MILENE MORFEI attended the National Institute for the Teaching of Psychology in St. Petersburg, Florida, Jan. 3 - 6.

During her special leave from Wells College, LAURA PURDY has had three books published: Violence Against Women: Philosophical Perspectives, coedited, with Stanley French and Wanda Teays, Cornell University Press, 1998; Embodying Bioethics: Recent Feminist Advances, coedited, with Anne Donchin, Rowman and Littlefield, 1999; and Bioethics, Justice, and Health Care (a textbook), with Wanda Teays, Wadsworth, 2001.

CRAWFORD THOBURN’s original composition, "Shepherds, Awake!," received its first performance by the Sanctuary Choir of the Thoburn United Methodist Church in St. Clairsville, Ohio, on December 24, 2000. This anthem, scored for mixed voices with keyboard accompaniment, is a setting of a text by Isaac Watts and was commissioned by the church in celebration of the 200^th anniversary of its founding.

In late January, the Wells Chamber Singers, conducted by Professor Thoburn, released a new compact disk of music performed and recorded during their residency at the Millennium Youth Music Festival based in Bad Arolsen, Germany, last August. Included on the compact disk, which is available in the college bookstore, are classic selections for women’s voices from the 16^th through the 20^th centuries, as well as settings of American folksongs and spirituals.

"Cryptic Responses to Tissue Manipulations in Avian Embryos" by CHRISTINA WAHL and Drew M. Noden has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience, published by the Pergamon Press. This article is one of a series written in honor of Viktor Hamburger's 100th birthday, and in the spirit of his pioneering studies on the movements of cell populations within embryos, undertakes to describe some of the far-reaching morphogenetic effects on tissues that result from surgical manipulation of very young embryos. Viktor Hamburger was a student of Hans Spemann, who received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1935 for the discovery (with his student Hilde Mangold) of the vertebrate organizer--a group of cells in the very early embryo which dictate the animal's future body axis. Drew Noden was a student of Viktor's, and Christina was a student of Drew's. Thus the tradition of experimental embryology lives on at Wells. On March 9, Drew Noden will deliver a Science Colloquium on the topic of "how the embryo builds its head and puts muscles there". Drew is internationally renowned for his work on the neural crest and head development.