Posted on Jan 20, 2011

Rebecca Cortez, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has co-authored papers with colleagues at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Northern Illinois University and the University of Albany College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. “Local transport properties, morphology, and microstructure of ZnO decorated SiO2 nanoparticles,” was published in the journal Nanotechnology, and “Investigation of the drain current shift in ZnO thin film transistors” was published in the Journal of Applied Physics. The atomic force microscopy research completed at Union College for these efforts was supported by a National Science Foundation grant. Additional support for the ZnO thin film transistor characterization was provided by Union’s Faculty Research Fund.

Research Professor of Philosophy Raymond Martin will be an interviewed panelist in the New York Academy of Sciences’ six-part interdisciplinary series, “Perspectives on the Self: Conversations on Identity and Consciousness.” Joining him on the panel are historian Gerald Izenberg and sociologist Nobert Wiley. This session, titled “Me, Myself, and I: The Rise of the Modern Self,” will be held in New York City Jan. 27. In addition, Martin’s review essay, “Let Many Flowers Bloom,” on historian Allan Megill’s “Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice,” appeared in a recent issue of the journal History and Theory.


Michael Vineyard
, the Frank and Marie Louise Bailey Professor of Physics and chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, gave a talk titled “Rutherford Back-Scattering Experiment in the First-Year Seminar at Union College” at the 2011 winter meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers in Jacksonville, Fla. The meeting celebrated 100 years of nuclear physics that began with the discovery of the atomic nucleus in 1911 by Ernest Rutherford. Scott LaBrake, senior lecturer and accelerator manager, was co-author of the paper.

“Morning in Tunisia,” an article by Michele Angrist, associate professor of political science, appears in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, which is published by the Council on Foreign Relations.To read the article, about the recent uprising in Tunisia, click here. Angrist is editor of “Politics and Society in the Contemporary Middle East” and co-editor of “Authoritarianism in the Middle East Regimes and Resistance.”