In a story on new paints for military vehicles that can detect, absorb and neutralize gases during a chemical weapons attack, The Economist cites the groundbreaking work of chemistry professor Christopher Landry and his research team who discovered how to mix a silica gel with a vanadium catalyst to create a coating that oxidizes mustard gas, rendering it harmless. Read the story at Economist.com...
Political Science professor Alec Ewald's research on the implementation of felony disenfranchisement law was cited in a pre-election New York Times editorial. Read the story at The New York Times...
In an essay written for The Scientist based on his latest book, Berndt Heinrich, emeritus professor of biology, admits that he has always been fascinated by beetles and decay. His new work, Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death, focuses on carrion beetles' tactics for using and consuming all manner of deceased plants and animals. Seven Days also reviewed the book in their story "Carrion Comfort." Read the story at TheScientist.com... and Read the review at SevenDaysVT.com...
Inside Higher Ed reviews At Liberty to Die: The Battle for Death with Dignity in America by Howard Ball, professor emeritus of political science. Ball suggests that the "due process" constitutional amendments extend liberty to "the terminally ill's right to choose to die with dignity." Read the story at InsideHigherEd.com...
Assistant professor of English Kevin Moffett’s new work, created in conjunction with a team of creative and technology professionals, is getting major coverage from publications such as The Los Angeles Times, Wired magazine and The New York Times. “Artistically exceptional” and a “technological innovation,” according to one production consultant for digital content strategies, The Silent History is a serialized app for iPhone and iPad “with visuals and text that set up the story of a present-and-future dystopia in which a mysterious speechlessness epidemic has broken out among a generation of children.” Read the story…
Political scientist Gregory Gause, an authority on the Middle East, talks to Public Radio International’s “The World” about King Abdullah’s sudden appointment of Prince Mohammed bin Nayef as interior minister, considered an unusual maneuver in “the complex political chess game” the Saudi royal family appears to be engaged in. Read the story at TheWorld.org…
In an article about Saudi civilians' fundraising efforts for Syrian rebels, The Wall Street Journal talks with Middle East expert Gregory Gause, professor and chair of political science, who warns of the risk that the government might inadvertently "encourage an atmosphere similar to the '80s," in which Muslim extremists were able to co-opt good intentions and forge the alliance that became Al Qaeda. Read the story at WSJ.com...
As the Morrill Act establishing land-grant public universities reaches its 150th anniversary, Diverse Issues in Higher Education examines concerns that the promise of democratizing that opportunity is eroding. The magazine cites Daniel Fogel, former president and co-editor of the newly published Precipice or Crossroads: Where America's Great Public Universities Stand and Where They Are Going Midway through Their Second Century,"We’re in danger of chopping away at the effectiveness of the commitment to access and affordability to higher education for the broad mass of the American people, absolutely." Read the story at DiverseEducation.com...
Gordon Robinson, political scientist, political analyst and journalist, wrote an opinion column for Gulf News analyzing presidential candidate Mitt Romney's recent Middle East trip and Republican fears that recent uprisings in the Arab world might lead to Islamist, anti-Christian governments. Read the story at GulfNews.com...
Seven Days interviews Thomas Visser, associate professor and director of UVM's historic preservation program, in a review of his "unexpectedly absorbing" book, Porches of North America. Visser's heavily illustrated book, with examples from Vermont and across the continent, is one of the first studies of porches as not just an architectural but also a cultural feature that illuminates American social history. Read the story at SevenDaysVT.com...