Lauren RubensteinJuly 31, 20124min
For the past two years, Ao Wang has shared with his students at Wesleyan a passion for Chinese poetry and intellectual debate over East Asian cultural issues. Wang came to Wesleyan in fall 2010 as a visiting professor. He was hired in the 2011-12 academic year as an assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures and East Asian studies. Originally from Qingdao, China, Wang was drawn to the United States because of his love of American culture, particularly music and poetry. Though he didn’t have a specific career goal at that time, he eventually decided to become a translator of…

Lauren RubensteinJuly 31, 20122min
In the wake of the LIBOR banking scandal, Richard Grossman, professor of economics, commented in the Canadian news magazine Maclean’s on July 13 about banking regulation throughout history. “It’s guaranteed to be a losing battle,” he said. “The incentives in banking are so strong and the money is so big. As soon as you close off one area, someone is going to think of a new way to do things.” Grossman stressed that governments and the public have a short memory when it comes to financial crises, so that regulations that seem prudent in one era become the next generation’s “political red tape.”…

Lauren RubensteinJuly 31, 20122min
Professor of Biology Ann Burke recently completed a Fulbright Specialists project in Nepal at The Patan Academy of Health Sciences. It is the mission of this new medical program to train students from rural areas of Nepal who are committed to returning to their villages to provide desperately needed health care. Burke's project, which involved training local faculty in the teaching of human anatomy for medical students, was completed during the months of May and June. Burke was one of over 400 American faculty and professionals who will travel abroad this year through the Fulbright's Specialists Program. The program, created…

Lauren RubensteinJuly 31, 20121min
Hilary Barth, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, is the co-author of "Active (not passive) spatial imagery primes temporal judgements." Written along with Jessica Sullivan of the University of California-San Diego, the article was published in the June 2012 issue of The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. For this article, Barth and Sullivan looked deeper into the previously demonstrated cognitive connections between how we think about space and time. They found that only when people are asked to imagine actively moving themselves through space are their perceptions of time influenced. When participants in the experiment were primed with a similar…

Lauren RubensteinJuly 31, 20121min
Matthew Kurtz, associate professor of psychology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior, is the co-editor of a new book, Clinical Neuropsychological Foundations of Schizophrenia. The book, co-edited by Bernice Marcopulos, was published on July 11 by Psychology Press. A resource for practicing neuropsychologists, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and neuropsychiatrists, as well as students of these disciplines, the volume provides knowledge and tools for providing professional neuropsychological services to patients with schizophrenia. It offers an overview of developmental models of schizophrenia and associated neuropathologies, and covers contemporary evidence-based assessments and interventions, including cognitive remediation and other cognitive-oriented interventions.

Lauren RubensteinJuly 9, 20123min
John Kirn, professor of biology, professor and chair of the neuroscience and behavior program, in May published an article in the Journal of Neuroscience on neurogenesis in songbirds. He recently spoke about his research on WNPR public radio and in The Hartford Courant.  Q: Professor Kirn, you study the neuroscience behind song learning and production in zebra finches. Please tell us about your research, and the surprising findings to come out of your most recent work. A: I’m interested in the normal functions of adult neurogenesis—the continual addition and replacement of neurons. This happens to a limited extent in humans but…

Lauren RubensteinJuly 9, 20128min
Assistant Professor Maria Ospina, who recently completed her first year in the Romance Languages and Literatures Department at Wesleyan, can trace her academic interests directly back to her childhood in Colombia and her longtime interest in history. “My interests in violence, memory and culture stem in part from my own experiences growing up in Colombia during the 1980s and 90s, in a very complex region that has been marked by armed conflict, the hemispheric War on Drugs and different waves of migration. The combination of political turmoil and a vibrant cultural production that actively reflected on the histories of violence…

Lauren RubensteinJuly 9, 20123min
John Kirn, professor of biology, professor and chair of the neuroscience and behavior program, was interviewed on WNPR public radio on June 25 about his research on neurogenesis, or the formation of new neurons, in the brains of zebra finches. "The birds that had managed to preserve their songs the longest had the most new neurons, which was completely counter to our prediction. It suggests that maybe, at least in some cases and in some brain regions, new neurons are being added in order to preserve what's already been learned," Kirn said in the interview, describing the findings of his latest…

Lauren RubensteinJuly 9, 20122min
In an op-ed published in The Hartford Courant on June 24, Bill Craighead, assistant professor of economics, proposes a policy solution to avoid economic disaster as the U.S. confronts the so-called “fiscal cliff” at the beginning of 2013. As Craighead explains in the piece, the cliff refers to the simultaneous expiration of Bush-era income tax cuts and Social Security payroll tax cuts, as well as automatic cuts in government spending mandated following last year's debt ceiling stand-off. Craighead proposes that, "The tax increases could be made to occur at a more appropriate time by instituting triggering criteria that would delay…