Olivia DrakeJelle Zelinga de Boer, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, emeritus, was cited in April 3 edition of The Hartford Courant. In an article titled " Remnants Of Old Mine In Middletown Date to Revolutionary Times," de Boer explains why an abandoned silver mine in Middletown, Conn. played a supporting role in the history of the country's industrial past. According to de Boer, the Middletown mine was originally opened to mine lead and was one of only two sites in New England that produced the metal for the Continental Army during the early stages of the Revolutionary War. The…
Errors in genomic DNA can lead to tumors and other diseases. By probing specific DNA structures, Ishita Mukerji hopes to gain an understanding of how such medical conditions can be prevented or possibly cured. Mukerji, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, studies how different proteins recognize and bind to DNA. Specifically, she examines four-stranded DNA structures, known as "Holliday junctions," which are involved in DNA repair and recombination. These are different from the common, two-stranded DNA. On April 1, Mukerji will receive a four-year grant worth $798,368 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund her research project, "Structure and…
During a "Who Done It? A DNA Investigation," elementary school aged children sported white lab coats and became "detectives" hoping to solve a crime. The students learned about DNA structure by isolating DNA from wheat germ and comparing DNA samples from a 'crime scene' with the DNA from five suspects. They learn how DNA forensics actually works – just like on the television show "CSI." (more…)
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Mary-Jane Rubenstein, assistant professor of religion, assistant professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, is the author of the book, Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe, published by Columbia University Press, March 2009. Strange Wonder confronts Western philosophy's ambivalent relationship to the Platonic "wonder" that reveals the strangeness of the everyday. On the one hand, this wonder is said to be the origin of all philosophy. On the other hand, it is associated with a kind of ignorance that ought to be extinguished as swiftly as possible. By endeavoring to resolve wonder's indeterminacy into certainty…
Vera Schwarcz, the Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies, chair of the East Asian Studies Proggram, professor of history, professor of East Asian studies, is the author of Chisel of Remembrance, a new collection of poems that draws from roots in Jewish, Chinese, and other ancient traditions. The 76-page book of poetry was published from Antrim House Books.
Michael Singer, assistant professor of biology, is the author of “Self-Medication as Adaptive Plasticity: Increased Ingestion of Plant Toxins by Parasitized Caterpillars," published in PLoS ONE, March 2009. PLoS ONE is an open access, online scientific journal from the Public Library of Science. This new article rigorously demonstrates that caterpillars can self-medicate, following up on a previous publication in Nature in 2005. This is the first experimental demonstration of self-medication by an invertebrate animal. This paper also represents the first publication to arise from research funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant awarded to Singer in December 2007. Kevi Mace…
John Kirn, chair and professor of neuroscience and behavior, professor of biology, director of Graduate Studies, is the co-author of a book chapter titled "Regulation and function of neuronal replacement in the avian song system." The chapter is published inside the book Neuroscience of Birdsong, released in 2009 by Cambridge University Press. The book provides a comprehensive summary of birdsong neurobiology, and identifies the common brain mechanisms underlying this achievement in both birds and humans. Written primarily for advanced graduates and researchers, there is an introductory overview covering song learning, the parallels between language and birdsong and the relationship between…
A group of Wesleyan faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, along with three post-docs from the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and Chemistry departments, attended the 53rd Annual Biophysical Society Meeting in Boston. Several labs contributed posters including those run by David Beveridge, the University Professor of the Sciences and Mathematics, professor of chemistry; Irina Russu, professor of chemistry; Manju Hingorani, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry; Don Oliver, the Daniel Ayres Professor of Biology, chair and professor of molecular biology and biochemistry; and Ishita Mukerji, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry. Noah Biro '09 was a co-author on a poster contributed by…
Choreographer Hari Krishnan, artist in residence of dance, will present his first New York season with his company inDANCE in New York City. Performers include Julie Neuspiel '09 and Emily Watts '03; and musician Aaron Paige, music graduate student. The evening features five works choreographed by Krishnan. With dancers of diverse personal and training backgrounds, inDANCE strives toward "radical innovation in the extraction of post modern dance vocabulary from contemporary Bharatanatyam and classic modern dance with an uncompromising standard of excellence." The company’s socio-political consciousness characterize the repertoire and its approach to dance-making. inDANCE is a Toronto-based Canadian company, that…
Norman Shapiro, professor of romance languages and literatures, has won the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division 2008 award for the best single-volume reference work in the humanities and social sciences. The award was for his 1,200-page collection of translations, French Women Poets of Nine Centuries, published by Johns Hopkins, 2008. The AAP awards prizes in several categories, ranging from the humanities and social sciences to life sciences, physical sciences, and medicine. Shapiro's winning single-volume work, competing against multi-volume works, went on to win as well the overall Award for Excellence in Reference Works.
Laura Grabel, the Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science in Society, was one of three guests featured on PBS's "Where We Live" on March 23. Grabel joined scientists and ethicists from all over the country for StemCONN 2009—an international stem cell research symposium held in New Haven, Conn. The symposium organizers and experts spoke on what new federal policy means for a state like Connecticut, which has already heavily invested in stem cell research. Connecticut is home to leading academic institutions for human stem cell research, including Wesleyan, Yale University, the University of Connecticut. It is a place where national and international stem cell research partnerships develop,…