Practicing Sabermetrics: Putting the Science of Baseball to Work. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press,
Gabe Costa and J T Saccoman
Department:
Mathematics and Computer Science
More than thirty years ago, when the yearly Bill James Baseball Abstract began to appear, people started to look at the game differently. It was James himself who coined the word sabermetrics, defining it as the search for objective knowledge about baseball. In their first book, Understanding Sabermetrics, Rev. Costa (right) and Dr. Saccoman (center), along with colleague Dr. Michael Huber (left) of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Muhlenberg College, introduce the reader to the basics of sabermetric analysis. Their most recent book, Practicing Sabermetrics, which was featured at a book signing at SHU’s bookstore, goes beyond the explanation of the statistics and demonstrates their use in solving problems in baseball research. All three authors have published articles on sabermetrics or other baseball-related topics, and all have taught courses in sabermetrics. Fr. Costa is currently on leave from his position at SHU and is at USMA West Point.
The Bernard J. Lonergan Institute at Seton Hall University announces the launch of its journal The Lonergan Review. This first issue, edited by Msgr. Richard Liddy, director of the center, brings together the proceedings of a seminar on Lonergan’s thought held at the Università del Sacro Cuore at Piacenza, Italy in 2008. Fr. John Ranieri of Philosophy and Dr. Tony Sciglitano of Religious Studies also serve as editors. The mission of The Lonergan Review is to link explicit self-knowledge with the various academic disciplines and professions. In addition to editing duties, Msgr. Liddy also contributed chapters on “Method and Intellectual Conversion” and “Method in History”.
Memory Binding in Early Childhood: Evidence for a Retrieval Deficit (Child Development, 80(5), pp 1321-1328)
Marianne LloydDepartment:
Psychology
Child Development is the #1 journal in Educational Psychology and in the top 10 journals for Developmental Psychology, according to ISI rankings. Marianne Lloyd of the Department of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences recently published the article in collaboration with Nora Newcombe, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Temple University and Ayzit Doydum of Emory University. Their research helps to explain why we fail to remember most events from early childhood. In the study, 4- and 6-year old children studied a set of pictures, backgrounds, and pairings of pictures and backgrounds. The results showed that young children can remember the parts of what they have seen before as well as older children but they have difficulty remembering the way in which the pictures and backgrounds fit together. A synopsis of the study was published in the November issue of
The APA Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association (
view online edition »).
From Letter to Literature: Giovanni Verga, Matilde Serao and Late
Nineteenth-Century Epistolary Fiction (Modern Language Notes, vol.
124(1), pp 177-194)
Gabriella RomaniDepartment:
Modern Languages
Modern Language Notes , published by Johns Hopkins Press, is one of the oldest American periodicals specialized in literary criticism. Romani’s article probes the interconnections between the world of real letter-writing and epistolary fiction and analyzes what some critics have defined as “postal culture”--that is, the rise in the nineteenth century of social and cultural practices developed around the letter. The topic of this article is now being expanded into a book forthcoming in 2011.
The College Fear Factor focuses on the perspectives and classroom experiences of community-college students. Based on classroom observations as well as interviews with students and faculty, the book illuminates how students’ preconceptions and understandings can conflict with professors’ expectations, and how traditional college norms can actually pose obstacles to students’ success. Cox’s interest in the topic derives from her own experience as a community-college instructor in Southern California, and she has conducted research at community colleges across the country.
Dr Sharrett’s article on changing images of masculinity in contemporary films was named on the cover of a 2009 issue of Film International. This article focused particularly on revisionist westerns and continues a theme that Sharrett has developed in a recent article in Cineaste, as well (“No Country for Old Men: Comic Dread in the Modern Frontier”). Sharrett has been a frequent contributor to Cineaste, one of the most influential periodicals of film analysis and criticism.
Target Finding Time for Microtubules in a Confined Geometry. (Canadian Journal of Physics, vol. 87, pp 691-694)
Mitra Shojania Feizabadi
Department: Department of Physics
Dr. Feizabadi’s research has an emphasis on the interdisciplinary field of biophysics, revolving in a major way around theoretical cell division and microtubule dynamics, as well as the experimental characterization of cytoskeleton filaments through the implementation of optical trapping techniques. An image of microtubules from the Physics Laboratory is shown.
Assistant Professor Yinan He has published a book on the processes that support and impede the reconciliation of historic enemies. Her book was published by Cambridge University Press, generally considered one of the most prestigious academic presses in the world. Her research considers the reasons why Germany and Poland have experienced relative success at reconciliation, a success not yet evident between China and Japan despite years of efforts. The writing of this book received support from the Faculty Development Grants of Seton Hall University, as well as fellowships from the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University and the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program.
Long before the January 2009 gas transit conflict between Russia and Ukraine that left millions of Europeans without gas or heating in the middle of an especially harsh winter, Margarita Balmaceda (Whitehead School) was researching Russia’s use of energy as a foreign policy weapon and the connections between domestic governance, corruption, and energy security in the broader European area. The latest publication in this research campaign was titled “Corruption, Intermediary Companies, and Energy Security: Lithuania's Lessons for Central and Eastern Europe.” Balmaceda’s work in the region has been supported by grants from, among others, the Fulbright Program, Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Harvard University, and, most recently, the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki, Finland, where she will be a Visiting Fellow this Spring.
Wagdy Abdallah of the Department of the Department of Accounting in the Stillman School of Business recently published Accounting, Finance and Taxation in the Gulf Countries (Palgrave-MacMillan). This text provides insights on differences between business practices and expectations in the Middle East that are critical background for American companies planning to do business there. Dr Abdallah’s past work on this topic has led to articles in the International International Tax Journal of and the International Journal of Accounting, among others.
Comanche Ethnography: Field Notes of E. Adamson Hoebel, Waldo R. Wedel, Gustav G. Carlson, and Robert H. Lowie (University of Nebraska Press) Thomas Kavanagh Department: Department of Sociology and AnthropologyThomas Kavanagh of Sociology and Anthropology has published Comanche Ethnography: Field Notes of E. Adamson Hoebel, Waldo R. Wedel, Gustav G. Carlson, and Robert H. Lowie (University of Nebraska Press), the results of years of work. Hoebel, Wedel, and Carlson were among a group of six anthropologists who met with elders of a Comanche tribe in 1933 in an effort to record and memorialize some of the customs, legends, and history of the Comanche. These notes were unpublished for 70 years until Kavanagh’s work, which also includes the field notes of another anthropologist whose expedition ended in 1912.
An article in Sex Roles represented another result of a long and productive collaboration between two departments in Arts and Scences. The article, Training and mentoring of chemists: A study of gender disparity (Sex Roles vol. 58, 235-250) was published by Susan Nolan (Psychology), Janine Buckner (Psychology), Cecilia Marzabadi (Chemistry and Biochemistry) and Valerie Kuck (also associated with Chemistry and Biochemistry); all four authors are also part of Seton Hall’s Center for Women’s Studies. This interdisciplinary collaboration has also resulted in articles in Journal of Chemical Education, a book published by Oxford University Press, and a large grant from the National Science Foundation.
