Faculty Highlights
Christopher Adler, Ph.D., Music Program, released a compact disc of his compositions, “Ecstatic Volutions in a Neon Haze.” He performed his compositions at the Switchboard Festival in San Francisco and the soundON Festival in La Jolla.
Lisa Baird, Ph.D., Department of Biology, examined leaves and flowers of Camellia to determine the mode of infection of the plant with the fungus that causes Sudden Oak Death. Electron microscopy indicated that the stomates (openings in the leaf for gas exchange) were the likely path of infection.
Terry Bird, Ph.D., Department of Biology, continued research into the regulation of cyst development in the purple, photosynthetic bacterium, Rhodospirillum centenum.
Jonathan Conant, Ph.D., Department of History, spent the year engaged in two research projects: his book manuscript, Staying Roman: Africa and the Mediterranean, 439-700, which examines the question of what it meant to be Roman once the Roman Empire had collapsed in the western Mediterranean. Dr. Conant also completed an article, “The Chiaroscuro of Transmission: Europe and the African Cult of Saints, ca.350-900,” which looks at the movement of North African saints’ cults to the rest of the Mediterranean in the early middle ages.
Bahar Davary, Ph.D., Department of Theology and Religious Studies, continued research on the question of re-appropriation of tradition within Islamic framework of thought specifically in regards to the question of gender and segregation. The result of this research was translated and published in the Turkish Journal of Religious Studies, Dinbilimleri in November 2008.
Casey Dominguez, Ph.D., Department of Political Science, presented the co-authored paper, “Groups and the Party Coalitions” at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association meeting, in Boston, Massachusetts. The paper used social network analysis to examine the relationships between interest groups in elections and in supporting legislation in Congress.
Hugh Ellis, Ph.D., Department of Biology, completed fatty acid research on grebes, though statistical analysis and writing continues in his migration study. Myoglobin was measured in tissues of grebes in his diving work. Two manuscripts were written as well.
Jane Friedman, Ph.D., Department of Mathematics and Computer Sciences, addressed issues that involved in estimating gene flow. Gene flow is one of the major evolutionary forces and for this reason it is of great interest to be able to estimate gene flow accurately.
Florence Gillman, Ph.D., Department of Theology and Religious Studies, conducted research concerning related material in the Qur’an and the Bible. Due to the released time, she was also able to accept an invitation to travel to Turkey in April 2008 on a dialogue trip with Muslims.
Kevin Guerrieri, Ph.D., Department of Languages and Literatures, conducted research in Colombia, South America for his project on contemporary colombian literature. He published a book review of “Fernando Vallejo: Condición y Figura by Eufrasio Guzmán Mesa” in the journal Hispania, and presented papers at three different international conferences in Canada, England, and Peru: “Vida, narrativa y política: un mosaico del exilio en El síndrome de Ulises de Santiago Gamboa,” “Paisajes urbanos en La ciudad y sus silencios de Alejandro Espinoza,” and “Historias desplazadas: la ficcionalización del testimonio en la novela colombiana.”
Stanley Gurak, Ph.D., Department of Mathematics and Computer Sciences, engaged in research to extend Mauclaire's classical evaluation of Gauss sums defined for prime powers over the p-adic rational field and that of Salie for the related Kloosterman sums to the general setting in extension fields of the p-adic rational field.
Rick Gonzalez, Ph.D., Department of Biology, examined physiological, biochemical and molecular of the transport process in acid-tolerant fish of Rio Negro. He collected evidence that Na+/K+-ATPase is involved in Na+ transport across the gills, but not H+-ATPase.
Valerie Hohman, Ph.D., Department of Biology, cloned and sequenced DNA encoding receptors involved in immune responses from several species of fish.
Eric Jiang, Ph.D., Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, developed a new approach that profiles email messages by artificial neural networks and published a refereed paper titled “Detecting Spam Email by Radial Basis Function Networks” in International Journal of Knowledge-based and Intelligent Engineering Systems, 11 (2007), 409-418.
Simon Koo, Ph.D., Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, designed and evaluated a P2P resource sharing framework for urban-scale sensing applications. The result was published in the proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Internet Computing (ICOMP \'07) in Las Vegas, titled “Resource sharing and design issues in urban-scale smart sensing applications.”
Mitch Malachowski, Ph.D., Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, prepared a series of new organic molecules and studied their properties.
Juliana Maxim, Ph.D., Department of Fine Arts, investigated the rise of a modernist architecture in postwar socialist Romania, at the intersection of three conflicting cultural currents: the Soviet definition of a socialist architecture, a simultaneous critique and endorsement of Western European modernist practices, and Romania’s own anti-modernist tradition.
Molly McClain, Ph.D., Department of History, researched and wrote an article on Queen Mary II (1662-94) who was part of the royal partnership known as “William & Mary.” Going Dutch’: Culture and Identity in the Life of Queen Mary II was submitted to Past and Present in June 2008.
