Sharon Bellina ‘09 has accepted a year-long internship in dramaturgy at the Pasadena Playhouse in California.
Amy Schrembs ‘09 presented her work “An Application of Computer-Based Training on Emotional Discrimination in Children with Autism: A Comparison to Non-Computer-Based Training” at the 2009 ABAI Autism Conference held in Jacksonville, Florida, in early February. The work was completed as part of Amy’s senior thesis project, supervised by Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Rodney Clark.
Under the supervision of Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Sarah Conklin, Siera Goodnight ‘09, Josh Sesek ‘10, Annie Ginty ‘09 and Emilia Symoniak ‘10 presented the results of their summer research at the 67th annual meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society in Chicago in March. The project consisted of a 21-day double blinded and placebo controlled trial of the long-chain omega-3 fatty acids (1.4 g EPA & DHA) in young adults. Siera Goodnight, who was a recipient of the society’s Young Scholar Award, presented data showing that supplementation of these fatty acids influenced resting cerebral asymmetry of EEG power, whereas the placebo group showed no change. Emilia Symoniak, who was also a recipient of the Young Scholar Award, reported data showing that supplementation with the fatty acids, but not placebo, reduced self-reported symptoms of neuroticism and depression. Annie Ginty was a co-author on the poster. Josh Sesek presented his data on cardiovascular reactivity to mental stress. Josh found that supplementation, but not placebo use, reduced mean arterial pressure reactivity to a mental stress task in the laboratory. The Young Scholar Award is presented to the top ten abstract submissions by students, a category that includes graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and medical residents.
Professor of Environmental Science Richard Bowden was a presenter for the National Wildlife Federation Campus Ecology Habitat Restoration and Protection on Campus Conference held February 19, 2009. Bowden’s talk, “Using Vegetation to Capture and Reduce Carbon Emissions: Forest Carbon Sequestration, Biofuel Studies and Native Wildflower Gardens,” addressed Allegheny’s efforts on campus as well as with community partners to protect habitat and to reduce carbon emissions.
Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies Mark Cosdon published “Le Voyage en Suisse des frres Hanlon: performances de comÈdiens et comÈdie de la performance” in the book Pantomime et thÈ‚tre du corps. Transparence et opacitÈ du hors-texte issued by the University of Rennes in France.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Gregory M. Kapfhammer was recently chosen to serve as a guest editor for a special issue on Software Test Automation in the Advances in Software Engineering Journal. Working with lead guest editor Philip Laplante (Pennsylvania State University) and five other guest editors, Kapfhammer will help to prepare a journal issue focusing on the development and evaluation of methods that both reduce the cost of testing and improve software quality. This special issue of Advances in Software Engineering is slated to be published in December 2009.
Associate Professor of Political Science Shannan Mattiace was invited to present her paper “Mexico’s ‘Tranquil’ Indians: State Legislation and Indian Rights in Yucatan, Mexico” at a conference on Mexico’s Multiculturalism in Comparative Perspective at American University on February 19 and 20. Mattiace and Associate Professor of Economics Tomas Nonnenmacher published their first co-authored paper (with co-author Lee Allston) in The Journal of Economic History (Vol. 69, no. 1, March 2009). The title of the article is “Coercion, Culture, and Contracts: Labor and Debt on Henequen Haciendas in Yucatan, Mexico, 1870-1915.”
Associate Professor of Geology Rachel O’Brien has been invited to teach a three-day workshop on “Preparing for an Academic Career in the Geosciences: A Workshop for Graduate Students and Post-doctoral Fellows.” The workshop is sponsored by the National Association of Geoscience Teachers and is funded by a National Science Foundation grant. Scheduled for July 2009, the workshop will be held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Professor of Religious Studies Carl Olson has published some further essays in the three-volume text Encyclopedia of Time: Science, Philosophy, Theology, and Culture, edited by H. James Brix and published in London by Sage Publications in 2009. He composed essays for the encyclopedia on Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Dogen, Nargarjuna, Sankara, and Paul Tillich.
Mike Richwalsky, of the Office of Public Affairs, presented the pre-conference workshop at the annual College and University Public Relations Association of Pennsylvania (CUPRAP) conference held in Hershey. The presentation dealt with the use of social media tools like Twitter and Facebook in college public relations. Mike’s slides are available at http://tinyurl.com/mikeslides. Mike was also featured in the March 2009 issue of University Business magazine, in an article titled “10 Questions and Answers About the Cloud,” dealing with college and university use of cloud computing. The article is online at http://tinyurl.com/acubstory.
Assistant Professor of History Guo Wu’s research paper “The Zhanguoce (Warring States Strategy) School’s Effort of Wartime Cultural Reconstruction, 1940-1942″ has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Modern Chinese History.
