Gilad Barnea, an assistant professor of neuroscience, has received a nearly $1.3 million four-year EUREKA research grant from the National Institutes of Health. His project will involve developing a method to selectively monitor the activation of each of the five receptors for the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. If successful, it could lead to more targeted treatments for mental illnesses and other diseases.

Former Pakistan president Gen. Pervez Musharraf, speaking before a capacity crowd at Brown University on Tuesday night, called fundamentalist terrorists the greatest threat to stability in the south Asian region and declared that his homeland and neighboring India and Afghanistan represent a “nexus of extremism.”

Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island and The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University are hosting a national conference, part of a major undertaking designed to help shape the future of women’s health research. The goal of the conference is to make sure research on women’s health issues remains focused and cutting-edge in the 21st century. The NIH conference in Providence is one of four around the country designed to develop strategies for women’s health.

Providence Journal columnist Bob Kerr describes a beautiful, enriching friendship that began late in life for Shirley Halsband, when Ed Beiser, a political scientist, law professor and medical ethicist at Brown for 35 years, asked her to read him a newspaper. Beiser died the first weekend in September.

A group of pro-Israel students at Brown, Brandeis, Harvard and Tufts organized a grassroots response to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s appearance at the United Nations. They plan to deliver hundreds of letters to local lawmakers, protesting the Iranian government’s nuclear program and urging legislators to support the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009.

Ashutosh Varshney, professor of political science, writes about the early choices India made between the pathways of “consociational” and “liberal” democracy and the profound difference those choices made in the cultural and political life of India today.