Columbia University announced on Tuesday that Feniosky Pena-Mora, dean of Columbia's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, has stepped down from his position, according to The New York Times. Born in the Dominican Republic, Pena-Mora was a noted addition to Columbia's administration, and his resignation marks the third high-level minority administrator recruited by Columbia President Lee Bollinger to resign. While some criticized Pena-Mora, who joined the university in 2009, for expanding the engineering school too quickly, Pena-Mora said he believed his status as a minority contributed to the majority of the negative assessment of his leadership. Executive Vice Dean of SEAS Donald Goldfarb will serve as interim dean of SEAS, and Pena-Mora will remain on staff as a Columbia faculty member, The Times reported.
Scientists at the world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, announced on Wednesday the discovery of a new elementary particle that is likely the Higgs boson a baffling particle which is believed to give all other matter its mass, according to CBS News. The particle is named after Peter Higgs, the leader of the group that first theorized the particle's existence in 1964. The Higgs boson marks the last undiscovered particle predicted by the current theory of particle physics, according to CBS News. California Institute of Technology physicist Maria Spiropulu said that this discovery has "propelled the future of particle physics toward the understanding of the fundamental properties of our universe in its entirety." Brown University physics professor Meenakshi Narain said that while the discovery is a "momentous event," much work still needs to be done to further understand the boson particle and its implications, CBS reported.
A Harvard Medical School study published online Monday found that almost 8 percent of adolescents have an anger disorder, The Boston Globe reported. The disorder known as intermittent explosive disorder is characterized by recurring violent outbursts that exceed normal anger displayed by teenagers. The study determined that out of teenagers who displayed symptoms of the disorder, less than 7 percent were receiving treatment for anger, though a majority were receiving treatment for conditions such as depression. Some mental health experts are unsure that intermittent explosive disorder is a "true illness" and believe that it should not be used to make diagnoses, according to The Globe.
