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Stefanie Linnan’s ’11 job this summer is to pull out her headphones and listen to music. For one of her two internships, she is responsible for tracking unsigned artists on MySpace and Purevolume. Each day she sends her manager information on five artists she likes and he gives her feedback.

Do we have control over what we remember? Sarah Bookbinder ’10 and Clifford Robbins ’10 are researching directed forgetting, a method for thought control in which participants are told to forget previously learned material.

De Bao Xu, professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures, was invited to give a plenary speech at the 2009 Conference and Workshops on Basic Education in China and Overseas, at Guangxi Teacher’s University, Guangxi, China, July 14-17.

Luke Maher '11, Grace Stadnyk '10, Chan Thompson '10 and Professor of Mathematics Richard Bedient just returned from the first Unknot (Undergraduate Knot Theory) Conference at Denison University where they gave a paper titled "Three-Trip Lorenz Knots," heard many more and generally had a great time meeting knot students from all over the country.

If she ever had trouble falling asleep during her trip to Ireland this summer, Erica Kowsz ’11 could have just counted sheep. They roamed outside her tent on the abandoned island of Inis Airc, and although living with them for almost a week was a bizarre experience, Kowsz says they made good company.

A man with a red nose and white face paint strolls into a pediatric hospital. He greets a small child who has cancer. Pulling out a letter “e” made of construction paper, he shows it to the girl. The letter is solid brown, and when the clown asks her what it is, she looks confused. But then a smile flickers across her face: “Oh, it’s a brown ‘e,’” she understands. “A brownie!” A non-profit organization like Clown Care is small but has a huge presence in both the hearts of its clientele and the nation.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Ashleigh Smythe spent 10 days in July working at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.  She is currently describing a new species of nematode that she collected from sediment off the coast of Florida.

Jay Williams ’54, the Walcott-Bartlett Professor of Religion, published an article, "The Gospel of John (or is it Ch'an)" on the bibleinterp.com Web site. As the title suggests, it offers a rather different approach to the fourth gospel, spelling out in more detail what Williams said at the Service of Remembrance during Reunions ’09 weekend.

Professor of Theatre Craig Latrell recently completed a month-long trip to Bali where he conducted research on destination weddings as intercultural performances. He observed the wedding of a Ukranian couple in a Balinese ceremony, and visited numerous wedding chapels, hotels, wedding coordinators, and an elephant park where it is possible to arrange a post-ceremony elephant ride through a village. His research was funded through the Dean of Faculty office.

Clathrate hydrates are like cages. They are sculptures of ice-like water-based solids that can trap very small molecules inside of them. Studying their behavior can help decide what uses they might have and what kind of industries could benefit from their reactions.