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In the News
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Week of 30 October 1998 |
Vol. II, No. 12 |
In the News
Probably few recent Nobel laureates in economics have faced starvation in their childhood. But the latest winner of the prize, Amartya Sen, got an early glimpse at age nine, when helping victims of famine in Bengal. "It's not a novel understanding that famines can be caused by market failure," says Debraj Ray, CAS professor of economics, in the October 26 issue of BusinessWeek. "But Sen was the one to pound it down the throats of people." Ray's recent textbook, Development Economics, has won considerable praise from fellow economists.
Charles DeLisi, dean of the College of Engineering, will lead a new research and education program in bioinformatics at BU funded by the National Science Foundation. An important component of the program will be teaching the clear communication of increasingly vast amounts of seemingly disparate biological information. "We try to stress communication skills, both verbal and written," says DeLisi, in the October 12 issue of Mass High Tech. "Writing succinctly and clearly to explain science and convey it to the public is very, very important."
Technological advances constantly cause factories to retool, and workers who can't swim will sink. Such consequences of technology are common knowledge, but the ranks of displaced office workers get less attention. "We know what happened in manufacturing," says CAS Economics Professor Eli Berman in an article in the September 6 Chicago Sunday Tribune. "You had workers in their early 40s, who were too old to be retrained. They took a real hit. But we don't know yet what happened in the services."
COM Journalism Professor Caryl Rivers undertakes to explain why for her and other feminists "the Big Creep is still Our Creep." Referring to President Clinton, Rivers describes him as "an amazing politician who has advanced issues that most women care about" and asks in an essay in the October 15 Boston Globe, "What group with an iota of horse sense would jettison the most powerful politician in the world . . . because of moral lapses?"
The dynamics of a dance company often resembles the diverse moves of its performers, and survival sometimes requires the same stamina and grace. Boston's Dance Collective has lasted a quarter of a century, and the group is described as "a very special model, with everyone supporting, nurturing, and giving feedback to one another" by one of its newest codirectors, Micki Taylor-Pinney. "I have the sense it could go on forever," says Taylor-Pinney, dance coordinator in BU's department of physical education, recreation, and dance, in a Boston Herald article on October 19.
"In the News" is compiled by the Office of Public Relations.