William Murphy, Thomas Lamont
Research Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature, was quoted in an
article, “Has Gates' Combativeness Hurt Microsoft in Court
Case?” in the May 7 edition of the Seattle Times. Written by Paul
Andrews '71, the piece quotes Murphy, “I suppose you could
characterize Gates' tragic flaw as righteousness. Early on, all Gates
had to do to preserve his pre-eminent position in the industry was to give
up one small thing – break apart the browser from Windows. But he wouldn't
do it. He wanted 100 percent.” Murphy compared the software mogul to
King Lear, who banished his faithful daughter Cordelia for the sin of
telling him the truth.
Seth Greenberg, Gilbert R.
Livingston Professor of Psychology, was a co-author (with A. Inhoff, M.
Starr, R. Radach) of a chapter, “Allocation of Visuo-spatial
Attention and Saccade Programming During Reading.” He published a
commentary in Behavioral and Brain Sciences titled “Words do
not stand alone: Do not ignore a word's role when examining patterns of
activation.” It examined whether investigations that report that
differential brain activation resulting from the processing of words
fitting different grammatical classes is reasonable evidence that classes
of words are stored in different locations in the brain. Theoretical
commentary was co-authored by M. Nisslein of the Max Plank Institute in
Germany. Joanna Tai '00, a student of Greenberg's presented a
paper, “Nursery Rhymes and Missing Letters,” at the 28th annual
Hunter College Psychology Convention on May 6. The paper reports on one of
several studies she did to investigate whether readers process different
grammatical categories of words differently in familiar as compared to
unfamiliar texts.
Teresa Meade, associate
professor of history, presented a paper, “Becoming Honorable:
Marriage and Identity on the Alta California Frontier, 1769-1850,” at
the Latin American Studies Association Congress in Miami this spring. She
presented a talk, “Reconfiguring the Frontier: Alta California in the
19th Century,” for the Latin American Studies Program at SUNY-Stony
Brook. Also, she spoke before the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians
in Stockbridge, Mass., on “Perspectives on the Berks: The Next 40
Years.”
M. Estellie Smith, research
professor of anthropology, has published a book, Trade and Trade-offs:
Using Resources, Making Choices, and Taking Risks (Waveland Press),
which deals with making choices and dealing with the sociocultural costs
and benefits of them. The book “casts aside the idea that economics
deals only with things that can be measured with money,” Smith
writes, and deals with the questions that arise from the necessity of
individuals and groups to deal with matters related to production,
distribution and consumption.
George Butterstein, Florence
B. Sherwood Professor of Life Sciences, authored a paper (with V. Daniel
Castracane of Texas Tech Health Sciences), “Effect of Particle Size
on the Prolonged Actum of Subcutaneous Danazol in Male and Female
Rats,” in Fertility and Sterility. Also, Butterstein, acting
dean of arts and sciences, was interviewed by a reporter from the Missoulian
during NCUR 2000 at the University of Montana recently. “What's
important about this conference is the diversity of topics,” said
Butterstein, who attended the conference with 47 Union students and five
other faculty. “It's not only science-oriented, it's across the
fields.”
Robert Sharlet, Chauncey
Winters Professor of Political Science, in November spoke on the
jurisprudence of the Russian Constitutional Court at the National Slavic
Conference (AAASS) in St. Louis. This spring, he made presentations on
post-Yeltsin constitutional issues at the American Enterprise Institute in
Washington, and at the Political Science Graduate Colloquium at the
University of California at Riverside. Of essays recently published in Americana
Annual 2000 (Grolier), a major one was on Russian political and
economic developments during 1999. He also evaluated applications of law
professors from post-Soviet states for research placements at U.S. law
schools.