With latest honor, Hofstadter is IU's first-ever Pulitzer, APS, AAAS triple honoree Little more than a week after election as a fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science Douglas Hofstadter has been elected a fellow of the American Philosophical Society. With the honor Hofstadter becomes the first faculty member in Indiana University history to hold fellowships in the two prestigious societies and to have won a Pulitzer Prize.   Full Story >>

IU Distinguished Professor Michael Lynch named a National Academy of Sciences fellow Michael Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at Indiana University Bloomington, has been elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the academy announced today from its 146th annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Fellowship in the NAS is considered by some to be the highest honor afforded in American science. According to the academy, election recognizes "distinguished achievements in original research," as well as scholarly prowess. Full Story >>

Preserving Yiddish memory from before World War II The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded two Indiana University faculty members $267,000 to preserve and annotate oral histories they collected from Yiddish-speaking residents of Eastern Europe and make the material available to scholars, educators and the public. Professors Jeffrey Veidlinger and Dov-Ber Kerler were awarded the grant through the NEH Preservation and Access program. Their project, which also received a 2005 NEH grant, is called Archives of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories, or AHEYM -- aheym is the Yiddish word for homeward.  Full Story >>

Inaugural Onward! Curtis R. Simic Scholars selected at IU Bloomington Five Indiana University students have been chosen as the inaugural recipients of the Onward! Curtis R. Simic Scholarship for Leaders at IU Bloomington. The $1.3 million endowed scholarship fund honors Curt Simic, president emeritus of the IU Foundation, for his years of commitment to IU and his lifelong focus on developing student leaders. Simic, who retired in September 2008, was an active student leader and president of the IU Student Foundation in his senior year at IU. Full Story >>

Distinguished professor emeritus elected into the European Academy of Sciences and Arts Peter Bondanella, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of comparative literature, film studies and Italian at Indiana University, has been elected to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. Based in Salzburg, Austria, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts is an interdisciplinary network of scholars from various fields who focus on scientific, social, cultural and ethical issues concerning the region. Bondanella is the first IU scholar inducted into the academy. Full Story >>

Star crust 10 billion times stronger than steel, IU physicist finds Research by a theoretical physicist at Indiana University shows that the crusts of neutron stars are 10 billion times stronger than steel or any other of the earth's strongest metal alloys. Charles Horowitz, a professor in the IU College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Physics, came to the conclusion after large-scale molecular dynamics computer simulations were conducted at Indiana University and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The research will appear Friday (May 8) in Physical Review Letters. Exhibiting extreme gravity while rotating as fast as 700 times per second, neutron stars are massive stars that collapsed once their cores ceased nuclear fusion and energy production. The only things more dense are black holes, as a teaspoonful of neutron star matter would weigh about 100 million tons. Full Story >>

European Wind Energy Academy honors IU Bloomington atmospheric scientist Indiana University Bloomington atmospheric scientist Rebecca Barthelmie has been honored for her wind energy research by the European Academy of Wind Energy. Barthelmie, a professor of atmospheric science and sustainability, accepted the EAWE's Academy Scientific Award for 2009 at the European Wind Energy Association annual conference and exhibition in Marseille, France, on March 16. EWEC is the premier event in wind energy and was attended by more than 7,500 delegates. Barthelmie is currently on sabbatical, continuing her research into power output from large wind farms at the Risoe DTU Laboratory for Sustainable Energy in Denmark. Full Story >>

IU professor's book examines life for Russia's merchant class, 200 years ago Ivan Alekseevich Tolchënov lived the life of a typical Russian merchant of the late 1700s and early 1800s, but with a major difference -- he wrote it all down. David L. Ransel, the Robert F. Byrnes Professor of History in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, has used Tolchënov's detailed diary to produce a revealing book about a segment of Russian society that had been largely ignored by historians. Full Story >>

IU professor writes first comprehensive study of Chinese criminal justice system Indiana University historian Klaus Mühlhahn estimates in a new book that 10 percent of China's people were imprisoned in the 1960s, perhaps half of them serving lengthy terms in labor camps devoted to the "re-education" of those accused of counter-revolutionary activities. "I was totally unprepared for that," said Mühlhahn, a professor in the IU Bloomington Department of History, part of the College of Arts and Sciences. "Like most other China specialists, I didn't know how extensive this practice really was." Full Story >>

