WRP - Final Reports 2002
Bev Clark/Sarah Crowley
Faculty Statement
During the fall I worked with Tanya Szafranski, '04, and during the spring I worked with Sarah Crowley, '05. Both worked with newspaper microfilms at the Boston Public Library, the repository for Massachusetts newspapers, searching for unindexed nineteenth-century reviews of the work of Louisa May Alcott. Tanya focused on scanning the BOSTON POST for reviews of Alcott's 41 publications. Sarah has focused especially on the WORCESTER EVENING GAZETTE. Reprints of the reviews are to appear in a book-length collection for the Cambridge Contemporary Reviews series. Both were awarded funding from the Wheaton Foundation to cover transportation expenses.
Student Statement
I viewed microfilm at the Boston Public Library, researching articles on Louisa May Alcott's work. The microfilm that was viewed was from The Boston Daily Advertiser, Lawrence American, and The Worcester Evening Gazette. The articles found were from 1870-1873, on such Alcott works as "Work," "Old Fashioned Girl," and "Little Men." All microfilm was viewed at the Boston Public Library.
WRP on Tocqueville in Italy -- David Vogler/Matthew Gritter
Faculty Statement
Matthew Gritter worked with me during the fall and spring semesters and during the January break to locate information and resources on Alexis de Tocqueville and Italy. The materials located included biographies of some of the key leaders of the Risorgimento, letters between Tocqueville and some of these Italian political leaders, and discussions of Tocqueville's writing in Italian sources.
Mr. Gritter has been a great help in locating and organizing this material and particularly in finding many relevant web-sites.
Student Statement
I have been researching secondary sources available from the Wallace Library and search engines while exploring the access to primary sources at libraries in the United States and abroad. The research has focused on discovering connections between the writings and life of Alexis de Tocqueville and the unification of Italy. His relationship to the players of the Risorgimento and application of his theories to Italian civic life is an unexplored area that deserves further research.
Jani Benoit/ Willie Stone
Faculty Statement
During the fall and spring semesters Willie Stone has been assisting me with the construction of an analytical system for measuring gaseous mercury. This piece of equipment can be purchased complete, or assembled from components for a fraction of the cost. Willie≠s help allowed me to use the system in Chem 303, Current Problems in Environmental Chemistry, for a new laboratory exercise in which we measured the mercury concentration in the air of the Science Center. Willie is currently working on adapting the equipment for measuring Hg in water samples.
Student Statement
Over the academic year I helped Professor Benoit set up her mercury analytical equipment. During that time I helped to run samples for a lab she was doing with her Environmental Chemistry class. Also, in the last few weeks I have been starting to run aqueous samples. Specifically, I≠ve been trying to reduce the amount of mercury present in the procedural blanks, so that we will be able to measure low levels of mercury in natural waters.
Geoffrey Collins/Karrie-Sue Farrar '03
Faculty Statement
This year, Karrie has been investigating large impact basins on Jupiter's moon Ganymede, building on her work last year cataloguing craters on the same body. Karrie has discovered a handful of previously unknown impact basins in images from the Galileo spacecraft, and has compiled a global database of these features. Karrie has also investigated the circularity of impact basin rings as a function of distance from the point of impact, which is an important issue to determine whether these rings can serve as large-scale strain markers as the crust breaks up. In a related project, Karrie and another student attempted to use the spatial density of impact craters to constrain the ages of different sets of faults on Ganymede. Karrie presented her work in March on a poster at an international conference of planetary scientists in Houston.
Student Statement
This year I continued working on the crater database I had started last year. However, there were a few minor differences, for example I expanded my database to include craters of larger sizes. These are known as palimpsets. In doing so I was able to discover four new palimpsets, which was very exicting for me. I was also able to present my research at the 33rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, where I had a chance to speak with many planetary scientists who helped me think of where to go in my research.
Report of the Genomics Research Group on its use of WRP Students 2001-2002
B. Dyer and M. LeBlanc
http://genomics.wheatoncollege.edu
The Genomics Research group is dedicated to the analysis of regulatory DNA sequences on a genomic level. Our long term project is the implementation of a motif lexicon allowing a user to search any DNA "word" and receive extensive annotation. We had one WRP position used sequentially by three different students who for various reasons (such as JYA) were not available the entire year: 1. Adam Villa did some work on our graphic user interface-- Fall 2001
2. Missy Kimball worked on modules for the Motif Lexicon-- January 2002
3. Steve Benz worked on making our lexicon interface a mirror of the Oxford English Dictionary, in keeping with our grammatical metaphor for gene regulation.--Spring 2002
Bruce Owens/Chris O'Keeffe
Faculty Statement
This Fall semester, Chris O'Keeffe helped me design and build a website that I have been constructing with the collaboration of students (previously Maura Mae Deedy, '03). We are using this website to document the numerous sites of monumental transformation and creation that have recently emerged within the UNESCO-designated World Heritage Monumental Zone of Swayambhu, Nepal. Chris first familiarized himself with the site through readings and perusing hundreds of digital photographs. He then modified the site by choosing the most appropriate new images and incorporating them into the website, which has become a powerful tool in my research.
