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.

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.

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.

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.

Indiana University researchers, former IU swimmers -- including Olympians Gary Hall, John Kinsella and Alan Somers -- and other IU-affiliated competitive swimmers plan to take care of business this week at the U.S. Masters Swimming 2009 Long Course National Championship in Indianapolis.

Indiana University Bloomington faculty and faculty teams seeking large grants from external funding agencies are being assisted by more than $1 million in seed funding provided by IU's Office of the Vice Provost for Research (OVPR).

In 1979 Chancellor's Professor David Pisoni brought the first two postdoctoral researchers to Indiana University Bloomingrton when he was awarded a five-year training grant by the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders. Today, the same grant supports six postdoctoral researchers, six doctoral students and six medical students in Bloomington and Indianapolis.

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.

Two College of Arts and Sciences undergraduates at Indiana University Bloomington are 2009 Goldwater Scholars. Ellen Weinzapfel and Kaleb Naegeli, juniors double majoring in biology and neuroscience, will receive one-year scholarships that cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500.

Students considering a career in health care can learn about more than careers as "doctor" and "nurse" at Indiana University Bloomington's Health Programs Fair on March 4 (Wednesday). The fair, scheduled from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Indiana Memorial Union Alumni Hall, will feature more than 100 health care representatives on hand to meet with students and answer questions about educational and career opportunities.

Researchers in Indiana University's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences have received a $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the role of developmental changes in children's object recognition.

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.

Researchers in Indiana University's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences have received a five-year, $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the role of cognitive and motivational processes in decision making and behavioral control in alcoholism and related disorders, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and childhood conduct disorder.

Indiana University experts in recreation and mental health, sports medicine and psychology discuss in January's IU Health & Wellness the influence of physical activity on mood for people with serious mental illnesses, emotional stages of athletic injury recovery and prenatal exposure to nicotine and behavior problems.

A new study found that adolescents were at the greatest risk of smoking when their parents began smoking at an early age and the parents' smoking quickly reached high levels and persisted over time.

Scientists have long known that women's preferences for masculine men change throughout their menstrual cycles. A new study from Indiana University's Kinsey Institute is the first to demonstrate differences in brain activity as women considered masculinized and feminized male faces and whether the person was a potential sexual partner. The researchers identified regions of the brain that responded more strongly to masculinized faces and demonstrated that differences between masculinized and feminized faces appeared strongest when the women were closer to ovulating.

Dozens of researchers from Indiana University's School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, School of Medicine, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, School of Nursing and other schools and departments are participating in the American Public Health Association's annual meeting on Oct. 25-29 in San Diego. This tipsheet includes a sampling of the research.

Two Indiana University professors -- Joseph L. Hoffmann, the Harry Pratter Professor of Law at the Indiana University School of Law--Bloomington, and Steven J. Sherman, Chancellor's Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at IU Bloomington -- have won the Emerald Management Reviews Citation of Excellence, a prestigious award recognizing the 50 best articles published in business and management journals around the world.

In the September issue of IU Health & Wellness, Indiana University experts in cognitive development, tennis and adolescent sexuality discuss new research into the cycle of violence, a fun way to improve in tennis and information parents need to play an effective role in their teens' sexuality education.

New research from Indiana University has found evidence that how we look for things, such as our car keys or umbrella, could be related to how we search for more abstract needs, such as words in memory or solutions to problems.

Researchers from several disciplines will bring an academic focus to the growing problem of childhood and adolescent obesity with a conference Sept. 4-5 at Indiana University Bloomington. The conference, titled "Cognitive, Behavioral and Economic Approaches to Childhood and Adolescent Obesity," will feature presentations by internationally known experts from the fields of economics, nutrition, marketing, biostatistics and exercise.

Indiana University experts talk about jaded Olympics fans as well as 8-8-08 -- the opening day of the Olympics, but also the 20th anniversary of the 8-8-88 uprising in Burma and the beginning of a nationwide pro-democracy movement.

In our brains, groups of neurons fire up simultaneously for just milliseconds at a time, in random rhythms, similar to twinkling lightning bugs in our backyards. New research from neuroscientists at Indiana University and the University of Montreal provides a model -- a rhyme and reason -- for this random synchronization.