The House is set to vote on a bill that would allow a proposed for-profit osteopathic medical school to open in Rhode Island. Edward Wing, dean of the Alpert Medical School, has written a letter to the House leadership opposing the bill. Wing says a for-profit medical school has a primary responsibility to investors, not students or the public. It “would jeopardize the quality of training, and as a result, patient care,” Wing says. “I would encourage a closer examination of their record and the alternatives prior to making a decision.”

As speculation mounts that Treasurer Gina Raimondo and Gov. Lincoln Chafee may face off in the next governor’s race, Wendy Schiller, associate professor of political science, says both of them appear to draw inspiration from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “Chafee is using the privilege of wealth to devote his life to public service, and he’s maintaining ideological flexibility in a very polarized world,” Schiller says. “Raimondo is maintaining liberal positions but understanding that business is intrinsic to success. She’s driven home that you can’t survive economically if you don’t recognize that programs that drain coffers and taxes that drive people and businesses away mean disaster.”

A new play at Trinity Repertory Company, called Love Alone, examines malpractice and the role of forgiveness in medicine. This week second-year medical students from the Alpert Medical School will see the show as part of an ongoing effort to integrate creative arts and the humanities into medical training. Jay Baruch, assistant professor of emergency medicine, says the play provides a means for talking about the gray areas that are part of medicine. “We want doctors to be human, but we don’t talk about if there’s a mistake as a result of that,” Baruch says.

A group of researchers has found that brain activity can predict both future sexual desire and weight gain. “What’s novel here is that we can actually make predictions about behavior based on brain activity,” says study author Kathryn Demos, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior. The researchers hope their study will contribute to the understanding of how our self-regulation system works and how our responses to reward can be controlled.

In this list of 11 ways to improve memory, Peter Snyder, professor of neurology, says mentally challenging activities like crossword puzzles can build new connections in the brain. “You can actually generate new cells in the hippocampus,” Snyder says. Those new cells build cognitive reserves that are important for creating new memories and may protect against memory loss – even dementia – later in life.

A group of researchers, including graduate student Michael Suher, measured the effects that a dirty bomb would have on downtown Los Angeles’ financial district. They found that such an occurrence could severely impact the region’s economy to the tune of nearly $16 billion, fueled primarily by psychological effects that could persist for a decade.

Research by mathematicians at Brown and engineers at Johns Hopkins University has led to a breakthrough showing that nanoparticles can indeed fold up and assemble themselves into 3-D structures. The team says the discovery can have multiple applications, including delivering medicine to a sick organ with pinpoint accuracy.