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Assistant Professor of History Lisa N. Trivedi traveled to Pune, India, to participate in a conference “Towards a History of Consumption in South Asia, 1750-1950,” sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and by the Indian Council of Social Science Research. She presented a paper “Health Matters: Mill Workers and Maternity Care in Bombay, 1920-1940.”

In the last week, Cheng Li, William R. Kenan Professor of Government, has been interviewed on several radio shows recently and has been quoted in a newspaper article, all focused on the police shooting of farmers in Dongzhou, a seaside village near Hong Kong, who were protesting the loss of their farmland and access to fishing grounds without compensation.

Three members of the Hamilton faculty have been promoted to the rank of professor. Associate Professor of Chemistry Karen Brewer, Associate Professor of Communication Catherine Phelan, and Associate Professor of Biology Patrick Reynolds were promoted, retroactive to July 1.

Meghan Dunn '06, Tim Evans '05, Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Karl Kirschner and Winslow Professor of Chemistry George Shields published an article in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A titled "Prediction of Accurate Anharmonic Experimental Vibrational Frequencies for Water Clusters, (H2O)n, n=2-5." This work was started by Tim Evans as part of his senior thesis last spring and finished by Meghan Dunn over the summer. Dunn wrote the first draft of the paper, which was revised by Kirschner and Shields prior to submission. Dunn and Evans are the first and second co-authors on the paper, which describes how highly accurate calculations of the vibrational modes of water clusters can be used to uniquely identify the (H2O)2, (H2O)3, (H2O)4, and (H2O)5 clusters in the atmosphere. This is the fourth atmospheric chemistry publication for Dunn and the first for Evans from their research at Hamilton. Evans is in graduate school at New York University. Dunn plans a research career in environmental chemistry.

Associate Professor of Music Michael "Doc" Woods created a 'Spiritually Uplifting' tone at his premiere with the Albany Symphony Orchestra on Dec. 8 at the Canfield Casino in Saratoga Springs. For this performance, Woods had the opportunity to write a new piece titled, "Places of Light" and an arrangement of "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," which fit with the spiritual theme of the program.

Dr. Larry Weed ’45 was featured in an article published in The Economist on December 10 titled “The computer will see you now” about his career-long goal of increasing the use of computers and technology to improve the efficiency of healthcare.

The students of Visiting Assistant Professor of Government Peter Cannavo’s Introduction to Environmental Politics course (Government 285) held a mock U.S. Senate hearing on the Kyoto Treaty on climate change, on Wednesday, December 7. The students represented 10 different interest groups and addressed the “Senators” of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, played by other Government 285 students.

Cheng Li, William R. Kenan Professor of Government, was quoted in an article in the South China Morning Post on December 8. The article, titled "Shanghai faces battle to retain growth record," discussed Shanghai's dilemma with how to maintain economic growth despite increased competition from other centers and central government moves to dampen property speculation. Li summarized the situation, "The top leaders in Shanghai were still obsessed with high-speed property development, without paying much attention to the potential property bubble and other socio-economic problems resulting from the single-minded construction mania."

Sharon Werning Rivera's article, "Interviewing Political Elites: Lessons from Russia," has been reprinted with an afterword in Quantitative Methods in Practice: Readings from PS (CQ Press). Co-authored with Polina Kozyreva and Eduard Sarovskii of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Sociology, the article discusses sampling, interviewing techniques and questionnaire design for surveys of political elites in post-communist societies. Quantitative Methods in Practice is a reader for introductory methods courses that uses practical cases to illustrate theories and methods.

Debra Boutin, associate professor of mathematics, recently published a research article in Ars Combinatoria, a Canadian journal of combinatorics. In the article "Isometrically Embedded Graphs," Boutin proves that every graph can be drawn in Euclidean space of some finite dimension in such a way that its symmetries are precisely displayed. Her work brings together aspects of graph theory, geometry, and abstract algebra.