Annual Reviews Conversations

Geoffrey L. Cohen, Professor in Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, Department of Psychology, and (by courtesy) the Graduate School of Business, and David Sherman, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, talk about their article "The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention," which they wrote together for the 2014 Annual Review of Psychology. In this lecture, the explain how self-affirmation affects social and education outcomes. Focusing on values affirmation, in which people write about values they hold dear, they show how short, inexpensive exercises can help counter the effects of stress and improve performance in members of certain socioeconomic categories.

Stephen Bezruchka, Senior Lecturer at the Departments of Health Services and Global Health of the University of Washington in Seattle, talks about his article "The Hurrider I Go the Behinder I Get: The Deteriorating International Ranking of U.S. Health Status," which he wrote for the 2009 Annual Review of Public Health. Using graphics to illustrate his points, Dr. Bezruchka describes how the United States has fallen to the 34th place in life expectancy, after Cuba, Chile, and Denmark. He also emphasizes the deteriorating health of women, as measured by their life expectancy, which has dropped in 30% of U.S. counties between 1987 and 2007. Finally, Dr. Bezruchka outlines his recommendations for improving health in the United States, including creating awareness about the nation's low ranking among developed countries and investing more in early life.

Dr. Sydney Brenner, Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Crick-Jacobs Center at the Salk Institute, talks about his life and career with Dr. Aravinda Chakravarti, Director of the Center for Complex Disease Research at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, part of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and co-Editor of the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics. Dr. Brenner recounts his early life in South Africa, and how he became interested in molecular biology, came to work with Francis Crick at Cambridge University, proposed the existence of messenger RNA, and studied Caenorhabditis elegans as a model of neural development. The latter earned him the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.

Jolanda Jetten, Professor of Psychology at the University of Queensland, talks about her article "Deviance and Dissent in Groups," which she wrote with Matthew J. Hornsey, also of the University of Queensland, for the 2014 Annual Review of Psychology. Dr. Jetten explores the reasons why people engage in deviance and dissent in groups, a little-researched aspect of psychology, as historically, the discipline has been more focused on explaining the reasons for conformity in groups. Concentrating on a single section of her article, Dr. Jetten describes the five motives for deviance and dissent, from disengagement and disloyalty to the group, to moral rebellion, to tangible rewards.

Alan Baddeley, Professor of Psychology at the University of York, talks about his autobiographical article "Working Memory: Theories, Models, and Controversies," which he wrote for the 2012 Annual Review of Psychology. In this lecture, Dr. Baddeley describes the evolving approaches to understanding memory over the course of the 20th century, and how he came to develop the multicomponent approach to working memory as a theoretical framework. He then links it to long-term memory, perception, and action, and explains how they interact.

Eric Wieschaus, Squibb Professor in Molecular Biology at Princeton University, talks with Bonnie Bassler, his colleague at Princeton and the Editor of the Annual Review of Genetics, about his life and career. Dr. Wieschaus describes his beginnings as a young boy in Alabama, and recounts how his interest in science was sparked by a science camp in Kansas funded by the National Science Foundation when he was a teenager. After a bachelor's degree at Notre Dame, Dr. Wieschaus was admitted to graduate school at Yale University, where he studied under the direction of Swiss Developmental Biologist Walter Gehring. Dr. Gehring eventually returned to his home country, taking his student with him. In Basel, Dr. Wieschaus met Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, or "Janni," as he calls her, and together they began the work that defined their careers. Their research resulted in the identification of 139 genes that determine the development of fruit fly embryos (Drosophila melanogaster), a finding that earned them the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Edward B. Lewis.

In this video, Dr. Temple Grandin describes the best practices in preslaughter handling, various stunning techniques, and religious slaughter. She also explains how to enforce humane rules and methods so as to ensure the best possible treatment of animals.

The Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering presents a conversation with Dr. Haldor Topsøe, chairman of Haldor Topsøe. In this interview, Dr. Topsøe talks about his career in industry, as well as his corporation's work with academic scientists.

P. James E. Peebles, Albert Einstein Professor of Science, Emeritus, at Princeton University, talks about his life and career with Sandra Faber, University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Editor of the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Dr. Peebles describes his youth in Winnipeg, Canada. He began his studies at the University of Manitoba, where he entered the engineering program, eventually transferring to Physics. On his advisor Ken Standing's urging, Dr. Peebles moved to Princeton University, and joined the working group of Robert H. Dicke, in which he studied gravity physics. Dr. Peebles went on to develop the field of physical cosmology, and his work contributed to establishing the big bang model and furthering our understanding of dark matter, dark energy, and the theory of structure formation.

Pierre Joliot-Curie, Professor of Biology at the Collège de France and former Director of the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), talks about his life and career with Jean-David Rochaix, Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Geneva. Dr. Joliot-Curie, whose grandparents Pierre and Marie Curie and parents Frédéric Joliot and Irène Curie were all Nobel Prize laureates, discusses his love of research, which he equates to an "artistic" endeavor and an adventure. He recounts his beginnings, growing up as a "poor student" in a scientific family, and how his father encouraged him to study biology rather than physics. He also explains how he came to develop instruments to study his chosen subject, photosynthesis. As a mentor, Dr. Joliot-Curie encouraged younger generations of researchers to have fun with their work by giving them large degrees of freedom.