Professor Barry Solomon (SS) has published a new book, “Sustainable Development of Biofuels in Latin America and the Caribbean,” New York: Springer, 2013.
From Tech Today.
$1.45 Million Study to Address the Northbound Flow of Airborne Toxins
Half of the people in Greenland have toxic levels of PCBs in their blood. A harmful cocktail of contaminants, including mercury and dioxin, has led to fish consumption advisories in all of the Great Lakes, including Superior.
The team members are undertaking a three-pronged research effort. First, they will estimate where the pollutants originate, describe the natural systems that transport them north, and identify where the pollutants finally land. Their models will offer predictions through the year 2050 and will account for the affects of climate change and changes in land use and cover and government policy relating to ASEPs.
In addition to Judith Perlinger, scientists collaborating on the project are Noel Urban of Michigan Tech’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Shiliang Wu, who has dual appointments in Michigan Tech’s Departments of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences/Civil and Environmental Engineering; Emma Norman of Michigan Tech’s Department of Social Sciences and Great Lakes Research Center; Hugh Gorman, Michigan Tech’s Department of Social Sciences; Joan Chadde-Schumaker, Michigan Tech’s Department of Cognitive and Learning Sciences and the Western UP Center for Science, Mathematics, and Environmental Education; Noelle Eckley Selin of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Engineering Systems Division and Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences; Daniel Obrist of the Desert Research Institute’s Division of Atmospheric Sciences; Henrik Selin of International Relations at Boston University; and Juanita Urban-Rich, University of Massachusetts-Boston, Department of Environmental, Earth and Ocean Sciences.
Read more at Michigan Tech News, by Marcia Goodrich.
Social Sciences Brown Bag Presentation Tuesday
The social sciences department’s noon brown bag series presents, “Reflections of a Fair Historian: The Joys of World’s Fair Scholarship,” by Robert Rydell, Montana State University. The talk will take place Tuesday, Nov. 19, at noon in Chem-Sci 104b. Please contact Rebecca Graff with any question, rsgraff@mtu.edu
From Tech Today.
Social Sciences Lecture Nov. 19
Robert Rydell, Michael P. Malone Professor of History and director, MSU Humanities Institute, Montana State University, will discuss “From Architecture to Zippers: World’s Fairs and the Invention(s) of the Modern World,” Tuesday, Nov. 19, 5 p.m., MUB Alumni Lounge.
Beginning with London’s Crystal Palace Exhibition (1851) and continuing into our own time, the Shanghai World Expo (2010), world’s fairs have shaped the modern world. After briefly examining the history (and future) of world’s fairs, Professor Rydell will explore how a series of technological inventions and innovations that debuted at world’s fairs made the world modern. Visited by well over a billion people since 1851 (the Shanghai fair alone attracted 70 million), world’s fairs mapped mental and cultural landscapes and, not incidentally, made progress seem like great fun especially when it came at the expense of “others.”
If you have any questions regarding our events, please contact: Rebecca Graff, rsgraff@mtu.edu
From Tech Today.
Associate Professor Mary Durfee will give the talk “’Mind the Gap: Conflicting Legal Rules in the Arctic,” Friday, Nov. 15 at noon in Academic Office Building 201.
From Tech Today.
Carol Griskavich, graduate student, Industrial Archaeology, “The Other Calumet: Steel and Subinterns in Southeast Chicagoland, Summer 2013,” Wednesday, Nov. 13 at noon in Academic Office Building 201.
From Tech Today.
A project headed by Richelle Winkler (SS) was covered in an article by The Atlantic Cities online and also Maptacular on Tumblr.
From Tech Today.
Mapping 60 Years of White Flight, Brain Drain and American Migration
You can tell a lot about a place by who doesn’t want to be there any more. Or, conversely, by who wants to move in.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Michigan Technological University and the University of New Hampshire have built just such a database dating back to the 1950s. Their tool tracks net changes in population by county, all across the country…
Read more at The Atlantic Cities, by Emily Badger.
Net Migration Patterns for US Counties
Every year, about 10 million Americans move from one county to another. Migration rates vary by age, race, and ethnicity and with local and national social and economic conditions over time.