Duncan McCosker, M.F.A., Department of Fine Arts, worked steadily upon his photographic project concerning the depiction of crowds at the county fairs of Southern California in terms of both the production of mural sized prints and final prints from 2007 and 2008. He has developed film and made selected prints from images that were exposed in 2006 as well as from pictures made during the Del Mar Fair of 2007 and the Los Angeles County Fair of 2008. More than 70 rolls from the summer of 2006, 80 rolls of film from 2007, and 15 rolls from 2008 have been exposed and developed.
Joseph McGowan, Ph.D., Department of English, wrote chapters for A History of the English Language, under contract with Basil Blackwell of Oxford: due January 2010, 660 pages; continued work on vol. 2 of Old English Glossed Psalters: A Collective Edition (under contract with University of Toronto Press for 3 more volumes, ca. 900 pp. each).
Vidya Nadkarni, Ph.D., Department of Political Science, worked on a research project dealing with strategic partnerships in Asia. Dr. Nadkarni presented a paper on this topic at the March 2008 annual meeting of the International Studies Association (ISA) in San Francisco. She developed a book proposal and has a book contract with Routledge with a completion date of December 31, 2008. She also presented a chapter of this book at another conference in Paris convened in June 2008 under the auspices of the Comparative and Interdisciplinary Section of the ISA.
Cameron Parker, Ph.D., Department of Mathematics and Computer Sciences, submitted a paper entitled “Unit Root Testing via the Tapered Block Bootstrap” and presented his results at the “Bootstrap and Time Series Workshop” in Kaiserslautern, Germany.
Marjorie Patrick, Ph.D., Department of Biology, focused on identifying the specific form of a sodium/proton exchanger protein involved in sodium transport across the salt-excreting rectal segment of a salt-tolerant mosquito larva (Ochlerotatus taeniorhynchus.) This work is vital to characterizing a highly novel sodium excretion mechanism that no other aquatic animal possesses.
Marianne Pfau, Ph.D., Music Program, focused on unpublished music for hautbois (baroque oboe) at the Mecklemburg-Vorpommersche Library in Schwerin. She studied eight mostly unknown composers; Linike, Hertel, Bodinus, Califanus, Fasch, Eick, Pepusch, and Prowo, and began to select the best for the recording with her European ensemble toutes suites: music from page to stage (www.toutes-suites.com).
Gregory Pregill, Ph.D., Department of Biology, continued studies of the vertebrate fossil record of Guam, Mariana Islands.
John Joe (J.J.) Schlichtman, Ph.D., Department of Sociology, examined small cities that forge global centrality by creating an economic specialization in a specific segment of the global service economy.
Kathryn Statler, Ph.D., Department of History, continued work on her current research project, a book length manuscript entitled Lafayette’s Ghost: A History of Franco-American Cultural Diplomacy from 1775 to the Present. She presented some of her findings at the August 2008 Pacific Coast Branch-American Historical Association annual conference.
Susannah Stern, Ph.D., Department of Communication Studies, examined children's perceptions and reactions to embedded advertising in online games.
Abraham Stoll, Ph.D., Department of English, conducted research in libraries in the U.S. and the U.K., as part of the early stages of a book on the early modern conscience.
Debbie Tahmassebi, Ph.D., Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, used her funds to support a project titled the Fluorescence Studies of Polymerase-DNA Complexes. Along with support from external sources (Research Corporation), the funds were used to purchase chemical supplies to support the research efforts and the undergraduate students working on this project (Taylor Hepp and Will Porterfield). Dr. Tahmassebi and her students were able to make a new molecule in the laboratory called tCdd, which can be used as a fluorescent probe for the DNA polymerase conformational studies. In addition, a manuscript was completed that described the use of a similar reporter molecule called tC. Along with her collaborator, Dr. David Miller, they were able to show that tC is a useful molecule that delivers accurate information regarding the motion of DNA polymerase in the presence of a growing DNA.
Angela Yeung, Ph.D., Music Program, continued her professional activities overseas and in the United States, among them serving as Artistic Director of the Early Music at Saint Peter’s Church in New York City (since 1993) and President of the Western Division of the National College Orchestra Directors Association (since 2006.) She also conducted in Hong Kong and in Jakarta, Indonesia, and hosted a number of master classes for various schools and orchestras in Hong Kong.
Zhi-Yong Yin, Ph.D., Department of Marine Science and Environmental Studies, continued a multi-year project in which he used tree-ring widths to reconstruct spatial and temporal variation patterns of precipitation and moisture conditions over the northeastern and eastern Tibetan Plateau.
Jennifer Zwolinski, Ph.D., examined whether exposure to violent video games influenced implicit and explicit forms of relational aggression. Results indicated that short-term exposure to violent gaming did not increase explicit reports or implicit relational aggression; however, long-term exposure to violent video gaming was uniquely associated with normative beliefs about relational aggression (especially approval of retaliation).
