2015 News Archive
Gloria Culver was formally installed as dean of the School of Arts & Sciences during an investiture ceremony December 1 in the Interfaith Chapel. University Trustee Ani Gabrellian ’84 opened the program, followed by remarks from Provost Peter Lennie, the Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences & Engineering. Mariët Westermann, vice president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Jon Lorsch, director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, served as guest speakers.
An analysis by Reuters and its sister company Thomas Reuters IP & Science revealed that U.S. Patent No. 8,642,660 is the most cited discovery to emerge from all fields of academic research in recent years. The patent, whose sole inventor is David Goldfarb, describes a set of drug-like molecules that extend yeast lifespan under assay conditions. Reuters reported that 108 patents cited Goldfarb's discovery between 2008-2012. A follow-up patent demonstrated that some of these molecules are active in mammalian age-associated disease models.
Males and females are made different through a diverse assortment of molecular mechanisms--from the XY chromosomal system of mammals to temperature-dependent systems in certain reptiles. In most species, some mixture of hormones, sex-specific transcription factors, and gene regulation carry out the initial instructions of the sex-determining triggers, but the outlines of these pathways have only recently begun to emerge in studies of various creatures.
Gloria Culver has been appointed dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, effective immediately. Peter Lennie, the Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences & Engineering, made the announcement following a yearlong national search. Culver has been serving as interim dean since July 1, 2014.
Kathy Giardina’s position requires her to manage complex budgetary matters within the department—including 30 research grants, faculty start-up accounts, capital equipment accounts, as well as departmental operating and teaching budgets.
We humans tend to assume we rule the Earth. With our advanced tool making, language, problem solving and social skills, and our top predator status, we like to think of ourselves as the dominant life form on the planet.
A protein newly found in the naked mole rat may help explain its unique ability to ward off cancer.
The protein is associated with a cluster of genes (called a locus) that is also found in humans and mice. It’s the job of that locus to encode—or carry the genetic instructions for synthesizing —several cancer-fighting proteins. As Professor of Biology Vera Gorbunova explains, the locus found in naked mole rats encodes a total of four cancer-fighting proteins, while the human and mouse version encodes only three proteins.
The findings by Seuanov and Gorbunova research team have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.