Emeritus professor Bruce Altschuler published “Seeing through the Screen: Interpreting American Political Film” through Lexington Books in late November. In addition, a review by Altschuler -- who taught for four decades at Oswego -- of “American Surveillance: Intelligence, Privacy, and the Fourth Amendment” by Anthony Gregory was published in the Winter 2017-18 issue of Political Science Quarterly.

Thomas Bertonneau of the English and creative writing faculty reported the following recent publications:

Anthropology faculty member Kathleen Blake published a chapter titled “The Biology of the Fetal Period: Interpreting Life from Fetal Skeletal Remains” in the 2017 book “The Anthropology of the Fetus: Biology, Culture, and Society” published by Berghahn Books: New York.  

Several Oswego students presented at the annual Rochester Academy of Sciences Fall Scientific Paper Session in Rochester at St. John Fisher College in November. They included:

Oral presentations

  • “Climate Change and Endangered Mutualisms: The Impact of Increased Temperatures on Pollinator Activity,” by Stephanie Facchine

  • “Identifying the Source of Infection in Snapping Turtle (Chelydra Serpentine) Eggs,” Jerome Job (faculty sponsor Poongodi Geetha-Loganathan)

  • “Testing Teratogenicity of Penicillin on Planarian Regeneration,” Asya Kadic (faculty sponsor Geetha-Loganathan)

  • “Microbiota of the Invasive Crop Pest, Spotted Wing Drosophila,” Gabrielle Solomon (faculty sponsor Peter Newell)

Poster presentations

  • “Two Years of Invasive Cattail Management Via Manual Removal,” Sarita Charap, Facchine, Joe McCarthy, Alexander Steiner and Faith Page (faculty sponsor C. Eric Hellquist)

  • “Untangling Metabolic Cooperation: Investigating Synergistic Growth of Acetobacter and Lactobacillus Bacteria in Co-culture,” Charap, Facchine, McCarthy, Steiner and Page (faculty sponsor Hellquist)

  • “Concentrations of Heavy Metals and Bacterial Communities in Bottled and Tap Water,” Emily Cooley, Jacqueline Epp and Abigail Leahey (faculty sponsor Hellquist)

  • “Identification of Transposable Elements in the Genome of the Terrestrial Isopod, Trachelipus Rathkei,” Rose Fontana (faculty sponsor Christopher Chandler)

  • “Analysis of Higher Alcohols in Scotch Using Gas Chromatography,” Shaun Henderson

  • “Effects of Atrazine on Freshwater Mussels,” Manna Job (faculty sponsor Geetha-Loganathan)

  • “Evaluation of Pesticide Residue Contents in Fruits and Vegetables After Different Washing Treatments,” Ilayda Kelley and Kyle Harbour

  • “Analysis of Drug Facilitated Criminal Acts Using Solid Phase Extraction and Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry,” Kimberly LaGatta and Kerina Heard (faculty sponsors Shokouh Haddadi and Vadoud Niri)

  • “Measuring Immune Response in Relation to Prevalence of Chytridiomycosis in Lithobates Clamitans (Green Frog) Populations in Oswego County, New York,” Jason Lowery and Nathan McKean

  • “The Role of Filamin in Response to Brief Mechanical Stimulation,” Jack Marcucci

  • “A Comparison of Three Methods of Post-Mortem Tooth Analysis to Age White-Tailed Deer,” Noah Seabrook (faculty sponsor Hellquist)

  • “Abundance of Microplastics in Stomach Contents of Lake Ontario Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus Tshawytscha) and Alewife (Alosa Pseudoharengus),” Julia Stephens and Alinda Dygert

  • “Novel Solar Cells: The Inkjet Printed Nanocrystalline Inorganic Perovskite Films,” Benjamin Swanson and Ian Evans (faculty sponsor Carolina Ilie, collaboration with other institutions)

  • “Picolinamide and N-Phenyl-N-Pyridinylurea Derivatives of Ligands for Aryl C-N Bond Formation,” Mahemuti Xiadiman

  • “Organogenesis Affected by Hard Rock Music During Chick Embryo Development,” Cliff-Simon Vital (faculty sponsor Geetha-Loganathan)

Geology major Emily Fenner won fifth place in the student poster contest at the American Exploration and Mining Association annual meeting in Sparks, Nevada. She competed with both undergraduates and graduate students. Her poster, "Origin of Fe-Ti Ores in the Adirondack Highlands, New York: Evidence from Trace Elements and Microtextures in Oxide Minerals," was co-authored by Allen Andersen of SUNY Oswego’s atmospheric and geological science department and Jared Singer of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Mohammad A. Islam of Oswego’s physics faculty served as lead author on a paper, “High Capacity Lithium Ion Batteries Composed of Cobalt Oxide Nanoparticle Anodes and Raman Spectroscopic Analysis of Nanoparticle Strain Dynamics in Batteries,” published in the journal Nanotechology. Additional authors include three recent Oswego graduates in Mateusz Zuba, Vincent DeBiase and Nicholas Noviasky, and Christopher J. Hawley of Drexel University. It is the first study from work in the college’s nanolab on lithium ion batteries to attain wide publication.

Shashi Kanbur, professor and chair of physics, co-authored “The Role of Opacities in Stellar Pulsation,” accepted into the book "Workshop on Astrophysical Opacities" published in the Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series. Co-authors included M. Marconi of Osservatorio di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy, and A. Bhardwaj, R. Kundu and H.P. Singh, all collaborators in the long-running project to calculate the scale and age of the universe.

Damian Schofield, director of the college’s human-computer interaction graduate program, gave the keynote Nov. 29 at the "Digital Humanities Evolving: Past, Present, and Future" conference in Taiwan. His talk was titled “The Psychology of Images: The Complex Relationship Between Digital Humanities and Visual Culture.”

Lawrence Spizman, emeritus professor of economics, presented the paper “Hyperbolic Discounting and the Defense Economist’s Impact on Settlement Outcomes” at the 2018 annual Allied Social Science Association Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. An economics professor at Oswego for 37 years, Spizman presented the piece with a behavioral economics approach to understanding the impact of defense alternative damage estimates on settlement negotiations. The concept of the inverted nudge is developed to introduce a new level of uncertainty and risk that alters plaintiff’s behavior which in turn impacts the level of hyperbolic discounting.

In memoriam

Mary Ann Gill, who worked at SUNY Oswego for 40 years, more than 30 with the college’s Finance Office, passed away Dec. 5.

Mark Kulikowski, an associate professor of history who taught at SUNY Oswego since 1982, passed away Jan. 14.