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As an intern at Sotheby's Contemporary Chinese Art Department, Xin Wang '09 spent the summer using her talents to the fullest. In her 11-week internship with the international auction house, Wang helped to prepare for an upcoming auction of contemporary Asian art. Although her internship was unpaid, she received funding from the Joseph F. Anderson Internship Fund, given in honor of a 1944 Hamilton graduate who served the college for 18 years as vice president for communications and development. The fund in his name provides individual stipends to support full-time internships for students wishing to expand their educational horizons in preparation for potential careers after graduation.

After taking a Japanese linguistics class, Eileen Rivera '10 began to think about her own linguistic habits. In the process of studying Japanese, Rivera became familiar with the phenomenon of "codeswitching," where a person changes his or her style of speaking in different situations. Codeswitching can involve using entirely different languages, or it can mean moving within the same language between dialects or styles, which is also called "style shifting." After learning about codeswitching, Rivera began to notice it in herself, seeing differences between her speaking style at Hamilton and at home in New York City. "I started to notice the dichotomy between the person I am when I am in school and the person I am when I go home," she says.

Far from the heat and humidity of a Central New York summer, Alexander de Moor '10 (Wayland, Mass.) began his summer aboard the research vessel Lawrence M. Gould, spending three weeks in Antarctica doing geology research. After crossing the Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica, de Moor spent five days conducting research with the Gould team, and then visited Palmer Station on Anvers Island before making the transit back to Punta Arenas in Chile.

Hamilton College will receive $671,141 from the New York State Dormitory Authority for the purchase and installation of equipment at the Kirner-Johnson Building. KJ is undergoing extensive renovation, with Phase 1 work completed this month. The money will come from the authority's Higher Education Capital Matching Grant Program (HECAP), according to state Sen. Joseph Griffo, R-Rome, and state Assemblyman David Townsend, R-Sylvan Beach.

Thomas Tull '92 chairman and CEO of Legendary Pictures, will be honored at The Fulfillment Fund's Annual Gala, to be held on Monday, Oct. 13, at the Beverly Hilton, Beverly Hills, Calif.

Tawanda Mashavave '10 (Shamva, Zimbabwe) worked with Associate Professor of Computer Science Mark Bailey this summer on securing vulnerable software using software dynamic translation, a process that modifies how a computer application runs during execution. According to Mashavave, there are many ways a hacker can gain control of computer systems. One common way is for the hacker to look at publicly available source code (i.e. the commands written by a programmer to create a computer program) and manipulate that source code to gain control of its associated program.

Nearly 300 students registered to vote and completed absentee ballot requests on Tuesday, Aug. 26, as a result of the efforts of Hamilton Engage 08. Two local television stations, NBC-affiliate WKTV and all news cable station News10Now, have reported on the group's success in registering students.

The results are in – Hamilton's first Cram & Scram made a difference. The recycling effort, launched at the end of the spring semester, collected recyclable/reusable items from residence halls. Everything from couches and microwaves to clothing and unopened food were collected. Rather than throwing the items away and sending them to the county landfill, the Recycling Task Force sorted them for reuse. Bottom line? This year, waste sent to landfill was reduced by 40 tons or about 28 percent. 

Hamilton College students and employees have a new tool to reduce their carbon footprint.  The College has teamed with Lucid Design Group of Oakland, Calif., to develop an interactive Web site that displays energy usage for buildings in real-time. The system also stores data so that, over time, energy-use comparisons can be made to previous days, months and years. 

After the year 489, early Christianity split into the Western, Catholic branch based in Rome and what is known as the Church of the East, rooted in the land east of the Euphrates. In 635, Alopen brought Christian teaching to Chang-An, the Chinese capital during that time. The Church of the East enjoyed a period of rapid development until around 845, but after the decline of the Tang Dynasty, Christianity completely disappeared on the Central Plain for almost 400 years, only remaining in Northwest China among some Uigur and Mongol tribes. However, during the Yuan Dynasty, beginning in 1271, the southeastern city of Quan-Zhou in Chinese Fujian Province suddenly became a center of the Church of the East overnight. This phenomenon begs the question: Where did these churches come from?