IU Bloomington to receive $1.2 million for Huntington's disease research The National Institutes of Health has approved a $1.2 million, four-year grant that will allow Indiana University Bloomington scientists to continue their study of Huntington's disease. The project, led by IU Bloomington structural biologist Joel Ybe, has focused on the interaction of two proteins, HIP1 (Huntingtin-interacting protein 1) and HIPPI (HIP1-protein interactor), whose association is believed to trigger the death of nervous system cells. Ybe will work with IU Bloomington chemist David Giedroc to characterize the dynamic flexibility of HIP1 by using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques. Full Story >>

Psyched out by stereotypes: IU research suggests thinking about the positiveIn 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. The study, led by Robert J. Rydell, assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University, focused on women and math ability. While studies -- including this one -- have shown that women will perform worse on mathematical tasks if simply made aware of the negative stereotype that women are weaker at math than men, this is the first study to examine the influence of concurrent and competing stereotypes, one negative and one positive. Full Story >>

Piracy, poverty and global trade: Indiana University expert source commentsContainer ships and other maritime behemoths that carry oil and bulk cargo ponderously across the oceans are prominent visual evidence of global trade, said Stephanie C. Kane, associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Indiana University Bloomington. She said this is the case not only in the port cities that function as transport nodes, but also along the coasts of nations like Somalia whose people are excluded from the benefits of global trade. Full Story >>

Award-winning author, Distinguished Professor Susan Gubar publishes book on Judas In her new book, Judas: A Biography, Indiana University Distinguished Professor of English Susan Gubar delves into how Judas became a symbol of the Jewish people. A pioneering feminist and culture critic, Gubar is the author of the books Poetry After Auschwitz and Rooms of Our Own, and she is co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. In the April 12 New York Times Sunday Book Review, Judas: A Biography was named to the Editors' Choice list. Full Story >>

IU astronomer’s discovery poses challenge to galaxy formation theories A team led by an Indiana University astronomer has found a sample of massive galaxies with properties that suggest they may have formed relatively recently. This would run counter to the widely-held belief that massive, luminous galaxies (like our own Milky Way Galaxy) began their formation and evolution shortly after the Big Bang, some 13 billion years ago. Further research into the nature of these objects could open new windows into the study of the origin and early evolution of galaxies. Full Story >>

IU GlueX experiment advances with Department of Energy groundbreaking For more than a decade Indiana University physicists have only been able to theorize about the nature of exotic hybrid mesons, unique particles that may be the key to unlocking how quarks bind together to form matter's building blocks. But the journey to move beyond theory in the search for these elusive particles moved a step closer Tuesday (April 14) with the turn of a shovel in Newport News, Va., where IU physicists were on hand to break ground on a $14.1 million, 8,000-square-foot experimental hall designed to test theories about exotic hybrid mesons. Mesons are particles made of a quark and an anti-quark that are bound together by gluons. Full Story >>

Mystery shrouds World Day for Physical Activity at IU Bloomington Dozens of Indiana University students in Bloomington will observe World Day for Physical Activity on Wednesday (April 8) with a 4-mile trek around the scenic campus as they search for a mysterious character. The students, competitors in the alternate reality game Skeleton Chase 2: The Psychic, for weeks have been learning about nutrition and other health matters as they work with their teammates to solve a mystery as it unfolds via digital spaces and the physical world. On Wednesday, the players will head to the Student Recreational Sports Center to pick up a Global Positioning System that is also a walkie-talkie. A character from the game will speak to them and arrange a rendezvous, but he is on the run, and they will have to try and find him. Full Story >>

IU anthropologist's project looks to expose, protect riches of Central Asia Professor Kubat Tabaldiev of Kyrgyzstan traveled six thousand miles from one of the most culturally diverse countries on earth to watch members of the Ojibwe tribe perform Native American dances in Michigan. He loved the experience so much that he can't wait to get back home and share what he learned. Full Story >>

IU Bloomington faculty member named National Humanities Center Fellow John Hanson, an associate professor in the Indiana University Bloomington Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a National Humanities Center Fellow for the 2009-10 academic year. Hanson will use the fellowship to complete a book, tentatively titled Islam, Schooling and the Public Sphere: The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Ghana, West Africa. Full Story >>

Dogs, maybe not, but old genes can learn new tricks A popular view among evolutionary biologists that fundamental genes do not acquire new functions was challenged this week by a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Full Story >>