February 2008

John Contreni

The Lessons of February

Someone observed recently that, with the Super Bowl now safely in the record books, we enter a period of doldrums in February before March Madness commences. Obviously, this sports fan didn't know about Books and Coffee, now in its 57th year. February is Books and Coffee month featuring four talks on important and interesting books. John Duvall, professor of English, began the series on Feb. 7 by sharing his thoughts about Don DeLillo's Falling Man. Professor Bich Minh Nguyen talked about Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay on Valentine's Day. The series, sponsored by the Department of English and the Purdue Student Union Board, also features Margie Berns, another professor of English, and Julio Ramirez, in the School of Civil Engineering, sharing their takes on books of great contemporary interest. They will discuss On the Road and The World is Flat, respectively.

February also brings news that Professor Marianne Boruch (English) and Professor Susie Swithers (Psychological Sciences) are recipients of Faculty Fellowships for Study in a Second Discipline. The fellowships support up to a year's release from teaching to stretch one's wings and imagination and to expand one's research skills. Professor Boruch will use her fellowship to work in Basic Medical Sciences and in Art and Design and "to see what poems come from the experience." Professor Swithers will use her fellowship to work in Foods and Nutrition to study energy balance in human populations. Another fellowship recipient, Professor Melissa Dark in the College of Technology, has chosen Political Science as her second discipline.

Programs seemingly as disparate as Books and Coffee and the University's fellowship program for study in a second discipline underscore, if underscoring were needed, the fundamentally interdisciplinary directions our teaching and research are taking. The new Asian American Studies program and the soon to be launched Latino and Latin American Studies program will add to the College's armamentarium of formal interdisciplinary initiatives. The list of less formal cross campus collaborations between colleagues in the College and team members in other colleges and schools requires eight pages to record.

The synergies "tiger team," co-chaired by Dean Susan Curtis (History) and Bill Oakes (Engineering Education), is now hard at work gathering information and imagining the future of research and teaching in a 21st-century university, pointing the way to even greater possibilities of collaborative work. The lesson is that the intellectual lifeblood of the University knows no administrative boundaries.

Sincerely,

John J. Contreni
Justin S. Morrill Dean

NEWS AND RESEARCH

Archaeologist 'strikes gold' with finds of ancient mine

A Purdue archaeologist discovered an intact ancient iron ore mine in South America that shows how civilizations before the Inca Empire were mining this valuable ore.

Kevin Vaughn

"Archaeologists know people in the Old and New worlds have mined minerals for thousands and thousands of years," said Kevin J. Vaughn, an assistant professor of Anthropology who studies the Nasca civilization, which existed from A.D. 1 to A.D. 750. "Iron mining in the Old World, specifically in Africa, goes back 40,000 years. And we know the ancient people in Mexico, Central America, and North America were mining for various materials. There isn't much evidence for these types of mines.

"What we found is the only hematite mine, a type of iron also known as ochre, recorded in South America prior to the Spanish conquest. This discovery demonstrates that iron ores were important to ancient Andean civilizations."

In 2004 and 2005, Vaughn and his team excavated Mina Primavera, which is located in the Ingenio Valley of the Andes Mountains in southern Peru. The research team performed field checks and collected some samples in 2006 and 2007. The findings of the excavation are published in December's Journal of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society. More

Linguist tunes in to pitch processing in brain

More of the brain is busy processing pitch from language and other sounds than previously thought, according to a researcher in neurophonetics at Purdue.

Jackson Gandour

"By studying brain activity at different stages of processing pitch patterns in tonal languages, we have found that early activity in the brainstem is shaped by a person's language experience, even while the person is asleep, and consequently, we now believe it plays a much greater role in speech perception that we thought before," said linguistics professor Jackson T. Gandour.

Gandour presented information from several of his pitch processing studies at the Feb. 16 "Brain Basis of Speech" session during the American Association for Advancement of Science's annual meeting in Boston.

"Everyone has a brainstem, but it's tuned differently depending on what sounds are behaviorally relevant to a person, for example, the sounds of his or her mother tongue," Gandour said. More

Pop quiz: Testing earns high marks as learning tool

Students learn more from taking tests than they do by studying, according to new research from a Purdue cognitive psychologist and memory specialist.

Jeffrey D. Karpicke

"That's contrary to our conventional way of thinking; learning only takes place when studying, additional studying increases learning, and testing just assesses what we know," said Jeffrey D. Karpicke, an assistant professor of Psychological Sciences.

"Now we have some pretty powerful evidence that during a test there are cognitive processes happening that actually promote learning. Testing is not just an assessment of what you studied. The act of retrieving information actually improves memory because you are practicing a skill. And that's the exact same skill you are going to need to retrieve that information again and again."

Karpicke and Henry L. Roediger III, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, co-authored an article that appeared Feb. 14 in Science. More

Artificial sweeteners linked to weight gain

Want to lose weight? It might help to pour that diet soda down the drain.

