Posted on May 31, 2010

Mary Swift, biology poster, spring 2010

Seven seniors and Scott Kirkton, assistant professor of biology, took part in the Experimental Biology meeting in Anaheim, Calif. recently. They joined some 12,000 professional biologists and 700 undergraduates with an interest in research and life sciences for an array of oral and poster sessions, lectures, workshops and exhibits. 

The Union students, who presented posters of their senior theses in biology or biochemistry, are: Dillon Betancourt and HuiQing Zheng (co-authored with Professor Kristin Fox, associate professor of chemistry); Amy Frankenthaler; Natalie Grome (Robert Olberg, the Florence B. Sherwood Professor of Life Sciences); Leah Robison (Robert Lauzon, associate professor of biology); and Matthew Santa Barbara and Mary Swift (Professor Kirkton).

Dillon Betancourt, biology poster, spring 2010

In addition, Kirkton was invited to give a talk and a poster, both titled, “Enzymatic analysis of the American locust jumping muscle during development.” Co-authors were Fox and former research student Elizabeth Nyberg ’09. Kirkton was an author on a collaborator’s poster, “Effects of body size and development on the hypoxia response of the caterpillar, Manduca sexta.” Co-authors were Kendra Greenlee of North Dakota State University, H. Eubanks of Mississippi Valley State University and Wah-Keat Lee of Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Ill.


Katherine Lynes,
assistant professor of English, will present a paper this month at the meeting of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences in Portland, Ore. The paper is titled “You can ache the need for river": Re-envisioning African American Ecopoetics.” The theme for this year’s conference is “Many Shades of Green.”


Gail Golderman,
Digital Services librarian, and Bruce Connolly, head of Public Services at Schaffer Library, marked their 10th year as contributing editors for Library Journal's "e-Reviews" column. The past year's columns covered electronic resources in the areas of careers and vocational counseling, multimedia, law and diversity.

Stephen Schmidt, chair of the Economics Department, recently was quoted in a Sunday Gazette (Schenectady) story about the New York state work force regarding the governor’s proposal to consider furloughs for state workers as one solution to the fiscal crisis.
 

William Blanchard, public safety officer II, was selected by Disney to be the musical director for the “Lion King” promotional play, held last month at Proctors.
 

The Daily Gazette did a feature on efforts by Mike Clarke '11 and other students to build a music room, art center, school store and drinking water system for the Faith Hour Redemption Academy in Accra, Ghana. Last year, Clarke and the students built a library in Ghana, collecting thousands of books. To read the story, click here (registration may be required). 

Leo Fleishman, professor of biology, has had several peer reviewed publications recently. These include: “Motion perception and visual signal design in Anolis lizards,”inProceedings of the Royal Society B (in press), with A. Pallus; “Habitat light and dewlap color diversity in four species of Puerto Rican anoline lizards,”Journal of Comparative Physiology, with M. Leal and M.H. Persons; andModeling and measuring the visual detection of ecologically relevant motion by an Anolis lizard,” Journal of Comparative Physiology, with A. Pallus.