Faculty Research 2006-2007


Anthropology

Christine Avenarius

Dr. Avenarius recently completed five month of ethnographic fieldwork in mainland China as part of her new research project “China and the Rule of Law: Conceptions of Fairness and Justice in Times of Change” funded by the National Science Foundation. She will conduct the second phase of fieldwork in mainland China between June and August 2007 in cooperation with Dr. Qi from the Urban Studies Institute of the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, researchers at the Hebei Academy of Social Sciences in Shijiazhuang, and Prof. Dr. Zhao Xudong from the Department of Sociology at the College of Humanities and Development, China Agricultural University. An anthropology graduate student, Lu Liu, will be conducting research on this project in China with her. She also plans to travel to Leiden in the Netherlands for a workshop in February and to Corfu in Greece in May 2007 to present her findings at the 27th International Sunbelt Social Network Conference. View Edge Article

Jami Leibowitz

Dr. Leibowitz is the lead faculty in the Global Understanding project. Using ECU’s global classroom, this project connects ECU students with students from other countries for synchronous, live time instruction in a virtual collaborative environment. Through the global understanding project, Dr. Leibowitz works with 16 international universities from 14 different countries. Most recently Dr. Leibowitz traveled to Taiwan to recruit Fu Jen University as our 17th international partner.


Biology

Enrique Reyes

Dr. Reyes will be involved in the field site visit and faculty exchange at the University College of Science and Technology Malaysia (Kustem), Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu Malaysia. Apr. 2007.

Yong Zhu

International Conferences:
International Symposium on Reproductive Physiology of Fish, St Malo, France, June 3-8, 2007.

Articles Published In International Journals:

Hanna R, Pang Y, Thomas P,Zhu Y(2006) Cell Surface Expression, Progestin Binding and Rapid Nongenomic Signaling of Zebrafish Membrane Progestin Receptors α and β in Transfected Cells. Journal of Endocrinology190: 247 – 260.

Nguyen N, Sugimoto M,Zhu Y(2006) Production and purification of recombinant somatolactin β and its effects on melanosome aggregation in zebrafish. General and Comparative Endocrinology145: 182-187.

Abstracts Presented At International Conferences

Zhu Y, Hanna RN (2007) Expression of membrane progestin receptors α and β in zebrafish. 8th International Symposium on Reproductive Physiology of Fish. Saint Malo, France, June 3-8, 2007.

Zhu Y, Hanna RN, Daly SCJ (2007) Characterization and expression of nuclear progestin receptors in zebrafish. 8th International Symposium on Reproductive Physiology of Fish. Saint Malo, France, June 3-8, 2007.


Economics

Okmyung Bin

Dr. Bin continues as a member of KAEA (Korea-America Economic Association). Dr. Bin presented a paper, “Valuing Spatially Integrated Amenities and Risks in Coastal Housing Markets,” with Thomas Crawford, Jamie Kruse, and Craig Landry, at the Third World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists, in Kyoto, Japan, July 2006. He has served as a referee for multiple proposals for the South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE) Grant.

Andrew Grodner

Dr. Grodner participated in the Warsaw Economic Meeting organized by the Department of Economics, Warsaw University and Warsaw Institute for Socio-Economic Research in Warsaw (Poland) last summer, 1-2 July 2006.He spoke on “Chinese Economic Reform and Labor Market Efficiency” Timeline.


English

Michael Aceto

Dr. Aceto latest project is examining the interface between linguistic theory and Tibetan Buddhism.

Debra O’Neal

Prof. O’Neal served as a lead teacher in INTL 1050 for a section which linked through video conference technology to Switzerland, China and Moldova for 6 sessions with each group. Her students discussed issues of concern and curiosity through the video links, through live chat sessions and through on going e-mails. This also was very enlightening for all students. The link for the project run by Dr Poe and Dr Chia is http://falcon.aos.ecu.edu/gu/


History

John Tucker

Dr. Tucker received a $5,000.00 grant from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership to fund a workshop for Greenville-Pitt County middle and high school social science teachers. The workshop, “Representations of the Feminine in Japanese Literary and Popular Culture,” took place on Saturday, October 7, 2006, on the ECU campus.

Dr. Tucker presented a paper, “The Metaphysics of Ancestor Worship,” as part of a Confucian Religions panel at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Washington, D. C., November 18, 2006.

He participated in an international workshop, “Science, Philosophy and Religion in Japanese Intellectual History,” at the Techny Conference Center in Chicago, March 9-11, 2007 for publication of a Sourcebook in Japanese Philosophy. The workshop is sponsored by the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, Nanzan University, Nagoya, Japan.

Dr. Tucker has received a Japan Foundation Short-Term Research Grant to conduct research at Nanzan University, in Nagoya, Japan, from mid-June through mid-July. Tucker will be a Visiting Research Fellow at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, on a prospective anthology to be called, A Sourcebook of Japanese Philosophy. The volume is planned for publication in 2008 by the University of Hawai’i Press.

Tucker will present a paper, “Confucianism and Capitalism: Exploring the Metaphysical Foundations of the Modern Japanese Economy,” at the spring meeting of the Southern Japan Seminar, to be held in Miami, Florida under the sponsorship of Florida International University, April 14, 2007.

Tucker will also serve as a review panelist for the U. S. Department of Education, Office of International Education and Graduate Programs Services, Title VI, American Research Centers Abroad Grants competition, from April 3-19, 2007.


