91传媒

Remember in the first Harry Potter movie when the new Hogwarts students file to the front of the Great Hall and don a tattered sorting hat to determine what house they will live in? There was tension and excitement in the air as they took their turns in full view of their new school community.

Minus the hats, nearly 100 91传媒 students participating in this summer faculty-student research program went through a kind of sorting exercise on the program first day in late May.

In 91传媒 済reat� dining hall, the students gathered at small tables to discuss their research topics. 淟oud conversations, lots of questions, pretty intense and engaged,� reports program director and government professor Bob Turner. Hoping to recreate a little Hogwarts magic, he then threw out categories and asked students to stand if they fit: humanities and social sciences, biology, chemistry; sophomores, juniors, seniors; studying frogs, fish, mice, children, things smaller than a penny. The gathering concluded with a bingo game in which the name of a student went in each square擱NA extractions, Omeka Web-page publishing, and scores of others.

By morning end, just as Turner hoped, the students had a fuller appreciation for the totality of the research program攁ll 85 students and 46 faculty members tackling 62 projects from 16 different disciplines. 

Among other things, they learned that their group is:

� working with zebrafish, algae, fruit flies, brown mice, preschool kids, frog eggs, the Vienna Riding School, the Ho Chi Minh Securities Corporation, and Chaucer Canterbury Tales

� tackling societal problems ranging from fetal alcohol syndrome, malaria, obesity, and neurodegenerative disease to PCBs, data encryption, computer processors, and the role of food in culture

� using some of the latest tools and methods, like intraperitoneal injections, the Python and Mathematica programming languages, RNA incubation, the Regional Ocean Modeling system, 渃ultural geography� theories of movement, paleography and codicology, and 3D printing.

� producing data for journal articles, books, conference presentations , Web pages, honors theses, and new courses

Also an important outcome, says Turner: 淭he students learn research in a discipline, but they also learn how their peers do it in other disciplines. At the dinner table or in the residence halls, I imagine questions such as, 榃hat it like to read Middle English all day long?� 榃hat are the legal aspects of computer languages?� 楬ow do you actually detect malaria?� 榃hat do you do all day, and what are your biggest challenges?櫇 He convinced that 渦nderstanding how students in other disciplines are approaching their research projects can open their mind to new ways of thinking about their own. Creative thought really does matter.�

July 1攖he midway point for many of the research teams攚as another gathering to share progress so far. In small tables that broke up and mixed all the teams, participants talked over issues like: What are the challenges in gathering, measuring, and ensuring the validity of your data? Is it harder or easier than you expected? What are the potential sources for error in your analysis? Is there a creative component of your data collection or analysis?

The complete summer �13 project list:

揝ynthetic Strategies and their Application in the Organic Chemistry Lab

揚adre Martini's Closed and Enigmatic Canons, with Solutions by Luigi Cherubini: A Publication Project

揗odeling Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder: Nervous System Defects

揟he Implementation of Universal Pre-Kindergarten in Rural New York State: A Look Five Years Later 2008-2013

揝tructural and functional characterization of polar expansion in plants

揗embrane trafficking in plant cells; the super highway of growth processes

揂n Exploration of Steganography and Steganalysis

揟he Influence of Unattended Information on the Processing of Attended Information in Selective Attention Tasks: Mediating Effects of Emotion and Hemispheric Specialization

揇evelopment of a Rapid, Inexpensive Biomedical Diagnostics for Malaria and Food Allergies

揥ill Children Learn a Complex Task through Imitation of an Unknowledgeable Adult?

揘umerical Simulation of Effects of Waves on the Upper Ocean

揂re artificial and natural sweeteners created equally?

揊aculty-Librarian Research: Partnerships and Alliances

揟he impact of social class salience and meritocracy beliefs on experiences of students in higher education

揈xtracellular contributions to alcohol and anesthetic modulation of ligand-gated ion channels

揗echanistic studies of a putative anti-addiction drug in a prokaryotic model system

揜ole of the hydrophobic gate in alcohol modulation of pentameric ligand-gated ion channels

揥hite Horses and Red Ink: The Spanish Riding School of Vienna

揑nvestigating mitochondrial dysfunction in mice and cell models of SCA1

揈stablishing a degradation timecourse for cerebellar ATXN1 protein

揅omparing Structures of Online Stores: The Case of Museums and For Profit Businesses

揅reativity, Code and Big Data: Understanding Innovation in the Consumer Protection Context

揟he role of the conjugated path in the optical response of molecules

揌aptic Perception in Blind and Sighted Subjects

揋reedy Resource Allocation in Simultaneous Multithreaded Processors

揈ffects of Copper on a Fruit Fly Model for Alzheimer's Disease

揂re Effects of Lead on Mouse Circadian Activity Rhythms Transgenerational?

揑s Chronotype Correlated with Birth Time?

揊aith in the Workplace: Religion and Secularism in the Employment Sectors of India, Sweden and the U.S.A.

揅omida Latina: Spanning Cultures, Building Bridges

揑s the Anti-Obesity Action of MnTBAP Related to a Brown Fat Phenotype in Obese Mice?

揂sparaginyl-tRNA formation in Mycoplasma genitalium

揟he Value of Institutional Privilege and Competitive Capacity in Vietnamese Stock Market