Releases

With a thousand distractions vying for your attention, how do you stay focused? Just who, or rather what, is in charge of your brain? New research into how the brain manages information has found that an area previously thought to be just an information collector in fact plays the role of an executiveóhelping to filter out extraneous information to help you stay focused. The findings offer potential insights into helping people with attention disorders. Read More

The Food and Drug Administration is examining study data from Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers, published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, to determine if new warnings should be placed on common blood pressure medications indicating an increased risk of birth defects for babies whose mothers take these medications during the first trimester of pregnancy. Read More

When 24-year-old Charles Dougherty checks into Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center tomorrow, he'll be preparing for a treatment that has never been performed before in an adult patient in Nashville, and will be only the second case in Tennessee history. Read More

Lou H. Silberman, an internationally recognized scholar of the Hebrew Bible and Judaic studies and longtime campus leader at Vanderbilt University, died June 6 in Tucson, Ariz. He was 91. Read More

Mike Newton, acting associate clinical professor of law at Vanderbilt University, is an expert on war crimes and international criminal law. Vanderbilt University Professor of History Thomas Alan Schwartz says that one of the real dangers about the Haditha investigation is that the truth about the incident could become secondary to opposing political agendas. Read More

Robyn Minton, director of the YWCA's Domestic Violence Services program, has been named the first recipient of tuition sponsorship to the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management Executive MBA (EMBA) program under the school's partnership with the Center for Nonprofit Management. The sponsorship, which will pay Minton's tuition for the 21-month program, is valued at about $73,000. Read More

Admission will be free to attend faculty and ensemble concerts at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music starting with the fall 2006 semester, announced Dean Mark Wait. Read More

About 20 Vanderbilt University students will work with health organizations in Uganda this summer as part of that country's response to HIV/AIDS. Read More

The possibility that Iraqi civilians were massacred at Haditha has brought back painful memories for many about the infamous My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, according to Vanderbilt University Professor of History Thomas Alan Schwartz. Read More

Rich Milner, assistant professor of education at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College of education and human development, has been honored with an Early Career Contribution Award from the American Educational Research Association. The award, presented annually by the association's Committee on Scholars of Color in Education, recognizes a scholar who is within the first decade of his or her career following receipt of the doctoral degree. Read More

A new university-wide initiative is urging tourists and Middle Tennessee residents alike to Visit Vanderbilt. Read More

The first buildings completed as part of the Commons, which will serve as the home for all first-year students at Vanderbilt University beginning in 2008, have been named for a woman who played an integral role in Vanderbilt's very existence and a man whose medical discoveries earned him a Nobel Prize. Read More

Norman Urmy, who over the past 24 years has led Vanderbilt University Hospital and its clinical enterprise successfully through an ever-changing landscape of health care changes, is stepping down. Read More

Vanderbilt University has hired five prominent African American literature scholars in a blockbuster recruiting coup that advances its efforts to be a major player in the study of African American literature and deepen scholarship of Southern and American literature. Read More

Vanderbilt engineers are a key part of the team in an ambitious national effort to advance the field of fluid power, which could lead to reductions in fuel consumption, state-of-the-art rescue robots and new devices to aid people with mobility impairments. Read More

Singer-songwriters Neil Thrasher, Wendell Mobley and Jason Sellers headline the second Bluebird on the Mountain show of the 2006 season at 7 p.m. Saturday, June 10, at Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory. Read More

A team of researchers has achieved a long-sought scientific goal: using laser light to break specific molecular bonds. The process uses laser light, instead of heat, to strip hydrogen atoms from silicon surfaces. This is a key step in the manufacture of computer chips and solar cells, so the achievement could reduce the cost and improve the quality of a wide variety of semiconductor devices. Read More

Your toddler can sing along with The Wiggles and knows Big Bird's face as well as she knows her own, but are those hours spent watching children's videos really helping her learn? New research indicates that parents should choose videos with high interactive content if they want their children to be educated as well as entertained by their time in front of the tube. Read More

President Bush's call for National Guard troops on the border is "a political move that flies in the face of reality," according to Robert Barsky, editor of AmeriQuests and an expert on refugee, border and migration issues. Delivering a nationally televised speech on immigration shows President Bush wants to act, not react, on the debate about cracking down on illegal immigrants, according to presidential expert John Geer. Read More

Camilla P. Benbow, Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt's Peabody College, has been appointed vice chairwoman of a national panel that will advise President Bush and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings on the teaching and learning of mathematics, Spellings announced May 15. Read More