WFIU Public Radio kicks off its annual fund drive Friday (Nov. 6) with guest Harvard-trained and published neuroanatomist IU Professor Jill Bolte Taylor on Noon Edition. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey and was chosen as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2008.

A new Indiana University academic program will focus on the work of French political thinker and author Alexis de Tocqueville, who died 150 years ago but whose insights into American democracy remain as fresh and vital as when they were written. The Tocqueville Program, directed by Associate Professor of political science Aurelian Craiutu, will launch with a lecture on Nov. 6 by Matthew Mancini of Saint Louis University.

Indiana University sociologist Stephen Benard is co-recipient of a new National Science Foundation award to study how dominant members of groups behave when a group is facing threats. The grant, which Benard shares with principal investigator Patrick Barclay of the University of Guelph, is part of a joint NSF/Department of Defense program supporting research that explores the social and behavioral dimensions of national security, conflict and cooperation.

Indiana University experts offer holiday-themed tips involving fear and drastic change, H1N1 and familiar greetings, staying active and thrifty gift-giving in the October issue of IU Health and Wellness.

Gossip in the workplace can be a weapon in reputational warfare or a gift and can offer clues to power and influence not found on organizational charts. New research from Indiana University details how the weapon is wielded -- and its influence muted -- in a rare study that catches this national pastime on video.

Like momentum traders in the stock market, parents today appear to favor names that have recently risen in popularity relative to names that are on the decline, say cognitive science researchers from Indiana University and New York University. The research, published in the journal Topics of Cognitive Science, is relevant to understanding how people's everyday decisions are influenced by aggregate cultural processes.

Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced today (Oct. 12). Ostrom is the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences and a professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington. She is co-founder and senior research director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at IU.

Which comes first, depression or inflammation? To help solve this long standing chicken and egg conundrum, researchers led by Jesse Stewart, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis asked two critical questions. Does depression lead to elevated inflammatory proteins in the human body? Or does an increase in these proteins lead to depression?

Indiana University's efforts in social studies teaching have been recognized by a $165,422 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to two Bloomington campus centers.

A neuroscientist in Indiana University Bloomington's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences has received a two-year $683,736 grant from the National Institutes of Health for a project aimed at understanding how certain parts of the brain learn to predict the outcome of one's own actions. Assistant Professor Joshua Brown says his research could one day lead to a better understanding and better treatment for substance dependence.

In IU Health and Wellness for August, IU experts discuss serious weight concerns involving fall high school sports and new research into how attitudes about smoking are transferred from parents to children and can predict smoking onset.

Cognitive scientists at Indiana University Bloomington received a five-year, $3.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to create and employ innovative methods for training future scientists. "Building on our existing strengths in the psychological and brain sciences and complex systems, as well as our new activities in robotics, this award will allow us to offer a unique training program on situated, embodied and dynamical approaches to cognition," said Randall Beer, professor of both cognitive science and computer science.

Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University Bloomington and director of the Indiana Democracy Consortium, has been named editor-in-chief of Perspectives on Politics, one of the core journals of the American Political Science Association.

Dozens of Indiana University researchers participated in the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in San Francisco. In this media tip sheet, researchers discuss studies involving "coming out" in rural areas, public opinion about name change after marriage, the polarization of American politics, pet ownership, stigma and the medicalization of mental illness and bullies.

The often-used one-size-fits-all approach to policies aimed at achieving sustainable social-ecological systems needs to be updated with a diagnostic tool to help scholars from multiple disciplines better frame the question and think through the variables, asserts Indiana University social scientist and political economist Elinor Ostrom in an article appearing in a July 24 special section of Science.

IU Health & Wellness for May discusses new research that looks at the influence having a sexual partner can have on one's interest in the oppositive sex. Experts in social networks and career counseling offer insights into how to find jobs and stay positive in dark times.

With one in five people in the U.S. speaking a language other than English when at home, Tessa Bent's research into how children perceive so many different varieties of foreign-accented English has never been more timely. Recognizing the importance of understanding how children may or may not overcome foreign-accented speech variables, the National Institutes of Health has made Bent, an assistant professor in the Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, one of the first IU faculty members to receive grant funds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

In a new study, cognitive scientists have shown that when aware of both a negative and positive stereotype related to performance, women will identify more closely with the positive stereotype, avoiding the harmful impact the negative stereotype unwittingly can have on their performance.

Pulitzer Prize winning author and Indiana University distinguished professor of cognitive science and computer science Douglas Hofstadter has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Stephanie C. Kane, associate professor in Indiana University's Department of Criminal Justice, discusses piracy, poverty and global trade in the wake of several recent high-profile pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia.

Should sociologists be involved in research on the genetics of illness and disease? A recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education recognized Indiana University Distinguished and Chancellor's Professor of Sociology Bernice Pescosolido for her research on alcoholism.

It's time for the U.S. legal system to re-emphasize "first principles," including protection of individual and family rights, in laws dealing with the abuse and neglect of children, Indiana University Bloomington faculty member Roger J.R. Levesque writes in a new book.

Four Indiana University Bloomington researchers are presenting at this year's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago. Descriptions of their talks as well as contact information are provided.

Two new teaching awards related to sustainability and environmental literacy -- the Sustainability Course Development Fellowships and the Sustainability and Environmental Literacy Leadership Award -- have been awarded to IU Bloomington faculty by the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs.

When it comes to assessing the romantic playing field -- who might be interested in whom -- men and woman were shown to be equally good at gauging men's interest during an Indiana University study involving speed dating -- and equally bad at judging women's interest.