Anthony Grafton, the Henry Putnam Professor of History and Chair of the Council of the Humanities at Princeton, is a cultural historian of Renaissance Europe. His lecture starts at 7:30 p.m. in Ustler Hall Atrium.

Grafton’s interests lie in the history of books and readers, scholarship and education in the west from antiquity to the 19th century, and the history of science from antiquity to the Renaissance. He is the author of more than 10 books and the co-author, editor or translator of many others. Most recently he has published “Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West.”

Grafton has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Balzan Prize for History of the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award.

His lecture, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by UF’s department of history and the Alexander Grass Chair in Jewish Studies. It’s part of the ongoing series “Faithful Narratives: The Challenge of Religion in History,” supported by the Center for the Humanities in the Public Sphere, the Center for Jewish Studies, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Christian Study Center of Gainesville, and several other outside institutions.

For more information on this or other lectures, please contact Andrea Sterk at sterk@ufl.edu or Nina Caputo at ncaputo@ufl.edu.

Forecasters currently expect the storm to have little effect on the Gainesville area and plans currently call for UF work activities to remain on a normal schedule. Should the storm’s predicted track change or should forecast conditions for the Gainesville area worsen, new information will be posted on UF’s home page.

UF’s tropical weather update page: http://www.ufl.edu/weather/hurricane/.

In a totalitarian police state, acclaimed writer Katurian is brought in for questioning because his gruesome short stories bear a strong resemblance to a recent string of child murders. After failing to elicit a confession from the writer, the two detectives change the game by revealing that Katurian’s brother, Michal, is also being held in custody. Throughout the play, Katurian narrates several of his stories as he struggles to protect himself, his brother and ultimately the legacy of his work.

Director Alex Hernandez has taken a unique cinematic approach to the piece, focusing on “the forgotten art” of storytelling. Setting the performance within an unusually open atmosphere, Hernandez hopes to place The Pillowman in the context of the other arts it represents.

Show times are Nov. 6 at 7 p.m., Nov. 7 at 1 and 4 p.m., and Nov. 8 at 2 and 7 p.m. The performances are free and open to the public.

Tickets may be reserved through the Florida Players Web site at www.floridaplayers.org. For special accommodations, contact Disability Affairs Cabinet, 72 hours in advance. This production contains adult themes and may not be suitable for children.

Florida Players is a student-run theater company that provides opportunities for students to explore the world of theatre and showcase their talents in doing so. Sponsored by UF Student Government, Florida Players produces plays and musicals throughout each school year and is open to students of all majors. Since its founding in 1932, the organization’s purpose has been to facilitate the acclimation of students into the professional theatre environment. Florida Players offers students opportunities in all aspects of theatre, including direction, design, performance and playwriting, as well as leadership positions. Florida Players also offers master classes led by professional artists in the field, most recently hosting sessions with Tony Award winners Gregory Jbara and Katie Finneran.

Adolphe Sax, the son of a Belgian musical instrument maker, was born on Nov. 6, 1814. His inventions included widespread improvements to many orchestral instruments. He is best known as the inventor of the family of instruments that bears his name.

Friday’s concert will feature a variety of music performed by the saxophone class at UF under the direction of Jonathan Helton, professor of Music. The many faces of the saxophone will be showcased at this concert, from nineteenth-century classical works to Latin jazz. Composers represented on the program include French contemporary artist Ida Gotkovsky, Pulitzer prize-winner Karel Husa, jazz great Paquito D’Rivera, and the great Italian composer Ottorino Respighi. The concert will culminate in a performance by UF All-Saxophone Festival Orchestra — a grand ensemble of 22 saxophones. This ensemble includes six sizes of saxophones from sopranino to bass. The ensemble will conclude the concert performing excerpts from an arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky’s masterpiece, Pictures at an Exhibition.

It works by texting the letters “UF” to the number “90999,” and then confirming a $5 donation to the Florida Opportunity Scholars program. The donation is added to the person’s mobile phone bill or deducted from their prepaid balance.

The Florida Opportunity Scholars program provides funds to UF students who are Florida residents and come from families whose annual family income falls below $40,000. The funds are used to help pay for living expenses, books and supplies while in school. Currently 1,375 UF students benefit from the program.

In October 2008, UF President Bernie Machen announced that UF head football coach Urban Meyer and head men’s basketball coach Billy Donovan would lead a drive to raise $50 million for the program. Since the announcement, $8 million has been raised in gifts and pledges.

