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Christian Science Monitor: Peace Corps returns to Peru

After a 27-year absence, the Peace Corps will return to Peru, President Bush announced during his recent visit there -- the first by a sitting U.S. president, reports the March 25 Christian Science Monitor. Peru President Alejandro Toledo, who met two Peace Corps volunteers when he was a young boy in a fishing town on Peru's central coast, says that the volunteers "helped me to understand the world," a reference to the assistance they gave him in getting accepted to the University of San Francisco. David Scott Palmer, a CAS professor of international relations, who was one of the original Peace Corps volunteers, is enthusiastic about the return of the Peace Corps to Peru. "I think it could make a useful contribution to Peru's efforts to reduce extreme poverty," he says.

Christian Science Monitor: Romney not invincible

The Massachusetts governor's race "looks like it will be one of the marquee matchups in the nation this fall," writes Seth Stern in the March 21 Christian Science Monitor. He cites Republican Acting Governor Jane Swift's quick pullout, leaving the field to Mitt Romney, who has rapidly risen to prominence following his organization of the successful Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. However, Democrats feel Romney has weaknesses that can be exploited. They will try to label him as too conservative for the state and may fall back on Ted Kennedy's successful campaign strategy against Romney in the 1994 Senate race, when the Kennedy camp termed Romney antilabor after widespread layoffs at his venture-capital firm. Says Tobe Berkovitz, a COM associate professor in the department of mass communication, advertising, and public relations, the Republicans now have "a slim chance instead of no chance."

Information Week: 'Net rage in check with 3Com "switch"

Network outages, which not only create technical challenges for IT staff, but also anger employees and curtail business productivity, may be resolved by the latest 3Com Corporation offering -- Switch 4007R -- reports the March 18 Information Week. The redundant switch fabric on the 4007R means that it can recover from a failure on one of its switch fabrics within milliseconds. "The users probably don't even recognize that there's been a switchover," says Graham Ward, a MED research assistant professor and director of information technology at MED's Office of Information Technology. "If our network is out of business, then our research community is very stressed, and a substantial amount of research could end up being lost."

National Geographic: Maya mural a masterpiece

Last year's discovery of a mural dating from a.d. 100 in San Bartolo, Guatemala, under a Maya pyramid is one of the most important finds in Maya archaeology in recent decades, both for its artistic merit and because of its insight into the Preclassic period of the Maya, reports the March 14
National Geographic. Norman Hammond, a CAS professor of archaeology, who has excavated Preclassic Maya sites in Belize, calls the San Bartolo mural "arguably the most significant find since Bonampak" -- a reference to the site discovered in 1946 in Mexico with Maya murals painted about a.d. 790, not long before the Maya civilization collapsed in a.d. 900. "Bonampak is the acme of Classic Maya mural painting," says Hammond, "but the San Bartolo mural shows that this seminaturalistic style was in existence half a millenium before."

29 March 2002
Boston University
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