Dedman College Research – Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences

Every vote counts

SMU News Originally Posted: September 16, 2o20 DALLAS (SMU) – The upcoming presidential election will be the first opportunity to vote for many SMU students, including Wilson Russ, and the University is lining up opportunities for these new voters to learn more about the process. But Russ is going to learn the election system from a very personal angle – by volunteering to serve as a poll worker on Nov. 3. “I’m very excited to vote for the first time and I’m thrilled for the opportunity to serve as a poll worker during this turbulent 2020 year,” said Russ, a sophomore studying political science, public policy, economics. He answered a call for young volunteers to help fill the gaps left by older Americans who traditionally staff polling [...]

By Katherine Nickles| 2020-09-17T07:59:23-07:00 September 17th, 2020|Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, Economics, Political Science, Undergraduate News|Comments Off

How college students are stepping up to help make returning to classes safe amid COVID-19

USA Today Originally Posted: September 1, 2020 AUSTIN — As a junior at Southern Methodist University, Austin Hickle says the challenge of safely reopening classes amid the coronavirus pandemic and affording young Texans the rewards of the college experience falls directly on the shoulders of students. "This COVID pandemic is one of our generation's defining moments. We have to step up to the plate," said Hickle, who is majoring in political science and economics and is also SMU's student body vice president. "Students have never (before) been asked to carry this (amount of) responsibility." READ MORE

By Katherine Nickles| 2020-09-11T08:11:45-07:00 September 11th, 2020|Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, Political Science, Undergraduate News|Comments Off

Wildfire Archaeology and the Burning American West

Sapiens Originally Posted: September 9, 2020 As I type, the American West is ablaze with more than 100 devastating wildfires. Many of these are record-setting in both size and intensity. Several, including one in my home state of Colorado, have been so intense they’ve created their own thunderstorms. Science shows that wildfires have been getting more destructive over the last several decades. The question is: Why? Are they getting worse due to climate change? Or is it due to human encroachment on once remote forests? Or, counterintuitive as it may seem, are federal wildfire suppression policies to blame? In the U.S., forest fire management policies date back to the 1880s, shortly after Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872. After a roughly 50-year period in which some [...]

By Katherine Nickles| 2020-09-10T10:26:14-07:00 September 10th, 2020|Anthropology, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, Dedman College Research, Faculty News|Comments Off

Dinosaurs’ unique bone structure helped them support their large weight

CNN Originally Posted: August 19, 2020 Some dinosaurs were so big the ground would have shaken while they walked. But how did they carry such massive loads? Dinosaurs likely had a different bone structure to mammals and birds that was uniquely capable of supporting huge weights, a new study has found. A team of paleontologists, mechanical and biomedical engineers examined the upper and lower leg bones of duck-billed hadrosaurs and sauropods, long-necked and big-bodied plant eaters, whose fossils have been found on every continent. "The structure of the trabecular, or spongy bone that forms in the interior of (the)bones we studied is unique within dinosaurs," said AnthonyFiorillo, a Southern Methodist University paleontologist and one of the authors of the study that published Wednesday in the [...]

By Katherine Nickles| 2020-09-02T10:35:23-07:00 September 2nd, 2020|Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, Dedman College Research, Earth Sciences, Faculty News|Comments Off

No one can predict the crises a president will face, so it’s better to vote on character (OPINION)

Dallas Morning News Originally Posted: August 30, 2020 Jeffrey A. Engel directs the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News. (OPINION) The Dallas Morning News is publishing a multi-part series on important issues for voters to consider as they choose a president this year. This is the third installment of our What’s at Stake series, and it focuses on presidential leadership. Find the full series here. Surely you predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall? Tiananmen Square? You also expected San Francisco’s World Series earthquake, and anticipated that the Exxon Valdez would choke Alaska’s coast with oil. Of course you didn’t. Neither did President George H.W. Bush, who confronted them all during his first year in [...]