Student Statement
My name is Christopher O'Keeffe, and I am a member of the class of 2004. This past fall, I worked with Professor Owens on developing a website that provides an accurate map of Swayambhu in the Kathmandu Valley. I primarily worked on updating the photographs on the site to accurately portray the state of the monuments as they are today, helped design a new version of part of the map, and worked on creating a format for displaying details about each particular section of Swayambhu.
Elita Pastra-Landis/Stephen Benz
Faculty Statement
Since September Stephen Benz has worked with me to process experimental data that I collected on the activity of the enzyme Aspartate Transcarbamylase from extremophilic bacteria. The goal was to use Steve's strong background with computer software to expedite the analysis and interpretation of the results. In the fall Steve learned the Kaleidograph program, and understood thorougly how absorbance numbers from spectrophotometric results are turned into activity valuesfor protein assays.
In the spring, and with a new set of data that I had collected over January, our combined work moved forward. The relative scatter of raw data was averaged and plotted so as to turn it into a story about the thermostability and the barostability of this protein. We completed the main part of the work for presentation at the Academic Festival.
We look forward to presenting the results as a poster at the National Meetings of the American Chemical Society in Boston in August 2002.
Student Statement
Working with Professor Pastra-Landis over the past year has provided a gateway into Biochemistry research and greatly increased my interest in the field. I help Professor Pastra-Landis analyze much of the data she collected while in Paris on extremophilic bacteria. I combined my current knowledge in Computers with my interests in Biochemistry and was able to both help Professor Pastra-Landia, as well as learn many new things myself. I hope I can continue this research with her in the future, and I am excited about presenting the data at the American Chemical Society Meeting in Boston this summer.
Bianca Cody Murphy/Jocelyn Townsend '02
Faculty Statement
Five divisions within the American Psychological Association are collaborating on developing a curriculum to promote education about partner abuse and relationship violence for both graduate and undergraduate students. The curriculum will include information about prevalence, theories about causes, methods to detect such abuse across differing communities (including ethnic minority and gay/lesbian/bisexual communities), consequences of partner violence strategies for prevention, forensic issues, and therapeutic interventions and services. The research assistants worked with me on this project.
Specifically, they checked all of the references in the document. They viewed a number of videos on intimate partner violence and created a list and abstracts of media resources. They also compiled a list including descriptions of recommended websites.
Student Statement
While working for Professor Murphy, I had three main jobs. The first job I had was to locate a student who would work for us 4 hours a week, and then supervising that research assistant. I would also oversee all of her work done on the project. The second job I had was editing the APA Task Force Curriculum on Intimate Partner Abuse and Relationship Violence. I was in charge of checking references to make sure that they were accurate. Lastly, together with the other research assistant, Aria Grillo, '04, I compiled a current list of websites and abstracts of recommended videos.
Herb Ellison/Anissa Demers/Anastasia Panos
Faculty Statement
I had two 500 students working with me this past year; one in environmental chemistry and the other in physical chemistry. As a result, I split a Research Partnership between the two.
The environmental project, with Anissa Demers, involved a continuation of our investigation of the water chemistry of the Wheaton vernal pool and a comparative study with three other vernal pools in Norton, something that had not been done before. In 2001 Anissa had collected water samples every week from the middle of February through the end of the semester. All samples were analyzed for pH, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, and total dissolved solids. Most of the Wheaton samples were also analyzed for chloride, nitrate, and sulfate ions. Anissa's work last fall was to finish the anion analyses for all samples and then to begin looking at cations such as sodium, calcium, and magnesium. The goal of the project was, and still is, to try to understand the causes of weekly variations in amounts of the various analytes and why they also vary, in some cases, from one year to another. The comparative study continued second semester with the goal of acquiring more data to help answer the same questions of variability of amounts of some of the ions. Anissa is an Environmental Sciences major. The WRP support enabled her to have more time for the laboratory analyses.
