UO sci/research tidbits

At my first journalism job in 1977, the small, daily Texas newspaper that had been desperate enough to hire me straight out of college had a social column called Tidbits. It was about what folks in town were doing -- their travels, guests and successes. In pondering what to call my occasional roundups like this one, I thought of tidbits and found that a tidbit can refer to a tasty morsel of food or to a small and pleasing, interesting or spicy bit of news and information. So here are some tidbits:

Dissociation and Trauma Archives

An important digital collection of medical and scientific literature in the field of dissociation and trauma is online by way of the Knight Library. The "Dissociation and Trauma Archives" contain the full text of many articles appearing in key journals published between 1862 and 1922. That's right -- 1862!

"The early history of trauma studies is of critical importance to contemporary research," said Jennifer Freyd, UO professor of psychology, in a news release  distributed by the UO Libraries. "By reading historical reports and analyses of childhood trauma from the past, we can discover not only how trauma impacts children and the adults they become but also how the cultural and historical context molds our approach to questions and issues about this condition."

Text is fully searchable, and the archives can be browsed by article title, journal, and author. Additional articles are to be digitized and added to the archive.

Dissociation and Trauma Archives was developed in part during a graduate psychology class, Childhood Trauma, taught by Freyd. Freyd's colleague Frank Putnam, a physician, was also a major contributor to the project.

Soon after the archive went live in March, Freyd began to draw accolades, including congratulatory notes from Dr. Vedat Sar, a psychiatry professor and director of the Clinical Psychotherapy Unit & Dissociative Disorders Program at Istanbul University, as well as notes from Syracuse and Stanford universities in the U.S. The note from clinical psychologist Catherine C. Classen at Toronto's Women's College Hospital -- and former president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation summed it up well: "Congratulations Jennifer. This is a wonderful contribution."

Pathways to Scientific Teaching

UO marine scientist Janet Hodder and Michigan State University plant biologist Diane Ebert-May are the editors of a new 206-page book "Pathways to Scientific Teaching," published by Sinauer Associates and the Ecological Society of America.

A flyer for the book says the material is based on a series of two-page Pathways articles originally published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment that "illustrate effective instructional methods to help students gain conceptual understanding in ecology." The book stresses methods that promote the process of scientific discovery.

The book covers a variety of topics that include carbon dioxide sequestration, effects of atrazine and temperature on turtles, collaborative learning and problem solving, homework, crop transgenes, endangered species, ecological complexity and preparing students for research. For more information on the book, see the Sinauer Web site.

Hodder is the academic coordinator for the UO's Oregon Institute of Marine Science in Charleston. She also is co-director of the National Science Foundation's Faculty Enhancement Project (FIRST II), a national dissemination project that provides opportunities for faculty and future faculty throughout the country to improve their teaching of science that enables undergraduate students to learn science. She also is a co-director of the NSF-sponsored Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education Program at the institute.

Ancient marine ecosystems and humans

Another new book for academic use is "Human Impacts on Ancient Marine Ecosystems: A Global Perspective" (University of California Press) co-edited by the UO's Jon Erlandson and Torben C. Rick, an anthropologist at Southern Methodist University. The cover is a shot from San Miguel Island off California, where Erlandson has done extensive research.

Erlandson's name appears as a co-author for three of the book's 13 chapters. The UO's Doug Kennett also is a chapter co-author.

In their preface, Erlandson, professor of anthropology and director of the UO's Museum of Natural and Cultural History, and Rick write: "To illustrate the contributions archaeology can make to the study of historical ecology in a variety of marine ecosystems, this volume brings together experts from relatively well studied coastal regions around the world to summarize the history of human coastal occupation, environmental change and human impacts in their area."

The 336-page book, published in April, contains 11 case studies from the Americas, Pacific Islands, Europe and Africa. More detailed information about the book is available at the UC Press Web site.

Global world of computer science

Andrzej Proskurowski, professor and head of the UO's department of computer and information science, says he's looking forward to a May 16-18 workshop in Portland. The event is the first of the National Science Foundation-funded project known as CPATH i18n. The workshop, a collaborative venture by the UO and Portland State University brings together some 50 people from throughout the Pacific Northwest and from Asia.

The workshop, which is not open to the public, will allow the participants to discuss approaches that might allow them "to transform undergraduate computer science education to prepare our students to work and to lead in a global community of computing professionals." (The next workshop will be held Oct. 24-26 in Beijing, China.)

For more information about CPATH i18n and its ties to the Pacific Rim, visit the organization's Web site. UO-based information is available by clicking here.

Help me spread the word about similar items involving UO science and research. If you have an item worth noting, send me an email along with supporting material and/or links that will help me tell the story -- briefly, as in a tidbit.

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