By Katherine Nickles| 2020-08-31T13:21:29-07:00 August 31st, 2020|Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, Dedman College Research, Faculty News, History|Comments Off

Contact tracing can stop COVID-19 — only if Americans allow government access to personal data

MSN Originally Posted: August 26, 2020 BY: Jo Guldi and Macabe Keiher Jo Guldi is an associate professor of history at Southern Methodist University. She teaches courses on data, text mining, and the history of capitalism. She is author of "Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State" and co-author, with David Armitage, of "The History Manifesto (2014)". Macabe Keliher is an assistant professor of Chinese history at Southern Methodist University. He is the author of "The Board of Rites and the Making of Qing China." Most Americans await a vaccine to end the pandemic and get us back to work. But the drama about vaccines and masks has obscured a practical answer to ending the pandemic that has already worked in other parts of the [...]

By Katherine Nickles| 2020-08-26T07:47:20-07:00 August 26th, 2020|Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, Dedman College Research, Faculty News, History|Comments Off

SMU virologist in NYT

New York Times Originally Posted: August 20, 2020 Drug Pitched to Trump for Covid-19 Comes From a Deadly Plant The chief executive of My Pillow, a Trump donor, claims oleandrin is a miracle cure for Covid-19. But no studies have shown that it is safe or effective, and the shrub it’s derived from is poisonous. An excerpt from the NYT article: So why would anyone think oleandrin could be a treatment for Covid? It’s not uncommon for plants — even poisonous ones — to generate interest as treatments for disease. Robert Harrod, a professor at Southern Methodist University, has studied oleandrin’s potential to fight a type of leukemia, for example. Although Dr. Harrod said that using oleandrin to treat the coronavirus was not yet more [...]

By Katherine Nickles| 2020-08-21T08:38:33-07:00 August 21st, 2020|Biology, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, Dedman College Research, Faculty News|Comments Off

What is oleandrin, the compound touted as a possible COVID-19 treatment?

C&E Chemical and Engineering News Originally Posted: August 20, 2020 Robert Harrod, a virologist in the SMU Department of Biological Sciences, has studied oleandrin’s ability to block human T-cell leukemia virus, type 1, a retrovirus that causes fatal blood cancer, from spreading to other cells in test tubes. “Even if (oleandrin) does make it into treatment of coronavirus as a therapeutic, this is going to have to be monitored very closely by doctors,” Harrod says. “It is a very dangerous compound.” https://cen.acs.org/biological-chemistry/natural-products/oleandrin-compound-touted-possible-COVID/98/web/2020/08

By Katherine Nickles| 2020-08-21T08:13:45-07:00 August 21st, 2020|Biology, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, Dedman College Research, Faculty News|Comments Off

Recent SMU PhD student in Computational and Applied Mathematics joins Columbia University on a prestigious Junior faculty position

Columbia University in the City of New York Originally Posted: July 1, 2020 The APAM Department is proud to announce the appointment of Dr. Lu Zhang as the Ju Tang Chu and Wu Ping Chu Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics Lu Zhang’s research interests are in the area of numerical and theoretic analysis of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) and applied mathematics in general. In particular, she focuses on developing high order discontinuous Galerkin methods in studying various PDEs with physical and biological backgrounds, such as advective wave equations, semi-linear wave equations, chemotaxis models, population dynamics models, etc. PDEs serve as the basic languages that describe the spatial-temporal dynamics of the phenomena within the physical and biological sciences. The challenges brought by the structural complexity and [...]

By Katherine Nickles| 2020-08-11T08:13:10-07:00 August 11th, 2020|Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, Dedman College Research, Graduate News, Mathematics|Comments Off

SMU creative writing professor shines spotlight on Black authors

Dallas Morning News Originally Posted: July 02, 2020 Author leads movement to fill bestseller lists with titles by Black authors Sanderia Faye is the author of Mourner’s Bench, a story about 8-year-old Sarah Jones coming to terms with the traditions of her community in 1960s Arkansas and the progressive nature of her mother, who is involved with the civil rights movement. Read More

By Katherine Nickles| 2020-07-29T11:15:47-07:00 August 3rd, 2020|Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, Dedman College Research, English, Faculty News|Comments Off