Front Page News at Indiana University

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IU faculty forum Saturday to focus on crisis in Iran
Making the difficult task of transporting a child with special needs safer
Time right for changes in college access, IU expert says
IU to focus on state and national energy challenges
Volunteers sought for emergency-response exercise
New faculty member's research cited in recent Supreme Court decision
Jacobs School of Music alumna Angela Brown receives Governor's Arts Award
IU Bloomington Scoreboard

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IU faculty forum Saturday to focus on crisis in Iran -- A panel of Indiana University faculty and students this Saturday (July 18) will present a forum on the recent elections and protests in Iran. The question-and-answer session will begin at 4 p.m. in Ernie Pyle Auditorium in the IU School of Journalism, 940 E. Seventh St. The public is invited. Panelists will include: Daniel Beben, a Ph.D. student in Iranian history in the departments of history and Central Eurasian studies; Jamsheed Choksy, professor of Central Eurasian studies, history and religious studies and a member of the National Council on the Humanities; Shahyar Daneshgar, professor of Persian language in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies; Paul Losensky, professor of Persian language and literature in the departments of Central Eurasian studies and comparative literature; and Abdulkader Sinno, professor of Middle Eastern politics in the departments of political science and Near Eastern languages and cultures. Read the complete story.

Making the difficult task of transporting a child with special needs safer -- A new study by researchers from the Automotive Safety Program at Riley Hospital for Children and Indiana University School of Medicine published online July 13, 2009 in the journal Pediatrics reports that the parents of children with special health care needs are doing a good job with the selection of the appropriate child car seat but still need help in using it correctly. The study, one of the first to look at how children with special needs are transported by their parents and to compare this behavior with American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines, offers advice on making transport safer for the child and less stressful for both the child and the parent. Transporting a child with special needs can be difficult, especially for a parent who must do so without the help of another adult. Read the complete story.

Time right for changes in college access, IU expert says -- The White House will likely succeed in simplifying the application for financial aid and in other measures aimed at increasing access to higher education, according to an Indiana University expert on issues of college choice, student financial aid policy, enrollment management and higher education finance. Don Hossler, IU School of Education executive associate dean and professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, said many of the proposals put forward by the Obama administration mirror recommendations of a blue-ribbon panel, on which he served, that examined access issues. Read the complete story.

IU to focus on state and national energy challenges -- Indiana University plans to roll up its collective sleeves at a two-day workshop in August to determine how it can help address state and national energy-related challenges. In a joint message to colleagues, Indiana University Vice Provost for Research Sarita Soni and IUPUI Vice Chancellor for Research Kody Varahramyan, said, "Indiana University already has important research and teaching activities underway that address some of these challenges both through individual faculty efforts and through research centers such as the Lugar Center for Renewable Energy, the Center for Research in Energy and the Environment, the Center for Research on Environmental Sciences and the IU Nanoscience Center. Unfortunately, we do not have a clear assessment of IU's strengths and gaps that would allow us to fully capitalize on IU's ability to help address this important issue." Read the complete story.

Volunteers sought for emergency-response exercise -- You can be a victim without getting hurt. Here's a chance to experience firefighters rescuing the injured and observe police tactics being used to make an extremely dangerous situation safe. The Monroe County Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) is coordinating a full-scale exercise on the Indiana University campus and involving all of Monroe County's emergency response agencies, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Aug. 19. In the recent past, violent incidents in schools and on college campuses have become an increasing concern for parents, students and those who respond to life threatening incidents. Volunteers can see and experience firsthand how agencies and organizations in Monroe County respond to a critical incident on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University. Read the complete story.

New faculty member's research cited in recent Supreme Court decision -- Like many of his colleagues at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, Herman Aguinis has published his research often in journals and other juried publications -- more than 70 articles so far. However, just two days before he joined the acclaimed business school, his work with four colleagues received national attention, being cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in its decision in the case of New Haven, Conn., firefighters. Aguinis, Dean's research professor in Kelley's Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, was among a group of fellows of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology to file an amici curiae brief in Ricci v. DeStefano. Read the complete story.