Researchers have laboratory evidence that the widespread use of no-calorie sweeteners may actually make it harder for people to control their intake and body weight. The findings appear in the February issue of Behavioral Neuroscience, which is published by the American Psychological Association (APA).

Psychologists at Purdue's Ingestive Behavior Research Center reported that relative to rats that ate yogurt sweetened with glucose (a simple sugar with 15 calories/teaspoon, the same as table sugar), rats given yogurt sweetened with zero-calorie saccharin later consumed more calories, gained more weight, put on more body fat, and didn't make up for it by cutting back later, all at levels of statistical significance.

Authors Susan Swithers and Terry Davidson, both professors in the Department of Psychological Sciences, surmised that by breaking the connection between a sweet sensation and high-calorie food, the use of saccharin changes the body's ability to regulate intake. More

Primaries, caucuses show political parties' vital signs

The primaries and caucuses tell Americans more than just who will be running for president, says a Purdue political scientist.

"The underappreciated feature of our presidential nomination system is the turnout question," says James McCann, a professor of Political Science. "In many states, people who participate in the primaries and caucuses do not have to be registered with a specific party, so based on who is going to the polls, you can infer some things about the health and popularity of the parties."

Many commentators have remarked on how the presidential contests of 2008 differ from 2004. But the better comparisons are 2000 and 1988, when there was no incumbent president seeking re-election, McCann says. In 2000 the 88,000 Republicans in the Iowa caucus outnumbered the 60,000 Democrats, he says. This year in Iowa, 240,000 Democrats participated in that state compared to 120,000 Republicans. More

CLA profs serve as media experts for 2008 election

Topics include presidential history, public opinion, political campaigns, voting trends, Latino voters, women in politics, public opinion, patriotism, media bias, and possible judicial nominations. More

Americans plot their geography skills with new Web site

A new Web site helps Americans map their geography skills, says a Purdue expert.

"Most Americans don't have a great conception of geography, and this Web site can help people relate where they live to another place," says Sorin Adam Matei, an associate professor of Communication. He studies how communication technologies - the Internet, wireless access, and cell phones - affect how people interact with their geographic environments.

The map designed by Matei and programmed by Chris Miller, an assistant professor of Library Science at Purdue, can be found at www.alterpode.com. When a user types in an American city, such as New York City, a marker appears on a map of North America. If the marker is clicked, a map of transatlantic locations found alongside the first one shows the longitudinal correspondent of New York City. That is in Central Asia: Kizyl-Kaya, Turkmenistan. More

Liberal Arts will offer Asian American studies minor

The College of Liberal Arts will begin offering a new program and undergraduate minor in Asian American Studies.

"Asian Americans represent the largest ethnic minority on Purdue's campus, with nearly 2,000 Asian-American students, so it seemed vital to develop an Asian-American studies minor," says Bich Minh Nguyen, an assistant professor of English who wrote the program's proposal in conjunction with Purdue's Council on Asian American Studies.

The 15-credit hour minor focuses on classes that explore Asian-American culture and history, as well as social issues such as stereotyping and prejudice. Required courses are "An Introduction to Asian American Studies" and "Contemporary Issues in Asian American Studies." More

Purdue students win awards at Theater Festival

Four Purdue theater students won regional honors at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Region III Festival this month.

Chris Holland, a master of fine arts candidate from Aliquippa, Pa., was the Region III winner of the Barbizon Award for Theatrical Design Excellence in Lighting for The Women of Troy. He also received an honorable mention for Regional Lighting Design Project for Titus Andronicus.

Shelby Newport, a master of fine arts candidate from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was the winner of the Barbizon Award for Theatrical Design Excellence in Costumes for The Women of Troy.

Jake Mahler, a master of fine arts candidate from Minnetonka, Minn., won the Irene Ryan Acting Judges Award for Best Musical Performer.

Rebecca Bezaire, a senior in the College of Liberal Arts from Dublin, Ohio, won second place in the Kennedy Center Stage Management Award for Six Degrees of Separation. More

EVENTS

Military correspondent to talk about war in Iraq issues

A Washington Post military correspondent will speak Feb. 18 about his recent trip to Baghdad and the war in Iraq.

Thomas E. Ricks will present "The Iraq War as a Failure of the American System?" at 8 p.m. in Stewart Center's Loeb Playhouse as part of the Sears Lecture Series.

Ricks, who has covered the U.S. military for almost two decades, is author of FIASCO: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. He has worked at the Washington Post since 2000 and before then covered the same beat at the Wall Street Journal for 17 years.

More

Purdue, Ivy Tech experts to discuss immigration issues

Community members are invited to attend a Feb. 19 informational forum on immigration that will feature speakers from Purdue and Ivy Tech's Lafayette campus.

The forum, which is sponsored by Purdue's College of Liberal Arts and Ivy Tech's School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will be at 6 p.m. in Room 1333 of Ivy Hall at Ivy Tech's Lafayette Campus, 3101 S. Creasy Lane.

The speakers and their topics are: