Minnesota State Representative Ilhan Omar has already made history as a millennial legislator, as a person who came to the U.S. as refugee and the first Somali-American legislator in U.S. history. Omar was first elected in 2016 to serve a central Minneapolis state house district. This November, she, ...
Sarah Luna, the first-ever Kathryn A. McCarthy, J45, AG46, Assistant Professor in Women's Studies, is one of the 35 newly-hired professors in the Schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering who arrived at Tufts this fall. Luna, whose research focuses on sex work, migration and borders, and race ...
Put simply, a niche is the ecological role a species plays in its environment. Think about the classic backyard birds and the niches they occupy — American robins hop around on the ground hunting for worms, downy woodpeckers drill holes in trees extracting insects and house finches crack thick seeds in their powerful bills. If you live somewhere like the tropics, the increased availability of resources leads to a higher quantity of occupiable niches. With more available niches, more species can coexist. And once two species start to utilize the same resource, they attempt to avoid competition by specializing on one part of that resource over years of evolution, effectively dividing — or partitioning — that niche. (For example, a hummingbird eats the nectar of a flower, while a tanager eats the insects on or around the flower.) This is one of the leading theories explaining the marvelously diverse array of species present in these ecosystems. Twenty species of shorebirds can happily coexist on the same mudflat because their unique bill lengths and foraging strategies target different invertebrates living just below the surface. Mixed flocks exceeding 30 species of Amazonian songbirds can hang out in a fig tree together gulping down insects, flowers, berries, fruit and lizards, among other things. It makes me wonder — do we, in our modern, civilized world, partition niches too?
Beginning this fall, the deadline for selecting the pass/fail option on classes has been extended from five to 10 weeks into the semester for sophomores, juniors and seniors, matching the 10-week period allotted to first-years. This extension was proposed by Class of 2021 Senator Sharif Hamidi, whose ...
Content warning: This article discusses eating disorders and mental health.Disclaimer: Jessie Newman, executive features editor for the Daily, is a participant of The Body Project Collaborative at Tufts. She was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.In light of the #MeToo movement ...
I seem to like being in introductory courses. My first semester at Tufts, I took EC 5; I don’t understand graphs. This semester, I’m taking BIO 13. Last semester, I took COMP 11. I was interested in the course in a curiously-peeking-around-a-corner way, in part because of the large number of computer ...
Former Congressman Mike Espy is no stranger to the people of Mississippi. The three-term legislator-turned Secretary of Agriculture won four elections in one of the most conservative states in the United States by positioning himself as a Blue Dog Democrat willing to put Mississippi above the sport of politics. And he might just be the first Democratic U.S. Senator from The Magnolia State in almost three decades.
Throughout American history, various movements and people have worked to expand access to the right to vote. The American Revolution was fought over representation, Susan B. Anthony fought to give women the right to vote and the 20th century ushered in the civil rights movement.
I spent this summer up in New Hampshire working as a loon biologist for the Loon Preservation Committee (LPC). Yes, that is a real thing. The LPC has been around for over 40 years now and hires several loon biologists each summer to monitor the entire loon population of N.H. It was such a sweet job; I basically kayaked around in the sun all day.
This fall, Tufts welcomed a group of new professors spanning a wide range of departments, experiences and backgrounds including 27 new professors in 14 different departments within the School of Arts and Sciences and eight professors across five departments within the School of Engineering. Jeffrey ...
I was born and raised in Japan. I say this when meeting someone for the first time. That is true; there is no other country that I would call my own, for and of which I am grateful and proud. It’s also true that American culture raised me too.Most of my peers back home surrounded themselves with ...
Colin Allred is one of those exciting candidates.
Nathan Foster (LA ’18) recently launched a campaign to become an alumni trustee. If elected, Foster would be the most recent Tufts graduate to sit on the Board of Trustees — among the current alumni trustee representatives, the most recent graduate did so in 2001.Foster’s campaign platform draws ...
How refreshing it is to arrive back on campus and watch all the starry-eyed first-years gallivanting from class to class, excited and eager to “discover themselves” and figure out “what life is all about.” Good luck with that. Many of my observations of these new college students are derived ...
The world of science may often feel inscrutable for people who are not practicing scientists or engineers, or who have access to few scientific resources. Tufts alumnus Jim Sampson (LA '09, SK '15) launched the "Breaking Science" public lecture series in 2016 with the goal of breaking down those very barriers to understanding science, research and technology for the masses.
This year, students will be able to enjoy several exciting changes to the offerings of Tufts Dining Services. Over the summer, the Dining Services team worked hard to implement several new food items and layout changes in both the dining halls and retail locations in order to improve students’ dining ...
Content Warning: This article mentions domestic violence. Lead for America (LFA) is a new fellowship program aimed at bringing recent college graduates back to their local communities and implanting them into that local government. Benya Kraus (LA '18) is one of the founding members of LFA.They ...
Picante Taqueria, a Mexican restaurant located at 352 Boston Ave., next to Tamper Cafe and the Campus Mini Mart, is a new restaurant owned by Edgardo and Jessica Morales. The restaurant opened in July. Edgardo has over 26 years of experience in the restaurant business, starting as a dishwasher and ...
Tufts is set to launch several new programs this semester that seek to improve the experiences of historically underserved student communities.The FIRST Resource Center, an initiative of the Office for Student Success and Advising (OSSA), aims to provide a resource network for the university's ...
The Institute of Global Leadership (IGL) traces its roots to 1985, when the entire program was a one-day symposium led by Tufts political science lecturer Sherman Teichman, and has fostered discussion of complex global issues ever since. IGL Associate Director Heather Barry said that Teichman ...