Student Statement -- Anissa Demers
Considerable research has been conducted on the ecology and the organisms that inhabit vernal pools. However much less is known about the chemical makeup of the water in these pools and thus it is difficult to predict the effects of chemical alterations to these habitats. The purpose of my investigation was to perform a comparative study on the relationship between vernal pool water chemistry and proximity to roadways and rural areas. Wheaton College is home to a vernal pool, located directly behind a parking lot. The chemical composition of the Wheaton pool was compared to three pools located in remote areas in Norton, Massachusetts. It was hypothesized that the Wheaton pool contains higher concentrations of chloride and sodium. Ion chromatography, atomic emission spectroscopy, and volumetric methods were employed for analysis. Significantly higher chloride and sodium concentrations were found in the Wheaton vernal pool in both 2001 and 2002. Levels of other substances in the off-campus pools are similar to each other. Future studies are needed to determine the effects of elevated sodium and chloride levels on living organisms.
Faculty Statement
The physical chemistry project, with Anastasia Panos, was a continuation of a project worked on several years ago by a Wheaton senior. This was a study of the interaction of the hydrogen bonding that occurs between pyridine and phenol. Infrared techniques had been used by others to show that a weak complex is formed between the two organic compounds and we attempted to use dielectric methods to obtain more information about the structure of the complex. Near the end of our previous study our data suggested that pyridine was also associating with itself in some way, something that has not been reported in the literature. We focused on this topic using our dielectric techniques and then, when our nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer was upgraded in February, we used this valuable tool to probe the system also. Anastasia is an excellent student with a good background and interest in physical chemistry and with the help of the WRP was able to collect more data than she might otherwise have done and thus extend this study to a second solvent system.
I might add that Anastasia presented the results of her work at the all day "Fourth Annual Student Chemistry Research Conference" organized by the New England Section of the American Chemical Society. The first Brauner Undergraduate Research Award was presented to Anastasia on the basis of the best presentation of the day!
Student Statement -- Anastasia Panos
The purpose of my research was to observe and determine the effect of two different solvents, cyclohexane and benzene, on the dipole moment of pyridine. Consequently, dielectric constants at different concentration of pyridine (between 0 and 0.9 M) in the two solvents were measured and it was found that a second order polynomial, concave up, dependency existed between the dielectric constant and the concentration of the solute. Many other solutes such as acetone, chlorobenzene, cyclohexanone, and toluene, display a linear relationship in the same concentration range. The dipole moment of pyridine in the two solvents was calculated using the Onsager theory and the Hedestrand theory. The nature of the interactions in these solutions was also studied using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Infrared spectra. It appears that the formation of simple dipole-dipole interactions between pyridine molecules results in the nonlinear dependence of the dielectric constant of the solutions as the pyridine concentration increases. The extent of this interaction is slightly different in the two solvents.
Ann Murray/Buck Crowe
Faculty Statement
As my Wheaton Research Partner this year, Buck Crowe began the task of researching key works from Wheaton's collection of antiquities, with the ultimate objective of providing commentary to accompany these objects when they go on display in the new Beard Gallery. His double major combines art history and classics, which made him ideally suited to work on this project. His research turned up some new information on several of the works. Our Etruscan antefix (which retains its original paint) is unusual in that it portrays an African male. Buck's research suggests a plausible answer to the question of how ancient Italians may have come into contact with Africans. He was also able to attribute our Black Figure Amphora to the obscure "Three-Line" group of Greek potters who specialized in pots commemorating festivals. Altogether he wrote commentaries on five works, which he presented at the Academic Festival on April 19. Although he will be on JYA next year, i hope he will continue his research as a senior.
Student Statement
This past academic year I was employed by Wheaton College as a research fellow for Professor Ann Murray. I submitted a slection of my work from this year to the Academic Festival in the hopes of raising interest and anticipation for the first installation of the Permanent Collection in the new Beard Gallery this next fall. Some pieces included in my presentation were the Wheaton Amphora, a spledid exmple of work from the archaic Three-Line group of potters; a well preserved Etruscan antefix depicting the head of an African, making it rather atypical of most other Etruscan antefixes; and Wheaton's copy of one of Wedgwood's copies of the Portland vase, the most famous Roman glass vessel from antiquity. As a double major in Art History and Classics, I hope to learn more about these and other pieces from the Newell Bequest in the future.
Edmund Tong/Joline Jacques
Faculty Statement
Joline Jacques Proved to be an excellent assistant not only in the lab but also in helping me prepare a document for publication. While she learned various techniques to perform both the in vivo and in vitro angiogenesis experiments, she also became familiar with the current research associated with many aspects of angiogenesis investigation. In addition, she gained first hand experience in the precise and accurate work necessary for the preparation of a scientific report before it is submitted electronically to a journal for publication.
