Science & Health
Teaching martial arts, creating community
By Arianna George Clouds of dust rise into the air from a sandpit across from the Washington Square Fountain. Exchanging blows and throwing kicks as they spar, members of the NYC Fight Club stir up that haze. What began three years ago as a search for a place where Martin Cheung, 35, the fight club’s […]
Stopping for a celestial, New York moment
By Sophie Yang Briefly, Manhattan forgot to be in a hurry. For three fleeting minutes — along some of the city’s busiest east-to-west cross streets — strangers stood still, shoulder to shoulder, their gaze fixed on a sliver of sunset. “It’s so aesthetically beautiful,” said Noelia Grardy, a Brooklyn College student. “Compositionally, it’s really beautiful […]
‘Bee boxes’ revive a buzzing population
By Keerthisri Senthilkumar Outside a Brooklyn apartment building, manmade bee hives shoot up from flower pots. In Manhattan’s Cooper Square, they dwell in flower beds. Bees buzz and fly in, out and around. Through those and other in The Horticultural Society of New York’s network of Borough Bee Boxes, bees can find repose. Over a […]
Honing neurodivergent learners’ tech skills
By Leane Kwon Computers hum. Students click through animations. Roars of excitement burst out as someone’s code project finally works. This isn’t your typical coding class. It’s a classroom built for 10- to 24-year-olds diagnosed with learning disabilities, including autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, executive function disorder and sensory challenges. Those dozen or so neurodiverse learners […]
A safe space for students with autism
By Haaniyah Faisal Fostering a safe space for autistic students. Helping patients find their voice. Encouraging them to accept and be confident in their autistic identity. These are some of the responsibilities of Yvetta Ma, an intern for the NYU Langone Health Hospital Center passionate about providing a space for autistic teen girls to feel […]
Learning and healing from cancer
By Isabella Cabral His sister died of breast cancer, his stepdad of aggressive prostate cancer. And, now, as Dion Summers sat, nervous and uncomfortable, tissue paper of an oncologist’s exam table crinkling underneath him, he heard what he didn’t want to hear. “Oh, this needs attention,” said a nurse, looking at a scan of his […]
A “game-changer,” gluten-free bakery
By Zoe Ntouvas Growing up in a family of restaurant owners, food was the world to Josh Borenstein. That world came crashing down in 2007 when he was diagnosed with celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder causing severe abdominal bloating, nausea and fatigue. “Food was, like, his passion, his life, his whole world, so it’s very […]
Music that heals and transforms
By Matthew Chen A brown upright piano was situated beside a red bass drum and, around the drum, were crash cymbals and ride cymbals on instrument stands. A guitar was mounted on a hook on a pale blue wall, above three amplifiers. Tambourines, more drums, maracas, a xylophone, boom sticks and brass instruments were tucked […]
NYU labs help diversify STEM fields
By Sophie Gao Standing before a roundtable of 13 high school, college and graduate students considering careers in engineering, Ollintzin Mortera explained his latest three-dimensional design. “I’m working on inter-meshed steel connections. And we’re basically modeling it and making it scalable, so we can use it in different applications, like robotics. And so that we […]
By opening up, youth lessen mental health stigmas
By Justin Miranda When he was 13, his 15-year-old best friend raped him. His parents made sure the police pressed criminal charges but that 15-year-old wasn’t convicted. “I wasn’t shocked with him being released because he is white and rich,” said the now 19-year-old, whose mother is Korean and father is Black. Because his crime […]
Men also are concerned with body image
By Sophia Herrera Brady O’Keefe, 16, stands at 5’ 7” and weighs 125 pounds. Ask him about his self-image, and the summer 2022 NYU Precollege Program student will give you a straight answer: “I try to avoid thinking about what I like and dislike because that will inevitably bring out what I dislike.” Society, in […]
New York City Mayoral Race Frontrunner Promotes Plant-based Eating
By Akil Kasubhai If elected mayor of New York City, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams will become the first vegan to hold that position, which he plans to use to persuade others to eat less meat and way more vegetables. After dealing with the crippling symptoms of type 2 diabetes Adams turned to a plant-based […]
Public Garden Soothes Amid Pandemic
By Ama Anwar Spectrum staff After being closed for more than four months, the 250-acre New York Botanical Garden re-opened to the public on July 28. Eileen Vurgos, a social worker from the Upper West Side, was one of the first people to glide through its entrance gates. After so many months either under quarantine […]
Doctor Discrimination Against LGBT Banned
By Sneha Dey Spectrum staff Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, 43, sat in a hospital room waiting for the kind of medical questions that might be considered a kiss-and-tell about his sexual history. But, that day, the doctor never asked about that history, or about whether Daskalakis wanted a standard test for HIV, which straight and gay […]
Tackling Latinos’ Fears About Mental Illness, Care
By Enmanuel De La Rosa Spectrum staff For the last 15 years, the Rev. Juadan Rodriguez, 40, a social worker and a preacher, has been counseling people with mental illness. Almost all of them have been Latino, and many of those Latinos have been reluctant to view mental illness as just another kind of sickness that needs to be treated. “Mental illness is not […]
Studying the Noise-y Nature of New York City
By Jayla Cordero Spectrum staff Most New Yorkers know how noisy the city can get. There’s blaring music, honking car horns, jackhammers, emergency sirens, kids screaming and whole lot less quiet than many–if not most–other places. The city is so noisy, in fact, that researchers at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development […]
Obesity Therapy Becomes Another Level of Attack Against Fat
For more than 10 years now, Sylvia Martinez, a licensed creative arts therapist based in the West Village, has used art therapy as part of her work to help obese people loose weight and get to root of why they overeat. With paintbrushes and pencils, Martinez teaches clients to express their feelings toward their condition. […]
Cooper Union Grooms Girls for STEM Careers
Giving in to her parents’ wishes, Kavya Udupa, a ninth-grader then, reluctantly took her first computer class in C++, an all-purpose computer programming language. She liked it more than she expected. Now 16, Udupa not only loves computers, she’s also exploring career possibilities in science, technology, engineering and math, a group commonly referred to as […]
Where Good Food Is Less Abundant, Farm Project Delivers a Harvest
Chef Louise Noel had just finished stir-frying kale, cabbage, chick peas and garlic scapes, sprinkled with assorted spices, when Leslie Daly and Paul Daly approached. “What’s in this?” the husband said, holding his head back, then dumping the paper cup containing a spoonful of Noel’s dish into his mouth. The Dalys sampled Noel’s cooking. […]
New Anti-AIDS Initiative Targets Young, Straight Males of Color
To slow the spread of HIV/AIDS by and among young, heterosexual males of color and encourage them to engage in a more public conversation about the disease, a Harlem-based group with citywide reach has launched its Young Men’s Initiative. During its inaugural daylong Young’s Men Summit, a July 21 workshop series, group leaders and some […]