One choice facing search committees for college presidencies is whether to go with an inside candidate or going outside to a top administrator at a comparable institution. In naming Brown Provost Robert Zimmer its next president, University of Chicago has split the difference. This article compares and contrasts the research and curricular differences between Brown and the University of Chicago research and curricula, and offers Zimmer’s perspective.

Brown University graduates who as students founded Axon Labs, a business to develop an alarm clock it calls SleepSmart, are in the product-development cycle of the business. They are unfazed by competition from an Atlanta entrepreneur who has developed a similar device, a watch alarm called Sleeptracker.

Biology Professor Kenneth Miller is profiled in “Meeting of the Minds,” a regular feature in the Health/Science section of the Boston Globe. The profile focuses on the high media profile Miller has obtained as a Christian scientist who defends evolution, According to one of the article’s sources, Miller has become science’s spokesperson “almost by default because so many other scientists want to avoid the topic.”

By combining a common organic compound with a rare metal, a team of Brown University chemists working in the laboratory of chemistry Professor Dwight Sweigart has created a new class of molecules that have potentially important applications for the pharmaceutical, chemical and energy industries. (Science Daily is an online magazine and Web portal devoted to science, technology, and medicine.)

After touring University research facilities, including the virtual reality “cave,” Raymond Orbach of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science encourages faculty and students to develop research projects that could be funded over the next decade by federal government money set aside for basic research. R.I. Gov. Donald Carcieri joined Orbach for the tour and the discussion.

In an online chat hosted by the Washington Post, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun discussed her new book, "Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics." In the book, Chun, an assistant professor of modern culture, observes that while the Internet is a good medium to promote freedom of expression, it is full of vulnerabilities. This is a transcript of the chat with online readers of the Washington Post.