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(04/20/10 12:49am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Hoosier Hills Food Bank, a Bloomington organization that distributes food to agencies in six Indiana counties, makes about 30,000 pounds of food available to the hungry every week.HHFB receives goods from restaurants, grocery stores and food distributors who donate excess or damaged products.More than 100 food drives contribute to HHFB annually, according to its website.HHFB programs such as Plant-a-Row for the Hungry and gleaning efforts have brought thousands of pounds of produce to the food bank, but in a HHFB press release from Monday, Julio Alonso, executive director, said protein is harder to come by.“It’s not donated in large quantities, and it’s expensive to buy,” he said. Indiana Pork, Feeding Indiana’s Hungry and the Indiana Soybean Alliance started the Million Meals Program with the goal of distributing one million pork meals per year to the hungry, according to FIH’s website.The group will donate 7,500 pounds of frozen pork to HHFB.“We distributed 29 percent more food last year than the year before, and we’re up almost 20 percent in the first quarter of 2010,” Alonso said in the press release. “Meat is the number one request of our member agencies, and it is something we can’t always provide.”
(04/09/10 1:02am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Friends of the Library launched a Campaign for Excellence in efforts to raise $25,000, all of which will go toward children’s programs.The money will help sustain reading programs, support children’s literacy and update the library’s children’s collection, according to a press release from the Monroe County Public Library.The library’s business is increasing, the release said, stating that “a record-setting 2.6 million books circulated in 2009 and there were 1.4 million visits,” but that doesn’t increase the library’s funding.To contribute to the campaign, visit www.mcpl.info/friends. If you have questions, call 812-349-3050 ext. 1080 between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m Monday through Thursday.
(04/07/10 12:56am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Hoosier Ride, an Indiana bus service, connects more than 30 cities throughout the Midwest, including Bloomington, Muncie, Indianapolis and Evansville, along with Louisville, Ky. and Kalamazoo, Mich. A result of the partnership between Miller Trailways, the Indiana Department of Transportation and Greyhound Lines Inc., the service has a few regional routes that are timed to connect with existing Greyhound service throughout the country, according to a press release sent by INDOT’s Will Wingfield.The service provides transportation options to work, airports, schools and other public and private services, said Reginald Addy, Miller Trailways’ director of Business Development, in the press release.“Intercity bus service is economical, fuel efficient and provides an important travel option for families, senior citizens, students who don’t drive, are without a personal vehicle, or just want to sit back and enjoy the ride,” Addy said.The service is partially funded with INDOT’s $2 million Federal Rural Transit grant.For tickets and schedule information, visit www.hoosierride.com.
(02/10/10 3:22am)
Hoosier Happenings
(12/04/09 5:03am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>In October, two Bloomington residents started an inclusive, professional lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organization at IU that’s aimed at people interested in scientific and technical fields. The National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals at IU seeks to shrink the “big disconnect” that exists between gays and the sciences, co-founder and Bloomington resident Kay Johnson said. When Johnson was a graduate student at Purdue University, she started the first collegiate branch of NOGLSTP, she said. Through it, she hoped to find faculty members in the scientific fields who were supportive and willing to mentor students who have come out and joined the GLBT community. “There isn’t really room for gay in the sciences because nobody’s talking about it,” Johnson said. “There’s a real ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy in the fields of engineering and sciences.” It’s not necessarily an anti-gay sentiment, but it’s not very welcoming, she said. Many GLBT students come out in college. Because they don’t put their sexual orientation on their resumes, their bosses and coworkers don’t necessarily realize they are part of the GLBT community, Johnson said. “All of a sudden, you’re in the closet again,” Johnson said. NOGLSTP at IU attempts to change that by providing a safe, inclusive space for people to meet others in their field and see examples of how members of the GLBT community can be out in their professional life. The IU branch of the organization has 13 members. Sophomore Chris Kase is a co-founder of NOGLSTP at IU and currently serves as the organization’s president. It’s important for people to feel like they have like-minded allies, Kase said. Johnson agrees. “You have to be able to be yourself,” Johnson said. Ara Scott, an IU student who belongs to NOGLSTP, is working on her degree in biology. She said she hopes to one day start a health care profession that’s specifically geared toward GLBT students, she said.“It’s something that hasn’t been done yet, so we can really shape it in a way that’s best for members,” Scott said. “It was a wonderful-sounding opportunity to meet other professionals and perhaps have an outlet for doing some different community projects.”
