At Brown

Holiday Bazaar, Dessert Social is Dec. 2

Now is the time to get a jump-start on all your holiday shopping! Join the Human Resources Department and more than 40 staff and faculty crafters and bakers from throughout the Brown community for the 28^th annual Holiday Bazaar. This year's event on Thursday, Dec. 2, from noon to 2:30 p.m. in Sayles Hall will also feature a new Dessert Social. Your favorite members of the senior staff will be serving delicious desserts and refreshments while you shop and enjoy holiday music. Hundreds of different items will be on display including stained glass pins, memo boards, homemade candies, jams and jellies, handwoven scarves, fleece hats, woodcarvings, holly baskets, photography, silver jewelry, oil paintings and much more.

Don't forget: Raffle tickets will also be on sale at the door and the proceeds will benefit the Brown/Taft Avenue Day Care Center. See you on Dec. 2 to kick off the holiday season!

Awards and Honors

Don. B. Wilmeth, Asa Messer emeritus professor and emeritus professor of theater and English, has been elected to a two-year term on the executive board of the Theatre Library Association.

He also recently became the general editor for a new series at Palgrave Macmillan Publishing Co.

Research Notes

Eduardo Nillni published two recent papers on the effects of leptin, a fat-burning hormone. Nillni, a research professor of medicine at Brown Medical School and Rhode Island Hospital investigator, found that leptin prompts the production of a quick and potent peptide that revs up metabolism - helping people burn calories and lose weight. In another experiment, Nillni found that two enzymes, also tripped by leptin, are also critical to calorie burning. Nillni's results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and The Journal of Clinical Investigation, helped land the professor a part in an Aug. 23 Newsweek cover story on obesity.

In conjunction with colleagues at Duke University Medical Center, Julie Kauer and her laboratory team published a paper in Science in September that shed new light on how the brain makes memories. Kauer, an associate professor in the Departments of Neuroscience and Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology and Biotechnology, helped solve the puzzle of where AMPA receptors, which act like gates to let chemical messages into information-receiving neurons, are stored inside cells and how they're activated when the brain makes a memory. Kauer explained these results on the Sept. 24 edition of NPR's Science Friday.

Neuroscience research associate Luk Chong Yeung led a Brown-based research team in developing a theoretical model which shows that brain cells' ability to fine-tune calcium flow not only sparks changes in synapses but also allows them to maintain a working state of equilibrium. These synaptic changes are a fundamental part of memory making and learning. The team, which included Leon Cooper, a professor of physics and neuroscience, published their results in October in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Department of Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology and Biotechnology and the Department of Surgery at The Miriam Hospital held a seminar Oct. 21 and snagged a pair of red-hot speakers: Woo Suk Hwang and Sung Keun Kang, part of the only research team in the world to clone a human embryo and extract stem cells from it.

The South Korean team announced their discovery in February. Embryonic stem cells have the potential to grow into any kind of cell or tissue in the body and could lead to cures for diabetes, Parkinson's disease and other conditions.

Hwang and Kang discussed their laboratory techniques and the implications of their therapeutic work in an hour-long seminar at the Laboratories for Molecular Medicine, Brown's new research facility on Ship Street in the city's Jewelry District. The pair also met with dozens of faculty and students at a meeting and over dinner at the Faculty Club.

After the seminar, Hwang told a small group of faculty and students that stem cell research in Korea has not attracted the controversy that accompanies it in the United States. In fact, the veterinarian said, the South Korean government has pledged $10 million for 10 years toward stem cell research and will build a new $20 million lab for his team.

The 2004 Lipsitt-Duchin Lectures in Child Behavior and Development were held Oct. 9 in MacMillan Hall. The annual event featured four experts in children's memory, including Brown's Ross Cheit, associate professor of political science and public policy. Cheit addressed the current "memory wars" being waged between professionals who believe children lie or can be manipulated into saying they've been sexually abused and those who believe they can't. Cheit used two Massachusetts cases of convicted child abusers to illustrate how this black-and-white thinking neglects certain cases and how the scientific split is affecting court testimony.

Susan Miller, an assistant professor of community health, will lead a team of researchers in a study aimed at influencing physician behavior so that more dying patients are referred to hospice and referred earlier. The two-year, nearly $230,00 study is funded by Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.

People

John O'Shea, executive chef of dining services, has successfully completed the American Culinary Federation certification process for Certified Executive Chef.

The American Culinary Federation (ACF) is the largest and most prestigious chefs' organization in America. It helps set professional standards for culinary education and assists in career development. Registered with the U.S. Department of Labor, ACF operates the only comprehensive certification program for chefs in the United States. ACF certification is a valuable credential awarded to cooks and chefs and pastry cooks and pastry chefs after a rigorous evaluation of industry experience and professional education and after thorough testing.

Brown/Trinity Repertory Consortium students Jesse Austrian, Justin Blanchard, Louis Changchien, Paul Coffey, Jess Crandall, Nina Daniels, Rick Dildine, Beth Hallaren, Jordan Kaplan, Myxy Tyler, Brian Wallace and Ian White will perform in Trinity Rep's annual production of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" through Dec. 26.

Off the Shelf

Professor of History Carolyn Dean is the author of a new book titled "The Fragility of Empathy After the Holocaust," published by Cornell University Press.

The book has been called "a major contribution to Holocaust studies." Joan Wallach Scott, professor of social science at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, writes that Dean "brings to bear her impressive skills as an intellectual historian to trace changing attitudes toward the representation of the suffering, vulnerable body," and calls the book "wonderful example of the ways in which a certain kind of close critical reading can open up new perspectives on a field one thinks one knows. Dean takes what seem commonplace observations (the idea, in this case, that our capacity for empathy has been exhausted by the brutalities of genocide and world war) and asks how they operate to create explanations that avoid rather than confront what has happened."

Peter Harrington, curator of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection in the John Hay Library, has had two books published recently: "English Civil War Fortifications" (Oxford, Osprey, 2003) and "English Civil War Archaeology" (London, Batsford, for English Heritage, 2004).

On the Road

Music Department faculty members Paul Phillips and Kathryne Jennings performed "An Evening of Songs and Sonatas" Oct. 23 as part of the Arts in the Village Concert Series at Goff Memorial Hall in Rehoboth. They were joined in their performance by flutist Janet Puchalski.

Last month, Brown faculty, students, investigators and research associates made 51 presentations at the Society for Neuroscience conference, the premier venue for basic and clinical research on the brain and nervous system.

The 31 professors from 11 campus and clinical departments presented results from a broad range of experiments at the annual meeting, held in San Diego Oct. 23-27. Topics ranged from fetal heart development to drug addiction to the body's circadian clock - and how brain or nerve cells are involved in all three.

Barry Connors, a professor of medical science in the Department of Neuroscience, delivered a special lecture on electrical synapses, which provide two-way connections between brain cells. Although scientists have known for nearly 50 years that electrical synapses can be found in animals such as crayfish, research now suggests that they can be found throughout the brains of mammals. Connors gave an overview of this new neuroscience frontier, discussing what electrical synapses are, where they can be found, and what they do in the mammalian brain.

John Donoghue, Henry Merritt Wriston Professor and chair of the Department of Neuroscience, took part in an invitation-only panel discussion on neuroprosthetic devices for science reporters. Donoghue presented preliminary clinical trial results of BrainGate, the system created by Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, Inc., based on Brown research. The system allows a 25-year-old quadriplegic to control a computer cursor, manipulate a television, lights and other environmental controls, and a robotic limb, Donoghue reported.

Brown scientists presented other significant research findings, including:

A team led by Elaine Bearer, professor of medical science in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, revealed a biochemical relationship between the common herpes simplex virus and dementia. Their findings suggest that herpes infection may either be a risk factor, or a cure, for AlzheimerÕs disease.

There is mounting evidence that in humans, the amygdala responds to scary stimuli. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Assistant Professor of Psychology Luiz Pessoa found that responses in this small area deep in the brain depend on a person's attention and don't occur automatically. In other words, the more focused you are on a rattlesnake in your path, the more likely it will be that the amygdala will kick in, triggering panic signals to the rest of the brain.

A team led by Connors and Rebecca Burwell, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, found the first definitive evidence that electrical synapses can be found in a tiny part of the hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. The findings suggest that these synapses help set the body's circadian clock.

David Sheinberg, assistant professor of neuroscience, showed that low levels of electrical stimulation applied to the inferotemporal cortex influences object recognition in monkeys - the first time this technique was successfully used in this area of the brain, which is responsible for processing complex visual information. The results provide important clues about the function of this brain region and the neural mechanisms involved in object processing, but could also eventually lead to assistive devices that help the blind or visually-impaired recognize people or objects.