Office of Research -- Annual Report 2005-2006

Table of Contents Physical Sciences & Engineering Exploring the final frontier – extreme light . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Nano discovery is golden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 New center fuels energy research . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 6 Imparting the human touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Tackling transportation challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 Concrete results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Dunes divulge mega-drought clues . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . .12 New drought tools aid tough decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 Life Sciences Unraveling immune system intricacies . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Solving evolutionary mysteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Plant transformation lab is biotech pipeline . . . . .. . . . . .16 Organic farming research expanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Training international HIV/AIDS researchers . . . . . . . . .18 Expanding partnerships with Zambia, China . . . .. . . . . .19 Humanities & The Arts ‘Poet of democracy’ goes digital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 GIS atlas reveals railroad’s instrumental role . . . . . . . . .20 Center enhances humanities research . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 The arts in action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 Social Sciences Smoking’s impact on babies’ behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 Horses a powerful prevention tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 Genes and political temperament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Technology Development Moving discoveries to the marketplace . . . . . . . . . . . .27 Education & Outreach Turning loose Tekbots as teaching tools . . . . . . . . . . .28 Undergrads experience research firsthand . . . . . . . . .30 Goldwater recipients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31 Fossils going online for easy access . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 Training Native American teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 Extending Our Reach Celebrating excellence, collaboration . . . . . . . . . .. . .34 Financials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

Bottomheavy: Legal Footnotes

For decades, legal footnotes have been the deserving target of both ample criticism and self-mockery. Apart from their complaints as to footnotes’ mere existence, most critics draw a bead on the ballooning of footnote content. Some journal editors, aspiring to respond to this sound theme, hopefully inform their authors of a preference for “light footnoting.” But where does an author begin to trim, and what editor has the audacity to slash what the author (or her research assistant) has so laboriously compiled below the line? Changing our footnote habits is about benefits and costs. To gain the former, we must ante up. If criticism began the round of bidding, this article modestly raises the stakes, suggesting a rule of reason that might govern the author’s, the editor’s, and the reader’s expectations for footnotes. A gamble, perhaps, but one that might be worth taking

Fall 2003

https://surface.syr.edu/connection/1003/thumbnail.jp

The Archivist’s New Clothes; or, the Naked Truth about Evidence, Transactions, and Recordness

The electronic records projects at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) have been promoted as competing visions of the archival future. This article, the work of several authors with experience as both manuscript curators and institutional archivists, challenges the perception that the UBC and Pitt models are fundamentally different from one another, and argues that they share a similar and deeply flawed conception of the meaning of archives and the mission of the archival profession. Rather than accept the premises upon which both UBC and Pitt build their models, archivists should re-assert the broader and more practical theory of archives that has dominated much of U.S. archival history

Ancient ancestors for modern practices: An evolutionary concept analysis of digital marginalia

Marginalia, the notes readers write in the blank spaces of their books, are significant objects of study in bibliography and book history, among other fields. Due to factors including findability and fragile book materials, marginalia from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are difficult to study. The same does not necessarily have to be true for similar objects from the twenty-first century. This thesis uses Rodger’s evolutionary concept analysis to analyze the usage of digital marginalia in the scholarly literature from 1991 to 2020. Beginning with an overview of bibliography and the history of marginalia, this thesis situates digital marginalia in a bibliographic context. Digital marginalia’s definitions, characteristic attributes, events related to the creation of digital marginalia, and concepts related to the practice are then examined. Bringing in connections to bibliographic concepts, this thesis argues that digital marginalia and bibliography provide each other reciprocal value. Like their physical counterparts, digital marginalia provide evidence of users’ interactions with media, their social interactions through that media, and their sociocultural contexts

The book of birds in Portuguese scriptoria: preservation and access

In this thesis, the Books of Birds from Hugh of Fouilloy produced in the Portuguese monasteries of São Mamede of Lorvão, Santa Maria of Alcobaça and Santa Cruz of Coimbra, were studied for the first time through an interdisciplinary and holistic approach. This investigation opened doors to a customized methodology for the study of manuscript circulation, by converging their history, codicology, iconography, colour – both molecular and symbolic – text analysis and conservation state. This allowed proposing new chronologies and correlations between each copy. Santa Cruz still lacked a comprehensive study from a material and technical point of view, contrarily to Alcobaça and Lorvão, which could ultimately support the research on the Books of Birds. Therefore, the Santa Cruz manuscripts were subject of a detailed investigation on their painting materials and techniques, as well as its bindings, used in their production. Since the collection had been previously analysed in a MOLAB access, the experimental work developed in this thesis was compared with the MOLAB data and the advantages of an in situ and micro-sampling approach were discussed. The three collections were compared, which allowed establishing more in-depth the colour palette used in Romanesque manuscripts, their singularities and main degradation issues. In order to study the meaning behind the usage of these colours, a colour mapping tool was developed and systematically applied in the three scriptoria. It was established that this complementary technique can bring new insights to art history, by correlating colour patterns to specific historical periods. Finally, it was also developed a new methodology for the study and characterization of dyes in illuminated manuscripts, by combining microspectrofluorimetry and SERS for the first time. It allowed establishing that lac dye was used to paint dark reds and pinks in Portuguese scriptoria, during the Romanesque period

Aiding the conservation of two wooden Buddhist sculptures with 3D imaging and spectroscopic techniques

The conservation of Buddhist sculptures that were transferred to Europe at some point during their lifetime raises numerous questions: while these objects historically served a religious, devotional purpose, many of them currently belong to museums or private collections, where they are detached from their original context and often adapted to western taste. A scientific study was carried out to address questions from Museo d'Arte Orientale of Turin curators in terms of whether these artifacts might be forgeries or replicas, and how they may have transformed over time. Several analytical techniques were used for materials identification and to study the production technique, ultimately aiming to discriminate the original materials from those added within later interventions

Forging Christianity: Jews And Christians In Pseudo-Ignatius

This dissertation explores one of the thorny problems of writing a social history of Early Christianity, the degree to which rhetoric either reflects or evokes worldviews, institutions, and other social formations. Through a focus on the textual traditions associated with Ignatius of Antioch, a second-century martyr and Christian bishop, I explore how language about Jews and Judaism was reproduced and rewritten in later centuries such that it has become evidence for our own histories of Jewish–Christian relations. The textual tradition of Ignatius’s letters includes multiple recensions and was reproduced repeatedly throughout Late Antiquity and into the Middle Ages. By comparing the various recensions, I show how both retention and alteration in the textual tradition can create new rhetorical effects. The different recensions provide evidence for the effects of earlier versions on later readers and how the reading and writing practices of later scribes gave birth to new images of the past and new modes of reading early Christian literature. By engaging recent scholarship on ancient education, scribal practice, and the materiality of texts, I show how careful attention to the effects of texts and textual production helps us better understand the processes and practices that give rhetoric social traction and force