Frederic Wills '19Hilary Barth and Andrea Patalano, associate professors of psychology, recently co-authored a paper in Psychonomic Bulletin and Review along with two former Psychology Department undergraduates, Laura Machlin and Jason Saltiel. The paper is titled, “The Role of Numeracy and Approximate Number System Acuity in Predicting Value and Probability Distortion.” When people make “risky decisions” like choosing between two gambles with different values and different probabilities of success, their choices appear to be based on distorted versions of both the values and probabilities. Although there are many theories attempting to explain the distortion, we don’t know exactly why it happens. This study…
Michael Roberts, the Robert Rich Professor of Latin, professor of medieval studies, professor of classical studies, recently contributed his work, “Venantius Fortunatus and Gregory of Tours: Patronage and Poetry,” to a journal dedicated to providing an expert guide to interpreting the works and legacy of Gregory, Bishop of Tours (573-594) in religious and historical studies. Published in A Companion to Gregory of Tours, in December 2015, Roberts’ article looked particularly at the relationship between the historian of 6th century Gaul, Gregory, Bishop of Tours, and the Italian-born poet Venantius Fortunatus. Throughout his work, Roberts argues, “that Gregory was Fortunatus' patron and friend…
John Finn, professor of government, is the author of an article published in Table Matters, an interdisciplinary journal of food, drink and manners. Titled “How Does a Recipe Mean: Interpreting the Recipe as a Text,” Finn makes the argument that recipes invite the cook to experience and perform them, rather than simply read them. Using the classic work “How Does a Poem Mean,” by John Ciardi, Finn draws a connection between poems and recipes through Ciardi’s idea that a “poem cannot be defined by dictionaries or understood simply by reading or memorizing it. It can be know only though experience. The…
Lauren RubensteinAssistant Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler and her collaborators on the Wesleyan Media Project are the authors of a new book, Political Advertising in the United States, published in February by Westview Press. The book is edited by Ada Fung '06. Fowler's co-authors are Michael Franz of Bowdoin College and Travis Ridout of Washington State University. Political Advertising in the United States is a comprehensive survey of the political advertising landscape and its influence on voters. The authors draw from the latest data to analyze how campaign finance laws have affected the sponsorship and content of political advertising, how "big data" has…
Olivia DrakeProfessor Francis Starr, graduate student Hamad Emamy and collaborators from the Brookhaven National Lab have co-authored a paper titled "Diamond Family of Nanoparticle Superlattices" published in the prestigious journal Science on Feb. 5. Starr is professor of physics and director of the College of Integrative Sciences. Their work proposed a solution to a decades-long challenge to self-assemble a diamond-structured lattice at will from nanoscale particles. "Such a diamond-lattice structure has long been sought after due to its potential applications as a light controlling device, including optical transistors, color-changing materials, and optical — as opposed to electronic — computing," Starr said. To solve this challenge,…
Joel Pfister, the Olin Professor of English and American Studies and chair of the American Studies Department, is the author of Surveyors of Customs: American Literature as Cultural Analysis published by Oxford University Press, 2016. Within his book, Pfister argues “that writers from Benjamin Franklin to Louise Erdrich are critical 'surveyors' of customs, culture, hegemony, capitalism’s emotional logic, and more. Literary surveyors have helped make possible—and can advance—cultural analysis.” While noting that cultural theory and history have influenced interpretations of literature, he asserts that, in fact, “literature can return the favor.” The book raises many historical, but timely questions. "When and why…
Associate Professor of Chemistry Brian Northrop and Alexander Goldberg ’15 are co-authors of “Spectroscopic and Computational Investigations of The Thermodynamics of Boronate Ester and Diazaborole Self-Assembly,” published in The Journal of Organic Chemistry, January 2016. The article is composed of Goldberg’s undergraduate thesis research.
Ruth Johnson, assistant professor of biology, assistant professor of integrative sciences, is the co-author of a new paper titled "The adaptor protein Cindr regulates JNK activity to maintain epithelial sheet integrity" published in the journal Developmental Biology on Jan. 7. The paper was co-authored by Hannah Yasin '15, Samuel van Rensburg MA '15, and Christina Feiler, an exchange masters student who worked in Johnson's lab during 2012-13. The publication represents Yasin's honors thesis, and van Rensburg's and Feiler's masters theses. According to the abstract: Epithelia are essential barrier tissues that must be appropriately maintained for their correct function. To achieve this a plethora…
(by Fred Wills '19) Joseph Rouse, the Hedding Professor of Moral Science, is the author of a new book titled Articulating the World: Conceptual Understanding and the Scientific Image, published by University of Chicago Press in December 2015. Rouse also is professor of philosophy, professor and chair of the Science in Society Program, professor of environmental studies. In his new book, Rouse examines naturalism as a historically situated philosophical project, "as we find ourselves in the midst of ongoing conflicts over what naturalism’s commitments are and why they matter, along with challenges to those commitments," he explained. According to Rouse, “the most…
Joop Varekamp, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, professor of earth and environmental sciences, and Marty Gilmore, the George I. Seney Professor of Geology, professor and chair of professor of earth and environmental sciences, are the co-authors of two book chapters published in Copahue Volcano (Springer Publishers, September 2015) Copahue Volcano is part of Springer Publishers' "Active Volcanos of the World" series. Varekamp is the lead author on a chapter with Jim Zareski MA‘14 and Lauren Camfield MA’15. Gilmore and Tristan Kading MA’11 are co-authors with Varekamp on another chapter dealing with terrestrial environments as analogs for Mars. A third chapter,…
Norman Shapiro, professor of French and the Distinguished Professor of Literary Translation, collected and translated a book, Fe-Lines: French Cat Poems through the Ages. The collection was published by University of Illinois Press in October 2015. The French have long had a love affair with the cat, expressed through centuries of poetry portraying the animal's wit and wonder. Spanning centuries and styles, Shapiro reveals a remarkable range of French cat poems, with most works presented for the first time in English translation. Scrupulously devoted to evoking the meaning and music of the originals, Shapiro also respects the works' formal structures. Pairing Shapiro's…
Shellae Versey, assistant professor of psychology, is the author of an article titled "Managing Work and Family: Do Control Strategies Help?" published in the August 2015 issue of Developmental Psychology. In this study, Versey questioned "How can we effectively manage competing obligations from work and family without becoming overwhelmed?" Versey examined control strategies that may facilitate better work-life balance, with a specific focus on the role of lowered aspirations and positive reappraisals, attitudes that underlie adaptive coping behaviors. Data from the Midlife in the United States Survey (MIDUS II) was used to explore the relationship between negative spillover, control strategies, and…