Faculty – Page 83

On June 15, Helen Poulos, a postdoctoral fellow in the College of the Environment, set sail aboard the Charles W. Morgan, the last remaining wooden whaling ship in the world. Built and launched in 1841, the Morgan embarked on 37 voyages up until 1921, roaming every corner of the globe in pursuit of whales. She had been docked at the Mystic Seaport in Connecticut since 1940, and underwent major restoration work in recent years. This month, she took one final commemorative voyage in order to call attention to the importance of historic ships and America’s maritime heritage, as well as…

Professor Elizabeth McAlister recently presented a weeklong intensive seminar on the ethnography of religion at the Anthropology and Sociology Department, Faculté d'Ethnologie, at the State University of Haiti, Université d'Etat d'Haïti. McAlister is professor of religion, professor of African-American studies, professor of American studies. Her seminar catered to Haitian university students who are training in field methods of ethnography of religion. The seminar wrapped up McAlister's four-month study on "Understanding Aggressive Prayer Forms in Evangelicalism and Afro-Atlantic Religions." Her research was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation in "New Directions in Study of Prayer." Developed through the Social Science Research…

Kurtz: Connecticut needs program for the good of individuals, families and society

Francis Starr, professor of physics, and Paul Hanakata ’14 are the co-authors of a new article published in the journal Nature Communications on June 16. The article, titled "Interfacial Mobility Scale Determines the Scale of Collective Motion and Relaxation Rate in Polymer Films,” is based off Hanakata’s senior thesis research at Wesleyan. Thin polymer films are ubiquitous in manufacturing and medical applications. Their chemical and mechanical properties make them suitable as artificial soft biological tissue and there has been intense interest in how film thickness and substrate interactions influence film dynamics. The nature of polymer rearrangements within these films determines their potential applications. However, up to now, there has been no way to readily…

Philip Resor, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences, is taking his knowledge of petroleum down under. Between June 18-26, Resor, a Distinguished Lecturer for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), is delivering six lectures in Australia. The talks are geared toward members of the Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia (PESA) and a general petroleum industry audience. While abroad, Resor will speak on "Syndepositional Faulting of Carbonate Platforms" and "Revisiting the Origin of Reverse Drag." He'll be lecturing in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra. A specialist in structural geology, Resor's work integrates field mapping, remote sensing, and numerical modeling to better understand the…

Roy Kilgard, support astronomer and research assistant professor of astronomy, together with Trevor Dorn-Wallstein ’15 and Tyler Desjardin MA ’11, recently presented stunning new images of a spiral galaxy produced by combining data from more than 232 hours of observing time with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Similar to the Milky Way, the galaxy is officially known as Messier 51 (M51) or NGC 5194, but nicknamed “the Whirlpool Galaxy.” Located about 30 million light years from Earth, its face-on orientation to Earth offers a perspective astronomers can never get of our own galaxy. The image showing a vibrant purple swirl was…

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Next summer, Wesleyan's Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) will offer a new Master of Arts in Performance Curation degree program, in addition to the permanent establishment of the Certificate Program in Performance Curation. The Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance was founded in 2010, and introduced as a pilot initiative in 2011, by Wesleyan graduates Samuel Miller '75 and Pamela Tatge, director of the Center for the Arts, in partnership with Judy Hussie-Taylor and New York’s Danspace Project. ICPP is the first institute of its kind, a center for the academic study of the presentation and contextualization of…

O'Connell: An ability to predict the tides is crucial for any amphibious operation, but is not simple

Professor of Economics Richard Grossman's paper, "A Monthly Stock Exchange Index for Ireland, 1864-1930," was published June 5 in the European Review of Economic History. Co-authored by professors at Trinity College Dublin, All Souls College (Oxford, UK), and Greater London Authority, the paper constructs new monthly Irish stock market price indices for 1864-1930. According to the abstract: "In addition to a total market index covering 118 equity securities issued by ninety-four companies, sectoral indices are presented for railways, financial services companies, and “other” companies. Nominal equity prices doubled between 1864 and 1898. Between the turn of the century and 1914,…

Kilgard presented new images of the Whirlpool Galaxy from NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory

Ellen Thomas, research professor of earth and environmental sciences, is the author of a paper titled "Rapid and sustained surface ocean acidification during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum," published in Paleoceanography, May 2014. In this paper Thomas and her colleagues document that ocean acidification of the surface ocean not only occurred during past times of global warming and high CO2 levels, but also by how much — about 0.3 pH units. The group studied planktic foraminifers from a drill site in the North Pacific. Thomas' study has been highlighted in a press release from Columbia University and also on Phys.org.

Poulos Studies Changing Perceptions of Whales Aboard World’s Last Wooden Whaling Ship

McAlister Teaches “Ethnography of Religion” Seminar in Haiti

Closing Schizophrenia Program a Crippling Loss

Starr, Hanakata ’14 Co-Author Paper on Polymer Films, Published in Nature Communications

Resor Delivering 6 Lectures to Petroleum Geoscientists in Australia

Kilgard Presents Stunning New Image of ‘Whirlpool Galaxy’

Chernoff Photographs Fish to Accompany Scientific Journal Article

ICPP Offers New Masters Degree in Performance Curation

How Science Helped Win D-Day

Grossman’s Paper on Irish Stock Market Prices is Published

X-Ray Vision of our Sister Galaxy

Thomas’s Paper Published in Paleoceanography