Two years after two Harvard psychiatrists published a controversial paper on repressed memory, Brown University political scientist Ross Cheit is engaged in an academic dispute over that paper’s integrity and its implications. Cheit’s paper appears in the current issue of Journal of Trauma & Dissociation.
(Distributed July 7, 2009)
Mysteries of cognition
Scientists from Brown University and the University of Cincinnati found that a portion of the brain that handles decision-making also helps decipher different sounds. Details are in the July issue of the journal Psychological Science.
(Distributed June 30, 2009)
Brown University and Draper Laboratory have signed a memorandum of understanding to create a center for research and development of energy-related technologies. (
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News Advisory
A new report from the Institute of Medicine recommends 100 health topics that need priority attention as the nation sets out to reform and improve the health care system. Constantine Gatsonis of Brown University served on the IOM’s national committee of experts that compiled the June 30 report, Priorities For Comparative Effectiveness Research.
(Distributed June 30, 2009)
Brown University and Draper Laboratory intend to establish a center to turn promising research discoveries into products that help tackle energy challenges in the United States. The parties have signed a memorandum of understanding that represents the first step toward creating a Center for Energy Research.
(Distributed June 30, 2009)
The Economic Crisis: June 29, 2009
In an update sent June 29, 2009, to the University community, Provost David Kertzer and Executive Vice President Elizabeth Huidekoper discussed further budget reductions of $30 million that the University must make for fiscal year 2011. Payout from the endowment is expected to decline for the next several years. The text of the update follows here.
(Distributed June 29, 2009)
Biotechnology
Infected implants now have a foe. Brown University researchers have created a nanoparticle that can penetrate a bacterial-produced film on prosthetics and kill the bacteria. The finding, published in the International Journal of Nanomedicine, is the first time that iron-oxide nanoparticles have been shown to eliminate a bacterial infection on an implanted prosthetic device.
(Distributed June 25, 2009)
Hannelore Rodriguez-Farrar, a 1987 Brown graduate and former University trustee, has been named assistant to the president at Brown University. She begins her new duties July 1, 2009.
(Distributed June 18, 2009)
(Distributed June 10, 2009)
Hope for people with paralysis
The BrainGate2 pilot clinical trial has begun at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. BrainGate is based on research from the lab of John Donoghue, director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science. Donoghue and Dr. Leigh Hochberg, associate professor of engineering at Brown and a vascular and critical care neurologist at Massachusetts General, are leading the research.
(Distributed June 10, 2009)
Robert Miranda Jr., assistant professor (research) with the Brown University Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, will examine whether the drug topiramate can help reduce marijuana addiction among teens. The National Institutes of Health and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 awarded him more than $560,000 for the first year of what will be a two-year study. Miranda’s research grant is one of the first in the country to use stimulus funding.
(Distributed June 9, 2009)
Update and News Advisory
Due to a conflicting meeting at the White House, David Blumenthal, national coordinator for Health Information Technology for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will be unable to speak at this year’s Frontiers of Healthcare Conference. HHS Senior Adviser John Glaser will speak in his place.
(Distributed June 5, 2009)
Brown University hosts the inaugural Brown International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI), a major new faculty development initiative for promising young scholars from the Global South and emerging economies.
(Distributed June 5, 2009)
Researchers from Brown University and the University of Washington have found a new proxy to measure the impact of fossil fuel emissions on the global nitrogen cycle. The scientists use nitrogen isotopes found in a Greenland ice core to link nitrates to the rise in nitric oxides since the industrial period. The research also shows the greatest change in the isotope ratios occurred between 1950 and 1980, following a rapid increase in fossil fuel burning. Results are published in Science.
(Distributed June 4, 2009)
Dermatologist Martin Weinstock has found that sun-damaged rough patches on the skin known as actinic keratoses lead to more forms of skin cancer than previously thought. Weinstock and colleagues also determined that lesions can become invisible and resurface over time. Details are in the current issue of the journal Cancer.
(Distributed June 2, 2009)