(10/29/09 3:54am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>During the past few years, an increasing number of bike rental programs have appeared at universities across the country. Now, IU is trying to implement one of its own.The IU Student Association is in the process of establishing a bike rental system that would allow students to borrow a bike for a certain amount of time to get around campus.Peter SerVaas, IUSA president, said the bike rental program seemed like the proper solution to provide an option other than “circling campus on a bus” and walking.Ben Schulte, IUSA’s chief of the bike rental program, said he thinks the bike rental program could be a success at IU with enough work.IUSA members are setting up meetings with administrators and suppliers to get the bike rental program started, Schulte said.The IUSA’s current plan for the program is tentative, pending the approval of IU administrators. IUSA members are trying to convince administrators to “see things the way we’re seeing them” in order to gain support, Schulte said.Students will be the primary focus of the bike rental program, but if administrators think faculty and staff should also be included, it might happen, Schulte said.If IUSA’s bike rental plan is accepted, bikes would be accessed through a swipe card. Schulte said they considered using student IDs for the program, but decided against it since they’re often lost or stolen. By linking a separate ID card to a credit card, rather than bursar accounts, people would have to take the proactive step of signing up, Schulte said. To be issued an ID, students would have to sign a waiver accepting full responsibility for the bike and its use.While the bike rental would originally be free, Schulte said they’d like to impose a time limit on how long someone can have a rental. If a student had a bike past it’s return time, their credit card would be charged a fee.Linking the IDs to a payment system will help IUSA account for damages to the bikes. Their initial proposal involves teaming with either a local bike shop or someone who can come in and do the repairs all at once, Schulte said. This would be cheaper than constantly having to employ someone who could fix the bikes, he added.While some schools have used donated bikes in their programs, Schulte said IUSA decided a standardized model would better suit their purposes. The initial cost would be greater, but it’d be easier to fix one type of bike than many.Schulte mentioned they might try to make the bikes noticeable to prevent stealing. IUSA has considered purchasing bikes with GPS chips on them, Schulte said. It would be a “huge” investment but could prevent theft in the long run, he said.IUSA will propose that the bikes should be unavailable at night and during the winter because of safety concerns, Schulte said.IUSA would implement a large fee to those who don’t return their bike by a certain time, in order to “deter people from either drinking and riding the bikes or riding in the dark when it’s potentially a lot more dangerous,” Schulte said.Also, IUSA is creating guidelines about where students are allowed to ride the bikes. Schulte said they’d like to prevent students from taking the bikes on main roads and encourage them to avoid “reckless situations.”IUSA already has some money ready to start the program. Members are working with Neil Theobald, IU’s chief financial officer, to apply for grants, SerVaas said. The amount of funding will help members decide whether to start a small rental program within the next year or wait a while to ensure that it becomes full-scale, he said.Before IUSA members were elected, they met with Kent McDaniel, executive director of IU Transportation Services, and Doug Porter, director of Parking Operations, to discuss the program, SerVaas said.IUSA hasn’t done any research on how many IU students would use the bikes, but Schulte said he thinks starting with 250 to 500 people would put them on the right track.“I don’t think popularity will be anything we’ll be shy on,” he said. “We’re going to start out relatively small to keep costs down and also to test the success of the program.”
(10/23/09 1:17am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU faculty members helped build a new digital camera. This one, however, is not about capturing nights out with friends.Professor of Optometry and director of IU’s Borish Center for Ophthalmic Research Ann Elsner is building a digital camera that uses laser scanning to screen for eye damage caused by diabetes and other sources of vision loss.Elsner is working with IU senior scientist Benno Petrig and optical engineer Matt Muller, Purdue University’s Henry Zhang, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and researchers at the University of California-Berkeley to build and test the camera.Recently, Elsner received almost $380,000 from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. Her company, Aeon Imaging, LLC, was awarded an additional $247,389 from the National Eye Institute’s Small Business Innovation Research program.Her camera uses near infrared light and laser scanning to create a high-contrast picture of the eye.By minimizing the amount of excess parts, Elsner said the device has a “very energy-efficient design” that’s easy to use, allowing companies to save money that would otherwise be spent on training and educating camera operators.Elsner didn’t say how much her camera will cost once it’s complete, but as more cameras are produced, the cost will inevitably decrease, she said.In about 10 months, Elsner will apply for more NIH funding.The first grant was approved based on the specifics of what, when and how Elsner planned to build the camera, she said.After Elsner and her team have fully completed assembling the camera, they will test it at IU on a minimum of 20 people. If everything works correctly, they will teach people at Berkeley how to use the device.It will be tested at the community-funded health centers in the area, Elsner said. People “with diabetes or suspicions of eye problems” go to these clinics where they are referred to specialists if necessary, she said.In order to receive the additional funding, Elsner and her team must provide data from 10 types of diabetes problems. They must show different examples of vision issues and prove that their new camera can find all the damage that can be found with other cameras.In order to get enough information, Elsner estimates they will have to perform at least 150 eye exams.Muller said they are most focused on low-cost eye care and are trying to “match or exceed existing cameras but at a much lower price.”It’s not about improving the cameras that are currently in use, Muller said. He said they focus on early detection. With the new camera, operators would decide if a person needs a full eye exam. More complicated, expensive technology will be used for a full, in-depth eye exam when the patient sees an optometrist, Muller said.Elsner said with her new device, she’s trying to get people who need a full eye exam to get one.“It’d be great if everyone got the full exam, but let’s face it – they’re not going to,” Elsner said. “The detection of diabetic retinopathy or any kind of eye disease related to diabetes is a growing problem.” Diabetes is the leading cause of vision loss in working adults.Any amount of vision loss suddenly makes people’s jobs harder, Elsner said. “The absolute main thing is to try to get the diabetes under control,” she said.
(10/13/09 3:14am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Stephanie Sanders and Erick Janssen, researchers at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, received a $423,500 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study barriers to correct condom use.“Consistent and correct use of male condoms can be a highly effective method of preventing the transmission of HIV and many STIs, but this method relies on men’s willingness and ability to use condoms,” according to a Kinsey press release.The study, which targets 18- to 24-year-old males, has two parts. First, subjects fill out a questionnaire about their condom use and any partner’s reactions.“The point of this study is to look at some of the problems that guys have when using condoms and find out why exactly does that happen and what can we do to overcome it,” Sanders said.Then, Janssen and Sanders review the questionnaires to see who is eligible for the lab study, in which researchers will measure men’s genital arousal in response to different stimuli.Researchers will ask men about the types of condoms they’ve been using, including whether or not the condoms have “special features” such as various textures, Sanders said.“The way a condom fits and feels can be very important to the experiences people have when they’re trying to use condoms,” Sanders said.Kathryn Brown, the health educator at the IU Health Center, teaches classes about contraception and other sexual issues.She said that she has heard common problems people have with condoms.People often don’t use enough lubrication or they use the wrong kind, she said, adding that she has also heard of people improperly trying to put a condom on, then flipping it over and continuing to use it.She said people should use a new one because the original could already be contaminated.The study’s funding was related to AIDS, but it’s also beneficial to the prevention of other STIs and pregnancy, Sanders said.Brown said people shouldn’t get frustrated if they don’t find the right condom immediately.“Don’t give up because it’s really the best protection we have,” Brown said, adding that there are many kinds of condoms available.Sanders agreed, saying condoms need to be easily incorporated into people’s sex lives.“Why don’t you shop around for other condoms?” Sanders asked. “There are tons of them out there, and maybe there’s another one out there that works for you.”Sanders said it’s important to think about how condoms affect people’s arousal when considering barriers to proper use.“If we can show that we’re trying to deal with these issues and give guys more confidence that they’ll be able to use them successfully, then I think that’s another way of promoting condom use,” Sanders said.
(10/12/09 4:13am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It takes more than talent to be named IU’s Big Man on Campus.“In order to be in this, you have to be a certain kind of person,” Phi Kappa Psi senior John Smolen said, sporting cutoff overalls and a brown mullet. “You have to be the energetic one, the enthusiastic one, the one that doesn’t mind getting embarrassed on stage.”On Friday night, Smolen performed “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood at the 10th annual Big Man on Campus, an IU variety show presented by Zeta Tau Alpha.During BMOC, the biggest single-house philanthropy in the country, 23 young men competed for the title in front of a packed IU Auditorium. The BMOC court consisted of Nick Koricanac, Andrew Morstein and Adam Rochford.This year, BMOC raised $190,000 for breast cancer research, thousands more than last year’s $178,00.“Oh my god,” Stern said. “I can’t believe (we) did that.”At about 4:30 p.m., people involved with BMOC came in from the rain to finish transforming the auditorium lobby into a football-themed area filled with clothing and concession sales, items for a silent auction and a green foam yard line.Cancer survivor Adrienne Harlow, IU women’s basketball coach Felisha Legette-Jack, Miss Indiana Nicole Pollard and IU’s Dean of Students Pete Goldsmith were some of the judges. They scored contestants on creativity, stage performance, fan enthusiasm and musical talent.Emily Stern, a Zeta co-philanthropy chair, said contestants’ fundraising factored into their scores. A contestant, however, cannot win BMOC if he has a horrible talent, she said.“With all of your help, we do believe there is a cure in sight,” Stern said. “We hope you are ready to team up with us and tackle breast cancer.”Harlow was booed when she said she attends Purdue University. Diagnosed with breast cancer when she was only 19 years old, Harlow was misdiagnosed twice by two different doctors, she said.“This time last year, I was just finishing up treatment,” Harlow said. “I made a goal to be here at the 2009 Big Man on Campus. And I made it,” she said as she got a standing ovation.Zeta members, with light pink ribbons contrasting their black dresses, lined up onstage to recite breast cancer facts.“As actress and breast cancer survivor Cynthia Nixon once said, ‘One day I will wear pink for no other reason than because I like the color pink, because one day, there will be no more breast cancer,’” said Sarah McNerney, Zeta’s co-philanthropy chair.When awards were given at the end of the show, Smolen was announced Mr. Congeniality.Phi Mu raised $12,000, the most money a sorority has ever raised for BMOC.Tyler Webb, from Theta Chi, was crowned BMOC. He raised $18,000.“When they announced that I had raised $18,000, I had no idea,” Webb said.Krista Robinson, who graduated in May 2008, was Zeta’s BMOC chair during her junior year.“I think it just pulls at your heart,” Robinson said. “Until we actually find a cure for breast cancer, we’re not going to stop fighting.”
(10/07/09 3:51am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>About 10 years ago in Nigeria, there was an optometrist who gave free eye exams to anyone who wanted them. A 12-year-old girl watched in awe as her fellow churchgoer tried to help so many people in one day.“Oh my gosh,” the girl thought, as she realized one person can have such a large influence on so many people’s lives. She hoped to eventually do the same.Linda Adebisi, now 23, is a second-year School of Optometry student at IU.“People wait until things get really bad before they see a specialist so there’s (little) preventative care (in Nigeria),” Adebisi said.Adebisi was born in Atlanta and moved to England when she was 2 years old. She then spent about 10 years in Nigeria. Her parents, she said, thought it was important to instill a strong Nigerian culture in her.When she was about 15, Adebisi decided she wanted to move back to the United States.“I feel like I didn’t get the chance to really live in America,” Adebisi said. “Why not take the chance?”She moved in with her uncle in Atlanta, where she attended high school. Adebisi received her undergraduate degree in biology from the University of West Georgia before she came to IU.Adebisi said she applied to about five graduate schools, and IU was the first one to offer her an interview.“As soon as I came here, I felt like it was really where I wanted to be,” Adebisi said.Adebisi said last year she received an e-mail from an optometry school faculty member about the AMBI scholarship, which gives African-American and Hispanic women $10,000 to use toward their schooling and careers.Adebisi doubted she’d be awarded the scholarship because only five women in the nation receive it.Luckily for Adebisi, she applied and along with four other women, was named the 2009 scholarship winners.Joe Boes, associate director for Recruitment and Marketing at the IU School of Optometry, has known Adebisi for about two years.Boes said Adebisi is conscientious, goal-oriented, positive, poised and articulate.“I think she embodies the whole idea of being an advocate and ambassador for this particular scholarship, and we’re just very fortunate and honored that someone of her caliber has been recognized for the AMBI scholarship,” Boes said. “I really have admired Linda in the short time I’ve known her.”Adebisi aspires to one day have her own practice and has set a goal to travel every year. However, she hasn’t been back to Nigeria since 2005 because travel costs are so expensive.Adebisi said her parents, older sister and brother still live in Nigeria.While her family visits her sometimes and Adebisi said she’d like to visit them again soon, she has no desire to live in Nigeria again.“This is home for me,” she said.
(09/25/09 3:01am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Jim Costello and his fellow students relied on each other to “feel our way around certain topics.”Costello, 30, did something no IU student had done before. He is the first Ph.D. recipient from IU’s School of Informatics and Computing. While professors were available to help with academics, Costello said he dealt with his peers on a personal, detailed level to determine how to get organized and figure out the best techniques for succeeding.“There wasn’t too much outside help,” said Amrita Mohan, one of Costello’s fellow doctoral students.Because Mohan and Costello had a couple common subjects, they talked through assignments together, Mohan said. Before joining the School of Informatics and Computing – which was established in 2000 – Costello ran track and field at the University of Iowa. He received his MBA from IU in 2004 and began his Ph.D. work the following year.For the first year or two, getting a Ph.D. involves a lot of class time, but it later becomes research focused with very little class, Costello said.While he was earning his master’s, Costello met Justen Andrews, an assistant professor in Informatics.“He would typically work most through the night. I’d ask him to do something and he’d send me the results at 5 in the morning,” Andrews said. “He’d do that again and again and again.”After getting his degree, Costello moved east with his wife, Lisa, a school psychologist he’d met at the Bluebird’s Hairbangers Ball in 2004, and his two dogs, Paige and Fossey. Costello said he’s always wanted to work in the medical field because his dad is an immunologist.This week he started his new job at Boston University, performing computation work to predict genes’ behavior.Andrews has high hopes for Costello.“As a graduate student he’s really made a significant contribution to the field,” Andrews said.
(09/18/09 2:30am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The National Science Foundation awarded IU a $10 million grant to create a new supercomputer called FutureGrid.Brad Wheeler, IU’s vice president for Information Technology said the grant for the supercomputer is different than other NSF awards.While most of the grants the NSF has given in the past are for one big supercomputer, IU will connect at least eight smaller ones to each other, Wheeler said.The computers, which will run different systems, will be spread throughout the country. Researchers can combine various programs and run experiments over an extremely fast network to see how they perform in different fields, like energy research and life sciences, Wheeler said.FutureGrid is an “experimental test bed” of supercomputers on which researchers test their software and simulations on different types of computers and networks. Because some machines are better suited to certain programs and research, the supercomputer allows people to see which matches their work best, Wheeler said.The research performed on supercomputers will eventually become “part of the public experience,” Wheeler said. While performing their experiments, researchers will also learn more about combining computers and networks, which have the potential to improve the public’s computer knowledge.Geoffrey Fox, director of the Pervasive Technology Institute and a professor of Informatics at IU, said FutureGrid will affect various industries.“FutureGrid will serve as a proving ground for newly distributed computing systems and will open up exciting new avenues for scientific, commercial and governmental collaboration and research,” Fox said in an IU press release.Wheeler said many people played a vital part in achieving the NSF grant.“This is truly the realization of the work Michael McRobbie started back with President Brand,” Wheeler said. “IU would not have been in the competition a few years ago, and now we’re winning. It really is a credit to the president, to the Lilly Endowment, to everyone that’s invested in us over the years.”
(09/11/09 4:18am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU is the only university in the world to have four scholars ranked as the best 100 entrepreneurship researchers. Better yet, they all made it in the top 50.Four IU entrepreneurship professors were listed as top researchers in a study, written by three Howard University scholars. The study was presented at the 2009 Academy of Management Conference in August.Donald F. Kuratko, Dean A. Shepherd and Jeffrey G. Covin from IU’s Kelley School of Business and David B. Audretsch from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs were ranked amongst the “100 Most Prolific Scholars in Entrepreneurship.” Shepherd was ranked second; Audretsch, seventh; Kuratko, 28th; and Covin, 45th.“It validates what we knew – that we have one of the greatest entrepreneurial faculties here at the Kelley School at IU,” Kuratko said.Kuratko, the executive director of the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, said it’s exciting to see the field grow. Some new, young faculty members have recently joined the Kelley School. He thinks they will focus on new and different topics, like social and international entrepreneurship, which will be valuable to students.Matthew Berman, a 2008 Innovation Fellow, said the Johnson Center taught him a framework for thinking that he can apply in business and other fields. The entrepreneurship program “teaches you how to think outside of the box,” he said, giving students the ability to consider traditional and nontraditional approaches to problems.Even though Kuratko was just listed as one of the best entrepreneurial scholars in the world, he will still work to further his research. He said he will focus next on corporations by “looking at how innovation is fostered and advanced inside of existing organizations.”Several students have benefited from the resources IU has for entreprueners.The Hoosier Hatchery, a business incubator for students to develop business ideas, will probably open sometime in November, Kuratko said. Zac Workman, who will graduate in May, founded ZW Enterprises and created a new energy drink around the beginning of his junior year.“The Johnson Center played a pretty big role in helping me with the struggles of starting a new business,” Workman said. He said the Center’s high ranking doesn’t surprise him at all. The faculty is inviting and supportive, always encouraging students to foster their own ideas, he said. Also this month, U.S. News and World Report published “2010 America’s Best Colleges” rankings. The report listed IU’s undergraduate entrepreneurship courses as fourth and ranked the Kelley School as the 12th best in the nation for undergraduate business studies, according to an IU press. “It was a great feeling to know that we were able to enhance IU’s reputation in this fashion because scholarship and research is the foundation of everything we do in academia,” Kuratko said.
(09/10/09 4:32am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The National Science Foundation gave IU cognitive scientists a five-year $3.1 million grant to create the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program.The program will focus on approaches to studying cognition, which is the process by which people know and learn.The process includes awareness, perception, reasoning and judgment.Most scientists tend to study cognition by breaking things down into smaller parts, said Randall Beer, cognitive science professor and principal investigator of the program.They also take the perspective that the brain is solely responsible for forming knowledge, Beer said.IGERT, on the other hand, will focus on how the interactions between the brain, its body and the environment affect cognition, Beer said. IGERT students have to recognize that bodies, environments, minds and other factors affect how people learn and understand the world around them. IGERT approaches the study of cognition in three ways: the situated approach, the embodied approach and the dynamical approach.The situated approach takes the structure of environment into account. For example, it would be similar to putting together a complicated recipe, Beer said. It would be difficult to remember the order in which the cook is supposed to combine ingredients because the recipe is not just in their head. The recipe is in the environment, Beer said.The embodied approach considers how one’s body aids in cognition. It would be difficult to reach into a purse and find coins without moving your hand, Beer said. If you move your body and manipulate it, it’s easier to find the coins.The dynamic approach has to do with the fact that learning happens in the world, and the world is constantly changing, Beer said. It helps when we need to apply what we know to different situations. The money awarded to initiate the IGERT program will go toward fellowships for graduate students. It will support roughly seven students in the first year and 11 students for each of the next four years. Also, an undergraduate summer program will be started to increase students’ interest in graduate school, Beer said.The program, which will begin in January 2010, includes 20 faculty members from various fields, including psychological and brain sciences, history and philosophy of science, the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Informatics and Computing.After the program’s first year is completed, IU faculty will nationally recruit graduate students for the program.Jennifer Trueblood, a first-year fellow, said studying cognition through the situated, embodied and dynamical approaches is a newer philosophy. IGERT will provide her with the opportunity to network with researchers from both domestic and foreign institutions who will provide her with feedback on how to best direct and perform her research.IGERT’s involvement with multiple areas of study will “show that this kind of integrative work is productive, against the traditional academic tendencies to separate and specialize,” said Tom Wisdom, one of the first-year IGERT fellows.
(09/09/09 4:30am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>An IU neuroscientist will soon begin research on how and why people make risky decisions.The National Institutes of Health awarded a two-year, $683,736 grant to Joshua Brown, assistant professor in the IU Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.The NIH grant, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, will allow Brown to study how certain areas of the brain can factor into a person’s decision to partake in risky behavior.Brown, who has been a professor at IU for three years, will perform his research in the Cognitive Control Laboratory in the Psychology Building. Three post-doctoral fellows and several graduate and undergraduate students will also work on the project.The brain can be divided into tens of thousands of small areas, Brown said. Using functional MRI and computer technology, Brown can track how some areas become more active when a risk is taken.In his research, Brown gives people choices that involve money. Subjects are free to choose between a small amount of money, without risk, or a large amount, with risk. If a person chooses to gamble for the larger amount, they could lose everything. People who are willing to gamble tend to be more likely to take other risks, such as using drugs, Brown said.Brown’s research will focus on the brain, disregarding outside factors such as environment and upbringing.Sometimes researchers need to “focus on one piece of the puzzle,” psychology professor Peter Finn said.“The more you know about the particular brain areas that are involved, the better prepared we are to design treatments that are aimed to target those brain areas,” Finn said.Brown said he hopes to learn how the brain functions in decision-making and how its circuitry is changed in people dependent on drugs or alcohol. When brain activity in people who abuse substances is measured, it’s almost as if the drugs control the function of certain parts of the brain, Brown said.“When people are faced with a difficult situation, subjectively you experience a kind of deliberation,” Brown said. Easy, habitual decisions such as food choices tend to involve much less deliberation than difficult decisions, he said.Risk-taking is an important factor in society, said Adam Krawitz, a post-doctoral fellow who will assist Brown. “We hope that this knowledge can actually be used to help with treating addictions,” he said. He said he hopes it will provide a better understanding of why people make decisions that might be harmful.While Brown hopes to come up with explanations for people’s decisions and contribute to the creation of addiction treatments, his research can also serve a preventative purpose. The “Just say no” and similar anti-drug advertisements could be more effective if researchers knew how they affect the brain, he said. Once that is discovered, businesses, advertisers, public health services and other industries will be able to better direct meaningful messages to consumers.“Now you can start to bypass people’s self-report and measure directly how their brain is responding to messages like that,” Brown said.
(09/04/09 3:02am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>One day after President Barack Obama gave a speech in Wakarusa, Ind., on Aug. 5, IU faculty met with government representatives and IU–Purdue University Indianapolis faculty to create a plan to research alternative energy systems.At the conference, attendees worked to create a guideline of ways for IU to increasingly participate in energy-related research, said Paul Sokol, director of IU Cyclotron Facility. The plan, Sokol said, should be presented this month.“IU won’t be able to tackle every issue related to energy research, so it is vital that we identify our top strengths and build on them strategically and systematically,” Sarita Soni, IU’s vice provost for research, said in an e-mail interview.By focusing on the school’s strong points, IU will be a competitive player in acquiring federal support in order to perform advanced, in-depth research, Soni said in an e-mail.During Obama’s Aug. 5 speech, he announced that the state will receive $400 million in grants toward energy and battery research. The majority of the money will go toward industries that will collaborate with the state’s educational institutions, Sokol said.During the next five years, however, Sokol said IU could receive about $50 million in financial support.Sokol said he thinks IU will benefit from being a large liberal arts school because energy-related issues deal with much more than technology, such as departments including education, the Environmental Science and in Public Affairs, law and engineering.John Rupp, a senior research scientist at the Indiana Geological Survey, is currently researching underground coal gasification and enhanced oil recovery using carbon dioxide injection. Just this week, he was awarded $282,000 from the Department of Education to continue his research. He said large universities like IU have a unique opportunity to work with other organizations to find cross disciplinary approaches to many issues, including environmental and energy research.Soni said IU will work with other state institutions to implement sustainable energy forms.“Institutions of higher education are key players as they bring together unique resources and expertise from diverse fields to discover, develop, deploy and demonstrate possibilities for solving problems such as the ones we face in energy,” she said in the e-mail.Still, Soni said the alternative energy push is about more than just universities and grants.“While our scientists are working hard on identifying alternative energy resources, society – that is all of us – needs to work on using our resources efficiently,” Soni said in an e-mail. “Some have described the energy problem as a ‘national security problem.’ If so, we all need to engage in finding solutions.”
(09/02/09 4:13am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>This year, IU opened its first new science department in more than 30 years.The Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry is located in Simon Hall, which was designed with the department’s needs in mind.The department has been in the works for seven years and was preceded by a graduate interdisciplinary program. It offers graduate courses as well as M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in biochemistry.“One of the things we lacked on this campus initially was a lot of infrastructure needed to do biochemistry,” said Carl Bauer, the first chairman of the department. “Many of this equipment cost millions and millions of dollars, so it’s really a big commitment by the University.”Suzanne Schwartz, the departmental manager and fiscal officer, said the department’s faculty comes from the interdisciplinary program.The new department will now administer the interdisciplinary graduate program, Bauer said.There are many divisions in biology and chemistry, making it hard to find enough biochemists to compete with other large universities. Because the biochemists were scattered throughout medical sciences, chemistry and biology and there was no central location or facility for them, it was hard to attract an adequate mass of biochemists on campus, Bauer said.The department consists of 74 students and two staff members. Simon Hall, which is 140,000 square feet, cost $55.7 million to build, Schwartz said. Nine million dollars of funding for the building came from the Simon family of the Simon Malls and Simon Property Group, Inc. Herb Simon is co-owner of the Pacers. IU was also given a $20 million state bond for the department’s creation.After the building was completed, Bauer said faculty was needed to fill all of the laboratories.“We decided that we had to focus our initial hires in a targeted area,” Bauer said. The best plan to have a “big impact really quickly” was to hire two or three people who were very skilled in their area, he said. Bauer found that Bogdan Dragnea and Tuli Mukhopadhyay worked in virus assembly and had collaborators in the area, who were soon hired. “Biochemistry was one of the missing pieces of the puzzle for what we needed for life sciences on this campus,” Bauer said, adding that “it was sorely needed for a long time ... It’s great that we’re finally catching up.”
(12/12/08 4:37am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Frank Kelley Edmondson, 96, former professor emeritus of astronomy at IU, died Monday at Bloomington Hospital.Born in Milwaukee and raised in Seymour, Ind., Edmondson first came to IU as a freshman in 1929. After receiving a Ph.D from Harvard, he returned to the University as a faculty member, where he worked for 46 years.Edmondson served as chairman of the astronomy department from 1944 to 1978. He was the first professor to broadcast lectures to other campuses through closed-circuit television.Edmondson served as vice president, president and chairman of the U.S. National Committee of the International Astronomical Union. He was a founding member of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy and treasurer of the American Astronomical Society.Edmondson was also the program director of astronomy for the National Science Foundation, from which he was awarded the NSF’s Meritorious Public Service Award.He was a statistical advisor and close friend to Alfred Kinsey, said Margaret Olson, his daughter.After retiring from IU, Edmondson wrote a book, “AURA and its US National Observatories,” which was published in 1997.Caty Pilachowski, the first Kirkwood Chair of Astronomy, knew Edmondson for about 30 years. She said she admired and respected Edmondson both as a person and an astronomer.“He was a man of really profound integrity,” Pilachowski said. “His vision of a national observatory that is open to all astronomers was transformative. His life has been one that has been dedicated to service to the community.”Edmondson recently summarized his life in a November interview with the Indiana Daily Student. “I was in the right place at the right time more often than I deserve,” he said.He was preceded in death by his wife, Margaret Russell Edmondson. He is survived by their two children, Olson and Frank Edmondson, Jr.“He led a good life, and his time ran out,” Olson said in an e-mail interview. “His mother and both her parents lived to be past 89. He got to 96. Pretty good!”Services are pending with Allen Funeral Home.
(11/14/08 4:42am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Frank K. Edmondson has dedicated his life to astronomy – so much that he has his own piece of outer space named after him.Colleagues honored Edmondson, former chairman of IU’s Department of Astronomy, by naming an asteroid after him. Now 96 years old, he was a vital asset in transforming both IU’s department and national observatories across the country, said Caty Pilachowski, IU’s Kirkwood chair of astronomy.“We owe everything to Frank,” said Pilachowski, who has known Edmondson for 30 years. “The impact of what he’s done to the discipline just cannot be overstated. He allowed astronomy to flourish at colleges and universities all over the country.” Edmondson graduated from IU in 1933, and after receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard, returned to IU as a faculty member. In 1934, Edmondson went on a friendly double-date. Somehow, partners switched, and Edmondson was paired with Margaret Russell instead of her sister.“Margaret said she maneuvered that. We got engaged the next day,” Edmondson recalled, adding that they married that fall. The date of their wedding coincidentally fell on the anniversaries of both Margaret’s and Frank’s parents.Famed astronomer Henry Norris Russell, Margaret Edmondson’s father, took her to American Philosophical Society meetings when she was a teen. “It was nice to be married to a woman who had a better mind than I did,” Edmondson said, adding that she accompanied him to most of his astronomical conferences.Margaret Edmondson died in 1999. Edmondson was deeply devoted to his wife, but he said he was busy juggling his marriage, raising two children, teaching and traveling. Through involvement with numerous science and astronomy organizations, Edmondson traveled all over the globe. Articles in the IU Archives document his trips to Russia, Dublin, Rome and countless places in the United States. Back in Indiana, Edmondson’s job suddenly took on a new role, making him a bit of a celebrity, articles in the IU Archives from the Indiana Daily Student explained. At one point, Purdue had no astronomy classes, so Edmondson began broadcasting his lectures through closed-circuit television. These continued for 20 years. “When I learned I had to go to a studio to talk into a camera, I said, ‘No way,’” Edmondson remembered, adding he required at least one student at each televised course. From 1985 to 1999, the Edmondsons contributed to a fund for a Kirkwood professorship in astronomy. One of Edmondson’s former students donated $2 million to raise the professorship to a chair, he said. Edmondson said Pilachowski, the first person to fill this position, was originally on staff at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz., which Edmondson founded through his work with the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. Pilachowski affectionately recalls the days when the Edmondsons visited Kitt Peak. “When he’d come up to the mountain for lunch or dinner, they would always fix him chocolate pie,” she said.During summer vacation in Arizona before World War II, Edmondson grew a beard. When the IDS found out, an article was published saying he planned to shave it soon. “The Daily Student said I was going to shave it off,” Edmondson said, proudly displaying his beard. “The Daily Student is not going to tell me what to do.”Edmondson has been known to tell people how he feels, Pilachowski said. “He doesn’t hold back,” she said. After all he’s accomplished, Edmondson still doesn’t boast. He was an instrumental figure in international astronomy, but he does realize the unique opportunities he’s been given. “My successor at NSF said I‘d done more different things than any astronomer he knew,” Edmondson recalled. “I’d never looked at my life that way, but by golly, I have.”
(10/16/08 4:39am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>In the midst of a gubernatorial election campaign and rallies, Gov. Mitch Daniels manages to keep fitness at the top of his priority list.A self-proclaimed “gym rat,” Daniels asked attendees of INShape Indiana’s 2008 Indiana Health Summit to tell him how the government can further teach and promote healthy lifestyles, especially in schools.On Oct. 15, the annual INShape summit kicked off in the Indiana Memorial Union’s Whittenberger Auditorium. “Healthy Schools, Healthy Indiana” focused on further decreasing obesity and tobacco use in Indiana, as well as fostering healthier learning and working environments for our state’s students and school employees.INShape “has really grown as a grassroots effort,” said Judy Monroe, Indiana State Health Commissioner.There are currently about 80,000 people receiving e-mails and getting involved through the campaign’s Web site, she said.Daniels said INShape targets schools because they make it easy to reach people. “This can be one of the very most productive things we can do if we can find the answers, the things that work,” he said.In order for INShape to successfully integrate proper health education into schools, it’s necessary to “articulate resources at the federal, state and local levels, as well as to provide some examples of schools who do this well,” said Robert Goodman, dean of the IU School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation.Getting a healthy start by focusing on tobacco, nutrition and physical activity is where it all begins, Monroe said, noting that making a difference starts with leadership.Partnerships across various industries are aiding the state in reaching ideal health standards.In 2007, schools were required to establish coordinated school health programs consisting of parents, students, nutritionists, health care professionals and school administrators, said Suellen Reed, Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction.“We must all work together with schools to ensure Indiana students are provided with a healthy learning environment,” Reed said. “Healthy students make better learners.”While the summit focused on creating healthy schools, administrators and teachers cannot solely be expected to bring about huge differences in the lifestyles of their colleagues and students, the summit’s mission stated.Making single requests to schools are fine, Daniels said, but when looking at the complete list of demands schools have to deal with, it’s “overwhelming and impossible,” he added.“I’m running around in short pants doing chin-ups on television,” Daniels said, laughing. “Whatever you think might catch somebody’s eye. That might be all I can do, but if we can at least get people to stop and think, we’ll start to see these needles, that are now just barely tilting, move in a bigger and bolder direction.”