Suggested Citation:
Winkler, Richelle, Kenneth M. Johnson, Cheng Cheng, Jim Beaudoin, Paul R. Voss, and Katherine J. Curtis. Age-Specific Net Migration Estimates for US Counties, 1950-2010. Applied Population Laboratory, University of Wisconsin- Madison, 2013. Web.
Image courtesy of the net migration mapping tool created by the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin.
In the News
Richelle Winkler’s research has been the focus of several news stories recently. She is featured in a recent issues of The Capital Times, Wisconsin State Journal, and Gizmodo. The articles discuss current US migration patterns.
From Tech Today.
A Map of Where Americans Are Moving (Hellooooo, Vegas!)
The coolest thing is playing with the data on the website, where you can cut and slice the data between counties and start to see some trends up close, especially when it comes to the age of who is moving.
Read more at Gizmodo, by Alissa Walker.
Melissa Baird, assistant professor of anthropology in social sciences department, presented a paper in an invited conference in October sponsored by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden entitled “Extractive Industries and Indigenous Heritage Landscapes.”
From Tech Today.
Carl Blair, PhD
Carl Blair joins the Department of Social Sciences as a lecturer. He earned his PhD and MA in Ancient Studies from the University of Minnesota and his BA in History and Biology from St. Olaf College in Minnesota.
Blair has been a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, coordinator of Study Abroad at Michigan Tech, as well as a visiting assistant professor. He is an archeologist with a wide range of interests, particularly the rise of social complexity in pre-industrial societies. He has designed and led an undergraduate study abroad program in Cumbria, England, for Michigan Tech.
He has been team leader for Commonwealth Cultural Resources, surveying the historic and prehistoric remains on National Forest lands in both northern Wisconsin and Michigan. Blair is principal investigator for SMELT, an archaeological research project where both experimentation and field work is used to explore early, large-scale European iron-smelting industries.
Ryan Cook, PhD
Ryan Cook is a lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences. He most recently taught at Saint Xavier University in Chicago.
Cook earned his PhD and MA in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago and his BA in Cultural Anthropology from St. Cloud State University.
Cook has authored more than 15 publications on religion, UFOs and culture. He received the Overseas Dissertation Research Grant in 2002 from the University of Chicago.
Melissa Baird, PhD
Melissa Baird joins the Department of Social Sciences as an assistant professor. She earned her MS and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Oregon and her BA in Anthropology from the University of California Berkeley.
Baird is a member of the American Anthropological Association and the Society for American Archaeology. She has been a reviewer for the International Journal of Heritage Studies, Otago Press and Arctic Anthropology.
Baird has presented nineteen times at professional meetings and has been invited to talk at five different events on archeology and anthropology. She also has published five refereed journal articles.
Rebecca Graff, PhD
Rebecca Graff is a visiting assistant professor for the Department of Social Sciences. Graff earned her MA and PhD in Anthropology, from the University of Chicago and her BA in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Graff has been a lecturer at the University of Chicago, an adjunct instructor at DePaul University, and preceptor and Earl S. Johnson Postdoctoral Instructor for the Master of Arts program in social sciences at the University of Chicago.
She has written extensively on archeological projects and cultural heritage. Graff also has an interest in languages, specifically Spanish, French, Latin and Hebrew.
Nancy Langston, PhD
Nancy Langston is a new professor in the Department of Social Sciences. Langston earned her PhD in Environmental Studies from the University of Washington, her MPhil in English at the University of Oxford, and her BA in English at Dartmouth College. She did a dissertation in zoology at the University of Washington and held the Eddy Postdoctoral Fellowship in ecology from the University of Washington.
Langston has published three books, 29 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, nine textbook and encyclopedia entries, and 20 journals, reviews, proceedings and white papers. Her interests range from the environment to history.
She has been a delegate to the American Council of Learned Societies and was on the board of directors of the Forest History Society.
Chelsea Schelly, PhD
Chelsea Schelly is a new assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences. She earned her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, her MA in Sociology from Colorado State University, and her BA in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Schelly has eight publications, two book reviews, as well as two papers under review, and five papers and two books in progress. Her research interests are in environmental sociology, sociological theory, comparative historical sociology and science and technology studies.
Schelly has presented at 15 sociological conferences. She also has been both a teaching assistant and an instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Colorado College, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and Colorado State University.