• John Casterline (Sociology), for “Child Well-Being in Egypt: Developing the Research Protocol."
  
  
• Marjorie Chan (East Asian Languages & Literatures), for “The 20th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics."
  
  
• Wondwossen Gebreyes (Veterinary Preventive Medicine), for “Antimicrobial Resistant Foodborne Pathogens and Impact on Public Health” in East Africa.
  
  
• Jesse Kwiek (Center for Microbial Interface Biology, College of Medicine), for “Does Placental Viral Sequestration Promote HIV-1 Mother-to-Child Transmission in Malawi?”
  
  
• Kazimierz Slomczynski (Sociology), for “Sociological Surveys of Public Opinion in Central and Eastern Europe: Cross-National Comparative Studies."
  
  
• William Tyler (East Asian Languages & Literatures), for “OSU/Nichibunken Joint Research Project on the Japanese Novelist Ishikawa Jun."
  
  
• Kwang-Kyoon Yeo (East Asian Studies Center), for “Unpacking ‘China’: Regional, Linguistic, and Cultural Diversities” Conference.
  
  
• Richard Yerkes (Anthropology), for “Patterns of Population Nucleation and Dispersal in Prehistoric Village Societies on the Great Hungarian Plain, and Collaboration on Bikeri Book Manuscript."

Child Well-Being in Egypt: Developing the Research Protocol

Principial Investigators:
John Casterline, Sociology
Grant Amount: $3,000 from OIA (add’l $2,000 from the Middle East Studies Center)

Child cohort study in Egypt. A child cohort study follows a set of children from an early age – typically birth – through early childhood (and sometimes beyond), gathering data on a variety of health, cognitive, and social dimensions. Child cohort studies are now common in high-income countries, highly valued for the intrinsic strength of design and for their potential to deliver policy-relevant findings about child well-being and its determinants. But to date there have been few such studies in middle- and low-income countries. The proposed Egypt Child Cohort study will focus on outcomes: physical health, including nutritional status; cognitive development; school readiness. Key explanatory variables will include: environmental exposure (of concern in both urban and rural Egypt); parental (especially maternal) care; neighborhood attributes (physical, economic, and social); genetic factors.
 

The 20th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics

Principal Investigator:
Marjorie Chan, East Asian Languages & Literatures
Grant Amount: $5,000

The North America Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL) occupies a special place in the history of Chinese linguistics, in being the first international conference series on Chinese linguistics, and with enthusiastic support by scholars through hosting of the conference and participation at the conference over the years. NACCL has been held in Canada and the United States, and has been hosted at some of this country’s most prestigious institutions. It is an internationally-recognized conference on Chinese linguistics that is held annually, with topics covering all areas of the field. The Proceedings volumes are a testament of the wealth of new research that has been presented at NACCL conferences over the years.

As one of the three organizers of the first NACCL conference at Ohio State in 1989, an apt tribute to its success in the intervening years is the invitation of scholars who have contributed significantly to NACCL’s birth and growth. In addition to their scholarship, the choices of invited speakers are also based on their pivotal roles in the history of NACCL. In addition, a special guest and speaker, representing the “Canada” portion of the NACCL conference is Professor Edwin G. Pulleyblank, at the University of British Columbia, Canada, for whom the Proceedings volume will be dedicated, in honor of his 85th birthday. NACCL-20 will give our students an opportunity to present at the conference, attend it, as well as meet OSU alumni and other scholars in the field. Former graduates will also have an opportunity to reunite with former classmates and professors, and meet our current students.
 

Antimicrobial Resistant Foodborne Pathogens and Impact on Public Health in East Africa

Principal Investigator:
Wondwossen Gebreyes, Veterinary Preventive Medicine
Grant Amount: $4,000

Sub-saharan Africa, particularly East Africa, is among the poorest regions in the world. Food and water-borne pathogens are rampant not only due to poor hygienic conditions but also due to decreased immunity of the populations that resulted from malnutrition and high prevalence of HIV/AIDS. These conditions exacerbate the dissemination of bacterial zoonotic diseases, such as Salmonellosis and campylobacteriosis, and increase their morbidity and mortality rates. The problem is further compounded by the occurrence of multi-drug antimicrobial resistant strains.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) through its various centers, mainly National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Fogatry International Center (FIC) is highly interested to fund projects in developing countries that address food safety issues and particularly antibiotic resistance. In addition, the US Department of Agriculture could also be an important funding source through Foreign Agriculture services and science and education (SAE).

Does Placental Viral Sequestration Promote HIV-1 Mother-to-Child Transmission in Malawi?

Principal Investigator:
Jesse Kwiek, Center for Microbial Interface Biology, College of Medicine
Grant Amount: $4,700

HIV-1 is one of the greatest threats to public health worldwide, reducing life expectancies in many sub-Saharan countries to pre-vaccination era levels. Last year, in many sub-Saharan African countries, the HIV-1 prevalence among pregnant women attending the antenatal clinics exceeded 20%, and 530,000 children were newly infected with HIV-1. To implement pediatric HIV-testing in Thyolo, Malawi and to collect blood and placental biopsies from HIV-infected and non-transmitting and HIV-transmitting women. These isolates will be used to determine if the cellular location and genomic sequences of HIV-1 are associated with HIV-1 mother-to-child (MCTC) transmission.  The establishment of pediatric HIV-1 testing in Thyolo, Malawi will create a unique cohort of samples that will allow Dr. Kwiek to answer basic, but currently unanswered, questions about the virology of HIV-1 MCTC.

