David Peak, Frank and Louise Bailey Professor of Physics, has received the 1996 Prize for Research in an Undergraduate Institution from the American Physical Society. The prize was established by the Research Corporation to honor a physicist whose research in an undergraduate institution has contributed to the professional development of undergraduate physics students. Peak is on leave from Union College as visiting professor of physics at Utah State University.
Amanda Leamon, assistant professor of French, presented a paper titled “On the Inside Looking Out: Distortion and Inversion in Medhi Charef's Le thé au harem
d'Archi Ahmed” at the Northeast Modern Language Association conference recently.
She is also author of an article forthcoming in the September issue of French Forum
titled “Eclipsing the Self: Sexuality and the Color Black in Blaise Cendrars' Prose
Fiction.”
Donald Rodbell, assistant professor of geology, has received an equipment grant
from the National Science Foundation for “Particle-size and Carbon Instrumentation
for the Integration of Quantitative Sedimentology Into the Undergraduate Geology
Curriculum.” The matching grant of $34,000 will provide instrumentation for use in a
number of courses including “Lakes and Environmental Change,” “Carbonate
Sedimentology,” “Process Geomorphology,” “Glacial and Quaternary
Geology,” and “Introductory Physical Geology.”
Terry Weiner, professor of sociology and political science, and Felmon Davis,
associate professor of philosophy, has an article titled “Sociological Theory and
Mental Retardation” published in a recent issue of the International Journal of
Sociology and Social Policy. The article explores the possibility of linking the
“conflict perspective” and the “medical model” of mental retardation,
usually thought to be at odds as explanatory frameworks.
Yoshimitsu Khan, assistant professor of Japanese and East Asian Studies, gave a
lecture titled “An Explanation of Confucianism” as a guest speaker this spring
in the Union College Academy of Lifelong Learning (UCALL). He spoke about filial piety,
ancestor worship, and religiosity in Confucian tradition.
Bruce Reynolds, professor of economics and director of the East Asian Studies
program, gave a talk titled “Reinventing East Asian Studies Under a Tight Budget
Constraint” at the annual convention of AsiaNet recently. Funded by the Luce and Ford
Foundations, AsiaNet brings together Asianists at liberal arts colleges to pool ideas and
resources. In May, Reynolds is to be a panel participant at a Cornell University
conference, “Lessons of Taiwan's Development Experience.”
J. Richard Shanebrook, professor of mechanical engineering, Lee Johnson Jr.
'94 and Richard I. Skoglund '93 are co-authors of the article, “Device for
Visualization of Anastamose Flow Pattern,” which appeared in a recent issue of the
French journal, Innovation and Technology in Biology and Medicine. The paper
presents a new type of aerodynamic wind tunnel that is useful for investigating the fluid
dynamics of bypass grafts as well as models of prosthetic devices that could improve their
long-term performance. The principal advantage of this approach is that air flow can be
used to simulate the flow of blood provided the Reynolds number of the two flows are
comparable. Also, many aspects of aerospace technology can now be used to study a wide
variety of cardiovascular flows.