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Rick Werner, the John Stewart Kennedy Professor of Philosophy, presented "Pragmatism, Justice, and Sustainability" in August at a conference on Politics, Policy, and Justice at Bern University, Bern, Switzerland. He argues that the consistent underreporting of climate change by recent scientific models, the psychological evidence that our ability to care about others diminishes with both time and space, and the need to look at the whole of justice under conditions of uncertainty present serious challenges to our ability to resolve climate change successfully.

Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation and a prominent observer of higher education, will give a lecture, “Smart Kids in a Stupid Culture: History, politics, literature vs. Twitter, Facebook, iP,” on Monday, Oct. 5, at 7:30 p.m., in Hamilton's Science Center Kennedy Auditorium. It is free and open to the public.

A few years ago, Grace Liew ’12 would have told you she had little interest in the politics of her native country. So it may come as a surprise that Grace spent her summer pursuing an Emerson Grant to investigate a paradigm shift in Malaysian politics. It was the trend of government itself that inspired Grace’s interest. In the 2008 elections, the leading party lost its majority, a new step for a nation that has not traditionally seen significant opposition in government. Liew’s research sought to examine the reasons for this development and to track its progress, aided by Professor of Philosophy Rick Werner.

Assistant Professor of History Chad Williams published a review of the book Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) by Margaret Humphreys in The Journal of African American History. Williams’ teaching and research interests include the history of African Americans soldiers.

Professor of Chinese Hong Gang Jin published an article in a recent issue of Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association (JCLTA). The article, “Participatory Learning in Internet Web Technology: A Study of Three Web Tools in the Context of CFL Learning,” explores Chinese language learning and instruction within a technology-rich, collaborative and participatory learning environment.

The electroweak force describes the confluence of two fundamental forces in nature (out of four): the electromagnetic force, and the weak force. “Electroweak” is a funny sounding name to begin with, and “weak force” does not sound very scientific – but both are, in fact, complicated concepts in particle physics. The weak force alone governs beta decay and its associated radioactivity. But when combined with the electromagnetic force, it controls neutron beta decay. The aCORN project is an effort to more accurately measure the electron antineutrino correlation termed “little a,” one of the parameters for neutron beta decay. This summer, William Bauder ’10 worked on the aCORN project at Indiana University, which collaborates with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Professor of Physics Gordon Jones guided him through the research.

One plus one is undoubtedly two. One times one is indubitably one. But what happens when you put a whole string of these simple calculations together? That is what Tawanda Mashavave ’10 researched this summer. His project was designated as computer science research, but it was geared more toward number theory. With Professor of Computer Science Richard Decker, Mashavave analyzed integer complexity: the integer complexity of a positive integer n, denoted by c(n), is the least amount of 1s used to represent n using only additions, multiplications, and parentheses.

The founder of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) was Marian Wright-Edelman, a leader in the civil rights movement. She was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s friend and legal counsel, and Megan Bumb ’10 was a guest in her home for a barbeque this summer.

Xiaohan Du ’12 is proud of her Chinese culture, but has some qualms about its philosophy on education, especially in museums. “The Chinese people don’t get enough from the museums as they should,” she said. Du describes the labels and audio guides that resemble those in American museums, but also mentions that there is a staggering lack of activity outside of these merely informative aides. “It’s pretty passive,” she noted. This summer, she did a comparison of American and Chinese educational methods in art museums. Her research was funded by the Emerson Foundation Grant program, which was created in 1997 to bolster student-faculty relations through collaborative research projects.

"Nature's designs can be so stealth!" Alyssa Kanagaki '10 said. Diseases spread so quickly that it is hard to believe that something as small as a bacterium could cause so much harm. Kanagaki's internship this summer with Dr. Suckjoon Jun gave her the chance to explore these microscopic marvels more closely. Dr. Jun, a physicist who has recently turned to biology, wants to know how one cell becomes two cells. It's not a simple question, nor does it have a simple answer. He and his team at Harvard University’s FAS Center for Systems Biology study this and other details of a cell's life.