But women may not have to endure the medical costs, stress and potential complications that accompany such invasive biopsies forever. A University of Florida biomedical engineering researcher is making progress on an “optical biopsy” that has the potential to determine whether growths are cancerous without ever puncturing the skin.

“At this stage, it is just too early for optical tomography to be a screening tool,” said Huabei Jiang, the J. Crayton Pruitt Family professor of biomedical engineering, who has spent more than a decade developing the technique at UF and Clemson University. “But you can pretty much say that it is highly likely it can become a diagnostic tool, an adjunct to X-ray mammography.”

Surgical biopsies have long been the gold standard for determining whether growths are cancerous. But at least three out of four biopsies following mammograms conclude that observed abnormalities are benign and that no intervention was needed, Jiang said. Depending on if the biopsies are performed with needles or surgery, that can mean added cost, recuperation and potential scarring or other complications — all ultimately unnecessary.

Jiang has devoted much of his career to an alternative: “phase-contrast diffuse optical tomography,” a screening technology that roots out breast cancer not with cutting tools and laboratory tests but with light and computing power.

He recently completed the third generation of his apparatus — a bed with an array of fiber optic laser lights and detectors mounted within a hole where the patient places her breast.

Light from the harmless lasers enters the breast and scatters. Most gets absorbed in the tissue, but some reaches the detectors. With enough light hitting the detectors from enough different directions, there is sufficient data for Jiang’s computer algorithms to create an image of the breast’s interior. This image suggests either benign conditions or some of the telltale signs of cancer that are completely invisible to standard X-ray mammograms — for example, a high density of blood vessels snaking around a likely tumor.

But the image is just one indicator. In Jiang’s newest apparatus, undergoing tests at the Tampa-based Moffitt Cancer Center, fiber optic lights span 10 different wavelengths, or colors. Light with these colors changes in predictable ways when they strike certain compounds, such as oxygenated hemoglobin, water or lipids. Just as light collected from distant planets can reveal the composition of their atmospheres to astronomers, so light collected from these collisions can indicate chemical evidence of cancer.

A third technique, known as index refraction or phase contrast, provides information on cellular size and density — both factors that play into determination of cancer in laboratory biopsies.

“What he’s done is introduce a whole new optical property that is pretty clever,” said Steve Ponder, of the phase contrast element of Jiang’s research. “It’s another tool, and he’s reported good success, and it did increase sensitivity.”

Ponder is director of advanced development for the Fort Lauderdale-based Imaging Diagnostic Systems Inc., which makes breast imaging devices that rely on similar technologies to those Jiang is developing.

Over the past 10 years, Jiang and his graduate students have tested their evolving device on a total of about 200 patients, he said. In a 2008 paper in Academic Radiology, his most recently published clinical paper, he obtained 35 images from 33 patients and compared his findings with the results of the women’s traditional biopsies.

His main conclusion: His technique correctly identified biopsy confirmed malignancies nearly 75 percent of the time, with the most accurate results from older patients, whose softer breasts make abnormalities more prominent. Jiang said he has since boosted the accuracy rate to 91 percent in a study involving 144 women, but he is still readying that study for publication. More research and more patients are needed, he said.

“It’s still not enough for us to say, ‘O.K.’,” he said. “But we have some confidence.”

The National Cancer Institute has provided the bulk of about $2 million in research support for Jiang’s efforts. His current collaborators include Moffitt Cancer Center, a UF partner institution.

After years of genetic sequencing, University of Florida researchers are beginning to harness the insects’ ability to churn wood into fuel. That ability involves a mixture of enzymes from symbiotic bacteria and other single-celled organisms living in termites’ guts, as well as enzymes from the termites themselves.

The team from UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences spent two years dissecting and analyzing gene sequences of more than 2,500 worker termite guts. In total, they identified 6,555 genes from the termites and associated gut fauna involved in the digestive process.

As the researchers reported Oct. 15 in the online journal Biotechnology for Biofuels, they’ve begun to identify which of these genes encode for enzymes that could significantly improve the production of cellulosic ethanol, a fuel made from inedible plant material that the U.S. Department of Energy estimates could replace half of our gasoline if the production process could be made more cost effective.

