Allen Kwong

Although protein translocations across cellular membranes are vitally significant, the biophysical mechanisms underlying such processes remain obscure. Nevertheless, methods exist for studying translocation processes. In particular, anthrax toxins movement across cellular membranes provides a model for studying general translocation mechanisms. Allen’s specific interest lies in elucidating the steric effects that particularly bulky, hydrophobic amino acid side-chains have on anthrax toxins translocation. By investigating translocation rates of anthrax toxin, Allen hopes to provide a deeper understanding of the toxins mechanism for cell entry. In addition, this study may provide implications for […]

Evarosa Holt-Rusmore

Throughout the Sierra Leone conflict, many girls and young women are abducted and sexually abused. The result of the abuse and suffering is often pregnancy. Especially after the end of civil war in 2002, young mothers who return to their communities confront social stigmatization. This has had marginalizing effects for both mothers and their children. Eva Holt-Rusmore’s research will address the effects of community stigmatization on the children of young mothers. Ethnographic observation of these children’s lives through participation in a Freetown school, as well as informal interviews with individuals […]

Say Tar Goh

Muscle stem cells, or satellite cells, are located in muscle fibers and are responsible for muscle repair in mammals throughout adult life. As individuals age, the capability of satellite cells to repair muscle dramatically declines. The loss of such capabilities can be related to the host environment, in that extracellular niches provided by old hosts hamper their ability to regenerate muscle, regardless of the origin of the cells themselves. Say Tar hypothesizes that this can, at least in part, be linked to their reduced ability to repair DNA in an […]

Sonia Fleury

Sonia Fleury’s project will primarily address notions of history and its construction in art and contemporary cultural media–newspapers, magazines, and political/popular prints–during the 1848 revolution in France. Receiving special attention will be the artwork of the 19th century realist painter Gustave Courbet, whose Burial at Ornans challenged traditional notions of history painting in its depiction of provincial bourgeois at a funeral. Does Courbet’s assertion that history painting is by its very nature contemporary parallel broader shifts in conceptions of history during this radical revolutionary moment, whereby history was seen as […]

Pei (Tony) Zhao

On one hand, determinism claims the necessity of physical laws, together with the state of the universe at any moment, entails that what happens next must happen. On the other hand, when a person acts wrongly and gets blamed for his action, we seem to presuppose that he could have acted differently. Does determinism, or the objective view of science in general, threaten the notion of moral responsibility? Is our practice of holding people responsible ultimately unjustifiable? Incompatibilists say yes; compatibilists say no. In the summer of 2008, Tony will […]

Kyle Dunbar

A renewable energy source is becoming a necessity as fossil fuel reserves dwindle. Using microbial fermentation processes, it is possible to harvest plant biomass and convert it into second-generation fuels. Current industrial focus has been placed on ethanol production. However, this compound is not ideally suited for a liquid fuel replacement. A biochemical pathway has been expressed in Escherichia coli that produces 1-butanol, a much more suitable fuel source in terms of both transportation ease and energy density. Experiments have shown that the pathway is active, but there is a […]

Lijia Xie

Based on Lijia’s travels in China in summer 2008, she composed a collection of three chapters of prose poems intercut with verse as cultural narratives of gender, reanimated as myths of Chinese history and femininity situated onto an invented milieu, the neither/nor setting of contemporary China hosting a global event. The first chapter, (public airing), seeks deconstructed understandings of this setting beyond the partial, i.e. incomplete, privileged, and relentlessly deferred by emerging phenomena. The second chapter responds to a French feminist discourse on criture fminine, particularly a fascination with how […]

Jaimee Comstock-Skipp

While Orientalism in French art has been extensively studied, its relevance to British art has received less attention. Jaimee seeks to fill this void by analyzing British paintings of Egypt during the colonial age. Her study involves face-to-face visits to the actual Cairene monuments and to their illustrated counterparts in English institutions. It will investigate the inclusion of Arabic script and details of Islamic art within select paintings as to determine cultural sensitivity or ignorance given the political climate. She anticipates that as time and cultural contacts progress, the art […]

Seryna Thai

The most valuable possession is a person’s life. This is a statement in Dang Thy Trms memoir, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace. Seryna Hanh Thai will be creating a documentary on the Vietnam War and her direct relation to it. Having two brothers who fought on different sides of the conflict gives Seryna a unique and untold perspective of a national conflict that shaped the history of her family and her native country. However, instead of creating a standard documentary-style approach, the lasting impression of works by Rea Tajiri, […]

Geoffrey Brookshire

There is a wealth of literature documenting the asymmetric role of the two cerebral hemispheres in different aspects of cognition. Although this has been most exhaustively studied with respect to language and spatial cognition, robust laterality effects are also present in emotion. Experiments performed on right-handed subjects associate the left hemisphere with approach-based behavior and positive emotional states and the right hemisphere with withdrawal and negative emotions. Right-handers, along similar lines, are quicker to respond to stimuli of positive valence when they are presented on the right side of space […]