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Nancy Rabinowitz, the Margaret Bundy Scott Profesor of Comparative Literature, presented her research at the Open University conference titled "Classics in the Modern World-A Democratic Turn?" in Milton Keynes, UK. The conference brought together scholars from all over the world to discuss whether the use of antiquity in modern times is in fact democratic. Her talk, "Expanding Tragedy as Critique," focused on contemporary uses of tragedy to critique the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Assistant Professors of Chemistry Nicole L. Snyder and Adam Van Wynsberghe have each received a Cottrell College Science Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. These grants each supply $35,000 for the investigators’ research programs and include funds for equipment, supplies, and faculty and student stipends. Fifty-seven of these awards were funded nationally in 2010.

The Frosted Elfin is not much to look at. It is a small, brownish butterfly whose unspectacular markings help it blend in against the backdrop of bark and dead leaves and grasses in its natural habitat in the Rome Sand Plains. The elfin, however, is an essential part of a fragile ecosystem and its numbers, recently, are decreasing. Five Hamilton students—Dan Bruzzese ’12, Eddie Williams ’12, Jonathan Pinney ’11, Chloe Von Ancken ‘11 and Mary Lehner ’12—along with Associate Professor of Biology Bill Pfitsch, are spending the summer doing field work for a project called “Restoration Ecology of Common Blue Lupine in the Rome Sand Plains” to find out why the frosted elfin is disappearing and how to get it back.

In its third year, Cram & Scram has perfected the formula for reusing unwanted goods, and helping others in the process. Fifteen students from all class years worked many hours in the early days of summer break to collect more than 10,000 pounds of goods that have found new and happy homes, resulting in fewer deposits of these usable goods to a landfill. This year, Cram & Scram reduced landfill deposits by more than 40 percent—10 percent more than 2009.

Imagine looking through a series of portraits and being asked to observe the faces of each one. What if suddenly you saw your own face on the screen? How would you react? According to Sam Briggs ’12 and Beril Esen ’13, a lot of that reaction depends on how you feel about yourself.

Assistant Professor of Art Rebecca Murtaugh is currently exhibiting at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, Mich. Her solo show titled "Temptations" opened on June 11 and runs until August 6, and features four series of art works.

The mission of the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, a nonprofit corporation headed by folk artist and cultural icon Pete Seeger, is to protect the waters of the Hudson River from pollution and degradation. This summer, Emerson Fellow Jacob Sheetz-Willard ’12 is researching how Pete Seeger’s Clearwater movement transcends environmental activism and becomes a cultural movement similar in organization to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. 

Professor of Chinese De Bao Xu gave the keynote speech at TCLT6, the 6th International Conference and Workshops on Technology and Chinese Language Teaching in the 21st Century, held at the Ohio State University on June 12-14. His talk was titled “Assessment of Participatory Learning Tools and Selection of Virtual Classroom Software (VCS).”

In 1918, the global influenza pandemic struck millions of families, killing a jaw-dropping 3 percent of the world’s population at the time. Scientists since devised a treatment to stop the flu infection from spreading within the body. With the recent emergence of a particularly virulent strain of avian influenza, H5N1, and the rise of the highly transmissible but somewhat less virulent pandemic H1N1 “swine flu” in 2009, many fear a repeat of this serious and lethal world health crisis. The common drugs used for treatment of influenza are far from perfect, and they sometimes act in unexpected ways on the molecular level. Working with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Adam Van Wynsberghe, Erica Losito ’12 and Jeremy Adelman ’13 are taking a closer look at exactly what happens when the virus and the drug interact, in two different ways.

Standing in the dark lab, Sarah Fobes ’12 and Zane Glauber ’12 flip the switch to turn on their laser. In the blink of an eye, the tiny glass sample that they had labored over glows a radioactive green—with any luck, a brighter green than the last one they illuminated. Working with Professor of Physics Ann Silversmith, Fobes and Glauber are spending the summer experimenting with different aspects of glass formation to make it fluoresce (or glow) more brightly, with the indirect consequence of being able to make a better laser.