Edward J. Wing, Brown University’s dean of medicine and biological sciences, sees the University’s planned new medical school in the grandest of terms. Imagine, he says, a block-long building, nearly 70 percent glass, overlooking the Providence River, visible from College Hill and the highways, brightly lit at night and sitting in the center of a growing cluster of biotech and life science industries. “It’ll be a beacon for the whole area, a visible symbol of the new knowledge economy,” he said, speaking recently in a small conference room on the University’s historic East Side campus.

What are the social and environmental costs of building and maintaining military bases and huge monuments? Catherine Lutz, the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Family Professor of Anthropology and International Studies and editor of The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle Against U.S. Military Posts, discusses these issues on Against The Grain, a California radio program about politics, society, and ideas.

Computer science professor John Savage will advise the State Department on the growing threat of cyber security. Savage was selected as a Jefferson Science fellow, the first person from Brown and the first computer scientist to receive the honor.

Researchers in Hong Kong have found that children who get less sleep tend to be heavier and that extra sleep on weekends may help control weight. Mary Carskadon, professor of psychiatry and human behavior, cautions that the precise nature of a link between insufficient sleep and obesity remains unclear.