“Termites are very unique creatures, and this research helps give the most complete picture of how their systems collaborate to, very efficiently, break down really tough biological compounds to release fermentable sugars,” said UF entomologist Mike Scharf, who leads the research.

The team has identified nearly 200 associated enzymes that help break down the problematic plant compound lignocellulose. This compound is the most costly barrier to wide-scale production of cellulosic ethanol because it must be broken down by intense heat or caustic chemicals.

Termites, however, are able to almost completely break down lignocellulose through simple digestion.

“The termite gut is a complicated and exotic package of biodiversity that manages these tasks with an efficiency that you really have to admire,” said Claudia Husseneder, a specialist in the molecular biology of termites at Louisiana State University who was not associated with UF’s research. “Mike’s work is on the cutting edge of understanding this system.”

In September, Scharf and the Savage, Maryland-based Chesapeake-PERL Inc., received a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to help develop his work into a product that can be used to help manufacture cellulosic ethanol.

Termites and their associated single-cell symbiotic organisms probably won’t have much to do with the processes that result from the work—except for their genes, of course. Scharf said that enzyme-producing genes will be transferred to a more controllable creature.

This has commonly meant that the genes would be transferred into genetically modified fungi or bacteria. However, Scharf said the genes would likely be transferred into other insects, such as caterpillars, to produce the enzymes on an industrial scale.

“Insects have played an important role in how this planet functions for millions of years,” Scharf said. “They still have a lot they can teach us. There are still many ways we can learn to benefit from Earth’s six-legged inhabitants.”

These vaccines are in nasal mist form. Pregnant women and people with chronic medical conditions should not receive the nasal spray vaccine. If you have received a nasal spray vaccine for seasonal flu, you should wait one month before getting a nasal spray vaccine for H1N1. Please see the list of medical conditions below for more details.

To receive a vaccine, students must register online at http://shcc.ufl.edu/h1n1/ and select a time slot to receive the vaccine. Fifty spots will be available for every half hour the clinic is open. The vaccines will be administered between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. at the Student Health Care Center’s Infirmary building.

Registration requires a valid Gatorlink account. Students also must print and fill out a medical questionnaire and bring the form to the clinic. Students should also read the Vaccine Information Statement posted on the registration site. Only students who have registered in advance and who present their Gator1 cards at the clinic will be vaccinated.

The ultimate goal is to vaccinate all members of the UF community who wish to be vaccinated.

You should not receive a nasal spray vaccine if you meet any of these criteria:
• Pregnant
• 50 or older
• Have asthma, diabetes, muscle or nerve disorders, heart disease, lung disease, liver or kidney disease, anemia or other blood disorders
• Have contact with a person with a severely compromised immune system
• Use long-term aspirin therapy
• Have Guillain-Barré syndrome
• Have an allergy to eggs, gentamycin, gelatin or arginine or flu vaccine.

For more information contact Kat Lindsey at 352-392-1161, ext. 4300, or e-mail katlin@ufl.edu.

Perri joined the college’s faculty in 1990 and has served as the interim dean since June 2007. A professor in the department of clinical and health psychology, Perri has held several administrative positions in the college including associate dean for research and head of the health psychology division.

“Under the leadership of (nursing dean and associate provost) Kathleen Long, as chair of the search committee, we conducted a vigorous national search for this critical position at the Health Science Center and University of Florida,” said Joseph Glover, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “After reviewing an extremely strong field of finalists, the search committee was uniformly supportive of Dr. Perri as the best fit for the next dean of the College of Public Health and Health Professions. I enthusiastically concur.”

Perri’s research findings have had a significant impact on theory, research and clinical care related to behavioral treatment of obesity. He has contributed to more than 120 scientific publications and has served as principal investigator or co-investigator for more than $30 million in research grants and contracts from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs and private industry. His current studies involve the development of effective programs for the management of obesity in underserved rural communities. In 2008 Perri received the American Psychological Association’s Samuel M. Turner Award for Distinguished Contributions to Applied Research in Clinical Psychology.

“UF and its health science center will benefit greatly from Dr. Perri as the dean of the College of Public Health and Health Professions,” said Dr. David S. Guzick, senior vice president for health affairs and president of the UF&Shands Health System. “During his tenure as interim dean, Dr. Perri successfully spearheaded the accreditation of the new school of public health within the college. He also stabilized a shaky financial foundation and launched several initiatives to foster collaboration across public health and the health professions disciplines, including the establishment of a funding program for interdisciplinary pilot studies and the founding of the Florida Trauma Rehabilitation Center for Returning Military Personnel.”

