many different schools and cultures competed to develop theoretical models and computational techniques that were the most efficient, the most empirically accurate, or just the most impressively clever. And when they encountered a foreign visitor doing some interesting math in a different language, they called in a translator and got to work exchanging ideas. My current research focuses on a group of scholars in early 18th-century India, including Hindu and Muslim court astronomers writing in Sanskrit and Persian respectively, as well as European Jesuit missionaries bringing printed books in Latin. This was barely a century after the trial of Galileo by the Inquisition, so scientific hypotheses about the earth orbiting the sun instead of vice versa, and planets moving in elliptical orbits, were still somewhat debatable issues even in European astronomy. The Indian court astronomers were intrigued by these ideas although maybe not totally convinced, while the European visitors in turn were fascinated by some of the ingenious mathematical methods of their hosts. My colleagues and I are reading the manuscripts they created to find out more about how they put their ideas together. Read More: [Springer Nature] - From Samarqand to Jaipur Evolving al-Kāshī’s Approximation to the Sine of One Degree This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org

  8. Aug 11

    Jonathan Lambert, New York University - Green Clay Tennis Courts Sequester Carbon Dioxide in Plain Sight

    What do green clay tennis courts have to do with climate change? Jonathan Lambert, visiting assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Climate Science at New York University, says it’s more than you might think. Faculty Bio: Jonathan Lambert is a geochemist and paleoclimatologist in the interdisciplinary-focused Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU. His research themes are twofold - past climate change and modern climate solutions. In his paleoclimate research, he uses fossil plankton to reconstruct ocean conditions in the Pacific over the past 1.5 Million years. In his climate solutions work, he evaluates carbon dioxide removal strategies such as enhanced rock weathering, and develops new teaching and outreach approaches for emerging climate solutions. He teaches interdisciplinary seminars on ancient earth extremes, local climate change, and climate solutions. Dr. Lambert believes that engaging students of all backgrounds and interests in climate change education, outreach, and research is a bridge to better environmental understanding and contributes to lowering climate anxiety through the power of practical knowledge. Transcript: If you have seen one of the thousands of green clay tennis courts in America, you have witnessed a climate change mitigation technique called enhanced rock weathering. This is a natural process in which rocks like basalt undergo chemical weathering which converts atmospheric carbon dioxide into stable bicarbonate ions that do not contribute to global warming. Crushing these rocks and spreading them over large areas expedites weathering, and dozens of startups are applying this technique on farmland. Research is expanding on other suitable areas for enhanced weathering, and for our study we quantified its climate impact on green clay tennis courts – the American counterpart of the red clay courts common in Europe. As opposed to the crushed brick of red clay, all green clay courts are built using weatherable metabasalt. We used a database of 17,000 green clay courts and built a model to calculate the gross carbon sequestration at each court given the rocks’ grain size, chemical composition, and local air temperature. We also calculated carbon emissions associated with mining and transportation of material to each court during construction and maintenance. In total, we found that all courts in the US sequester a net total of approximately 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year – equivalent to the emissions of 4,200 passenger cars. Additionally, compared to the more common concrete courts, green clay courts emit at least 1.6 times less carbon dioxide from construction. Green clay courts therefore have high climate mitigation potential, and one simple opportunity to increase their carbon sequestration is to shift the proportion of newly built courts to favor clay over concrete. Additional climate benefits can be found by using smaller grain size materials for new clay courts, and by rigorously tracking and iterating on court maintenance practices. Read More: [NYU] - Green Clay Courts Serve Up Environmental Solutions by Absorbing Carbon Dioxide Pavia Lab at UW Carbon dioxide removal by enhanced weathering on American green clay tennis courts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org

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