Low Tech . . . and Timeless

Science Magazine has published its 2006 Visualization Challenge Winners, and among them--as 2nd place winner in the Illustration division-- is this version of Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (first drawn more than 500 years ago). Biology teacher Caryn Babaian of Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pennsylvania,

uses the iconic sketch as a "multi-conceptual image" in her introductory anatomy class to illustrate three crucial anatomical concepts: rotation, transparency, and transverse section. Babaian requires her students to draw the image in their notebooks as they watch it take shape on the blackboard.

(Click on image for larger version.)

X-ray Vision

What interests me about other people's books is the nature of their collection. A personal library is an X-ray of the owner's soul. It offers keys to a particular temperament, an intellectual disposition, a way of being in the world. Even how the books are arranged on the shelves deserves notice, even reflection. There is probably no such thing as complete chaos in such arrangements.

--Jay Parini, Other People's Books, Chronicle of Higher Education, 22Sep06

MONA

Here's another reason to like Nebraska: MONA. The Museum of Nebraska Art (Kearney, Nebraska) has a lovely online display of art by Nebraska artists. Besides featuring a work or two by each collected artist, the online exhibit also includes biographical information and information on each work. (Below, Deborah Murphy's Your Street, Any Street, 1992, acrylic.)

Food for Thought Department

McKeachie's Teaching Tips, by Wilbert McKeachie, a classic guide for new teachers which has gone through many editions (I'm quoting here from my battered copy of the ninth), describes the most commonly cited fact about lectures: Research has found that after a lecture "students recalled 70 percent of the material covered in the first 10 minutes, and only 20 percent of the material covered in the last 10 minutes" (so if you insist on continuing to lecture all the time, make sure you speak really loudly during the last 10 minutes).

One study found that if a professor speaks 150 words a minute, students hear about 50 of them; another study determined that students are tuned out of a 50-minute lecture around 40 percent of the time.

--from Beyond Lecturing, James M. Lang, Chronicle of Higher Education, 29Sep06

Test Your Dark Movie Literacy

In a painting reminiscent of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, M&M'S® has created 50 visual clues to the names of "dark movies." Test your dark movie literacy and see how long it takes you to find them all.

Warning: Not work safe . . . it eats up the time!

One of Our Favorites: Maurice Sendak

A new Maurice Sendak title is an occasion for joy--this one especially. In collaboration with Arthur Yorinks (author of Hey, Al!) and Matthew Reinhart (pop-up guru), Sendak has produced his first pop-up book: Mommy?

As in many other Sendak books, the plot features a child in peril--here, a little boy who encounters Halloween monsters as he searches for his mommy. And, as usual, the boy saves himself and achieves his quest.

• NPR has a nice audio slide show of Sendak illustrations where Sendak talks about the source of his childhood fears
• An interview with NPR's Steve Inskeep: Why Maurice Sendak Puts Kid Characters in Danger
  

How to Teach a Dirty Book

Meanwhile, my younger students complained that their parents made off with their Peyton Place copies — not to censor, but to read the forbidden book at last. ("Don’t tell your grandmother.")

In honor of Banned Books Week, nHumanities is pleased to direct you to Emily Toth's wonderful essay on teaching Peyton Place to today's students, 50 years after it was first published: How to Teach a Dirty Book (via Inside Higher Ed).

Free People Read Freely ®

What do To Kill a Mockingbird and Lolita have in common?

Both are books which were challenged this year in an American library or school. A "challenge" is when a library receives an oral or written complaint which challenges the presence and/or appropriateness of a book. In other words, some other American, somewhere, thought you shouldn't be allowed to read these books if you want to.

September 23-30 is Banned Books Week's 25th anniversary. Sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA), Banned Books Week . . .

celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express oneÂ’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

This year, Google Book Search celebrates Banned Books Week by putting together a wonderful list of banned books you can read online (or download), including the links to access them.

• ALA's Banned Books web site
  
• Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century
• ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom
• How to Handle Challenges to Library Materials
• Google Blog on Banned Books Week
  

Oedipus (with Vegetables)

Need some culture, but don't have the time? Try this 8 minute video of Oedipus, with a cast comprised entirely of vegetables. The cast includes

Laios ..............................Broccoli
Jocasta .....................................Tomato
Oedipus ..........................................Potato
Sheep ....................................Cauliflower
LINK

STUDENTS: WARNING. This dramatic adaptation takes a few liberties with the story of Oedipus. Do not use this as a substitute for actually reading the play.