Jacobs School of Music alumna Angela Brown receives Governor's Arts Award -- Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Indiana Arts Commission (IAC) announced July 10 that Indiana University Jacobs School of Music alumna Angela Brown is among the recipients of the 2009 Governor's Arts Awards. Originally conceived in 1973, the biennial awards program honors individuals, organizations, partnerships, businesses and communities that have made significant contributions to the arts in and beyond the confines of Indiana. Read the complete story.

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Indiana University Bloomington Scoreboard

Sports schedules and scores will resume in August.

For more information on IU Athletics visit https://iuhoosiers.cstv.com/.

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IU in the news

A New Weight Loss Quick Fix? Obesity Experts Say Initial Results Promising, but No Human Trials Yet
ABC News, July 14 -- Millions of Americans want to lose weight. On their treadmills and over their salads they dream of a quick fix that doesn't require excessive dieting and exercise. And the hope that those dreams could become reality got a boost Monday when a team of researchers at Indiana University released a study in the online journal Nature Chemical Biology that showed that two natural hormones combined into a single drug suppressed appetite and increased metabolism -- in rodents, anyway. "There's a global epidemic of obesity," said Richard DiMarchi, chairman of the chemistry department at Indiana University in Bloomington and the study's lead researcher. "Our focus is finding therapies to lower body weight and treat diabetes." A single injection of the drug decreased the rodents' body weight by 25 percent -- and fat mass by 42 percent -- after one week. Full story.

IU first in the nation to launch multi-campus communication system
Indiana Daily Student, July 12 -- Through a new partnership, IU will deploy an institution-wide communication system to more effectively reach prospective students, current students, alumni and donors. IU has partnered with Campus Management Corp. to deliver its constituent relationship management software for organizing data and communications for all IU campuses, according to an IU press release. The new six-year license agreement will provide unlimited use of Campus Management's Talisma-Campus product. With this agreement, IU is the first major, multi-campus university in the nation to elevate constituent communications to a university-wide platform inclusive of all schools, its alumni association and foundation. Full story.

Analysts Turn To Software For Spotting Terrorists
NPR, July 14 -- One recent morning on the way to his office in Palo Alto, Calif., software engineer Bob McGrew made some quick, rather innocuous stops. He slipped into a Starbucks and grabbed a coffee -- a regular, with room for cream. He swiped his credit card and continued to a nearby ATM. A couple of punches on the keypad, and out came $100 and a receipt. McGrew works for Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley company that, among other things, sells software to the FBI and CIA. The software is meant to help the government find patterns among terrorists -- by spotting clues in everything from phone calls to the kind of trail McGrew left on his way to work. So, imagine for a moment that instead of being a software engineer, McGrew was a terrorist. In that case, his simple morning errands could be seen in a more sinister light. And he would have left a data trail in at least three places: at Starbucks, at his credit card company and at his bank. If he were a suspect, the government might well have scooped up that information as a way to track him down or see with whom he is associating. "We don't even have enough of a data set to get a good pattern of 'What does a terrorist look like?'" says Fred Cate of Indiana University's Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. "And terrorists, of course, are constantly changing their patterns because, quite simply, they don't want to get caught." Full story.

Transplant shows heart's reparative capabilities
Los Angeles Times, July 14 -- In an unprecedented feat, British surgeons implanted a donor heart in a dying toddler whose own heart was too weak to sustain life, then removed it 10 years later after the girl's own heart had fully recovered. The technique is unlikely to become widespread because of the severe shortage of pediatric donor hearts, but it suggests that better mechanical assist devices that take some or all of the load off a diseased heart could allow time for weakened hearts to heal themselves. The procedure, reported online Monday in the medical journal Lancet, shows that "the heart has reparative capabilities that we suspected it might have, but for which we have really lacked a great deal of proof," said Dr. Douglas Zipes of Indiana University, a former president of the American College of Cardiology. "We need to understand better how it does it, capitalize on that and be able to use it in routine therapy." Full story.

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