Physics

Michael Dingfelder

International travel:
July 13 -23 2006: Beijing, China. Attended the 36th COSPAR Scientific Assembly. Presented 1 solicited talk, 1 contributed paper: M. Dingfelder, Track structure studies and cross section calculations. Solicited presentation given at the 36th COSPAR Scientific Assembly, Beijing, China, July 16-22 2006.W. Friedland, P. Jacob, H.G. Paretzke, A. Ottolenghi, F. Ballarini, and M. Dingfelder, Simulation of ion induced radiation damage in cells. Contribution presented by W. Friedland at the 36th COSPAR Scientific Assembly, Beijing, China, July 16-23, 2006, Book of Abstracts, F2.2-0011-06.

Gregory Lapicki

Dr. Lapicki continues to collaborate with many groups in India (listed are only of main names of workers with whom he worked recently via email, their institutions, and our most recent publications): S. BuholkaReddy, Swami Jnanananda Laboratories for Nuclear Research, Andhra University, Visakapatnam, India.; M. Sarkar, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, Bidhannagar, India, ; N. Puri, Department of Biophysics, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India; L. Tribedi, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Colaba, Mumbai, India. Papers with groups at Saha and Tata Institutes had also co-authors (L. Sarkadi and L. Gulyas) from Institute of Nuclear Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (ATOMKI), Debrecen, Hungary.

Yong-qing Li

Dr. Yong-qing Li, Associate Professor, is collaborating with Professor Shushi Huang of Guangxi Academy of Sciences (China) on a project of Raman microscopy/mapping of biological cells. Professor Huang is currently visiting ECU for 12 months as a visiting scientist for the collaborative research. Dr. Li is a guest (honor) professor of Guangxi Normal University, located in Guilin, China. Dr. Li attended International Quantum Electronic Conferences (IQEC) in 2000 and 2004, respectively.


Religious Studies

Derek Maher

Last September, Dr. Maher delivered a paper on historiographic method in traditional Tibetan literature at the conference of the International Association of Tibetan Studies which met in Konigswinter, Germany. In May and June, for the second year in a row, he directed a group of sixteen students on a study abroad program to India. ( Program description.) He is currently completing a translation of a two-volume religious and political history of Tibet called One Hundred Thousand Moons.


Sociology

A.J. Jacobs

Dr. Jacobs spent a month in Japan in May 2006, conducting research in Tokyo and Hiroshima. In addition to research on Japanese cities, he also met with the international center and business faculty Hosei University in Tokyo in an effort to create a student exchange program between ECU and Hosei. This meeting was the continuation of an a 8-year relationship with Hosei, where Dr Jacobs taught in 2004-05 and had a doctoral fellowship in 1998. Hosei is very interested in establish a mutual exchange program with ECU, now to get things in place we need to recruit one or two ECU students a year to go to Tokyo for a semester or year.

Two of his recent publications related to his work in Japan are:Jacobs, A. J. (2006), “Embedded Localities: Employment Decline, Inner City Population Growth, and Declining Place Stratification among Japan’s Mid-Size and Large Cities,” City & Community, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September), pp 269-292; Jacobs, A. J. (2005), “Has Central Tokyo Experienced Uneven Development? An Examination of Tokyo’s 23 Ku Relative to America’s Largest Urban Centers,” Journal of Urban Affairs, Vol. 27, No. 5 (December), pp. 521-555 [top cited Urban journal in 2004-05].


College of Business

Management Information Systems

Ravi Paul

Students in Dr. Paul’s Introduction to MIS course are working collaboratively with some graduate students from the Management Development Institute (MDI), India. View Project Description


College of Fine Arts and Communications

Dr. Sachiyo Shearman

Dr. Sherman’s research interests include interpersonal and intercultural communication. Specifically, she has conducted research that examines an impact of personality on communication, the effectiveness of social influence strategies, and cross-cultural differences in communication styles. She has collaborated on a research on a cross-cultural comparative study on communication styles (e.g., high/low context or direct/indirect communication demonstrated by the people in Japan, Korea, and the U.S, which was published in Human Communication Research. She has collected the data on the young adults’ preference for conflict strategy with their parents and their family communication patterns both in Japan and in the US. The finding of this study was presented at an International Communication Association conference held in Dresden, Germany in June of 2006. Also, recently she collected the data from a Japanese manufacturing organization in Greenville, NC, to examine the communication between Japanese workers and American workers in the organization setting and how two cultures are negotiated in one organization. Her research has been published in journals such as Human Communication Research, Communication Quarterly, Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, Language and Communication, and Asian Journal of Social Psychology.


College of Human Ecology

Child Development and Family Relationships

Priti Desai

Prof. Desai’s current doctoral research work is about Early Intervention services for children with special needs in Gujarat, India. She will be spending part of summer 2007 in India doing research. She plans to conduct a seminar or if possible a half to full day workshop on early intervention services for child development professionals, pediatricians, NGOs and perhaps policy makers.


Brody School of Medicine

Medical Humanities

John Moskop

On September 21 and 22, 2006, Dr. John C. Moskop, Professor of Medical Humanities at the Brody School of Medicine, served as an invited faculty member at a conference entitled “Clinical Ethics: A Practical Approach” at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India. The conference was co-sponsored by the Christian Medical College and by the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, Texas. The conference featured presentations on a variety of topics in clinical ethics by faculty from the United States and local faculty. Dr. Moskop gave three presentations, “Ethics and Organ Transplantation,” “Advance Directives and the Right to Die,” and “Ethical Issues in Embryonic Stem Cell Research.”