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Olivia DrakeMay 9, 20222min
On April 30, Wesleyan's Archaeology and Anthropology Collections hosted an open house at Exley Science Center. In addition to viewing artifacts excavated from around the world and Middletown, guests were able to tour the museums, watch demonstrations of stone tool-making and 3D scanning, and participate in a hands-on animal bone and scat identification exercise. The event was co-hosted by the Wesleyan Archaeology Program, Environmental Archaeology Laboratory, Joe Webb Peoples Museum of Natural History, and the George Brown Goode Biological Collections. (Photos by Willow Saxon '24)

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Olivia DrakeApril 11, 20228min
Every summer, Anna Fehr '23 would cherish family camping trips to the mountains in California. There, she could see something many people—especially city residents—rarely get to experience: a truly dark night sky. "I remember seeing the Milky Way and just being blown away by the sheer number of stars," she recalls. "I think I knew at the time that each star was like another sun, and it was just impossible to imagine the scope of what I could see with a naked eye. Also, my parents both have August birthdays, so we would go up to the mountains during the…

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Steve ScarpaApril 4, 20227min
It isn’t often that watching late night comedy would be considered preparation for an environmental studies senior capstone project, but that turned out to the case for Belle Brown ‘22. Regular viewing of John Oliver’s commentary on environmental issues helped inform Brown’s upcoming stand-up comedy set about the absurdities of the Monsanto Company. “Belle decided to do the comedy act as her capstone project as a way of presenting research about policy and politics related to big-agriculture in a format that might be more accessible to people. I just saw a preview, and it is hilarious as well as informative,”…

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Olivia DrakeMarch 16, 202210min
In April 2019, Middlesex County EMT Livia Cox '22 recalls responding to a medical call where she encounters an unconscious and pale-faced patient. She eyes a pill bottle in the room, and although the man is dead, she begins chest compressions anyway "with every joule of energy and every compassionate bone in me," she says. Cox had met this patient before. They've discussed his comorbid chronic physical and mental pain and substance dependency at length. A former military man, he has frequent PTSD episodes. He's been prescribed opioids to ameliorate his joint pain, but help more with his insomnia. "On…

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Olivia DrakeFebruary 9, 20225min
While scientific societies frequently approach diversity and inclusion efforts by supporting the professional development of historically underrepresented groups, data is lacking to evaluate the efficacy of these methods. As co-principal investigator I of a $701,000 National Science Foundation grant awarded to the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), Candice Etson, assistant professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, will help establish a network of experts who will collaboratively identify evidence-based inclusion strategies in STEM. The results will be reported and disseminated in open-access training materials and publications throughout the duration of the three-year project. The project, titled "Enhancing and Developing Biology (LED-BIO) Scientific…

Rachel Wachman '24February 3, 20226min
  NASA's new infrared telescope, which launched on Dec. 25, 2021, will help researchers like Wesleyan's Seth Redfield explore the universe in ways like never before. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is accessible to the worldwide scientific community, offers scientists the ability to explore the solar system, galactic evolution, the early universe, and the formation of stars and planets like never before. The telescope will also observe planets orbiting other stars, known as exoplanets. Professor of Astronomy Seth Redfield, a member of the JWST's Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Program (ERS), will work with scholars from around…

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Steve ScarpaJanuary 11, 20226min
Using high-resolution data obtained from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope, Wesleyan University Professor of Astronomy Seth Redfield can show the conditions the Sun encountered traveling through space over the past 5 million years. Redfield will present his findings Jan. 12, 2022 as part of a press conference associated with the American Astronomical Society’s previously planned annual conference. This work was a close collaboration of Redfield with Hunter Vannier ’20, and a major component of Vannier's senior thesis. Vannier is now a PhD student at Purdue University working on lunar mineralogy. By focusing on eight paths, each of…

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Steve ScarpaJanuary 3, 20226min
A recent Wesleyan study showed that seeking out social media for emotional succor during COVID-19 did not improve emotional well-being among emerging adult college students. The study, conducted by Royette Dubar, assistant professor of psychology; Nicole Watkins, postdoctoral fellow in psychology; and psychology major Grant Hill '20, MA '21 asked more than 600 emerging adults in college (18-to-29-year-olds) across the U.S. to complete two online surveys over a five-month period at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. “COVID has had significant implications for how we interact with other people and how we think about our well-being. What we are trying to understand…

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Editorial StaffDecember 16, 20216min
By Maia Dawson '23 In the Lunar lab on the third floor of the Exley Science Center, Thomas Davoren MA ’22, thumbed through scientist David Walker’s handwritten notes from 1970, and inspected samples retrieved from the moon in 1969. Found in Davoren’s work are clues to the origins of Earth’s glowing satellite. Davoren was among the students awarded a Fall 2021 NASA Connecticut Space Consortium Fellowship. In a paper written for a conference in 2020 in Houston, Davoren detailed his discovery of Chromite-Ulvöspinel-Pyroxene (CUSP) inclusions. These unique, microscopic crystalline structures appeared first to Davoren in basaltic rocks retrieved from the…

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Rachel Wachman '24December 3, 20216min
Haley Brumberger BA/MA ’21 captured an image through a microscope of tiny crustaceans called ostracods in sediments of a volcanic lake in Oregon during the 2019 program for Wesleyan Summer Research in the Sciences, which she participated in as a summer research fellow through the College of Integrative Sciences. The image first won the Summer Research in the Sciences Image Competition for 2019 before winning this year’s image competition for The Micropalaeontological Society (TMS). They announced her win on Twitter, as well as through the RedBubble merchandise they’re selling of the image. Brumberger, who majored in earth and environmental sciences…

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Rachel Wachman '24November 22, 20217min
Math doesn’t always come easily to every student, but this semester, Professor of Mathematics Ilesanmi Adeboye relaunched Math Jam, a supportive space for students to seek peer assistance for their math-related school work. “Math Jam is an additional resource for students taking math classes intended to complement the Math Workshop, CA sessions, and professor's office hours,” Adeboye said. “The difference is in the set up. Space is available for students to come on their own, or in a group, to work on homework sets or study for exams. Experienced tutors are available to answer questions as they come up. One…

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Olivia DrakeNovember 12, 20217min
A 7-foot-long extinct marine crocodile has finally found a permanent home on Wesleyan's campus—exactly 150 years after it arrived. Known as a Teleosaur (Macrospondylus bollensis), the sea-dwelling lizard lived during the early Jurassic period, approximately 180 million years ago. A cast was gifted to Wesleyan in 1871 by chemist Orange Judd of the Wesleyan Class of 1847, and the namesake of the University’s Orange Judd Museum of Natural Sciences. When the museum closed in 1957, more than 900 animal casts, including the Teleosaur, were moved into storage in random locations throughout campus. Over sixty years later, the Teleosaur cast was…