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How ion bombardment reshapes metal surfaces

Ion bombardment of metal surfaces is an important, but poorly understood, nanomanufacturing technique. New research using sophisticated supercomputer simulations has shown what goes on in trillionths of a second. The advance could lead to better ways to predict the phenomenon and more uses of the technique to make new nanoscale products. (Distributed May 22, 2012)   Read the story

Physical properties predict stem cell outcome

Stem cell potential: Stem cells have the potential for becoming different kinds of tissue, but certain characteristics — stiffness, viscosity, size — are telltale signs of what they’re optimized to become.
Tissue engineers can use mesenchymal stem cells derived from fat to make cartilage, bone, or more fat. The best cells to use are ones that are already likely to become the desired tissue. Brown University researchers have discovered that the mechanical properties of the stem cells can foretell what they will become, leading to a potential method of concentrating them for use in healing. (Distributed May 21, 2012)

Bogues to direct Slavery and Justice Center

B. Anthony Bogues: The Harmon Family Professor of Africana StudiesInaugural Director, Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice
B. Anthony Bogues, the Harmon Family Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University, has been named inaugural director of the University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Creation of the center was among the recommendations made in the Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. (Distributed May 22, 2012)

People with paralysis control robotic arms using brain-computer interface

One small step: A 58-year-old woman, paralyzed by a stroke for almost 15 years, uses her thoughts to control a robotic arm, grasp a bottle of coffee, serve herself a drink, and return the bottle to the table.
A new study in Nature reports that two people with tetraplegia were able to reach for and grasp objects in three-dimensional space using robotic arms that they controlled directly with brain activity. They used the BrainGate neural interface system, an investigational device currently being studied under an Investigational Device Exemption. One participant used the system to serve herself coffee for the first time since becoming paralyzed nearly 15 years ago. (Distributed May 16, 2012)

Pollination with precision: How flowers do it

It's all about the prevention of ‘polytubey’: Flowers make certain that gamete fusion has successfully occurred before other pollen are repelled. That allows the process of fertilization to continue if the first pollen grain turns out to have been a dud.
Pollination could be a chaotic disaster. With hundreds of pollen grains growing long tubes to ovules to deliver their sperm to female gametes, how can a flower ensure that exactly two fertile sperm reach every ovule? In a new study, Brown University biologists report the discovery of how plants optimize the distribution of pollen for successful reproduction. (Distributed May 17, 2012)
The 38th Medical Commencement

Alpert Medical School to award 78 M.D. degrees

Care of the sick, promotion of health, service of humanity: All Brown M.D. classes have taken a version of the Hippocratic Oath prepared by the University’s first M.D. graduating class for its Commencement at the First Unitarian Church in 1975.
The Warren Alpert Medical School Class of 2012 Commencement ceremony begins at 11:15 a.m. Sunday, May 27, 2012, in the First Unitarian Church. Speakers include Harvard’s Dr. Joseph Martin, who will discuss the doctor’s role in health care and research changes. (Distributed May 21, 2012)

Clergy can fight HIV on faith-friendly terms

Spreading the word: Pastors march in Philadelphia to help stop the spread of HIV. Pastors say they can reinforce public health messages about testing and social justice that are faith-friendly.
In the United States, where blacks bear a disproportionate burden of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, black religious institutions could help turn the tide. In a new study in PLoS ONE based on dozens of interviews and focus groups with 38 of Philadelphia’s most influential black clergy, physicians and public health researchers find that traditional barriers to preaching about HIV prevention could give way to faith-friendly messages about getting tested and staying on treatment. (Distributed May 16, 2012)
2012 Doctoral Theses

Hussein Banai studies democracy in context

“Of the people, by the people” respects the local context: A billowing green banner, inscribed with names, messages, and dates, flies on the Brooklyn Bridge — part of post-election pro-democracy demonstrations in New York and inside Iran.
On the surface, democracy, a system practiced by countries around the world, seems like a simple concept. But digging deeper, Hussein Banai found that it’s much more complex than the centuries-old tenets of “Of the People, By the People, For the People.” In the research that will earn him his Ph.D. this spring, Banai found that context also plays a role in how democracy is defined. (Distributed May 16, 2012)
The 244th Commencement

