Cynthia RockwellA new study by University of California - San Diego Professor of Psychology Nicholas Christenfeld and graduate student Jonathan Leavitt ’92 suggests that people enjoy a story more when they they already know how it ends. Writer Mary Elizabeth Williams, for Salon.com suggests that those on constant alert for “spoilers” in media reviews should chill out: “For their study, Nicholas Christenfeld and Jonathan Leavitt provided participants with a variety of 'ironic-twist, mystery and literary' short stories…. Some readers read the stories in their original forms. Some were given a preface with the spoiler. Others had a spoiler rewritten into the…
Olivia DrakeMore than 75 Wesleyan employees, contractors, friends and families participated in the Wesleyan Open Golf Tournament, held July 9 at Banner Country Club in Moodus, Conn. Golfers raised $1,500 for Middletown United Fathers, Inc. MUF is a non-profit organization that operates as an advocate for underprivileged and underserved men and youth of color throughout Middlesex Country. Areas of advocacy are centered on issue regarding education, health, finances, personal, family and community responsibility. Future programming will include ongoing fatherhood parenting classes as well as job placement services for youth and fathers participating in services through the organization. All participants pay an entry…
Ellen Thomas, research professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, has accepted an offer to become one of four science editors for the journal Geology, a prestigious journal in Earth Sciences. She starts her four-year term in January 2012 as the editor for paleoceanography, paleoclimate, stratigraphy, paleontology and related topics. The journal is published by the Geological Society of America, online at http://geology.gsapubs.org/. During the upcoming 2011 GSA Annual Meeting & Exposition, held Oct. 9-12 in Minneapolis, Minn., Thomas will meet the other editors and GSA personnel in order to get organized for the commitment.
David PesciIn an opinion piece for The Hartford Courant, Jonathan Cutler, chair and associate professor of sociology, explains how a austerity budget deal brokered by Connecticut’s governor with a coalition of public employee union leaders was then torpedoed by rank-and-file union members. The Connecticut deal was initially applauded nationally because Democratic Governor Malloy, unlike Wisconsin’s Republican governor Scott Walker, seemed better positioned to win painful union concessions without sparking street protests by labor and liberals. Those applause came too early, however, as state employee union members rejected the cuts agreed by an anti-democratic union structure created by the the state and…
Shamar Chin '13 was featured in the Aug. 3 edition of The Middletown Press for her efforts running the Green Street Art Center's Young Women's Leadership Institute. The program is designed to empower girls in fifth through seventh grades and to teach them leadership through art, dance, music and writing. Chin, an environmental studies major, started volunteering at Green Street earlier this summer and took on the five-week summer program because she wanted to help young girls succeed. “Especially with what we see in the media, what is being presented to young women, I feel like we are expected to look…
A chapter written by Ákos Östör, professor of anthropology, emeritus, is featured in the Flavours of the Arts:
From Mughal India to Bollywood exhibition catalog for Geneva's Musée d'ethnographie. This pertinently illustrated book focuses on the close relationship between music, painting and film in northern India. His chapter is titled, "Living with Pictures. Study, Film and Life in Naya (West Bengal)."
Papers, articles and book chapters by Fred Cohan, professor of biology, are published in several publications including: "Community ecology of hot spring cyanobacterial mats: predominant populations and their functional potential," published in ISME Journal: Multidisciplinary Journal of Microbial Ecology, 2011; "Influence of molecular resolution on sequence-based discovery of ecological diversity among Synechococcus populations in an alkaline siliceous hot spring microbial mat," published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology 77:1359-1367, 2011; "Are species cohesive?—A view from bacteriology," published in Bacterial Population Genetics: A Tribute to Thomas S. Whittam, American Society for Microbiology Press, Washington, pages 43-65, 2011; "Species," a chapter published in…
Ishita Mukerji, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, director of graduate studies, is the co-author of "“HU Binding to a DNA Four-Way Junction Probed by Förster Resonance Energy Transfer," published in Biochemistry, issue 50, pages 1432–1441, 2011. This work specifically examines the Escherichia coli protein HU's four-way junction interaction using fluorescence spectroscopic methods. This work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation.
Charles Sanislow, assistant professor of psychology, co-authored a study published in the August issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. The study reports on the prospective course of psychopathology and functioning for Borderline Personality Disorder. The work emanates from the Collaborative Personality Study led by a team of researchers of which Sanislow has been a member since the study began in 1996. The study is online here .
Articles by Masami Imai, director of the Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, chair and associate professor of east asian studies, associate professor of economics, were published in two economic publications: "Elections and Political Risk: New Evidence from Political Prediction Markets in Taiwan," with Cameron Shelton, appeared in the Journal of Public Economics, 95 (7-8), August 2011. "Transmission of Liquidity Shock to Bank Credit: Evidence from Deposit Insurance Reform in Japan," with Seitaro Takarabe, appeared in the Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, June 2011.
David Beveridge, the Joshua Boger University Professor of the Sciences and Mathematics, professor of chemistry, received a five year graduate student training grant from the National Institutes of Heath (NIH) in support of Wesleyan's interdepartmental program in Molecular Biophysics and Biological Chemistry (MBBC). This program is co-coordinated by Ishita Mukerji, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, director of graduate studies. The MBBC Program involves 12 faculty members from chemistry, biology, MB&B and physics departments along with both graduate Ph.D. students and undergraduate certificate students. The grant, worth $662,820, is the latest in a series of awards to this program, which…
Ruth Nisse, associate professor of English, associate professor of medieval studies, received a $40,000 fellowship grant from the American Council of Learned Societies for 2011-12. During the fellowship, she will complete her book Jacob’s Shipwreck. The study focuses on the “co-emergence” of Christians and Jews in12th and 13th century England and Northern France. She argues that the the two communities mediated their relations through the reception, translation and rewriting of ancient texts.