In the mid 80’s when I just arrived in Chicago, Bob Zimmer was lecturing on his recent work showing how perturbations of isometric actions of Kazhdan groups were dynamically simple (preserve a measurable Riemannian metric) [Zi1]. The heady mixture of the beauty of the results, the audacity of the vision (this is really 0% of what should be true...), and Bob’s charisma and charm attracted me so ...

Cultural ecosystem services are defined by people's perception of the environment, which make them hard to quantify systematically. Methods to describe cultural benefits from ecosystems typically include resource-demanding survey techniques, which are not suitable to assess cultural ecosystem services for large areas. In this paper we explore a method to quantify cultural benefits through the e...

First impressions are powerful and rich sources of information about other people, and studies have demonstrated that they predict performance in numerous domains, such as teaching (Ambady & Rosenthal, 1993) and electoral success (Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005). Much of this work, however, has employed outcome variables that are subjective. For example, in the study of teacher effect...

Popular lore tells us that genius is born, not made. Scientific research, on the other hand, reveals that true expertise is mainly the product of years of intense practice and dedicated coaching. Ordinary practice is not enough: To reach elite levels of performance, you need to constantly push yourself beyond your abilities and comfort level. Such discipline is the key to becoming an expert in ...

Remote meetings via Zoom, Skype, or Teams limit the range and richness of nonverbal communication signals. Not just because typically sub-optimal light, posture, gaze conditions, but also reduced speaker visibility. Consequently, speaker’s voice becomes immensely important, especially when it comes to being persuasive conveying charismatic attributes. However, offer a reliable service transmiss...

We are now constructing the ion nanoprobe, a new instrument designed for isotopic and chemical analysis at the few-nm scale. The new instrument will combine a recently developed high resolution liquid metal ion gun (LMIG), tunable solid state lasers for laser resonant ionization, a molecular fluorine excimer laser for UV ionization, and high transmission, high resolution timeof-flight mass spec...