NASA recently announced that many of the moon rocks brought back to Earth from two Apollo space missions have gone missing. They were given as gifts to the nations of the world. Carle Pieters, professor of geological sciences, says the knowledge gained from these tiny rocks is priceless."I am continually awed when I work with four-billion-year-old lunar samples. They are beautiful and don’t have ugly weathering products often seen in Earth rocks. The lunar rocks retain a record of events in the early solar system that we cannot obtain elsewhere."

Mark Blyth, professor of international political economy, talks about the outlook for Greece’s debt crisis. The country recently won a second bailout totaling $173 billion. Blyth says that such liquidity will do nothing to solve Greece’s problem, likening the move to kicking the can down the road to delay default.

Brown biology Professor Ken Miller understands that most students are religious. He is too. The way to teach science to religious students is to show how scientific ideas come to be, he says. Students can learn that religious people engage in scientific explorations of nature, and that theories are based on observation and logic, not some anti-religious agenda. Miller recently spoke about how he teaches science to religious students at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver, Canada.

A group of Brown researchers has created a living 3-D model of a brain tumor and its surrounding blood vessels. In experiments, the scientists report that iron-oxide nanoparticles carrying the agent tumstatin were taken by blood vessels, meaning they should block blood vessel growth. The living-tissue model could be used to test the effectiveness of nanoparticles in fighting other diseases.

Nina Tannenwald, lecturer in political science, discusses the latest International Atomic Energy Agency talks with Iran about the country’s alleged weapons testing plans. She says it’s unlikely that the talks will result in access to Iranian nuclear sites and scientists, noting what she calls a “striking lack of diplomatic imagination.” She suggests other routes that need to be explored, such as harnessing moral and religious norms as a source of nuclear restraint, which would tap into Iranian religious leaders stance that nuclear weapons are “un-Islamic.”

According to a new analysis of hundreds of recorded office visits, led by M. Barton Laws, assistant professor of health services policy and practice, doctors and nurse practitioners typically issued orders and asked closed or leading questions when talking to their HIV-positive patients about adherence to antiretroviral therapy. Attempts at problem-solving with patients who had lapsed occurred in less than a quarter of visits.

Faubourg Tremé, a New Orleans neighborhood that is one of the oldest African-American communities in the United States, this year is celebrating the 200th anniversary of its annexation to the city. The district represents an important though often overlooked chapter in the country’s African-American history. "When we look at the struggle for equality and freedom for African Americans, we have to look first at Tremé," says Brenda Marie Osbey, a visiting professor in Africana studies. "That’s where it all started."

Evolutionary biologists at Brown University and the University of Sheffield have documented for the first time that plants swap genes from plant to plant to fuel their evolutionary development. The researchers found enzymes key to photosynthesis had been shared among plants with only a distant ancestral relationship. The genes were incorporated into the metabolic cycle of the recipient plant, aiding adaptation.