President Ruth J. Simmons discusses leadership and being a role model. This interview was conducted when President Simmons was in London to launch the United Kingdom component of the Boldly Brown Campaign for Academic Enrichment.

Professor of Sociology Michael White offers his perspective on the growing population of the United States, which is expected to gain its 300 millionth resident later this month.

Weight-loss experts say how a couple approaches weight loss can make or break their success. For couples who can't seem to get in sync with weight loss, there's still hope: the "ripple effect" documented by Assistant Professor of Psychiatry/Human Behavior (Research) Amy Gorin and colleagues at Brown Medical School. "If you have a partner or spouse who needs to lose weight, one of the best things you can do is to do this yourself," Gorin says.

In this opinion piece, Professor of Chemistry James Baird discusses the concept of genius and praises the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University for the number of alumni they have produced who have gone on to win MacArthur “genius” grants. “Rhode Islanders should be proud to have sent out into America such outstanding talent and to have both the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University, which attracted and taught them,” he concludes.

Some people in Lafayette, La., believe that crime in the city is on the rise and blame the rise on the influx of Katrina refugees. Sociology Professor John Logan offers some data and some cautions against false inferences.

To commemorate its 20th anniversary, the University’s Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Science is sponsoring a lecture series. Northwestern University Professor of Electrical Engineering Donald Norman kicks off the series Oct. 4. This article is an interview with Norman.

Roger Williams University’s new economic impact statement notes that though the university pays no property taxes, it produces 10.1 percent of Bristol’s revenues last year and accounted for only 8.3 percent of municipal expenditures. Bristol officials have asked the school to make payments to the town in lieu of taxes. The article notes that in 2003, Brown University, Providence College, Johnson & Wales University and the Rhode Island School of Design agreed to pay a total of $50 million over the next two decades to help cover the cost of municipal services in Providence. The announcement of that agreement spurred the most recent talks in Bristol.

Assistant Professor of Medical Science Alexander Brodsky was on the team of researchers who produced the first complete map of molecular "control panels" - stretches of DNA that turn genes on and off - operated by the cells' estrogen receptor, the master regulator of cell growth in the most common form of breast cancer. The new tool may eventually help doctors match breast cancer patients with treatments that are most likely to be effective for them and overcome the problem of resistance to current hormone therapies, the study authors say. This press release was published on several science and medicine Web sites.