Hispanic Heritage Month

September 15 - October 15 is Hispanic Heritage Month. First authorized as a "week" in 1968, Congress extended the celebration to a month beginning 1988.

Local activities and television:

• Hinckley Library will showcase items from Spanish-speaking countries and Latino cultures of the U.S. (beginning September 25)
• A film on Hispanics in Wyoming, sponsored by the Northwest College Spanish Club (October 9, 7:00 p.m., FAB 70)
  
• PBS Visiones: Latino Art & Culture (September 24, 3:00 a.m., KRMA of Denver)
  
• PBS Los Braceros--Strong Arms to Aid the U.S.A. (September 26, 9:30 p.m., KRMA of Denver)

Select Web Resources:

• Gale - Free Resources - Hispanic Heritage
• US Census Press Releases: Hispanic Heritage Month
• We the People: Hispanics in the United States (PDF, 2000 Census Special Report)
  
• Hispanic Reading Room (Library of Congress)
• National Park Service: Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month 2006
• CRM Online (Cultural Resource Management): Exploring Hispanic History and Culture--A Dynamic Field
• Impacto, Influencia, Cambio (everyday people of Latin America and the southwestern US who have affected science and technology)
• PEW Hispanic Center
• REACH: Recursos Para la Enseñanza y el Aprendizaje de las Culturas Hispanas
  
• NARA: Genealogists/Family Historians - Hispanic Americans
• The History Channel: ¡Hispanic Heritage Month!

(Image courtesy of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.)

Times Reader (beta)

The New York Times has rolled out a beta test of its new Times Reader, which is "a new, downloadable software application that lets Windows XP and Vista users read The New York Times electronically, online or offline, in a paginated format as opposed to scrolling down a Web page. Times Reader lets users retrieve all the latest news and photos (a process that takes about a minute) and read the content offline."

nHumanities has been using the Times Reader for the past few days, and we love it. The experience of reading text online has never been so good, much less reading a newspaper online. It works equally well on the desktop, a tablet PC, a laptop, or an ultra mobile device.

You can find out all about the new Times Reader and enroll for the Beta at the service's FAQ page.

Another Reason to Buy More Books (as if we needed one)

Paul Buckley, art director for Penguin Group, has commissioned some splendid cover art for volumes old and new. A recent series which has us drooling is "the Graphic Classics--timeless works of literature featuring amazing, one-of-a-kind cover illustrations from some today's best graphic artists." You can read an interview with Paul Buckley at Hear, Hear.

Pictured, our beloved Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, with cover art by American cartoonist Roz Chast.

Oy Vey! Jewish Pirates

In an upcoming book, Ed Kritzler argues that many historical pirates were "Ladino-speaking Jews whose piracy grew out of the Inquisition":

While some Jews, like Samuel Pallache, took up piracy in part to help make a better life for expelled Spanish Jews, Kritzler said others were motivated by revenge for the Inquisition.

One such pirate was Moses Cohen Henriques, who helped plan one of history's largest heists against Spain. In 1628, Henriques set sail with Dutch West India Co. Admiral Piet Hein, whose own hatred of Spain was fueled by four years spent as a galley slave aboard a Spanish ship. Henriques and Hein boarded Spanish ships off Cuba and seized shipments of New World gold and silver worth in today's dollars about the same as Disney's total box office for "Dead Man's Chest."

Henriques set up his own pirate island off the coast of Brazil afterward, and even though his role in the raid was disclosed during the Spanish Inquisition, he was never caught . . ..

In honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, you can read all about it at The Jewish Journal.

How Likely Are You to Die from al-Qaida?

In an article titled One Million Ways to Die, Wired News has created a visual which is a "ranking of the various dangers confronting America, based on the number of mortalities in each category throughout the 11-year period spanning 1995 through 2005 (extrapolated from best available data)."

