Olivia DrakeNext fall, Wesleyan students and faculty will perform research activities on the same state-of-the-art animation computers that produced Ice Age the Meltdown, a $652 million worldwide box office hit. The computer hardware was donated July 2 by Greenwich, Conn.-based Blue Sky Studios, the creator of a number of award-winning digital animation features, including the Ice Age series and Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who, which took in nearly $300 million worldwide. In 2008, Blue Sky Studios refreshed their technology for their latest movie, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and bought racks of new computers. "The old computer racks still…
A paper co-authored by Ellen Thomas, research professor of earth and environmental sciences, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 2009. In the article, "Surviving mass extinction by bridging the benthic/planktic divide," Thomas and her colleagues show a very unexpected observations, i.e. that a species of foraminifera, which lives floating in the surface waters of the Indian Ocean, is genetically the same as a species living on the bottom of the ocean in shallow waters (between tide levels, coast of Kenya) - using DNA analysis. "We then show, using a sophisticated way of chemical analysis,…
Evan Perkoski ’10 is a recipient of a 2009-10 Undergraduate Research Program grant sponsored by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). Perkoski, who is majoring in government, will study "Counterterrorism and ETA in Spain." His faculty advisor is Erica Chenoweth, assistant professor of government. Undergraduate Research Program recipients are actively engaged in critical research related to the study of terrorism and responses to terrorism, consistent with the mission of START. Each recipient is paid $3,000 to enhance his/her START research and professional development and receives funds to attend the 2010 START Annual Meeting in College…
From the day Carl T. West ’11 arrived on Wesleyan's campus, he wanted to study the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. Although reluctant at first, Tsampikos Kottos, assistant professor of physics, welcomed the eager frosh to his "Complex Quantum Dynamics and Mesoscopic Phenomena" research group. "To be honest, Carl was a kind of an experiment, for me," Kottos says. "I usually take sophomores and above at my group, but Carl was so confident on what he wanted, so I decided to involve a freshman in our research. It was a good and decision." In the past two years, West wrote an article…
Christopher Doucette ’11, a molecular biology and biochemistry major, received an undergraduate research award from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s Undergraduate Affiliate Network is a national organization comprised of university-based chapters dedicated to the advancement of undergraduate research, research-based undergraduate education, and K-12 outreach in biochemistry and molecular biology. Doucette will receive a research award in the amount of $1,000. The award is to be used for the purchase of research supplies and reagents. He is expected to present his findings and results at the next ASBMB annual…
Manju Hingorani, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, is the co-author of "Mechanism of Cadmium-mediated Inhibition of Msh2-Msh6 Function in DNA Mismatch Repair," published in Biochemistry, March 25, 2009. Three undergraduates from three countries worked on the project in the Hingorani Lab at Wesleyan. They include Francis Noah Biro '09; Markus Wieland, an exchange student from University of Konstanz; and Karan Hingorani, Manju Hingorani's nephew from St. Xaviers College in Mumbai who did volunteer work in the lab. The project focused on how the heavy metal toxin Cadmium (found in cigarette smoke, industrial pollution, batteries, etc.) causes DNA damage…
Jelle Zelinga de Boer, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, emeritus, was cited in April 3 edition of The Hartford Courant. In an article titled " Remnants Of Old Mine In Middletown Date to Revolutionary Times," de Boer explains why an abandoned silver mine in Middletown, Conn. played a supporting role in the history of the country's industrial past. According to de Boer, the Middletown mine was originally opened to mine lead and was one of only two sites in New England that produced the metal for the Continental Army during the early stages of the Revolutionary War. The…
David PesciJanice Naegele, chair and professor of biology, professor of neuroscience and behavior, has received a $499,988.00 grant from the Connecticut Stem Cell Research Advisory Committee for her study titled: "Brain Grafts of GABAergic Neuron Precursors Derived from Human and Mouse ES Cells for Treating Temporal Lobe Epilepsy." The four-year grant will begin in July 2009, and will support research in laboratories in Wesleyan's biology department and neuroscience program. The research is directed toward generating inhibitory interneurons that we will transplant into the hippocampus of mice that have temporal lobe epilepsy. The goal of the project is to investigate the potential…
Michael Singer, assistant professor of biology, is the author of “Self-Medication as Adaptive Plasticity: Increased Ingestion of Plant Toxins by Parasitized Caterpillars," published in PLoS ONE, March 2009. PLoS ONE is an open access, online scientific journal from the Public Library of Science. This new article rigorously demonstrates that caterpillars can self-medicate, following up on a previous publication in Nature in 2005. This is the first experimental demonstration of self-medication by an invertebrate animal. This paper also represents the first publication to arise from research funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant awarded to Singer in December 2007. Kevi Mace…
A group of Wesleyan faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, along with three post-docs from the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and Chemistry departments, attended the 53rd Annual Biophysical Society Meeting in Boston. Several labs contributed posters including those run by David Beveridge, the University Professor of the Sciences and Mathematics, professor of chemistry; Irina Russu, professor of chemistry; Manju Hingorani, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry; Don Oliver, the Daniel Ayres Professor of Biology, chair and professor of molecular biology and biochemistry; and Ishita Mukerji, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry. Noah Biro '09 was a co-author on a poster contributed by…
In the sparsely populated, mountainous region of Ladakh, India, elderly Buddhist nuns are suffering from isolation, illiteracy and lack of respect from their communities. These women, who spent their lives serving their family or working as laborers, have rarely had the opportunity to become ordained or to worship in a monastery like the highly regarded male monks. "These women have been devalued from the beginning," says Jan Willis, professor of religion, professor of East Asian studies. "All they've ever wanted to do is serve the dharma and study, but instead, they've become servants of their community, or helpers for the…