Lauren RubensteinGary Yohe, the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, wrote in The Hartford Courant about Pope Francis' encyclical on climate change--"a very valuable and much needed injection of morality into the scientific and economic discussions on climate change — it is quite likely a game-changer." While scientists, economists and other professionals have long made a case for taking action to reduce emissions and mitigate the effects of climate change, Yohe writes, "The pope's encyclical adds a moral dimension to this case with nearly 200 pages of inspiring text about man's pollution and the immorality of emissions. He notes that the…
Olivia DrakeStudents enrolled in the Introduction to Environmental Studies course presented their artist's books, children's stories, documentaries and story maps during the class's annual Project Showcase on May 14 in Exley Science Center. The class is taught by Kim Diver, visiting assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences. Suzy Taraba, director of Wesleyan's Special Collections and Archives attended the event and spoke to the students about artist books. Photos of the event are below: (Photos by Aviva Hirsch) (more…)
Laurie KenneyErika Taylor, assistant professor of chemistry, assistant professor of environmental studies, has co-authored a paper published in FEBS Letters, an international journal established for the rapid publication of final short reports in the fields of molecular biosciences. The paper, which is an expansion of her lab’s work on the enzyme Heptosyltransferase I, is titled "Cloning and Characterization of the Escherichia coli Heptosyltransferase III: Exploring Substrate Specificity in Lipopolysaccharide Core Biosynthesis," The paper is co-authored by her former graduate student Jagadesh Mudapaka. FEBS Letters is published by Elsevier on behalf of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies. Taylor also is the co-author of “Improving Alternate Lignin Catabolite Utilization of LigAB…
Wesleyan’s Green Street Teaching and Learning Center has received a $12,500 grant from the Petit Family Foundation to support the center's Girls in Science Summer Camp. Green Street Director Sara MacSorley accepted the gift from Dr. William Petit. The Green Street Girls in Science Summer Camp will take place August 3 - 7 and will be open to girls entering grades 4, 5, and 6. Erika Taylor, assistant professor of chemistry, assistant professor of environmental studies, Ruth Johnson, assistant professor of biology, and Christina Othon, assistant professor of physics, will participate in the five-day program, covering topics from biochemistry to physics and culminating…
Lori Gruen, professor and chair of philosophy, discussed her new book, Entangled Empathy: An Alternative Ethic for Our Relationships with Animals, with University of Colorado Professor Emeritus Mark Bekoff in The Huffington Post. Bekoff calls the book "a wonderful addition to a growing literature in the transdisciplinary field called anthrozoology, the study of human-animal relationships." Gruen defines "entangled empathy" as "a process whereby we first acknowledge that we are already in relationships with all sorts of other animals (humans and non-humans) and these relationships are, for the most part, not very good ones. We then work to figure out how to make them better and that…
A book by Marc Eisner, the Henry Merritt Wriston Chair of Public Policy, was selected as a winner of the Outstanding Academic Titles by Choice in 2014. Eisner's book, The American Political Economy was published in 2014. In this innovative text, he portrays the state and the market as inextricably linked, exploring the variety of institutions subsumed by the market and the role that the state plays in creating the institutional foundations of economic activity. Through a historical approach, Eisner situates the study of American political economy within a larger evolutionary-institutional framework that integrates perspectives in American political development and economic sociology. Eisner also is chair…
Erika Taylor, assistant professor of chemistry, assistant professor of environmental studies, is the author of a paper "Exploring Allosteric Activation of LigAB from Sphingobium sp. strain SYK-6 through Kinetics, Mutagenesis and Computational Studies," published in Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Vol, 567, pages 35-45, February 2015. Co-authors include graduate students Kevin Barry and Joy Cote; Erin Cohn '15, Abraham Ngu '13 and former graduate student Jason Gerbino. Development of renewable alternatives for petroleum derived fuels and chemicals is of increasing importance because of limits on the amount of fossil fuels that are available on the planet. In an effort to improve the utilization of…
Two faculty members and two graduate students co-authored a paper published in the July 18 edition of the academic journal, Biochemistry. Erika Taylor, assistant professor of chemistry, assistant professor of environmental studies; Manju Hingorani, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry; chemistry graduate student Daniel Czyzyk; and molecular biology and biochemistry graduate student Shreya Sawant wrote the paper, "Escherichia coli Heptosyltransferase I: Investigation of Protein Dynamics of a GT-B Structural Enzyme." It appears online here. Biochemistry is a publication of the American Chemical Society.
Fred Cohan, chair and professor of biology, professor of environmental studies, is the co-author of "Species," published in the Encyclopedia of Genetics, Amsterdam, Elsevier, 2013; "Accuracy and efficiency of algorithms for demarcating bacterial ecotypes from DNA sequence data," published in BMC Genomics, 2013; and "Speedy speciation in a bacterial microcosm: New species can arise as frequently as adaptations within a species," published in the ISME Journal's Advance Online Publication, 2013.
Johan "Joop" Varekamp, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, professor of environmental studies, was elected as president of the Board of Trustees of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment (CFE). The CFE is an organization of environmental advocacy, habitat restoration and outreach with about 20 staff members. Its mission is to protect and improve the land, air and water of Connecticut and Long Island Sound by using legal and scientific expertise and by bringing people together to achieve results that benefit the environment for current and future generations.
Johan “Joop” Varekamp, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, professor of environmental studies, received a $150,000 grant from the National Science Foundation in January. He will use the funds to build a new X-Ray Fluorescence lab in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department. The lab will be used for analyzing rocks, soils and waters.
Laura Stark, assistant professor of sociology, assistant professor of science in society, assistant professor of environmental studies, received a grant worth $6,900 from the American Sociological Association for her study titled “How do research subjects affect biomedical studies?” The grant was awarded Oct. 21.