News & Awards

Professor Banta’s most recent publication 16S rRNA Gene Survey of Microbial Communities in Winogradsky Columns has its origins from a project in a microbiology class at Williams. Continue reading »

Christine Schindler ’13,Uttara Partap ’13, and Bonnie Patchen ’12 and Professor Steven Swoap’s Chronic rapamycin treatment causes diabetes in male mice  was published on 15 August 2014 in the American Journal of Physiology. http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/307/4/R434… Continue reading »

Uttara Partap, Williams College, Biology major and Honors student, collaborated with David R Hill, MD, Professor of Medical Sciences, Director of Global Public Health, Frank H. Netter MD, School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University, on two recently published Global Health research papers. Uttara’s interest in Global Health issues started with… Continue reading »

Ben Iliff ’10 just published a paper with Steve Swoap in the American Journal of Physiology.  This manuscript was from his thesis work, for which he shared the David Bruce award for top undergraduate poster at the Experimental Biology meetings in 2010. http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/early/2012/07/09/ajpregu.00081.2012.reprint  … Continue reading »

Genetic identification of a neural circuit that suppresses appetite Matthew E. Carter,  Marta E. Soden,  Larry S. Zweifel  & Richard D. Palmiter Appetite suppression occurs after a meal and in conditions when it is unfavourable to eat, such as during illness or exposure to toxins. A brain region proposed… Continue reading »

Barriers to gene exchange in hybridizing field crickets: the role of male courtship effort and cuticular hydrocarbons Luana S Maroja, Zachary M McKenzie, Elizabeth Hart, Joy Jing, Erica L Larson and David P Richardson Pre-zygotic barriers often involve some form of sexual selection, usually interpreted as female choice, as females… Continue reading »

Small heat shock proteins are necessary for heart migration and laterality determination in zebrafish Jamie L. Lahvic a,1, Yongchang Ji b, Paloma Marin a, Jonah P. Zuflacht a,2, Mark W. Springel a,3, Jonathan E. Wosen a, Leigh Davis a,4, Lara D. Hutson a,5, Jeffrey D. Amack b, Martha J. Continue reading »

Oxyntomodulin increases intrinsic heart rate through the glucagon receptor Auyon Mukharji1, Daniel J. Drucker2, Maureen J. Charron3, Steven J. Swoap1,* Two hormones from the gastrointestinal tract, glucagon and oxyntomodulin (OXM), vigorously elevate the intrinsic heart rate (IHR) of mice. We have previously shown that OXM influences murine heart rate (HR)… Continue reading »

The Mathematics of Encryption: An Elementary Introduction Margaret Cozzens, DIMACS, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, and Steven J. Miller, Williams College, Williamstown, MA How quickly can you compute the remainder when dividing 10983797 by 120143? Why would you even want to compute this? And what does this have to do… Continue reading »

Summer Science Research Poster Session was held in Schow Library on August 2. 54 posters were on display. This was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate and share the collective efforts of 162 summer science research assistants with fellow students, faculty, and visitors. The winners of this year’s informal ‘Great Poster’ competition… Continue reading »

Muzhou Lu ’13 has dedicated three summers and his senior thesis to tracking total solar eclipses to study the Sun’s corona. Lu’s research culminated at this year’s American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Bozeman, Mont. Lu won the Solar Physics Division (SPD) poster competition for his presentation, “Observations and Modeling… Continue reading »

Professor Luana Maroja’s article “Partial complementarity of the mimetic yellow bar phenotype in Heliconius butterflies” was recently published in PLOS ONE and is available online at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048627. Butterfly genome reveals promiscuous exchange of mimicry adaptations among species Luana S. Maroja, Assistant Professor of Biology, was a contributing participant in… Continue reading »

Greg Johnson ’16, Shelby Shote ’16, Steve Swoap (Biology) and Alicia Romac (Science Center)   The annual Student, Faculty and Staff golf tournament was held on Sunday 21, 2012 at Taconic. The low team score of the day was a 52! The sciences were well represented by Professor Steven… Continue reading »

Biology Professor Luana Maroja published in EVOLUTION: EDUCATION AND OUTREACH, titled “Where Do I Come From? Using Student’s Mitochondrial DNA to Teach About Phylogeny, Molecular Clocks, and Population Genetics”.  She uses this in Biology 305: Evolution. http://www.springerlink.com/content/t43q21224265w423/?MUD=MP… Continue reading »

Subaru Outstanding Woman in Science: Phoebe A. Cohen, Assistant Professor of Geosciences, Williams College The Subaru Outstanding Woman in Science Award will be presented to Phoebe A. Cohen, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for her 2010 Ph.D. research, “Investigations of enigmatic Neoproterozoic eukaryotes,” which is a significant contribution to the… Continue reading »

Associate Professor of Computer Science, Morgan McGuire founded the open-access international Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques for scholarly articles on 3D graphics and will serve as its first editor-in-chief. His cofounders on the editorial board span academia and industry, including Google, Harvard University, Pixar, University of Tokyo, and Autodesk. This… Continue reading »