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Cuttlefish, dogfish, and puffer-fish are not common household pets, but Genevieve Flanders '09 is getting up-close and personal with them this summer. She is spending the summer as an intern at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Massachusetts where she works with those as well as Hermissenda crassicornis sea slugs.

It’s a tricky job to decide whether an event is a riot or a revolution, but Douglas Paetzell ’09 (Madison N.J.) is ready to make the call. The event is the 1967 Newark riot, a six-day uproar touched off by a white police officer arresting and beating a black cab driver. Paetzell, a history and economics major, has received an Emerson Grant to research the effect of the riots upon the residents of Newark and investigate the federal actions which may have caused it.

Why do people faint? Travis Blood '09 (Pepperell, Mass.) might be able to tell you. As a research intern at the Integrative Cerebral Hemodynamic Lab in Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, a facility of Harvard Medical School, Blood works on several projects designed to ascertain why people feel dizzy and what parts of the body account for the process of brain blood flow.

The emergency departments in United States hospitals are under increasing pressure due to overcrowding. Tamar Nobel ’08 (Mamaroneck, N.Y.), a Hamilton student particularly dedicated to emergency care, takes this problem as her research this summer. Funded by a Levitt Fellowship and working with Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics Selcuk Eren, Nobel is studying the availability of insurance coverage and hospital emergency department visits for asthma patients.

Stephen Okin ’10 (New York, N.Y.) is fascinated with current foreign policy, a fascination which led him straight to the big problems. The U.S. relies upon a rhetoric of liberty and democracy, but there are times when the promotion of democracy abroad conflicts with the need to secure national interests. Okin, a rising sophomore, has an Emerson grant and is working with Assistant Professor of Government Ted Lehmann to research this contradiction as regards the “Venezuelan threat:” the current political situation in Venezuela and its conflicting implications for U.S. foreign policy.

Blake Hulnick ’09 (Richfield, Conn.) is anything but an average, errand-boy intern. Working in the office of the King’s County District Attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y., Hulnick doesn’t fetch anybody coffee; instead, he gets to do exactly the same job as the lawyers and paralegals beside him. He is in the Early Case Assessment Bureau (ECAB) Department, the part of the office which screens, categorizes, and arraigns every arrest that takes place in Brooklyn.

As traders moved back and forth along the Silk Road, they carried more with them than luxury goods. Art, concepts, beliefs changed hands during the trade – but how to track this part of the commerce? Liuhong Fu ’09 (New York City, N.Y.) is willing to try. This rising junior will spend his summer working with Professor of Religion Jay Williams and researching the development and change in early Christianity on the Southeast coast of China.

While other folks in tidal regions are eating shellfish this summer, Adele Paquin '07 (Northampton, Mass.) is dissecting hers. Paquin, a biology major specializing in marine biology, has an internship this summer with a graduate student at Sonoma State University in California. She is working on a project which compares the ability of different coastal sites to support populations of mussels and their predator seastars.

All of us remember learning about recycling in school. We are taught to recycle plastics as much as possible, but how much plastic do scientists give back to the industry? Diana Di Leonardo ’10 (Malverne, N.Y.) asks this question in her research this summer. Concentrating on the recycling of plastic from cell and molecular biology labs, Di Leonardo and her faculty collaborator, Professor of Biology Jinnie Garrett, will research just how much is recycled in the workplaces of those who tell us to recycle.

At first glance, one might be jealous of the summer plans of Emily Smith ’09 (Ridgefield, Conn.): she is researching celebrities. But it’s not actually autograph-chasing in Hollywood; instead, the world politics major and art history minor student has a Levitt Center Fellowship to study the role of the Western celebrity as a social entrepreneur, with an emphasis on those celebrities active in the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa.