The Indiana Geological Survey, a research institute of Indiana University, is a member of a large, new U.S. Department of Energy project to assess the geothermal potential of most American states. The IGS, along with 40 other state geological surveys, have formed a coalition to populate a new National Geothermal Data System with relevant, state-specific geothermal data. Over the three-year life of the project, the Geothermal Data Consortium will receive $17.79 million from the DOE with the IGS receiving $300,000.

NASA's apparent discovery of copious water on the moon is a revolutionary development that could help answer questions about the origin of water on earth and other mysteries of the solar system, says Indiana University geologist Abhijit Basu.

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.

The Indiana University Nanoscience Center is sponsoring a workshop on advanced battery technologies from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 13, in the IU Bloomington Chemistry Department. The workshop is an outgrowth of a major two-day Energy Conference held at IU Bloomington and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in August.

Pumpkin-colored Mars will return to prominence during November, rising shortly before midnight at the beginning of the month and more than two hours earlier by month's end. The orange planet will brighten noticeably as it passes the stars of the Beehive cluster.

The Indiana University open house to end all open houses, complete with a perilous bed of nails, streaking rocket cars, imploding oil drums and soda cans ripped apart by magnetic fields, will be brought to you Saturday (Oct. 31) by the IU Departments of Physics and Astronomy.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded Indiana University a $5 million grant to continue a project that measures levels of airborne toxic chemicals being deposited in the Great Lakes. The Integrated Atmospheric Deposition Network project is led at IU by Ronald Hites, Distinguished Professor, and by Ilora Basu, a research scientist in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

If "surgical manipulation of body parts . . . resurrection of life . . . the ethical consequences of engaging powers we've yet to morally know how to use" reads like a lead-in for a Halloween movie marathon then the public can expect much more next week when biologist David Stocum presents on the seasonally-timed topic of "The Legacy of Frankenstein: Regenerative Biology and Medicine."

Indiana University dignitaries dedicated Multidisciplinary Science Building Phase II, the Bloomington campus's newest science building, in a special ceremony on Thursday. The dedication was part of October's month-long Celebrate IU initiative. IU President Michael A. McRobbie led a platform party that included members of the IU Board of Trustees, Provost Karen Hanson, College of Arts and Sciences Dean Bennett Bertenthal, School of Public and Environmental Affairs Dean John Graham, and Provost's Professor of Geological Sciences Lisa Pratt, who has also been chair of the MSB II Design and Oversight Committees. David Johnson, president and CEO of BioCrossroads, was the event's keynote speaker.

A small molecule designed to detect cyanide in water samples works quickly, is easy to use, and glows under ultraviolet or "black" light. Although the fluorescent molecule is not yet ready for market, its Indiana University Bloomington creators report in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (now online) that the tool is already able to sense cyanide below the toxicity threshold established by the World Health Organization.

David Rollo, an Indiana University Bloomington biologist and Bloomington city council member, has been invited to Washington, D.C., to participate in a U.S. Department of Commerce forum on energy. The "Clean Energy Economy Forums" panel includes Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, and Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere Jane Lubchenco, among others. The two-hour forum begins at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 22, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House.

Award-winning science writer and University of Southern California Annenberg School of Journalism professor KC Cole will speak here Monday (Oct. 19) about her new biographical memoir of atomic bomb developer Frank Oppenheimer.

A virologist and an evolutionary biologist are the latest honorees of Indiana University Bloomington's Joan Wood and James P. Holland lecture series. Mavis Agbandje-McKenna, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Florida School of Medicine, will give a talk, "Structural studies of Adeno-associated viruses towards improved gene delivery applications," at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 21, in Myers Hall room 130. Harmit Singh Malik, an associate member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and an affiliate assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine, will also lecture. "The high-stakes evolutionary game of 'rock, paper, scissors' between primates and viruses" will begin at 4 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 19, in Whittenberger Auditorium (Indiana Memorial Union).

Indiana University Bloomington will join seven partners in Britain and the Netherlands to investigate early human settlements in Europe. The $1.81 million (1.1 million pound) Leverhulme Trust grant, spearheaded by the Natural History Museum in London, will be distributed to collaborators over four years. Paleontologist David Polly oversees IU Bloomington's participation in the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project.

Three planets will appear close together in the predawn sky in early October. Venus will be the first to rise, coming up two hours before the sun as a dazzling white "morning star" low in the east. Mercury will follow Venus about 45 minutes later. Last to appear will be Saturn, rising about 20 minutes after Mercury as the dawn sky brightens. Saturn will pass close to Mercury first and then Venus as the month advances.

The Indiana Memorial Union Board and the Secular Alliance of Indiana University will present a lecture by evolutionary biologist, author and atheist Richard Dawkins, titled "The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence for Evolution," on Monday, Oct. 12, 7 p.m. at IU Auditorium (1211 East Seventh Street). The event is free and open to the public. No ticket is required, and doors will open at 6 p.m.

An IU scientist's primer on climate change, a study of melodrama in Latin American cinema and television, an exploration of the flowering of Jewish culture in the late Russian empire, a memoir of growing up in New Orleans and a respected former congressman's argument for strengthening Congress are featured in this issue of Indiana University Book Marks.

Jupiter will dominate the night sky during September. Glowing low in the southeast as evening twilight fades, it will climb high in the south before midnight and set around the time morning twilight begins. Jupiter's four brightest moons can usually be seen with binoculars, but on the night of Sept. 2-3, all four will be hidden either in front of the planet, behind it or in its shadow. Jupiter will not appear "moonless" again until 2019.

An astronomer who came to Indiana University-Bloomington two years ago to study the formation and evolution of galaxies has received the National Science Foundation's most prestigious award for early career, tenure-track teachers and scholars.

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.

The new Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry is the first science department created on the Indiana University Bloomington campus in 33 years, and is the culmination of more than seven years of planning. The IU Trustees recently approved the department. The department is offering M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in biochemistry, but does not award undergraduate degrees. Biochemistry faculty members will teach undergraduate courses, however, for their departmental allies, Biology and Chemistry.

Running with the success of its promotion of the International Year of Astronomy and backed with funding from the Indiana Space Consortium, Indiana University Bloomington's Department of Astronomy will bring its own quiz show, plenty of homemade comets and a 3D experience of Mars to the Indiana State Fair later this week.

What do flocks of birds have in common with trust, monogamy, and even the release of breast milk? According to a new report in the journal Science, they are regulated by virtually identical neurochemicals in the brain, known as oxytocin in mammals and mesotocin in birds. Perhaps most striking is the fact that none of the treatments affect males -- only females.

Extra genomes appear, on average, to offer no benefit or disadvantage to plants, but still play a key role in the origin of new species, say scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and three other institutions in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Plant biologists have long suspected polyploidy -- the heritable acquisition of extra chromosome sets -- was a gateway to speciation. But the consensus was that polyploidy is a minor force, a mere anomaly that accounts for 3 or 4 percent of the world's flowers and ferns.

Indiana University Bloomington is home to the state of Indiana's first "select agent" laboratory for the study of pathogens. Select agent labs are safe and secure, and are rigorously regulated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. IU Bloomington biologist Melanie Marketon is the first scientist to use the lab.