Death and Taxes

Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. --Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy (13 November 1789)

Death and Taxes (2007 ed.) is a "representational graph of the federal discretionary budget" (in essence, our federal income tax), created by Jess Bachman. Pictured above is a segment of the graph dealing with education. The graph is a fascinating visual display of quantitative information.

nHumanities loves Science Fiction, and we are not alone . . . in more ways than one.

In today's New York Times, Ronald D. Moore--one of the writers for Battlestar Galactica--contributes an op-ed piece on how Science Fiction affected his life, in particular how Star Trek shaped his world view and ideals.

Moore says,

As I grew into adolescence, the show provided a handy reference against which to judge the questions that my young mind began to ask: What is the obligation of a free society toward the less fortunate? Does an "advanced" culture have the right to spread its ideas among more "primitive" ones? What does it mean to be human, and at what point do we lose our humanity to our technology?

Yes, folks, the answers are all in Star Trek, which Moore calls "the gold standard for the idealistic vision of tomorrow."

You can read the entire article--"Mr. Universe"--at the New York Times online.

PS Battlestar Gallactica's new season premiers October 6th on the SciFi channel.

Read Like an Olmec

The New York Times reports that "A stone slab bearing 3,000-year-old writing previously unknown to scholars has been found in the Mexican state of Veracruz, and archaeologists say it is an example of the oldest script ever discovered in the Western Hemisphere." The significance of this find is that it links the Olmec civilization--previously known for huge stone heads and monumental cities--to literacy.

Unknown writing systems are rarely discovered, with the last being the Indus Valley script, which was discovered during excavations in 1924.

Scholars can't read the Mexican glyphs, but the text "conforms to all expectations of writing" and reflects "patterns of language, with the probable presence of syntax and language-dependent word orders."

More about the discovery is in an article in the 15 September 2006 issue of Science, written by the scientists who found the text.

More on Talk Like a Pirate Day

Our previous post provides all the necessary background one needs to fully appreciate Talk Like a Pirate Day.

However, as professionals in the field of language study, we understand that simply reading about a language is insufficient for the development of true expertise.

With that in mind, we recommend what be a fair salty video on the finer points of talking like a pirate.

Talk Like a Pirate Day--September 19th

Don't forget!! Talk Like a Pirate Day is September 19th!

• How it all started
• Dave Barry's popularizing column
• Real pirates from UK's National Mariner's Museum
• Elizabeth's Pirates, from Channel4 (UK)
  
• NationalGeographic.com's Pirate webpages for children
• This week's pirate activity from the International Chamber of Commerce
  

New Scholarly Search Engine

The Librarians' Internet Index alerts us to an online database from Great Britain that's designed to find high quality web sites for education and research: Intute.

With over 113,000 records, Intute's database includes only web sites that have been selected and evaluated by subject specialists, who then write descriptions of the resources. Intute also provides support materials and tutorials that help teach students how to search the internet within their subject areas.

One can also personalize Intute with Myintute, which allows a user to save records and searches; receive weekly email alerts; and export records to one's own web pages.

Classical Music Available No Where Else

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum now provides "free recordings of classical music performed live in the museum's Tapestry Room. These exclusive recordings from [the Museum's] regular concert series feature performances by acclaimed master musicians and up-and-coming young artists."

Five programs are currently available and a new program is posted every two weeks.

Licensed under a Creative Commons license, the Museum's podcasts allow users to download, copy, file-share, trade, distribute, and publicly perform (e.g. webcast) the concerts, provided the user meets the following requirements:

• Noncommercial. A person may not sell copies of this music or make any other commercial use of this music.
• No Derivative Works. The user may not sample or remix this music.
  
• Attribution. The original author must receive credit.
  

2006 - 2007 Northwest College Writers Series

The Northwest College Writers Series has announced its 2006-2007 list of speakers. We are pleased to have another fine lineup of writers for this year's series. They are:

Renee Dechert (essayist) Thursday, Sept. 21, 2006

Lawson Inada (poet) Tuesday, Oct. 10

Jeff Biggers (travel writer) Thursday, Nov. 2, 2006

CJ Box (detective fiction writer) Thursday, Nov. 30

Mary Clearman Blew (memoirist) Feb. 20, 2007

Kim Barnes (memoirist) TBA

Garry Wallace (memoirist) April 10th, 2007

For times and more details on these authors, see the Writers Series page on the Humanities Division Web Site.

