Olivia DrakeSonia Sultan, professor and chair of biology, professor of environmental studies, recently had several new articles published. "A resurrection study reveals rapid adaptive evolution within populations of an invasive plant," was published in Evolutionary Applications, September 2012. Wesleyan research students Tim Horgan-Kobelski BA '09/MA '10, Lauren Nichols BA/MA '09, Charlotte Riggs '08 and Ryan Waples '07 co-authored the study. The paper is part of a multi-year study of the introduced Asian annual Polygonum cespitosum, which has recently become invasive in North America. Also in September, Sultan had another paper published about the same invasive species at PLoS One (Public Library of Science One). This paper, titled, "Phenotypic…
Lauren RubensteinBarbara Juhasz, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, is the author of an article titled, "Sensory experience ratings for over 5,000 mono- and disyllabic words." The article was published online on Aug. 31 in the Behavior Research Methods journal, a publication of The Psychonomic Society. It was co-authored with Melvin Yap of the National University of Singapore. The study provides sensory experience ratings (SERs)--which reflect the extent to which a word evokes a sensory and/or perceptual experience in the mind of the reader—for 2,857 monosyllabic words used in a 2011 study, as well as 3,000 new disyllabic words.…
Legendary folk musician and activist Pete Seeger appeared on The Colbert Report to talk about a new collection of his private writings, selected and edited by Rob Rosenthal, provost, vice president of academic affairs and the John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology, and his son, Sam Rosenthal. The book is Pete Seeger: In His Own Words. Seeger also performed a song, “Quite Early Morning,” on the show.
Rob Rosenthal, provost, vice-president for academic affairs, and the John E. Andrus professor of sociology, is the co-editor of a new book, together with his son, Sam Rosenthal. The book, Pete Seeger: In His Own Words, is a collection of the legendary folk singer's private writings—including letters, notes to himself, published articles, rough drafts, stories and poetry—spanning most of the 20th century and into the 21st. Seeger has never published an autobiography, but these documents provide the most detailed picture available of him as a musician, an activist and a family man. From letters to his mother written as a…
Rich Olson, assistant professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, received a grant worth $460,197 from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on Aug. 8. The grant will support his research on "Mechanism of Cell Membrane Targeting by Vibrio cholera Cytolysin" through July 31, 2015. Vibrio cholerae cytolysin (VCC) belongs to a family of secreted toxins produced by pathogenic bacteria that allows them to evade the immune system and to colonize the human body. Understanding how bacteria and their toxins target cells is important in developing therapies against human infectious diseases.
Professor Stephen Devoto and his students have identified a gene that controls a critical step in the development of muscle stem cells in vertebrate embryos. This discovery will allow scientists to better understand the causes of birth defects and diseases affecting human musculature, such as Muscular Dystrophy, and opens doors for the development of effective stem cell therapies for such diseases. Devoto is professor of biology, professor of neuroscience and behavior. The study, “Fss/ Tbx6 is required for central dermomyotome cell fate in zebra fish,” was published in July in Biology Open. Though the research was done on zebrafish, the gene,…
David PesciEllen Thomas, research professor of earth and environmental sciences, has been awarded the Maurice Ewing Medal by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The medal is one of the AGU’s most prestigious awards and will be presented to Thomas during the organization’s annual meeting later this year. According to AGU, “Jointly sponsored with the United States Navy, the Ewing Medal is named in honor of Maurice Ewing, who made significant contributions to deep-sea exploration.” It is presented each year for significant original contributions to the scientific understanding of the processes in the ocean; for the advancement of oceanographic engineering, technology, and…
“We’ve moved the meeting/truck forward.” “That was a long wait/ hotdog.” "We’re rapidly approaching the deadline/guardrail.” English speakers use a shared vocabulary to talk about space and time. And though it’s not something we’re necessarily conscious of, psychologists have found that the identical words we use to describe our wait in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles and the length of an especially impressive hotdog are not a fluke, but rather are telling of the cognitive processes involved in thinking about time. Past studies have shown that priming people with spatial information actually influences their perceptions of time. For example, people primed to imagine…
Wesleyan Provost Rob Rosenthal and his son, Sam Rosenthal, presented a reading with rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Famer Pete Seeger July 18 at Bryant Park in New York City. They are mentioned in this July 19 The New Yorker story. According to The New Yorker, "Rosenthal spoke ... briefly, about collecting Seeger’s words. He said that over and over, he found letters to Seeger saying, 'I’m in the middle of my own political struggle and what has kept me going is your music.'" The letters were “From people all over the world,” Rosenthal said. Rob and Sam Rosenthal are the co-editors…
Hilary Barth, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, is the co-author of "Active (not passive) spatial imagery primes temporal judgements." Written along with Jessica Sullivan of the University of California-San Diego, the article was published in the June 2012 issue of The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. For this article, Barth and Sullivan looked deeper into the previously demonstrated cognitive connections between how we think about space and time. They found that only when people are asked to imagine actively moving themselves through space are their perceptions of time influenced. When participants in the experiment were primed with a similar…
The Wesleyan Board of Trustees has awarded tenure to eight faculty members. Additionally, four associate professors and two adjunct faculty members also have been promoted. Wesleyan President Michael Roth and Rob Rosenthal, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, announced the promotions, which were effective July 1. Newly tenured faculty, promoted from Assistant to Associate Professor Gloster Aaron, associate professor of biology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior, arrived at Wesleyan in 2006, following five years as a post-doctoral researcher at Columbia University. Aaron studies the brain’s synaptic circuitry to better understand communication patterns in the neocortex. His most recent…
Assistant Professor Maria Ospina, who recently completed her first year in the Romance Languages and Literatures Department at Wesleyan, can trace her academic interests directly back to her childhood in Colombia and her longtime interest in history. “My interests in violence, memory and culture stem in part from my own experiences growing up in Colombia during the 1980s and 90s, in a very complex region that has been marked by armed conflict, the hemispheric War on Drugs and different waves of migration. The combination of political turmoil and a vibrant cultural production that actively reflected on the histories of violence…