Terry Weiner, professor of political science, gave a paper, “The Demise of Physician Power,” at the
Northeast Political Science Association meetings in November. He also chaired a panel on “Innovative
Approaches to Engaging Students Into College Life and Learning” at the same meetings.
Donald T. Rodbell, associate professor of geology, has published two papers in the last months on the
Younger Dryas Event, a climatic event that was an 1,000-year-long return to near full-glacial conditions
midway through the transition from the last glacial period to the present interglacial. It has fascinated
Earth scientists, in part, because it demonstrates an instability in regional and, perhaps, global climate.
The first paper, “The Younger Dryas: Cold, Cold Everywhere?” was in the October issue of Science magazine.
The second, written with colleague Geoff Seltzer of Syracuse University, was “Rapid ice margin fluctuations
during the Younger Dryas in the tropical Andes” published in the November issue of Quaternary Research.
It documents evidence in the Andes Mountains of Peru for a glacial advance early in the Younger Dryas
interval. The cover photograph on the Quaternary Research issue, taken by Rodbell, is of a glacial deposit
in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru that dates to the beginning of the Younger Dryas. Rodbell took the
photograph while hiking with Prof. John Garver and Nick Balscio '01 last summer as part of a scouting
trip for “Living on the Edge” (a new course on geologic hazards in the mountains of central Peru).
Rodbell and Balscio also spent a week in northern Bolivia mapping glacial deposits and coring lakes;
samples from this trip are the basis for Balscio's senior thesis.
Peter Tobiessen, professor of biology, was co-author with Elizabeth Wheat '99 of a paper published this
year in the journal Lake and Reservoir Management titled “Long and short term effects of waterfowl on
Collins Lake, an urban lake in upstate New York.” In this paper they studied the effects of the rapidly
increasing populations of Canada geese found in many urban parks containing water bodies. On Collins Lake,
across the Mohawk River in Scotia, they found that the increased numbers of geese was related to decreased
water quality during the ice-free season (spring to fall), but that there was no annual (year-to-year)
decrease in water quality over the 10-year duration of their study.
Barbara Boyer, professor of biology, gave a plenary address titled “The development of Neochildia supports
the position of acoels as basal bilaterians” at the ninth International Symposium on the Biology of the
Turbellaria in Barcelona, Spain last June. In addition, she published a paper in Developmental Biology on
work done at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole with colleagues Jonathan Henry of the University
of Illinois and Mark Martindale of the University of Hawaii titled “The unique developmental program of the
acoel flatworm Neochildia fusca.”
(Faculty and staff may submit For the Record items to caseyc@union.edu.)