Monday, March 30, 2009

Alumni Update: Trinh Tran teaching in Vietnam

Trinh Tran (BA International Affairs 2006) sends an update from Phouc Loc, Vietnam, a town about 2 hours from Saigon, where she has been teaching English for the past few weeks at a school run by the Catholic Order of the Daughters of Charity. The school trains young women from rural and poor areas of Vietnam in the skills necessary to obtain positions in the hospitality industry.

While Trinh remains busy teaching English, she also mentions that she is learning a lot from her students, calling them "full of spirit and kindness." She most enjoys teaching new words and phrases and testing her students on them throughout the day.

Trinh sends her best wishes from Vietnam and would like to let everyone know that, if they wish to help the school, English-language cookbooks are greatly needed. Cookbooks can be sent to the address provided below.

Di An Binh-Co Trinh
Trung Tau Day Nghe Phuoc Loc
Tan Thanh Ba Ria, Vung Tau
Vietman

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Professor Brian Richmond Recently Featured by NPR, Science

Professor Brian Richmond was featured on the February 26 edition of NPR’s (National Public Radio) “All Things Considered” discussing an article he co-wrote in the February 27 Science reporting the discovery of a set of 1.5 million-year-old human ancestor footprints in Kenya. These footprints show the earliest direct evidence of modern human bipedalism.

Ancient hominin footprints are extremely rare and the new prints fromthe site of Koobi Fora are the second oldest in the world after the 3.7-million year-old prints in Laetoli, Tanzania, making them one of the most important discoveries regarding the evolution of human walking.

The international team determined that the shapes of these prints significantly are more like those formed by modern humans compared to the prints from Laetoli, Tanzania, which are dated to 3.75 million years and are believed to have been formed by Australopithecus afarensis.

The article, "Early Hominin Foot Morphology Based on 1.5-Million-Year-Old Footprints from Ileret, Kenya", is available online here

"All Things Considered" is available for listening via the National Public Radio website here and iTunes.

Associate Professor of Anthropology Brian Richmond is the graduate advisor for the Hominid Paleobiology Doctoral Program and associate editor of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.