Data and tissue from this study will provide a virologic framework to identify the role of the placenta in HIV-1 mother-to-child transmission. The findings will be synthesized into a manuscript and also used to generate hypotheses for a NIH R01 proposal targeted to the Pediatric AIDS Division of The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
 

Sociological Surveys of Public Opinion in Central and Eastern Europe: Cross-National Comparative Studies

Principal Investigator:
Kazimierz Slomczynski, Sociology
Grant Amount: $4,000

The purpose of this conference is to bring together scholars from the international academic community interested in the state of public opinion survey research in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to discuss methodology, theory and social problems related to survey research in CEE countries and examine and harmonize inter-regional data sets (such as the Value Survey, International Social Survey Program and European Social Survey) with region-specific data sets (such as Social Stratification in Eastern Europe after 1989, Poverty, Ethnicity and Gender in Eastern Europe, the Polish Panel Survey, and the South-East European Social Survey).  The invited specialists will demonstrate, in practical terms, how major comparative datasets of the region could be harmonized and used for various unexplored topics. Generally, this conference has a potential to generate creative new ideas by providing an international forum for established researchers and young up-and-coming scholars of the United States, and Central and Eastern Europe to discuss the future of public opinion survey research in CEE.  The workshop will involve students from the Summer School in Social Sciences, called Central and Eastern Europe in Comparative Perspective: Assessing Social and Political Change, which is organized by the Department of Sociology at the Ohio State University and the Graduate School of Social Research at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, the Polish Academy of Sciences, in Warsaw during July 2008.
 

OSU/Nichibunken Joint Research Project on the Japanese Novelist Ishikawa Jun

Principal Investigator:
William Tyler, East Asian Languages & Literatures
Grant Amount: $2,600

The seminars sponsored jointly by OSU’s Office of International Affairs and the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto, Japan will bring together scholars of the literature of the Japanese novelist Ishikawa Jun (1899-1987) with the first seminar laying the groundwork for the second. Leading this project is William J. Tyler, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature, Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures, Ohio State University and Sadami Suzuki, Professor of Japanese Literature at Nichibunken. Tyler and Suzuki are the world’s authorities on Ishikawa’s fiction.  Ishikawa was a leading figure in Japanese literary circles. He was a pioneer modernist writer in the 1930s, won Japan’s most distinguished literary award,  wrote essays written under the penname Isai and a literary column that appeared regularly in the Asahi Newspaper during the 1970s and 80s, and at the time of his death, he was referred to as the last of Japan’s great literati writers.

The first seminar will held on Saturday, March 8 at Nichibunken. It will bring approximately 30-35 scholars from all parts of Japan to Kyoto for a full-day of discussions of Ishikawa’s most representative postwar novel, Aratama/The Bad Boy of the Gods, as well as new directions to pursue in interpreting Ishikawa’s fiction written during the years after 1960 when his works assumed a more streamlined, cinematic and experimentally postmodern style. Nichibunken will make its facilities available for the seminar. It has also budgeted funds in its 2008-2009 fiscal year (which commences April 2008) for the larger international conference to be held in July 2008.
 

Unpacking ‘China’: Regional, Linguistic, and Cultural Diversities - Conference

Principal Investigator:
Kwang-Kyoon Yeo, East Asian Studies Center
Grant Amount: $5,000

Since the 1990s as an emerging world power beyond the East Asian region, China has been one of the most speculated, researched, and analyzed topics in academia, mass media, and policy debates in the United States. However, the majority of studies and analyses on the topic have been framed within a simulacrum of China based on the imagined homogeneity of its history, people, and culture. This monolithic image, an awakened dragon to the call of the global capitalism, has shaped not only the studies of history, society, and culture of China, but also dominated the policy debates and public imagination of China in the United States. Considering the significance of policy makers’ perception on other countries in implementing foreign policies, this static image of China might hinder the development and implementation of more effective and accommodating strategies toward the most populous country on earth.
By convening scholars working on diverse local, linguistic, and cultural identities within China, this conference will highlight the heterogeneous and dynamic inner workings of China, and examine how the representation of the homogeneity of China as a nation is constructed, reproduced, and maintained both inside and outside China. Consisted of three panels focusing on regional, linguistic, and demographic diversity in China, this conference will expand a new understanding on the emerging world power as a heterogeneous nation-state constituted of various localities, diverse identities, and contesting visions in the past and present.
As an end product of the two-day conference at the Ohio State University from May 9 to 10 (2008), the organizers plan to publish an edited volume on “multicultural China: the past and present” based on the presentations, discussion, and follow-up communications.
 

Patterns of Population Nucleation and Dispersal in Prehistoric Village Societies on the Great Hungarian Plain, and Collaboration on Bikeri Book Manuscript

Principal Investigator:
Richard Yerkes, Anthropology
Grant Amount: $3,285

Funding is requested to cover the costs of airfare, van rental, and room and board so that the applicant can join other members of an international research team for two weeks of collaboration in Hungary during spring, 2008 to complete preparation of a book ms., Bikeri: Two Copper Age Villages on the Great Hungarian Plain that summarizes seven years of research on the development and dispersion of farming into Europe, and visit several archaeological sites and assess their potential for future research. We must visit the sites to determine which of them will be included in external grant proposals that we will plan while we are in Hungary. The trip is also necessary for our team to renew relationships with local officials and land owners and apply for permits.

The goal is to collect data that can be used to examine the social, environmental, and economic processes that led to changes in farming and herding practices by the prehistoric agricultural communities of the Great Hungarian Plain and to the cycles of settlement nucleation and dispersal. The proposed research building on and expands the ongoing studies of our Körös Regional Archaeological Project and will contribute to anthropological understanding of long-term social dynamics and ecological understanding of changing relationships between agriculturalists and their environments over time.