Posted on Jun 3, 2008

“A 20th-Century Faust,” a book review by Mark Walker, the John Bigelow Professor of History, appears in American Scientist, the magazine of science and technology published by Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society. Walker reviewed “Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War” by Michael J. Neufeld (Knopf, 2007). Wernher von Braun was a German physicist and astronautics engineer and leader in rocket  technology. 

 

An article by Writing Center Director Mary Mar was included in a recent Haverford College publication, “Summer Bridge Programs and Academic Achievement.” Mar’s article is titled “Bridging the Gaps in Summer Bridge Programs: The Role of the Writing Course.” 

 

Cheikh M. Ndiaye, assistant professor of French and Francophone studies, published an article, “Marronnage, Oralité et Écriture dans Solibo Magnifique de Patrick Chamoiseau,” in the Francophone studies journal,  Nouvelles Etudes Francophones. The article is a revision of a conference paper Ndiaye had previously presented at the Rocky Mountain Modern Languages Association annual convention in Idaho.

 

Robert Baker recently was quoted in a San Francisco Chronicle article on the clash between hospitals and patients over privacy rights. The article explains how medical institutions routinely use patient information as part of their fundraising efforts. Baker is chair of the Rapaport Ethics Across the Curriculum Initiative, the William D. Williams Professor of Philosophy and director of the Union Graduate College-Mount Sinai School Medicine Bioethics Program.

 

Judith Lewin, associate professor of English, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Religion, recently completed a scholar-in-residency program at the Hadassah Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University for her book project on Jewish women’s writing. In addition, she has authored a book chapter about an historical fiction film, “The Governess,” which appeared in cinemas in 1998. The chapter discusses stereotypes associated with Jewish women’s sexuality in 1830s British culture and complements two other pieces on Jewish women by Lewin in print this spring. Lewin also was elected to a four-year term on the Women's Caucus board of the international Association for Jewish Studies.

 

An article by Associate Professor of Economics Tomas Dvorak, titled “Cross-Border Returns Differentials,” will be published in the November issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Co-authors are Stephanie Curcuru of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and Frank Warnock of the Darden School of the University of Virginia. Dvorak and his co-authors recently presented a paper, “The Decomposition of the Returns Differentials,” at the International Macro-Finance Conference at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C.

 

Associate Professor of Chemistry Michael Hagerman recently received a grant of $75,396 from the Center for Advanced Microelectronics Manufacturing (CAMM) at the State University of New York at Binghamton and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to fund solar cell nanomaterials research titled, “Self-Assembled Laponite/CdSe/PANI/PEDOT Nanocomposite Thin Film Photovoltaics on Flex.” This work is in collaboration with Wayne Jones, Chemistry professor at the University at Binghamton. The funding, from July 1 through June 30, 2009, will support undergraduate and graduate research in nanotechnology bridging Union College, the University at Binghamton and local industrial partner, Evident Technologies.  

Cay Anderson-Hanley, Ph.D., assistant professor of Psychology, and co-authors Joseph P. Nimon ’07 and Sarah Westen ’09 presented two posters at the annual meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine in San Diego recently. They presented “Neuropsychological Effects of Low-Impact Exercise for Community-Dwelling Older Adults,” whose research was a collaborative effort among Prof. Anderson-Hanley’s Healthy Aging & Neuropsychology Research Lab, the Senior Health and Wellness Program of Catholic Charities of Schenectady County, and the Retired Senior Volunteer Program in the Capital Region. Alessandro Carini ’07 and Lyndsay DeMatteo ’10 assisted with the research. Anderson-Hanley, Nimon and Westen also presented “Neuropsychological Effects of Exercise for Aging Women: Role of Steroid Hormone Biomarkers.” Co-author was Brian Cohen, professor of Biology.

 

George Gmelch, the Roger Thayer Stone Professor of Anthropology, recently gave a public lecture on the changing culture of America baseball at Elon University in Elon, N.C. He also gave a talk to anthropology students and faculty that compared the Union College Barbados and Tasmania anthropology terms abroad.

 

 

Janet Anderson, professor of Chemistry, and Griselda Hernández and David LeMaster of the Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health, recently published an article in Biochemistry. They used electrostatic calculations to explain the observed hydrogen exchange rates for amide protons on the surface of the rubredoxin protein.

 

An article by Rebecca Surman, associate professor of Physics, appears in the June issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. It is titled "r-Process Nucleosynthesis in Hot Accretion Disk Flows from Black Hole-Neutron Star Mergers." Co-authors are G.C. McLaughlin, M. Ruffert, H.-Th. Janka and W.R. Hix. Surman presented this work recently at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society in St. Louis and in invited seminars at Duke University and North Carolina State University.

 

Kathleen LoGiudice, assistant professor of Biology, gave talks about her research at Bennington College and Siena College. She co-authored a paper, with J.L. Brunner and R.S. Ostfeld, titled “Estimating the Importance of Zoonotic Reservoir Hosts in Pathogen Transmission: Prevalence and Infectivity,” which was published in the Journal of Medical Entomology. Another paper, co-authored with S. Duerr, M. Newhouse, K. Schmidt, Killilea, M. and R.S. Ostfeld, was accepted for publication in  Ecology. It is titled “Impact of Host Community Composition on Lyme Disease Risk.”

 

Benjamin Bunes ’08 has had a paper on his senior thesis in Electrical Engineering accepted for publication in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Nanotechnology Conference in Austin, Texas, in August. The paper is titled “Image Processing Algorithm for Analyzing Chirality in Carbon Nanotubes.” Associate Professor of Chemistry Michael Hagerman and Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering Palma Catravas were supervisors. Bunes is a double major in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics with minors in Nanotechnology and History. He is the recent recipient of the College’s  Warner King (Class of 1906) Prize, given to the senior in Engineering who has contributed most to the traditions and ideals of the College.

 

Andrew Rapoff, asistant professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Ronald Bucinell, the Thomas J. Watson, Sr. and Emma Watson Day Professor of Mechanical Engineering and department chair, along with Scott McGraw of the Ohio State University and David Daegling of the University of Florida, recently presented research titled "Full Field Noncontacting Strain Measurements in the Colobine Mandibular Symphysis" at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio.

 

Andrew Morris, assistant professor of History, attended the Policy History Conference in St. Louis last week. He organized a panel titled “Privatizing Public Policy and Public Services,” which considered various aspects of the history of privatization in the United States. He also presented a paper, “Privatizing Human Services: The Nonprofit Sector and the Contracting State,” which looked at the origins and evolution of government’s use of non-profit agencies as service delivery mechanisms. The material in his paper is derived from his forthcoming book, “The Limits of Voluntarism: Charity and Welfare from the New Deal Through the Great Society,” to be published by Cambridge University Press in early 2009.