How to Mark a Book

You know you have to read "between the lines" to get the most out of anything. I want to persuade you to do something equally important in the course of your reading. I want to persuade you to "write between the lines." Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind of reading.

I contend, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is not an act of mutilation but of love.

In the early 1940s, the American philosopher and author Mortimer J. Adler published a short essay titled "How to Mark a Book" in The Saturday Review of Literature which remains one of the best short works on how to get the most out of your reading.

Here's Adler's specific advice on how to mark up a book:

• Underlining (or highlighting): of major points, of important or forceful statements.
• Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined.
• Star, asterisk, or other doo-dad at the margin: to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the book. (You may want to fold the bottom comer of each page on which you use such marks. It won't hurt the sturdy paper on which most modern books are printed, and you will be able take the book off the shelf at any time and, by opening it at the folded-corner page, refresh your recollection of the book.)
• Numbers in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points the author makes in developing a single argument.
• Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the book the author made points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together.
• Circling or highlighting of key words or phrases.
• Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page, for the sake of: recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raised in your mind; reducing a complicated discussion to a simple statement; recording the sequence of major points right through the books. I use the end-papers at the back of the book to make a personal index of the author's points in the order of their appearance.

Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists™

Set as we are to bring you all things academic, nHumanities is gobsmacked to discover that the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS) has existed for several years . . . and we were clueless.

Brought to us by the scholars at Improbable Research, LFHCfS is a club for scientists who have, or believe they have, luxuriant flowing hair. According to the LFHCfS web site, "The first member, chosen by acclamation, was psychologist Steven Pinker, whose hair has long been the object of admiration, and envy, and intense study. From that lone, Pinkerian seed, there has grown a spreading chestnut, black, blond, and red-haired membership tree."

Pictured below are the Drs. Schuch, Linsner, and Jung--the 2004/2005 Men of the Year for the LFHCfS:

Another Great MIT Hack

In honor of 9/11, students at MIT have pulled off another great hack. Yesterday morning (the 11th), a fake fire truck appeared on top of the 150-foot high Great Dome at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

The Boston Globe reports that the fire truck "appeared to be the old fashioned cab of a truck that has been painted red. The cab is attached to a rectangular box, which is also red, and has the words 'MIT Fire Dept.' painted on the side in bold white letters. A coiled rope dangled from the side of the 'truck,' completing the emergency vehicle look. "

You can see some close-up pictures of this classic hack on the MIT hack website, which also contains a complete list of campus hacks by year (many including photos).

The Great Dome is the traditional site of many MIT hacks, or student pranks. One of the most famous involved the appearance of a campus police car in 1994, complete with flashing lights and a box of donuts on the seat.

NNDB: Tracking the Entire World

NNDB (Notable Names Database) is an "intelligence aggregator" that contains profiles on over 18,500 people (living and dead) throughout the world. It contains some of the same information as most biographical reference books, such as date of birth, a life story, and other essential facts.

What NNDB adds is an attempt "to document the connections between people, many of which are not always obvious. A person's otherwise inexplicable behavior is often understood by examining the crowd that person has been associating with."

nHumanities thinks this publishing goal sounds similar to warnings that mothers give their young: "Be careful who your friends are!" In NNDB's case, each profile includes interesting but usually omitted information such as slept with, sexual orientation, nervous breakdowns, health risk factors, and incredibly frank executive summaries, along with more pedestrian information. Inquiring minds want to know.

[You can read Frank Zappa's profile at NNDB.]

10 x 10

Each hour, 10 x 10 "collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time." Its sources are the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources. Using Flash technology, the viewer can pass a computer mouse over each picture and click to learn more about the word and story represented by the image.

The result is a strangely mesmerizing and sometimes poignant snapshot of our world, hour by hour.

infartillery

No, infartillery doesn't mean what you think it does.

infartillery n. an artillery group capable of acting as infantry. Related: counterspace, bag drag, English, Military

This is one of the delightful definitions from Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary. Created by a lexicographer for Oxford University Press, the Double-Tongued Word Wrester "records undocumented or under-documented words from the fringes of English. It focuses upon slang, jargon, and other niche categories which include new, foreign, hybrid, archaic, obsolete, and rare words. Special attention is paid to the lending and borrowing of words between the various Englishes and other languages, even where a word is not a fully naturalized citizen in its new language."

