It’s the part of the brain that makes sure you cannot tickle yourself. The cerebellum, an apple-sized region near the base of the skull, senses that your own fingers are the ones trying to tickle, and cancels your usual response. Now an international team of researchers has learned something surprising about this region, which despite its small size contains roughly half of all the neurons in the brain.

At the end of the two-day global conference, Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber thanked participants and shared a final thought, saying that if we use critical thinking, liberty and democracy can survive the digital age.

It has taken us thousands of years to build today’s urban centers, and yet, they’re expected to double in land-area in just the next few decades. “Half the urban infrastructure we will be using in 2050 has not yet been built,” said Elie Bou-Zeid, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton.

The international community has poured billions of dollars into aid, services and protection for civilians in Afghanistan, hoping that winning their support would help the fight against insurgents. But new research shows that strategy has an unintended consequence: villages where residents support the international forces are more likely to face attacks from the Taliban-led insurgency.

In many species, mating comes at the steep price of an organism’s life, an evolutionary process intended to regulate reproductive competition. But males of certain roundworm species have doubled down with two methods of checking out after mating, including one in which the males poison each other, according to new research.

The Princeton men’s basketball team won the first Ivy League championship tournament Sunday, earning an automatic berth in the NCAA tournament. The Tigers, seeded 12th in the NCAA West bracket, will play fifth-seeded Notre Dame in the first round Thursday.

Committee issues pilot recommendations for undergraduate dining

The Princeton University Board Plan Review Committee has developed initial recommendations to enhance the dining experience for undergraduates starting in fall 2017. The changes will be implemented as a one-year pilot program and will inform the committee’s ongoing review of undergraduate board plans.

Read more about the pilot recommendations.

Researchers like Bou-Zeid and others in Princeton’s School of Engineering and Applied Science are exploring new ways to build urban infrastructures to serve our growing population, changing civilization and warming planet.

Read more about intelligent cities.

Princeton University researchers provided the theoretical understanding that led to the creation of time crystals being reported in the journal Nature March 9 by two groups of researchers based at Harvard University and the University of Maryland.

Frick Chemistry building

Since the Middle Ages, alchemists have sought to transmute elements, the most famous example being the long quest to turn lead into gold. Transmutation has been realized in modern times, but on a minute scale using a massive particle accelerator.

The University unveiled the “Princeton Portraits” project Monday, March 6, on a website that, in a multimedia display of the University’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, showcases the backgrounds and perspectives of 32 campus administrators.

An influx of pollution from Asia in the western United States and more frequent heat waves in the eastern U.S. are responsible for the persistence of smog in these regions over the past quarter century despite laws curtailing the emission of smog-forming chemicals from automobile tailpipes and factories.

Early this year, about 30 neuroscientists and computer programmers got together to improve their ability to read the human mind. The hackathon was one of several that researchers from Princeton University and Intel, the largest maker of computer processors, organized to build software that can tell what a person is thinking in real time, while the person is thinking it.

Princeton senior Monique Claiborne has been awarded a Luce Scholarship that will allow her to spend the next year in Asia.

Read more about the Luce Scholarship.

The recipients of Princeton’s top alumni awards underscored solutions for the political and technological challenges of today and the future at the University’s annual Alumni Day on Saturday, Feb. 25.

A common roundworm widely studied for its developmental biology and neuroscience, also might be one of the most surprising examples of the eat-local movement. Princeton University researchers have found that the organisms have a sure-fire method of ensuring a steady supply of a bacteria they eat — they grow their own.

In conjunction with Princeton’s Office of Technology Licensing, the Keller Center hosted the 12th annual Innovation Forum. The purpose of the Innovation Forum is to showcase Princeton research that offers the potential to be commercialized.

The number of first-generation and low-income undergraduates at Princeton continues to grow, and more programs have been developed to empower students from first-gen and low-income backgrounds to thrive at the University.

Electromagnetic pulses lasting one millionth of a millionth of a second may hold the key to advances in medical imaging, communications and drug development. But the pulses, called terahertz waves, have long required elaborate and expensive equipment to use.

Princeton professor Eric Wood and a team of Princeton engineers have deployed an advanced drought and flood risk monitoring program for environmentally vulnerable regions like Niger and other areas in Africa and in Latin America.