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Julia Muntean ’10, who is advised by Associate Professor of Biology and Biochemistry Catharina Coenen, won first place at the Chemistry and Biochemistry Undergraduate Research Competition at Florida State University in November. She was one of twelve students selected from the nation to participate. The poster Julia presented was titled “Salicylic Acid Inhibition of Indole-3-Acetic Acid-Induced GH3 Promoter Activation.”

Chris Bonessi ’11, Justin Gaudi ’11 and Alex Haas ’11 presented a poster at the 2009 Student Symposium on the Environment sponsored by Westminster College and the Slippery Rock Watershed Coalition. “Aquaponics for Sustainability: Achieving Environmental Education through Community Development” describes a research project conducted in collaboration with Assistant Professor of Environmental Science TJ Eatmon as part of his Junior Seminar course. The project examined the potential for using aquaponic systems to foster environmental education through community development and assembled a network of students, teachers, environmental educators, farmers, businesses, nonprofits, and community members through their interactions with the small scale, low cost, environmentally friendly technology.  The students won a first-place prize for “Best Poster Presentation” and a $50 award.

Shane Downing ’11 presented a poster titled “Comparing microfossil shell weight from two locations on the California coast to understand controls on bottom water carbonate chemistry over the past 14 ka” at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, in San Francisco.  The presented research was part of a collaborative project with Dr. Tessa Hill (University of California Davis) at the Bodega Marine Laboratory.

Professor of Environmental Science Richard Bowden recently coauthored a paper in the journal Forest Ecology and Management.  Bowden and his colleagues, working in an old-growth Douglas fir forest in Oregon, have shown that increased forest productivity may reduce rather than increase storage of C by soils.  The paper, “Increased coniferous needle inputs accelerate decomposition of soil carbon in an old-growth forest,” has implications for climate change mitigation strategies that rely upon soils to help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  Bowden also co-chaired a workshop, “Soil organic matter dynamics: A cross-ecosystem approach,” at the 2009 National Science Foundation Long-Term Ecological Research Program All-Scientists Meeting in Estes Park, Colorado.

Professor of Philosophy Bill Bywater gave two papers at the American Philosophical Association meetings in New York in December.  One paper, “Introducing Goethe’s Delicate Empiricism as an Environmental Philosophy,” was given at a session sponsored by the International Association for Environmental Philosophy. Bywater was invited to give the other paper, “Comments on Yancy,” as one of three panelists at a session devoted to the discussion of George Yancy’s book Black Bodies, White Gazes. Yancy then responded to the panelists’ comments.

Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Sarah M. Conklin is the first author on the paper “Age-related Changes of Omega-3 and Omega-6 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex of Individuals with Major Depressive Disorder,” to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids. Caroline Runyan ’04, who is now at MIT, is the second author on the paper. Additional co-authors include colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Denver Health Sciences Center.  The paper examines the relationship between postmortem brain fatty acid levels in areas known to be involved with emotion regulation.

Brian Gillette, assistant director of Physical Plant for construction, has received the new Educational Facilities Professional (EFP) credential from APPA (formerly the Association of Physical Plant Administrators), the association dedicated to leadership in educational facilities. The EFP is a way to validate the unique knowledge and competence required of an accomplished professional in the educational facilities field.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Gregory M. Kapfhammer was recently elected a Fellow of the Awesome Foundation for Arts and Sciences, which is based in Boston and affiliated with organizations such as Microsoft Startup Labs and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Using the financial award associated with this fellowship, Kapfhammer established the Forty Day Visual Feast Project (FDVFP) to support the creation of forty exciting visualizations that will inspire and educate both scientists and artists. In conjunction with an international and interdisciplinary expert review panel that will fairly evaluate each submission, the FDVFP will award cash prizes for the first, second, third, fourth, and honorable mention submissions.  Individuals who are interested in submitting their own visualizations to the contest should visit https://www.cs.allegheny.edu/visualfeast/ for more details.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Tamara Lakins presented an invited Mathematics Colloquium, “Ramsey’s theorem, computability theory, and reverse mathematics,” at Appalachian State University in September. In October, she presented the invited logic seminar “Ramsey’s theorem for trees” at the University of Chicago; the talk was based on joint work with Jeffry Hirst (Appalachian State University). In November, Professor Lakins was appointed chair of the Mathematical Association of America’s Basic Library List Committee. The MAA is a national professional organization that focuses on mathematics accessible to undergraduates. The Basic Library List Committee maintains the Basic Library List, a list of important mathematics resources recommended for public, community college, college and university libraries.

Associate Professor of Physics and Biochemistry Doros Petasis and Tanya Nocera ’09 are co-authors with others on the paper “An Unprecedented Charge Transfer Induced Spin Transition in an Fe-Os Cluster,” which appears in Angewandte Chemie, a journal with one of the highest impact factors among chemistry journals. Journal editors chose their paper as a “hot paper,” indicating its importance in a rapidly evolving field of high current interest and publishing it online ahead of print publication. Tanya is pursuing her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at Ohio State University. Her research is focused on the study of iron oxide superparamagnetic nanoparticles using atomic force microscopy.

At the 124th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in San Diego in January, Assistant Professor of History Guo Wu presented a paper titled “Print Socialism: Reading Rooms, Bookstores and Early Chinese Anarcho-Communists, 1919-20” as part of a panel he organized on “Dissemination of Western Knowledge and Ideology in Late Imperial and Early Republican China.” In addition, Wu recently had three Chinese-English translations appear in the translation journal Chinese Studies in History (M.E. Sharpe).