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Alexandra Wright was surprised to find that an area in Germany with high biodiversity recovered rapidly and with great success after a recent major flood.

The impact of catastrophic flooding can be mitigated by protecting biodiversity, suggests a new study led by Bard College biology professor Alexandra Wright and published this week in Nature Communications.

Stuart Levine, Bard professor of psychology and emeritus dean of the college, delivered a lecture last month to the Obedience to Authority Conference in Kolomna, Russia. Professor Levine presented a paper on the continuing development of his Bard College seminar, Milgram—Obedience to Authority, and insights that have emerged in the course over the years. The Bard seminar focuses on Milgram's famous and controversial Yale University experiment on obedience to authority and the subsequent 50 years of further study and critical response it generated. Professor Levine presented at the invitation of Professor Alexander Voronov, of the State Academic University for the Humanities in Moscow, who has visited the Bard seminar in the past. This year Bard celebrates professor Levine's 50th anniversary as a member of the college's faculty. Read More

As part of Bard College's Citizen Science Program, all first-year students return to campus in January to take part in a rigorous three-week course that introduces them to natural science and the ideas underlying the scientific method. This year’s theme, “Reducing the Global Burden of Infectious Disease,” explores the biology of infectious disease and the myriad of impacts that outbreaks and subsequent management can have on our global society. As a health emergency with global implications, one topic that will be central in this January’s course is the Ebola epidemic and crisis in West Africa.

The Bard College Citizen Science Program presents two lectures this month. Both lectures take place at 6:30 p.m. in the Richard B. Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. They are free and open to the public; no reservations are necessary. On Wednesday, January 14, Gautam Dantas, assistant professor at the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, will present “Networks of Exchanging Antibiotic Resistomes in Human and Environmental Microbiota.” On Thursday, January 15, Michael Specter, staff writer at the New Yorker and visiting professor in the Environmental and Urban Studies Program at Bard, presents “Relying on Reality: Separating Fact from Fiction in Daily Life.”

Santa Fe painter Jivan Lee "is a talented, emerging artist with a blossoming career and bright future ahead of him," writes Bonnie Gangelhoff.

Hudsonia executive director and Bard alumnus Erik Kiviat is part of a team of scientists that has established the existence of a new species of frog in New Jersey.

Patty Dooley writes about the power of the "wow factor" in teaching science, and how to move students from those first reactions to asking "Why?" and then "What if?"