A completely made-over undergraduate teaching laboratory asks the question, “Will open-ended research and high-tech collaboration make biology more exciting and engaging for students?”

A newly published review article finds that use of infertility treatments in the United States, ranging from medicines to in vitro fertilization, is likely hindered by widespread gaps in insurance coverage of reproductive services and technology.

Brown has finalized a plan to create a more diverse and inclusive academic community that is sensitive and responsive to issues of discrimination, inequality and structural racism.

The creators of Bootstrap, a program developed by faculty at Brown University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, will support a new White House initiative to enhance access to computer science education. They will train 300 additional educators to teach computer science.

Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr., a senior fellow at the Watson Institute and a former U.S. diplomat, will deliver a three-part lecture series on American diplomacy, as part of the Watson Institute’s Chong Wook Lee and Vartan Gregorian Distinguished Lecture Series. Lectures will take place Feb. 4, 11, and 18, and are free and open to the public.

Boston Modern Orchestra Project will visit Brown twice this semester for a residency that will include a public performance featuring faculty works, a lecture by its conductor, Gil Rose, and reading and recording sessions with Brown composition students.

For more than an hour on stage in the Salomon Center Thursday evening, movie star Michael Douglas and Israeli leader and former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky traded thoughts about their Jewish identities and some of the challenges to Israel’s identity on the world stage. The event packed the house, but also drew demonstrators against Israeli policies and actions regarding the Palestinian people.

Noah Elbot, class of 2014, and Max Song, class of 2016, were among 111 candidates named as inaugural Schwarzman scholars. Schwarzman scholars receive a fully funded scholarship at Schwarzman College on the campus of Tsinghua University in Beijing.

One hundred and ten students, mostly sophomores and juniors, took their ceremonial walk through the Van Wickle Gates and will begin their Brown studies tomorrow.

With a $25-million gift, part of the University’s BrownTogether campaign, Brown will establish the Jonathan M. Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship, combining real-world experience with academic expertise to equip students for lives of innovation and impact.

Film star Michael Douglas and Israeli public figure and former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky will speak at Brown University Jan. 28 about Judaism, Israel and anti-Semitism. Free registration is required to attend the event, which is open to the public.

Aaron Held’s research merges and draws on the expertise of two of the labs in Brown’s broad effort to combat ALS. That role has given him several opportunities to learn novel skills and new science during graduate school.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — ALS — can arise from aberrant genes. A group of five Brown University professors proposes that a cure may also come from aberrant genes — genetic mutations that suppress ALS. A new research grant supports their comprehensive investigation of ALS in flies, worms, mice and human cells.

For their accomplishments in biotechnology, professors Jeffrey Morgan and Anubhav Tripathi have been elected fellows of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.

Jonathan L. Walton, a noted social ethicist, scholar of American religions, and professor at Harvard University, will deliver the 2016 Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture on Tuesday, February 2, 2016. Walton will speak about "Love, Power and Empathy in an iLife Era." His presentation is free and open to the public and begins at 6 p.m. in Salomon Center for Teaching, De Ciccio Family Auditorium.

Brown University’s School of Professional Studies announces a new 16-month program leading to an Executive Master in Cybersecurity degree. Enrollment is underway for the fall session of the new degree program, created for individuals with five to 15 years of managerial experience and responsibility for information security.

A portrait of Ruth J. Simmons, Brown’s 18th president, has been completed and hung in Sayles Hall. The painting, by renowned portraitist Steven Polson, joins the University’s collection of 317 portraits of presidents, chancellors, deans, faculty, and benefactors commissioned throughout Brown's 250-year history. Thirty-five of those portraits currently hang in Sayles Hall.

The idea of legalizing physician assistance in the planned death of terminally ill patients is rapidly gaining political traction across the United States, write Eli Adashi and Ryan Clodfelter in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Eric S. Estes, currently vice president and dean of students at Oberlin College and Conservatory, has been named vice president for campus life and student services at Brown University. Estes will begin his work at Brown on July 1, 2016, succeeding Margaret Klawunn.

Machine learning software designed by a Brown computer scientist is helping the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization monitor the globe for evidence of nuclear tests.

Doctors have no approved medicine to help treat marijuana dependence and abuse, but in small new clinical trial topiramate reduced the amount of cannabis heavy smokers used when they lit up. The results also show, however, that many volunteers couldn’t tolerate the drug’s side effects.

Brown University president Christina Paxson, an economist, has been elected to the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Among HIV-positive patients with Hodgkin lymphoma, a new study finds that blacks are significantly less likely than whites to receive treatment for the cancer, even though chemotherapy saves lives.

A pair of slavery shackles of the type used to transport captured Africans to slavery in the Americas is on display at the John Hay Library. The shackles, on loan from the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, will remain at the Hay through March 13, 2016, and then return to Liverpool for permanent display.

The Brown University Orchestra is featured in a just-released CD of well-known American and British works in jazz and popular song recorded with pianist Jeffrey Biegel.

Atmospheric models have suggested that a vast majority of nitrogen deposited in the open ocean is derived from human activities, but a new study suggests that’s not so.

The Humanity Centered Robotics Initiative aims to explore the intersection between robotic technologies and society. New support from Brown University will help spur innovative interdisciplinary research.

A new study reports one of the most explosive movements in the animal kingdom: the mighty tongue acceleration of a chameleon just a couple of inches long. The research illustrates that to observe some of nature’s best performances, scientists sometimes have to look at its littlest species.