All News

Stephen Okin ’10 (New York, N.Y.) is fascinated with current foreign policy, a fascination which led him straight to the big problems. The U.S. relies upon a rhetoric of liberty and democracy, but there are times when the promotion of democracy abroad conflicts with the need to secure national interests. Okin, a rising sophomore, has an Emerson grant and is working with Assistant Professor of Government Ted Lehmann to research this contradiction as regards the “Venezuelan threat:” the current political situation in Venezuela and its conflicting implications for U.S. foreign policy.

Dean of Faculty and Professor of English Joseph Urgo took four students to the 11th International Willa Cather Seminar in France, June 24-July 1, where he presented a lecture. The seminar, "Willa Cather: A Writer's Worlds," took place in Paris and the Abbey St. Michel de Frigolet in Provence. The trip was an optional, culminating event to a senior seminar on Willa Cather that Urgo offered last spring. The students who attended were Leah Babb-Rosenfeld '07, Christine Mays '07, Laura Hartz '07 and Ashley DeMaio-Zacharek '08. The conference attracted 150 attendees.

Blake Hulnick ’09 (Richfield, Conn.) is anything but an average, errand-boy intern. Working in the office of the King’s County District Attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y., Hulnick doesn’t fetch anybody coffee; instead, he gets to do exactly the same job as the lawyers and paralegals beside him. He is in the Early Case Assessment Bureau (ECAB) Department, the part of the office which screens, categorizes, and arraigns every arrest that takes place in Brooklyn.

What summer job is better for college students – one that pays well and allows them to save money and pay for expenses, or one that doesn't pay anything but gives them the career-related experience they need to help land a "real" job after college graduation? It's a dilemma that many students face during the summer and sometimes it's difficult to find a  job that provides both.

An article co-authored by Associate Professor of Government and Associate Dean of Students Philip A. Klinkner titled “Measuring the Difference between White Voting and Polling on Interracial Marriage” was published by the Cambridge University Press Online Journal on May 10. The article had previously been published in print in the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race in September 2006. Micah Altman, senior research scientist at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, was Klinkner’s co-author.

When most people thinking of harvesting material from apis mellifera, they think about honey. Apis mellifera is, after all, the scientific name of the honeybee. That's not the case for Sarah Bertino '09 (Natick, Mass.), working under the advisement of Associate Professor of Biology and Director of the Neuroscience Program Herman Lehman. When Bertino sets out to harvest from bees, she's after their brains. She has about 30 seconds to extract the brain from the bee on the dry ice beside her and isolate it in a small test tube before the brain liquefies. That's just the beginning of a bizarre and captivating trail leading to an intimate connection with the human brain that holds the promise of yielding answers to the mechanisms of Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics Andrew Nutting presented a paper "To the Slimmer Go the Spoils: Heterogeneous Responses to Bodyweight Incentives in Olympic Weightlifting Tournaments” at the Western Economic Association  82nd Annual Conference in Seattle on July 2. The paper has been accepted for publication by the Eastern Economic Journal.

Marianne Janack, the Sidney Wertimer, Jr. Associate Professor of Philosophy, attended the National Women's Studies Association conference in July in Chicago, where she was on a panel on future directions in feminist epistemology. Her paper was called "Truth Talk and Realism."

Isoprene (C5H8) is the second most common naturally occurring hydrocarbon in the atmosphere (methane, CH4, is the first). It is produced and released into the air by certain species of plants. Due to isoprene’s high concentration in the atmosphere, it has a significant impact on many atmospheric processes, most notably its role as an essential precursor to ozone (O3). Although ozone in the upper layers of the atmosphere is essential to blocking harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun, ozone in the lower layers of the atmosphere is a serious pollutant because it contributes to smog, acts as a greenhouse gas, and causes respiratory problems.

Any scientist knows that research is time-consuming. Most researchers, both at Hamilton and in the world at large, will wait years to see the results of their labor, but Jonathan Wexler ’08 (Beverly, Mass.) anticipates seeing his work put into operation before the end of the summer. Under the advisement of Associate Professor of Physics Gordon Jones and Professor of Mathematics Larry Knop, Wexler will update and perfect existing programming – as well as creating new computer code – for programs integral to the Spallation Neutron Source in Tennessee Oakridge National Labs in Nashville. Beginning in mid-July, Wexler will spend a month installing these programs and overseeing their operation at the facility, which provides a controlled source of neutrons for experiments regarding subjects as diverse as the composition of antimatter and the origin of the universe.