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Ernest Williams, the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Biology, recently published a journal article, co-authored with collaborators from Sweet Briar College and Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. The article, "Oyamel fir forest trunks provide thermal advantages for overwintering monarch butterflies in Mexico," appeared in Insect Conservation and Diversity 2:163-175.

The patriarch of Hamilton’s first family, William McLaren “Mac” Bristol III ’43, died Tuesday, August 18, following a brief battle with cancer. He was 88.

Piscidins are potent biological substances. Classified as antimicrobial peptides, they naturally fight off infection in organisms like the hybrid striped bass, among others. There are four members of the family of piscidins that Billy Wieczorek ’11 is studying this summer. Piscidin-1 has been the subject of myriad other studies, and although it has many antimicrobial properties, it can be harmful to human blood cells because it cannot differentiate between bacterial and mammalian cells.

Juancho Hurtado ’11 is a fire-breathing dragon. Well, not really. But he has experimented with the dangerous art of breathing fire this summer. His newly-acquired talent comes from his work at Teatro Taller de Colombia, one of the oldest street theatre groups in Colombia. He is studying street theatre there through the Emerson Grant Foundation, which was created in 1997 to promote collaboration with faculty on subjects that students find fascinating and worthwhile. His adviser and co-researcher is Professor of Theatre Craig Latrell, who stays in regular contact with Hurtado while he is out of the country.

Danielle Burby ’12 knows that the editor always has the final say. So when she secured an internship at Square One Publishers for the summer, she did not expect to have much flexibility. For the most part, she assumed that she would be confined to marketing and minor, superfluous tasks. But during the first week, she took an editing test, and found that she had underestimated her power there – her supervisors loved her ability to tidy up almost any piece of prose and wanted to hire her to edit a book in need of revision. With the turn of a page, Burby’s unpaid internship spawned a paid opportunity.

Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Nigel Westmaas published an opinion piece in Georgetown, Guyana’s newspaper, Stabroek News, titled “Corruption, criticism and political culture in Guyana” on Aug. 3. The article addressed Guyana’s “lack of objective oversight standards” and offered ways to prevent and fight against corruption.

Max Currier ’10 is looking for a way to increase the effectiveness of political restructuring in Afghanistan – as long as it works, and works well. He supports Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), joint civil-military teams designed to extend the Afghan Central Government from Kabul (the capital) to Afghanistan’s 32 provinces. His goal this summer is to examine the role and efficacy of PRTs in Afghanistan.

Assistant Professor of Physics Natalia Connelly published an article in the Astrophysical Journal titled "An Evolutionary Paradigm for Dusty Active Galaxies at Low Redshift." With co-authors from the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell and Caltech, Connelly considered a number of mid-infrared spectra of active galaxies obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope.

When Clair Cassiello ’11 was younger, she wanted to work for the FBI. The psychological twists excited her – she liked that criminal investigators sometimes analyze how a person thinks as opposed to what crime he has actually committed. Although her ambitions have changed, she still is interested in the profound effect the mind has on actions. This summer, Cassiello is learning more about psychology through an eye-tracking bias project with Visiting Professor of Psychology Mark Oakes.

The paper "Stable Homology as an Indicator of Manifoldlikeness in Causal Set Theory" by Associate Professor of Physics Seth Major and collaborators David Rideout (Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Canada) and Sumati Surya (Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, India) was published Friday, Aug. 14, in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity.