Brown University presents The Year of India — an exciting lineup of public lectures, art exhibits, academic conferences, media, and other explorations of India’s dramatic rise on the global stage.
(Distributed September 29, 2009)
A gift from Evelyn Y. Davis and the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation will support programs for Brown students interested in business careers.
(Distributed September 29, 2009)
The National Institutes of Health will fund a new five-year project headed by Stephen McGarvey, professor of community health and anthropology. McGarvey will lead efforts to conduct detailed genotyping of Samoan adults in order to document genetic variation and see whether it can be connected to propensities toward obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
(Distributed September 28, 2009)
Joseph Nyuma Boakai, vice president of Liberia, will speak at 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009, in Salomon Hall on the campus of Brown University. Boakai’s address, “Capacity Building for Liberia’s Future,” is free and open to the public.
(Distributed September 24, 2009)
Brown University scientists have made a major discovery: The moon has distinct signatures of water. The discovery came from a paper published in Science detailing findings from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), a NASA instrument aboard the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-1. Carle Pieters, professor of geological sciences at Brown, is the principal investigator of the M3 instrument and the lead author of the Science paper.
(Distributed September 23, 2009)
Federal Stimulus funds
Brown University has obtained two state-of-the-art instruments that will fundamentally widen its scope of research activities. The University will also receive funding for a new CAVE, the three-dimensional, interactive space used by researchers across disciplines. The latest awards bring Brown’s total of federal stimulus money for research to roughly $20 million.
(Distributed September 23, 2009)
In the most computationally intensive phylogenetic analysis to date, an international research team led by Brown University has found the first evolutionary branching for bilateral animals. The researchers determined that the flatworm group Acoelomorpha is a product of the deepest split within the bilateral creatures — multicelled organisms that, like humans, have symmetrical body forms. Results appear online in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
(Distributed September 23, 2009)
Katherine Gordon, former director of business development at Harvard University’s Office of Technology Development, now directs Brown’s Technology Ventures Office.
(Distributed September 22, 2009)
Jefferson science fellow
John Savage, professor of computer science at Brown University, has been named a Jefferson Science Fellow. Savage will advise the State Department on cyber affairs. The posting in Washington lasts one year. Savage is the first person from Brown to be selected and is also the first computer scientist to serve as a fellow.
(Distributed September 21, 2009)
September 17, 2009
As expected, health officials at Brown University are beginning to see students reporting influenza-like illness. As part of the state H1N1 surveillance network, the University submits one case per day for laboratory testing. Of the 10 cases tested to date, three have been confirmed as H1N1 influenza. The University sent the following message to the campus community today.
(Distributed September 17, 2009)
Chinua Achebe, the most celebrated and widely read African writer, has joined the Brown University faculty as the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and professor of Africana studies.
(Distributed September 15, 2009)
With some global equity markets declining nearly 30 percent, Brown University’s endowment strategies provided some protection. The return on endowment declined 23.1 percent for fiscal year 2009.
(Distributed September 9, 2009)
Inmates and Drug Addiction
Research from Brown University, the Miriam Hospital and their affiliated Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights has determined that just more than half of all federal and state prison systems offer viable heroin treatments. Details are published online in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
(Distributed September 8, 2009)
The 246th Academic Year
Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons will officially open the 246th academic year at Opening Convocation, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009. Johanna Schmitt, director of Brown’s Environmental Change Initiative, will deliver the keynote address to the 2,234 undergraduate, graduate, and medical students beginning their studies at Brown. The ceremony begins at 4 p.m. on The College Green.
(Distributed September 4, 2009)
Measurements of economic growth often fall short for developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and are rarely calculated at all for cities throughout the world. In a new working paper, three Brown University economists suggest a way to improve GDP estimates for such areas by using images of nighttime lights as seen from outer space.
(Distributed September 4, 2009)
