The School of Business and Writer's Place Partnership at The College of New Jersey

Like many institutions, The College of New Jersey, a public college with an undergraduate student population of about 6000, is grappling with the role and quality of undergraduate writing. Moreover, we are doing so in the context of a recent curricular revision through which all courses were transformed from 3credits to 4-credits and departments in the liberal arts and professional schools have begun to develop writing intensive courses. One goal driving this curricular revision was to have students dive more deeply into the subjects they study by writing more and better. Through this curricular change, we wrestled with questions such as “how will changes in the curriculum affect what kind and how much writing students do?” and “what effect will curricular transformation have on the balance between content and writing?” A key concern for many faculty centered on not being sure how to teach writing and to respond to student papers. As our community focused attention on these matters, we discovered unexpected and fruitful opportunities for collaboration across program and disciplinary lines. One such collaboration between The School of Business and The Write Place began last year in response to faculty concerns about the quality of student papers.University Writing Cente

Saying and Doing: Speech Actions, Speech Acts and Related Events

The question which this paper examines is that of the correct scope of the claim that extra-linguistic factors (such as gender and social status) can block the proper workings of natural language. The claim that this is possible has been put forward under the apt label of silencing in the context of Austinian speech act theory. The ‘silencing’ label is apt insofar as when one’s ability to exploit the inherent dynamic of language is ‘blocked’ by one’s gender or social status then one might justly be said to be silenced. The notion that factors independent of any person’s linguistic competence might block her ability to exploit the inherent dynamic of language is of considerable social as well as theoretical significance. I shall defend the claim that factors independent of a person’s linguistic competence can indeed block her ability to do things with words but I will show that the cases that have been previously considered to be cases of illocutionary failure are instances of rhetic or locutionary act failure instead. I shall refine the silencing claim as previously advanced in the debate in at least one fundamental respect. I also show that considering the metaphysics of speech acts clarifies many of the issues previously appearing as thorny bones of contention between those who hold that the only notion of silencing that is coherent is that of physically preventing someone from speaking or writing and those who hold the opposite sort of claim sketched above

Phonon dispersion curves of two-dimensional colloidal crystals: on the wavelength dependence of friction

Digital video-microscopy measurements are reported of both elastic bandstructures and overdamped phonon decay times in two-dimensional colloidal crystals. Both quantities together allow to determine the friction coefficients along various high symmetry directions in q-space. These coefficients contain valuable information on the hydrodynamic forces acting between the colloidal particles. We find Stokes-like friction for phonons near the edge of the first Brillouin zone and vanishing friction coefficients for long wavelength phonons. The effect of this wavelength dependence in real-space is further investigated by simulating a crystal with constant friction (Langevin simulation) and comparing experimentally measured and simulated particle auto-correlation functions.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, submitted to Soft Matte

An endosomal beta COP is involved in the pH-dependent formation of transport vesicles destined for late endosomes

In this paper, we show that beta COP is present on endosomes and is required for the formation of vesicles which mediate transport from early to late endosomes. Both the association of beta COP to endosomal membranes as well as transport vesicle formation depend on the lumenal pH. We find that epsilon COP, but not gamma COP, is also associated to endosomes, and that this association is also lumenal pH dependent. Our data, thus, indicate that a subset of COPs is part of the mechanism regulating endosomal membrane transport, and that membrane association of these COPs is controlled by the acidic properties of early endosomes, presumably via a trans-membrane pH sensor

Functional dissection of COP-I subunits in the biogenesis of multivesicular endosomes

In the present paper, we show that transport from early to late endosomes is inhibited at the restrictive temperature in a mutant CHO cell line (ldlF) with a ts-defect in epsilon coatomer protein (epsilon COP), although internalization and recycling continue. Early endosomes then appear like clusters of thin tubules devoid of the typical multivesicular regions, which are normally destined to become vesicular intermediates during transport to late endosomes. We also find that the in vitro formation of these vesicles from BHK donor endosomes is inhibited in cytosol prepared from ldlF cells incubated at the restrictive temperature. Although epsilon COP is rapidly degraded in ldlF cells at the restrictive temperature, cellular amounts of the other COP-I subunits are not affected. Despite the absence of epsilon COP, we find that a subcomplex of beta, beta', and zeta COP is still recruited onto BHK endosomes in vitro, and this binding exhibits the characteristic properties of endosomal COPs with respect to stimulation by GTP gamma S and sensitivity to the endosomal pH. Previous studies showed that gamma and delta COP are not found on endosomes. However, alpha COP, which is normally present on endosomes, is no longer recruited when epsilon COP is missing. In contrast, all COP subunits, except obviously epsilon COP itself, still bind BHK biosynthetic membranes in a pH-independent manner in vitro. Our observations thus indicate that the biogenesis of multivesicular endosomes is coupled to early endosome organization and depends on COP-I proteins. Our data also show that membrane association and function of endosomal COPs can be dissected: whereas beta, beta', and zeta COP retain the capacity to bind endosomal membranes, COP function in transport appears to depend on the presence of a and/or epsilon COP

New High Field State of Flux Line Lattice in Unconventional Superconductor CeCoIn_5

Ultrasound velocity measurements of the unconventional superconductor CeCoIn_5 with extremely large Pauli paramagnetic susceptibility reveal an unusual structural transformation of the flux line lattice (FLL) in the vicinity of the upper critical field. The transition field coincides with that at which heat capacity measurements reveal a second order phase transition. The lowering of the sound velocity at the transition is consistent with the collapse of the FLL tilt modulus and a crossover to quasi two-dimensional FLL pinning. These results provide a strong evidence that the high field state is the Fulde-Ferrel-Larkin-Ovchinikov phase, in which the order parameter is spatially modulated and has planar nodes aligned perpendicular to the vortices.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure