By Kat Meads
Associate Professor Michael Cheers was interviewed by the San Jose Mercury News at the unveiling of a downtown mural.
The San Jose Mercury News interviewed Associate Professor Michael Cheers, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, regarding the December unveiling of a multicultural mural in downtown San Jose that depicts six barbers of Barbers, Inc. styling the locks of six icons, including Muhammad Ali, Bruce Lee, Johnny Cash and poet Maya Angelou. “Imagine kids leaving here and seeking out Maya’s books of poetry,” Cheers said. The mural is located near the corner of Eighth and Santa Clara streets.
Department of Physics and Astronomy Lecturer Friedemann Freund, a senior scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, was a presenter at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco. He shared his research on predicting earthquakes via electromagnetic anomalies that appear in the Earth’s crust minutes to days before an earthquake occurs.
This month, iSchool Assistant Professor Christine Hagar presented at the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction Science and Technology Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Hagar shared research on her specialty, crisis informatics, concerning the role of information professionals and public libraries in disasters and collaborations with disaster and emergency management agencies.
In December, Professor of Art and Art History and Director of the Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery Jo Farb Hernandez presented her book “Singular Spaces: From Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments” at the Reina Sofia Museum in Spain. Hernandez’ book was presented along with books by three other women who have recently published on the theme of art brut/art environments in Spain, Cuba and Italy.
Last month Lecturer Sharmin Khan, Department of Computer Science and Department of Linguistics and Language Development, published “A Muslim call to fight radical Islam” in the San Jose Mercury News, calling on “all progressive Muslims to wake up to the peril within our midst.” Read the article online.
Assistant Professor Ellen Middaugh, Department of Child and Adolescent Development, was interviewed by NBCBayArea.com on how to discuss the recent Paris terrorist attacks with children. Most critically, parents should emphasize that the actions of Islamic extremists do not reflect the beliefs and actions of all Muslims, Middaugh stressed. Read more online.
Professor Scott Myers-Lipton, Department of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, is leading a San Jose business tax initiative. The proposed ballot measure would establish a gross-receipts tax, taxing businesses based on income. The proposal will go before voters in November if 20,000 signatures can be gathered in six months. Myers-Lipton, who also led the successful 2012 campaign to raise the city’s minimum wage, is the author of “Ending Extreme Inequality” (Paradigm 2015).
Assistant Professor Dustin Mulvaney, Department of Environmental Studies, published an article in the San Jose Mercury News on climate change and the importance of preserving desert habitats. “Permanently protecting large swaths of the California desert, such as Mojave Trails National Monument, will ensure that these landscapes continue doing the important work of sequestering carbon pollution,” he wrote. Read the article online.
New Scientist interviewed Assistant Professor Aaron Romanowsky, Department of Physics and Astronomy, about his team’s discovery of a dwarf spheroidal galaxy “in distress, orbiting NGC 253, a giant spiral galaxy 11 million light years from Earth,” the article reported. “It looks like it’s being ripped apart by the larger galaxy,” Romanowsky said. Read more online.
Lecturer Edward Webb, Department of Accounting and Finance, was promoted to partner at Burr Pilger Mayer, one of the largest California-based accounting and consulting firms. Webb leads the firm’s Consulting Practice Group. At SJSU, he teaches corporate finance and accounting.
Professor Elizabeth Weiss, Department of Anthropology, recently spoke at the Milpitas Public Library on the links among modern health problems, lifestyle and evolutionary history. Weiss teaches physical anthropology courses at SJSU and has presented her research findings at annual meetings of, among others, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, Canadian Association of Physical Anthropology and the Paleopathology Association.
The December issue of Nature Neuroscience featured an article co-authored by Biological Sciences Assistant Professor Katie Wilkinson on the discovery of a protein related to proprioception – a sense that allows humans and animals to tell where their body parts are relative to each other and the environment. Read more online.