Olivia DrakeConnie Leidy, assistant professor of mathematics, received a $18,900 grant from the National Science Foundation for a workshop on “Knot Concordance and Homology Cobordism.” The grant, awarded July 6, supported a conference held July 19-23 at Wesleyan.
Carl West ’11, Tsampikos Kottos, assistant professor of physics, and Tomas Prosen of the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, are the co-authors of an article titled “PT-Symmetric Wave Chaos,” published in Physical Review Letters 104 in 2010. "This work studied the universal properties of this crossover and demonstrated that a simple scaling function could embody the effects of such dramatically different changes as increasing the system size, varying the initial energy, or having varying degrees of imperfections / disorder in the system," West explains. "While these results were obtained from a toy model, they carry direct applications to optics where…
Richard Grossman, professor of economics, is the author of the book, Unsettled Account: The Evolution of Banking in the Industrialized World since 1800, published by Princeton University Press in June 2010. The 400-page book provides a comparative history of banking focusing on four types of events that have been central to the lifecycle of banking systems: crises, bailouts, mergers and regulatory reform.
Irina Russu, professor of chemistry, and chemistry graduate student Xiaoli Weng are the co-authors of an article titled, “Structural Enegetics of the Adenine Tract from an Intrinsic Transcription Terminator,” published in the Journal of Molecular Biology 397, pages 677-688, in 2010.
Richard Grossman, professor of economics, discusses financial reform in an op-ed.
Nicaraguan Sign Language, developed only 30 years ago by Deaf children in Nicaragua needing a way to communicate, offers insight to ways an adapted language affects thought processes. In a new study, which was published June 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, co-author Anna Shusterman, assistant professor of psychology explains how human spatial cognition depends on the acquisition of specific aspects of spatial language. The article, titled “Evidence from an emerging sign language reveals that language supports spatial cognition,” is co-authored by Jennie Pyers (Wellesley), Ann Senghas (Barnard College), Elizabeth Spelke (Harvard) and Karen Emmorey (San…
Quality-of-life for patients with Schizophrenia has been recognized as a crucial domain of outcome in schizophrenia treatment, and yet its determinants are not well understood. Arielle Tolman ’10, who studied "Neurocognitive Predictors of Objective and Subjective Quality-of-Life in Individuals with Schizophrenia: A Meta-Analytic Investigation” as her senior honors thesis, will have the opportunity to share her research with other scientists interested in schizophrenia. This month, the editors of Schizophrenia Bulletin accepted Tolman’s paper for publication in an upcoming edition. “This is a real achievement, particularly at the undergraduate level,” says the paper’s co-author and Tolman’s advisor Matthew Kurtz, assistant professor…
Join members of the Class of 2014, new transfer students, and their families for a casual summer social as they prepare to head to campus. “The Summer Sendoffs are an opportunity to meet others new to Wesleyan, as well as some current students and their families, alumni and friends of Wesleyan,” says Dana Coffin, assistant director of parent programs. All Sendoffs are hosted by Wesleyan alumni or parents. Sendoffs begin June 27. They will be held in New York, N.Y., Atlanta, Ga., Boulder, Colo., Cary, N.C., Chappaqua, N.Y., Chicago, Ill., East Hampton, N.Y., Houston, Texas, Los Angeles, Calif., Memphis, Tenn., Newton, Mass., Philadelphia, Pa.,…
Laura Fraser ’82 wrote the May 28 “Modern Love” column for the New York Times. In “Our Way of Saying Goodbye,” Fraser traces the role of the Italian farewell, “ci vediamo,” or, “we’ll see each other” in her long-time, but sporadic, relationship with “The Professor,” her sometimes-married lover. She writes that earlier on, the words served as affirmation that “he would always stitch in and out of my life, and that this stitching was slowly mending my heart.” Ultimately, it again allowed the lovers to avoid “goodbye,” when he is diagnosed with liver cancer. Fraser’s memoir on their meeting, An…
In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina’s battering storm smothered Bob Flowers’ Gulfport, Miss. home. The flooding and winds left the structure unlivable, forcing Bob and his wife to reside in a FEMA trailer for the next four years and 10 months. Desperate for some helping hands, the couple applied for relief with Mission on the Bay, a ministry of Lutheran Episcopal Services in Mississippi. The organization provides volunteers who help families rebuild post-Katrina homes. Mike Conte, assistant director of mechanical trades, and his daughter, Megan Nicole Conte, 17, are among 1,800 volunteers from across the country and Canada who joined the…
Gary Shaw, professor of history, professor of medieval studies, was appointed Interim Dean of the Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Programs for the 2010-2011 academic year, beginning this July. In his 20 years at Wesleyan, Shaw has served as chair of the History Department, vice-chair of the advisory committee, chair of EPC, and has been a member of FCRR and the faculty merit appeals committee. He is the associate editor of History and Theory. His numerous awards include an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, an American Philosophical Society Research Grant and Wesleyan’s Carole A.…