Professor of Anthropology William Beeman offers his perspective on a letter written to the American people by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “People are simply not used to being talked to this way,” Beeman said of the letter’s content. “It is almost a sermon, which is very much in keeping with his religious background,” he said, adding that the letter also represents an overture.
Free registration: www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/world/middleeast/30iran.html

Dr. Ken Mayer, professor of medicine, is one of three AIDS experts interviewed about why the rate of HIV infection is no longer dropping and what can be done.
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6562444

Professor of Economics Glenn Loury joins a roundtable discussion on President Bush's trip to the NATO summit and a scholarship for white students at Boston University
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6548817

Professor of Economics Ross Levine, who was a presenter at a a policy forum hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, discusses his research on “persistent poverty and the forgotten role of finance.”

Professor of Psychology Mary Carskadon discusses teens’ sleep habits for a radio series about how hormones affect teenage behavior. The program was broadcast on Dec. 3, Dec. 4, and Dec. 5 in the United Kingdom and North America. The audio is available for download for one week on the Discovery web site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/discovery.shtml
www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/discovery.shtml

In a segment that aired on several NBC affiliates around the country, Dr. Ken Mayer, professor of medicine, notes that about 40,000 people become infected with HIV each year.

The college application journey of a Carroll, Texas, high school senior is being chronicled on NBC’s “Today” show. The student’s top choice is Brown. The first installment, which included footage of the student’s trip to Brown, aired in October. The outcome of his application to attend Brown will be shown nationwide in April.
www.caller.com/ccct/local_news/article/0,1641,CCCT_811_5177452,00.html

Brown University had 2.5 percent fewer applications this year for an early decision on admission. Jim Miller, dean of admissions, said the drop wasn’t a serious concern because it was so small. “ED fever is swelling down a little bit,” Miller said.
www.pbn.com/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/123943

The 28 American universities that are seeking to raise at least $1-billion collected a total of $527.2-million in gifts and pledges during the last month for which they had data available. Brown University reported raising $782.3 million as of October 31 (increase of $6.3-million in the last month); the goal is $1.4-billion by 2010.
chronicle.com/daily/2006/12/2006120504n.htm

A Food and Drug Administration panel will meet later this week to discuss the safety of drug-coated stents. Medical journals are rushing studies into print, and doctor groups are reconsidering treatment guidelines. Professor of Medicine David Williams is among the doctors interviewed for this article, which appeared in newspapers and on web sites around the world.
www.boston.com/business/healthcare/articles/2006/12/04/fda_to_study_the_risks_of
_coated_stents/

Brown undergraduate Sophia Choukas-Bradley writes about what once worried her about turning 20 and, now that she has passed that landmark, how she has grown.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/03/AR2006120300974.html

In advance of the Dec. 9 opening of “Discovering Tutankhamun: The Photographs of Harry Burton” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Professor of Egyptology James P. Allen discusses the period around Tutankhamun's reign. Allen also wrote the introduction to the exhibition’s catalog.
www.nysun.com/article/44522

This feature article takes a look at “New Jersey as an Impossible Object,” a project by Joe Milutis, visiting assistant professor of modern culture and media. Milutis began the project after reading the poem “Paterson,” written 60 years ago by William Carlos William.
www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxNjcmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cW
VlRUV5eTcwMjk2NTQmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3

Measurements taken by Lewis and Clark between winter 1803 and spring 1805 "constitute the first quantitative hydrological study of the Missouri River," according to research recently published by Bethany Ehlmann, a doctoral candidate in geological sciences, in the journal Geology. She talks about the findings and suggests widening some stretches of the Missouri "to reconnect it to its floodplain," a move that would partly reverse that pattern and restore habitat for spawning fish and nesting birds.
www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/missouristatenews/story/AB1E61A79556C
B608625723900141263

Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and an adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, delivered the keynote address at Brown University’s World AIDS Day Symposium.
www.projo.com/education/content/brownaids_12-03-06_BA35NTD.2c4d706.html
See news release: www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2006-07/06-061.html

Ted Widmer, director of the John Carter Brown Library, is the author of a biography, published last year, about Martin Van Buren, whose birthday on Dec. 5 is cause for celebration at the Providence Athenaeum. Widmer discusses how he approached the research conducted for the biography of the nation’s eighth president.
www.projo.com/lifebeat/content/lb-vanburen02_12-02-06_3534LMJ.22a6527.html

Dr. Timothy Flanigan, co-director of the Immunology Center at Miriam and a professor of medicine at Brown, was chosen as the first recipient of the HIV Medicine Association’s Advocacy Award, which recognizes an HIVMA member “who has made important contributions to sound HIV/AIDS policy at the local, state, national or international levels in the arena of prevention, research or access to care.”
www.pbn.com/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/124003

This feature profiles the work performed by the seven doctors at Neurosurgery Foundation Inc., a nonprofit offshoot of Brown. All the doctors are members of the Brown neuroscience faculty.
www.pbn.com/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/123998

Karen Davis, president of The Commonwealth Fund, discussed “Why We’re Not Number One: A Look At High Performance Health Systems Across the Globe.” Her presentation was the annual Paul Levinger Professorship Pro Tem in the Economics of Health Care Lecture.
www.pbn.com/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/124000
See news release: www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2006-07/06-053.html

The National Institutes of Health has chosen 58 postdocs for "Pathways to Independence" grants, a new hybrid award meant to speed their transition into academic research. Professor of Biology Susan Gerbi, who served on a National Academies' panel that recommended NIH adopt such a program, offers comments.
sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/1201/1

Christine Acebo, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown Medical School, discusses preschoolers’ sleep problems. This article ran on several web sites around the country.
www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2006/11/30/hscout534947.html

The Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation Center is working with Professor of Neuroscience John Donoghue to develop a new technology that will drive a paralyzed arm and hand using a brain implant that detects the intent to move. The researchers plan to test the concept in 2007 by having a paralyzed patient use a brain implant to operate the computerized virtual arm. If that's successful, they'll try out the system on an actual limb.
www.technologyreview.com/BioTech/17842/

Dr. Charles Carpenter, professor of medicine and director of the Brown University AIDS Center, comments on new findings that IHIV patients who take their HIV drugs intermittently are at a greater risk of infections, heart disease, and death compared to those patients who never stop taking their medicine.
abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2687714

For the second time this year, legislation that would designate former President Bill Clinton's childhood home in Hope a national historic site has stalled due to a “back-door hold.” There are no formal Senate rules governing the placement of holds on bills, said Wendy Schiller, associate professor of political science, She said that if the Clinton bill, or any of the bills being held, were considered important, Republican leadership could pressure the bills’ release.

As the international health community marks World AIDS Day, there is increasing evidence that the reemergence of some infectious diseases is being driven by the AIDS pandemic. "As HIV-infected people are living longer lives, they want to travel, or if they come from overseas they want to go back and visit,” said Associate Professor of Medicine Margaret Neill, director of the travel clinic at Memorial Hospital in Providence. When they do, they often expose themselves to unusual pathogens. In a healthy person these diseases are ordinarily not problematic, but because HIV attacks the body's natural defenses, AIDS patients are more vulnerable to opportunistic infections.
www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-10/1164956667189200.xml

Hundreds of doctors and health officials gathered in Washington to determine how the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's expanded HIV testing guidelines – that everyone aged 13 to 64 who visits a doctor be tested for HIV – should be put into practice. Dr. Ken Mayer, a Brown professor of medicine who helped organize the summit, noted that the cost for screening (one estimate puts the figure at $864 million a year) shouldn't be considered an obstacle to testing.

Scaling up HIV testing, prevention and care is the key to ending the country's HIV/AIDS epidemic, said Professor of Medicine Kenneth H. Mayer, co-chair of a Washington, D.C. summit on the topic. Mayer noted that HIV screening rates remain low in doctors' offices, emergency rooms and sexually transmitted disease/family planning clinics.

The fruit fly gene “doublesex” is responsible for ensuring that male flies look male and females look female. New Brown University research led by biologist Michael McKeown shows that doublesex not only helps shape bodies but also shapes behavior, acting with together with the gene “fruitless” to guide flies’ courtship routines and responses. The finding shows that sexual development in flies - and, perhaps, in humans - is a more complicated proposition than previously thought. This press release was published on science web sites around the world.
www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2006-07/06-063.html