Beautifully done, academically sound . . . and fun.

99 Undiscovered Web Sites

PC Magazine says, "Think of us as the friends who are always forwarding you links to cool sites you'd never find on your own. That's who we aim to be with this list of 99 Undiscovered Web Sites, and that's who you'll be after reading it.

"The following list is made up of sites that are still flying under the radar, but are useful, funny, or interesting enough to merit entrée into the Web's public consciousness."

Links from PC Magazine:

• 99 Undiscovered Web Sites
• Top 101 Web Sites
• Top 10 Future Classic Web Sites

Stories on Stage

Chicago Public Radio's Stories on Stage "features live dramatic readings of literature by professional actors in a theatrical setting."

If you aren't going to be in Chicago any time soon, then you might wish to check out the program's Audio Library of 90-minute broadcasts of three or four stories linked by a common theme.

Slave Narratives

The Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco) features a marvelous online exhibit of Slave Narratives. The exhibit features introductions by Maya Angelou, with actors providing readings from the actual narratives. The site includes transcripts and good resources. Beautifully laid out, Slave Narratives uses interesting Flash technology. (A non-Flash version of the website is available, too.)

100 Best Products for 2006

Do you really like Craigslist.org? Does Google Earth boggle your mind? Do you fall to your knees and thank God that you live in the same time and place as YouTube.com? Do you start each day with a solemn pledge to fight the Microsoft hegemony by using Mozilla's Firefox as your exclusive browser? Couldn't live properly without your Apple iPod?

Yeah. We at nHumanities know what you mean. And you aren't alone.

Each year, PC World rounds up the 100 best products: web applications, software, hardware, and games. The items we just mentioned are among those 100. The entire list is a valuable resource for new personal technology, much of it free.

---

Department of non sequiturs: Take a look at the hynotizing video Noah takes a photo of himself everyday for 6 years at YouTube.com.

Beloit College's Mindset List® for the Class of 2010

Each August, the faculty of Beloit College releases its Mindset List, a list of cultural touchstones which typify the world of the average American 18-year-old. The list for the Class of 2010 includes 75 items that are worth perusing. Here are a few of the highlights:

• The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.
• For most of their lives, major U.S. airlines have been bankrupt.
• They have grown up getting lost in "big boxes" (i.e., Wal*Marts).
• There has always been only one Germany.
• They have never heard anyone actually "ring it up" on a cash register.
• "Google" has always been a verb.
• Text messaging is their email.
• Mr. Rogers, not Walter Cronkite, has always been the most trusted man in America.
• They grew up in mini-vans.
  
• Reality shows have always been on television.
  

Writing (for the Web)

A List Apart features articles for web site developers. As such, it occasionally addresses the subject of good writing, most recently in Gentle Reader, Stay Awhile; I Will Be Faithful by Amber Simmons.

As it happens, advice on good writing works regardless of the medium--web, personal letters, freshman comp essays, or your grocery list. Here are Simmons's key points:

• Write for a single reader rather than an audience. Speak to him in an appropriate tone, and treat him as a real person.
• Tell your reader what he wants to know, even if it bores you to tell him.
• Provide as much context as possible.
• Anticipate and answer your reader’s questions.
• Take your reader on an interesting and well-considered journey into the web.
• Respect the time your reader chooses to spend with you. Treat him fairly.

---

Flickr photo How well I could write if I were not here! originally uploaded by Esther_G.

WP's Style Invitational

Each week, The Washington Post holds a word contest called The Style Invitational. In 1998, the Week 266 Style Invitational invited readers to redefine any word from the dictionary. The results, published in the 10 May 1998 Sunday paper include these:

• Seventh Runner-Up: Carcinoma -- n., a valley in California, notable for its heavy smog.
  