Student Statement
As a WRP research assistant in Dr. Tong's Angiogenesis lab, I have learned procedures of cell culture, analysis of cell growth using a Photomax Pro computer-linked well plate reader device, how to generate publishable graphs of data, and CAM assay methods to test the effects of chemicals, among other laboratory techniques. Our recent CAM (chick Chorioallantoic Membrane--chemicals are introduced to the embryo membrane to determine if the agent stimulates blood vessel growth) experiments using an antidiabetic drug have shown that the drug, Ciglitazone, does indeed have an angiogenic effect (observed blood vessel growth), the magnitude of which is affected by the concentration of the drug.
Candice Brown/Ashley Burgess
Faculty Statement
Ashley Burgess and I worked primarily on the book ReMembering Cuba, Legacy of a Diaspora. This is a collection edited by Andrea Herrera O'Reilly. Our research set into motion an entire evening of performance. Producing and creating this event in collaboration with Ashley was a way for the research to take shape in a performance piece. We worked with the author and one of her contributors, Leandro Soto. Leandro is an Interationally Acclaimed Visual Artist currently on the faculty of Mt. Holyoke College. The three of us have been working together to present a visual reality or world of experience surrounding the theme of Cuban exile. What we've been concentrating on is really a living 'testimonial.' During the evening Andrea did a lecture which formed a backdrop for the audience about her research and it included commentary about the original project that evoked the book ReMembering Cuba, Legacy of a Diaspora and her novel, The Pearl of the Antilles. From there, Leandro Soto presented his work in a wonderful slide demonstration and linked it to the experience of being in exile from Cuba. The third element of the evening brought live performance pieces from each of the books into performance through dance, staged readings and movement inspired poetry. The research concentrated on the experience of Cuban exile.
Student Statement
As research assistant to Prof. Candice Brown, I worked to recieve funds for our event Beyond the Diaspora from student clubs and organizations, most notably ICB, Spanish Club, and WOW. As for my artistic contribution to the project, I chose to direct a series of interpretive dance pieces set to poems published in the book ReMembering Cuba: Legacy of a Diaspora by Andrea O'Reilly Herrera, the event's lecturer. I saw the poems coming to life in a vivid array of images and emotions perfectly expressing the sentiment, nostalgia, loss, and strength of the Cuban exile. I selected a cast composed of two other readers (beside myself), two musicians (a percusionist and guitarist) and dancer Nikki Rodriguez 01'. Working with this talented group of people was a pleasure, as they all added their own energy and interpretation to the text that was evident in their performance. They all seemed to identify with the concept of "exile" in their own way, as did I. The three poems were arranged in chronological order, the first being a representation of nostalgia, where the exile is on the boat floating away from everything she has ever known, the second being when she is in America and the split-identity she feels being a part of two cultures but not fully feeling accepted by either, and the third was generations later, how the experiences of the Cuban exile shaped the experiences of their descendants. This was my first experience as a director, as I had never been in the position to choose a cast, costumes, light configurations, blocking, or sound. It was a wonderful and educational experience that I, no doubt, would do again in a heartbeat.
Faculty Statement
The Aboriginal Research project was really a gathering of information surrounding the Tasmanian peoples of Australia. This research is in its infancy. Mahendran and I scanned books, listened to pieces of music together, watched videos, contacted museums, looked at books about Aboriginal art, and began to link the Tasmanian art culture to its history and record our findings.
Student Statement
When I started this project, I began with a passion for culture. I never thought that it would inspire me to do a different form of art. After I researched and learned many things about Tasmanian Aborigines and Australian Aborigines, I wanted to go there and be part of that world. I could feel the characters that I was reading about come out my hands onto paper. It was an amazing process. I am glad to have joined Candice on this journey. I hope that the research I started doing will help her.
There are a few books that I suggest to use for future research. There is one very good book here at the Wheaton Library that will be very helpful. It is called "Contested Ground" it is edited by Ann McGrath. It give a good description of the Aborigines stories and has some info on the Tasmanians as well. I also did some research at two other libraries.
The first was Boston Public which I found very helpful. The Books that I would recommend are "The Baudin Expidition" By NJ Plomely and "Weep In Silence." If you do a search under "Tasmanian Aborigines" at the library you will find more books, but these are the two I really liked.