Graduate School to award more than 720 degrees

Brown University’s Graduate School will celebrate its graduates, and several individual honorees, at its Commencement Convocation Sunday, May 27, 2012, on Lincoln Field. (Distributed May 21, 2012)

Five-limbed brittle stars move bilaterally, like people

Why bother with turns or pivots?: The brittle star doesn’t turn as most animals do. It simply designates another of its five limbs as its new front and continues moving forward.
Brittle stars and people have something in common: They move in fundamentally similar ways. Though not bilaterally symmetrical like humans and many other animals, brittle stars have come up with a mechanism to choose any of its five limbs to direct its movement on the seabed. It’s as if each arm can be the creature's front, capable of locomotion and charting direction. Results appear in the Journal of Experimental Biology. (Distributed May 10, 2012)
Brown and D’Abate Elementary School

A partnership beyond the classroom

Little kids, big kids: All learners: Nearly 160 Brown students spend more than 500 hours a week at the D’Abate Elementary School in Olneyville. The Brown kids may tutor and teach, but everybody is learning.
For 12 years, Brown University has partnered with William D’Abate Elementary School in Providence’s Olneyville neighborhood to bring after-school programming, in-class tutoring, and summer camps to students there. While the programs are a learning experience for everyone involved, the hope is that some lessons will have effects that last long after graduation. (Distributed May 9, 2012)

Feeding tubes may worsen pressure ulcer risk

In the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers report that despite the conventional wisdom that feeding tubes help dementia patients resist pressure ulcers, feeding tubes actually are associated with an increased risk of ulcers developing. The tubes also don’t promote healing. (Distributed May 14, 2012)
Opening June 9 at the Bell Gallery

Rolemodelplaytime explores identity in play

Kent Rogowski, Bears 45  (2006)C-print, 16 x 20 inches
Opening June 9, 2012, at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, rolemodelplaytime is an imaginative exhibition featuring works in a variety of media that explore the way we create lasting identity through play. Rolemodelplaytime includes works by Hannah Barrett, Caleb Cole, Jane Maxwell, Randy Regier, Kent Rogowski, and TRIIIBE. (Distributed May 8, 2012)
2012 Doctoral Theses

Brian Reggiannini figures out who’s talking

Real-time tracking of who’s talking: With the right algorithms and signal processing software, an array of button-size microphones placed around the perimeter of a room can identify, follow, and record each of several people as they move about, interrupt each other, and converse.
If computers could become ‘smart’ enough to recognize who is talking, that could allow them to produce real-time transcripts of meetings, courtroom proceedings, debates, and other important events. In the dissertation that will allow him to receive his Ph.D. at Commencement this year, Brian Reggiannini found a way to advance the state of the art for voice- and speaker-recognition. (Distributed May 14, 2012)
2012 Doctoral Theses

Daniel Block and the ‘feel of not to feel it’

Daniel Block: “One of the many ways Romanticism remains contemporary is in our desire for evocative history.”
The History Channel and other outlets insist that knowing about the past is not enough: It must come alive and we must feel it. But are our emotions and sentiments a reliable guide to historical understanding? Daniel Block finds that Wordsworth, Keats, and other British Romantic writers may have something new to offer about the use and value of our affective experience. (Distributed May 4, 2012)
2012 Doctoral Theses

Julie Hunter and the beat of a different drum

Where better to learn the art and significance of drumming?: A drummer herself, Julie Hunter did much of her thesis research in Ghana, using the rise of women drummers as a lens to study historical, social, cultural and gender-role change.
Cultural taboos have long kept Ghanaian women away from drumming. But two significant political movements began to break down those barriers in the last 60 years, bringing women into the musical fold. It is that shift — and its political, social, and cultural implications — that Julie Hunter studied to earn her Ph.D. this spring. (Distributed April 23, 2012)
2012 Doctoral Theses

Matthew Heard calms fear of invasive plants

Along the coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, ecologist Matthew Heard, who earns his Ph.D. this spring, has found that native and exotic plant species have managed to strike a delicate but sustained balance. It is time, he says, for people to stop thinking of new species as necessarily bad. (Distributed April 16, 2012)
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