• Sixth Runner-Up: Asunder -- adj., supine.
• Fifth Runner-Up: Esplanade -- v., to attempt an explanation while drunk.
• Fourth Runner-Up: Willy-nilly -- adj., impotent.
• Third Runner-Up: Flabbergasted -- adj., appalled over how much weight you have gained.
• Second Runner-Up: Negligent -- adj., describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightie.
• First Runner-Up: Excruciate -- n., the ligament that attaches your ex-wife to your paycheck.
  
• Grand winner: Canticle -- n., a modular office space so small and lightless that it saps an employee of all motivation.
  

Some of the more popular honorable mention entries have lived on in emails and blogs, including some of our favorites:

• Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
• Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
• Gargoyle (n.), garlic & oil-flavored mouthwash.
• Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
• Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
• Frisbeetarianism (n.), The belief that, when you die, your soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

---

Blog entry via Harriet

This Is Your Brain on Music

Tuesday morning's Salon.com reviews neuroscientist Daniel Levitin's new book This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (to access the complete article for free, play the brief advertisement). In it, Levitin explains how music represents an essential step in human evolution, but along the way, he explains some other musical mysteries, too.

One such is his explanation of why the music which we love as teenagers stays with us as no other music does. Salon.com reviewer Farhad Manjoo explains Levitin's theory:

Humans prefer music of their own culture when they're toddlers, but it's in our teens that we choose the specific sort of music that we'll love forever. These years, Levitin explains, are emotional times, "and we tend to remember things that have an emotional component because our amygdala and neurotransmitters act in concert to 'tag' the memories as something important." In addition, our brains are undergoing massive changes up until the teen years -- after that, the brain structure becomes more fixed, and it begins to prune, rather than grow, neural connections. Consequently it's in our teens that we're most receptive to new kinds of music (in much the same way it's easier to learn a new language when you're young than when you're old).

Another musical mystery that Levitin tackes has the delightful German name ohrwurm or earworm. That's the experience of having an annoying fragment of music stuck in your head: "Alas, Levitin says relatively little research has been done on the phenomenon -- all we really know is that musicians and people with obsessive compulsive disorder are more prone to getting earworms, and that for most people it's small bits of songs, rather than entire songs, that we keep repeating."

You can read the entire review at Salon.com.

---

Wired News has an interview with Levitin at Music Makes Your Brain Happy.

Partial Truth: The Freshman 15

The GOOD NEWS: According to a host of scientific studies completed since 2000, the average freshman student will not gain 15 pounds.

The BAD NEWS: The average freshman student will gain 6-8 pounds.

According to a recent article in The New York Times, the myth of the freshman 15 began around 1985 in a Chicago Tribune article. The story quickly gained status as gospel. One's common sense said that all-you-can-eat dining halls, prepaid meal plans, unlimited desserts, late-night snacking, and sedentary lifestyles would mean at least 15 pounds of trouble.

Not so. Most recently, a study at Rutgers University found that female students gained an average of 6 pounds, while males added an average 8 pounds.

"Unfortunately, most people fail to gain control of their weight gain from early adulthood," said Stacy Trukowski, assistant director for fitness at Rutgers. "Although gaining an average of 7 pounds is not as alarming as 15, the pounds will surely add up over time."

What to do? Fitness directors at Rutgers suggest the following:

• Begin a fitness program.
• Get a workout partner.
• Improve your eating habits.

More specific eating advice comes from Daphne Oz, a junior at Princeton, who has written The Dorm Room Diet:

Her tips include avoiding sugar cereals and fried food; stocking dorm refrigerators with bite-size goodies like strawberries and baby carrots instead of Diet Coke and ice cream; filling up on fruit and water before attending parties; and preparing for study sessions by brown-bagging snacks like pears and soy crisps so that the midnight munchies won'’t propel you to a vending machine.

The blog Slashfood offers eight more eating tips:

1. Keep low fat yogurt in the mini fridge.
2. Trail mix is a good snack to keep on hand instead of candy bars.
3. Eat breakfast.
4. Visit the salad bar in the dining hall.
5. Avoid desserts.
6. Remember that calories come from drinks, too, like juice, smoothies, and coffee drinks.
7. Instead of chips, choose low fat popcorn.
8. Keep some long-lasting fruit on hand, like apples and oranges.