The books at BU library I used were "The Aboriginal Tasmanians" By Lyndall Ryan, and "Daily Life and Origin of The Tasmanians" and "The Black War".--
Travis L. Crosby/Janine Jacques
Faculty Statement
Because my Wheaton Research Partner, Janine Jacques, has been abroad at Oxford University for the Spring 2002 term, I'm filling in for us both in setting out our combined report for the first term of this academic year. During the Fall Term, Janine continued to exercise her ingenuity in locating academic journals (sometimes using Interlibrary Loan facilities) that may have relevant information on the life of David Lloyd-George, the subject of my next book ("David Lloyd-George: A Life in Conflict"). Among the journals that she has examined and photocopied from are: History, Labor History, The Historical Journal, Historical Research, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Modern History, Journal of British History, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Twentieth Century British History, English Historical Review, Slavonic and East European Review.
Scott Shumway/Dan Foxman '02
Faculty Statement
Dan Foxman '02 and Scott Shumway worked together on the Wheaton Arboretum Project. Dan photographed campus trees in the fall semester, scanned slides over Janaury, and constructed a Virtual Tour of the Wheaton Campus Trees during the spring semester. The Virtual Tour will be added to the Wheaton web site in the near future. Dan also helped mount display labels on campus trees. The partnership enabled Dan to pursue his love of photography and to apply what he learned in his photography and computer graphics classes to the tree project. In the process he became very good at identifying and photographing trees.
Evie Lane/Bill Richards
Faculty Statement
This past year Bill Richards ‘04 has been assisting me in my research related to work on the architecture, sculpture and stained glass of a thirteenth-century collegiate church in France called Notre-Dame de Donnemarie-en-Montois. He has been involved in carrying out a number of tasks that relate to my multivalent study of the site, including library research, cataloguing of photographs, data collection and the creation of an inked survey plan of the site. His assistance has enabled me to work on the publication of a series of articles related to the study of Gothic architecture and its decoration in buildings that lie outside the usual canon, such as the great cathedrals in France.
Student Statement
My primary function as a research assistant this past year was one of support in many areas of Professor Lane≠s research as a medieval art historian. My duties included, but were not limited to: cataloging hundreds of photographs from her collection of images of the sculpture, architecture and stained glass of a French Gothic church, Notre-Dame de Donnemarie-en-Montois; combing texts for all references to 15th and 16th century cloisters still in existence in France for comparative analysis with the cloister still attached to Donnemarie; the creation of an inked ground plan of the church drawn to scale and based on Professor Lane≠s penciled survey plan; and library research related to the gathering of sources dealing with the construction of church towers in the middle ages.
Bob Morris/Christopher English
Faculty Statement
During the 2001-2002 academic year, including over January, Chris English '03 worked with me analyzing the movements of motor proteins in sea urchin embryos. In particular, Chris used web-based software to analyze the structure of one motor protein, kinesin-II, to determine how that protein might be shuttled into and out of the nucleus. The results of Chris's work were used in Chris's poster presentation at the Academic Festival, were used for two figures on the poster I presented at an international meeting I attended at Woods Hole in May 2002, and will become two figures in the research paper I'm writing right now on a large body of data from my research lab. Chris will use the work he did in his WRP as the springboard for his Senior Honor's Thesis research in my lab this coming year.
Student Statement
During my WRP this past year, I conducted research with Professor Robert Morris in the Biology Department. My work included an in-depth looked at the primary amino acid sequence of the kinesin-II motor protein. In the search, I looked for a specialized region of the protein that allows the molecule to travel through a nuclear pore and into the nucleus. This was done by an extensive comparison of the kinesin-II amino acid sequence with the sequence of other proteins that are known to pass through the nuclear pores. This search was done with an online search know as Blast. Blast is an search engine put out by Genbank and allows researchers to compare both nucleic acid and protein sequences. In addition, I presented my results at the 2002 Wheaton Academic Festival. Finally, the work I conducted over the year will be used toward my honors thesis next year to bring my work with Prof. Morris to a close.
Laura Muller/Shaelah Reidy
Faculty Statement
Over the past two years, Shaelah and I have been examining the fluorescence behavior of mixtures of pyrene and ethanol confined within porous sol-gels. We have observed changes in the effective polarity of pyrene environments and have found that the formation of pyrene excimers in ethanol solutions confined within sol-gel pores at concentrations lower than those required to observe excimers in the bulk.1,2 During the fall semester, we verified the results of our initial experiments that showed the amount of pyrene excimer emission and the effective polarity of these confined ethanol solutions is pore-size dependent: higher excimer emission and lower solvent polarities are seen in solutions confined within smaller pores than from those confined in larger pores (Figure 1). We will be presenting this data in a poster at the American Chemical Society National Meeting in Boston on August 19, 2002.