Lauren RubensteinOn Oct. 17, Peter Rutland, Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor in Global Issues and Democratic Thought, professor of government, professor of Russian and Eastern European studies, had an op-ed published in The Moscow Times exploring whether the European Union deserves the recently awarded Nobel Peace Prize. "Europe is certainly a more peaceful place today than at any time in its past, but does the E.U. deserve all the credit for this? Defenders of the committee's decision argue that the E.U. has ended the centuries-old proclivity of European states to invade each other. It's true that most of Europe has enjoyed six decades…
Olivia DrakeGreg Voth, associate professor of physics, received a grant worth $300,000 from the National Science Foundation's Material Research division to support his study on "Rod Dynamics in Turbulence: Simultaneous 3D measurements of Anisotropic Particles and Velocity Fields" through May 31, 2015. In a wide range of natural and industrial situations, turbulent flows carry particulate material. For example, clouds are turbulent flows containing water droplets and ice crystals. Papermaking uses turbulent suspensions of fibers. If the particles are spheres, there are a variety of tools available for measuring their motion. But usually the particles are not spheres, and the movement and…
Michael McAlear, chair and associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, is the co-author of "The adjacent positioning of co-regulated gene pairs is widely conserved across eukaryotes," published in BMC Genomics, October 2012. The article is online here. The co-authors are Ph.D candidate James Arnone and Jeffrey Arace '12; Adam Robbins-Pianka BA '08, MA '10; and Sara Kass-Gergi '12. The team investigated co-regulated gene sets in S. cerevisiae beyond those related to ribosome biogenesis, and found that a number of these regulons, including those involved in DNA metabolism, heat shock, and the response to cellular stressors were also significantly enriched for adjacent gene…
Kit Reed, resident writer in the English Department, is the author of Son of Destruction, published by Severn House (U.K.) in October 2012. The U.S. version will be released in March 2013. When his mother dies, Dan Carteret has only two leads to the identity of his father: a photograph of four young men, and a newspaper cutting showing the remains of a victim of spontaneous human combustion. Carteret travels to his mother's hometown of Fort Jude and discovers that three cases of spontaneous combustion have occurred there in the recent past. In the search for his father, he confronts…
Janice Naegele, professor of biology, professor of neuroscience and behavior, and Laura Grabel, the Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science and Society, professor of biology, were recently honored in Hartford Magazine’s “Amazing Women” issue. Two of only 13 women selected this year for recognition, Naegele and Grabel were lauded for their contributions to the field of stem cell research. The magazine's profile of Naegele states: "The research conducted by Janice Naegele, who is professor of biology and neuroscience and behavior at Wesleyan University, is opening up new possibilities for treating epilepsy through stem cell therapy. Her work focuses on temporal lobe epilepsy,…
On Sept. 14 and 15, Professor of Economics Richard Grossman attended a conference in Munich jointly sponsored by the Bundesbank (the German central bank) and a Munich-based research institute called CESifo. Grossman chaired a session and acted as a discussant at the conference, whose focus was, "The Banking Sector and the State." According to the conference website: "The current financial and sovereign debt crisis has shown once again that the banking sector and the state are intertwined in many ways: On the one hand, the state lends support to distressed banks and accepts risks from the private sector; in this…
On Aug. 31, "Where We Live," a program on WNPR public radio, featured two segments about music at Wesleyan. Rob Rosenthal, provost, vice-president of academic affairs and the John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology, and his son Sam Rosenthal, a writer and musician in New York City, discussed a new collection of Pete Seeger's personal writings that they co-edited. The book is Pete Seeger: In His Own Words (Paradigm Publishers). They described the experience of combing through decades of Seeger's writings in the folk singer's Beacon, NY home while he hovered nearby. "He would drop in from time to time…
David PesciIn a Sept. 5 op-ed for The New York Times, Wesleyan President Michael Roth discusses the recent calls to further specialize education and narrow what we teach students from K-12 and on to college at the exclusion of the liberal arts, especially the humanities. Roth says this drive to turn students into “human capital” is not a new. In fact, the esteemed 19th century educational philosopher John Dewey argued against the very same calls, saying, in part, “that learning in the process of living is the deepest form of freedom.”
In an Aug. 24 op-ed for The Hartford Courant, Lauren Caldwell, assistant professor of classical studies, says that U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin’s reference to women being able to consciously prevent conception during rape is relying on “facts” presented by the ancient Roman physician Soranus of Ephesus in the Second Century, A.D. Caldwell also says, “The next time I teach my course, I will be able to bring in the example of Rep. Akin to illustrate the ways in which 'medical understanding' continues to be used with the aim of social control,” which was also an objective of Roman rulers in…
On Sept. 18, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Jennifer Tucker, associate professor of history, associate professor of science in society, associate professor and chair of feminist, gender and sexuality studies. In light of the current mission of the Mars Curiosity Rover, Tucker writes about the centuries-long search for extraterrestrial life. The op-ed can be read online here. On Aug. 23, The New York Times published an op-ed by Tucker. Tucker says that the science behind Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin’s comments on rape is completely sound, at least from the perspective of the 12th Century. She says that what may be…
Peter Rutland, professor of government, Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor in Global Issues and Democratic Thought, professor of Russian and Eastern European studies, writes in a Sept. 10 op-ed published in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune about two recent symbolic events in the Caucasus region that threaten to ignite hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Elizabeth McAlister, chair of the Religion Department, received a grant worth $114,000 from an initiative funded by the John Templeton Foundation, and developed in conjunction with the Social Science Research Council’s program on Religion and the Public Sphere. McAlister plans to study the increase and globalization of what she terms “aggressive forms of prayer,” including evangelical spiritual warfare prayer and political forms of imprecatory prayer, in the context of increasing global militarization. Over the coming years, 28 grantees will participate in a series of interdisciplinary workshops and digital initiatives organized in conjunction with the project. McAlister also is associate professor…