Perri is a diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology and a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Society of Behavioral Medicine and the Obesity Society. He was recently appointed associate editor of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, the leading peer-reviewed journal in the field of clinical psychology.

Perri earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Missouri – Columbia. Before arriving at UF he served on the faculty at the University of Rochester, Indiana University and Fairleigh Dickinson University.

“I am honored and excited about the opportunity this appointment presents,” Perri said. “The college has accomplished a tremendous amount over the past five years. We are now at the starting point to go on to more significant achievements through our collaborative efforts in education, research and service.”

This concert will feature Andrea Centazzo, composer, percussionist, and multimedia artist, and University of Florida professor of physics David Reitze, head of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory Scientific Collaboration.

Reitze will open the program with a brief presentation aimed at the general public highlighting gravitational waves and what they reveal about the most violent events in the universe, such as the Big Bang, neutron stars and collisions of black holes. He’ll also explain how the gravitational wave observatory, known by its acronym LIGO, home to the world’s most sensitive laser interferometer, may detect gravitational waves. Centazzo will then perform his “Einstein’s Cosmic Messengers,” the multimedia concert. The presentation blends music and sounds played live with images and animations inspired by LIGO’s facilities, the universe, and Einstein’s genius and obsessions.

“Einstein’s Cosmic Messengers” is a wonderful blend of science, art, and music. It brings together one of the boldest and most precise astrophysics experiments ever developed — LIGO — with the musical and artistic interpretative powers of Andrea Centazzo,” says Reitze. “I hope that people will come away with a sense of the quest for gravitational waves as the dawn of a new type of astronomy.”

Free and open to the public, the concert is set for 8 p.m. Sunday in the Rion Ballroom of the Reitz Student Union. It is co-sponsored by the UF LIGO research group, the UF department of physics and the National Science Foundation.

For more information on Centazzo and his music, go to www.andreacentazzo.com. For more information on the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, go to www.ligo.org.

The gift, made through the Harris Foundation, will establish an endowment fund to support early stage, innovative research projects in the field of computer science and engineering. Areas of research may include mobile communications, high-performance computing and medical informatics.

“We’re very fortunate to be part of Harris Corporation’s leadership initiative in education and research,” said UF President Bernie Machen. “Their commitment to UF and their recognition of the importance of a healthy and diverse state economy demonstrates an optimistic strategic view of the future, and we share that view with Harris.”

In recognition of the Harris gift, UF will create the Harris Gateway to Learning and Innovation in the College of Engineering, housed in the current Computer and Information Sciences building. A portion of the gift will fund the renovation of the third floor of the building to make way for this new facility.

“The Harris Gateway is aptly named in that it will provide a ‘door’ to many benefits,” said Howard L. Lance, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Harris. “It will support the ¬¬¬recruitment and development of outstanding faculty, enhance industry partnerships, create a dynamic educational model and play a key role in recruiting outstanding students to UF.”

Harris Corporation has had a longtime partnership with the University of Florida and currently employs 850 of its graduates.

“The Harris gift is an example of how leadership, partnership and innovation can mutually benefit two dynamic organizations, and in turn, benefit industry and the nation’s economy,” said Cammy Abernathy, dean of the College of Engineering. “It is also a fitting tribute to the launch of the college’s celebration of its 100th anniversary.”

The renovated space in the Computer and Information Sciences building will foster an “intellectual collision,” according to Abernathy. More than 1,100 students, 40 faculty and many visitors from industry frequent the building on a routine basis. The Harris Gateway creates a comfortable, conducive environment for the interaction of these individuals.

Work on the renovation is scheduled to begin in spring 2010.

By: Lauren Fasig
Lauren Fasig, a professor of law and director of research at the Center on Children and Families at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, co-edited the book, Handbook on Communicating and Disseminating Behavioral Science.

As parents, teachers and coaches have long known, teens think differently than adults. So, it comes as no surprise that a substantial and growing body of science confirms that although adolescents may demonstrate cognitive abilities similar to those of adults, they are less capable of mature judgment.

For example, research in behavioral science shows that adolescents simply reason differently than adults. They are less able to control their emotions or consider alternative behaviors and are less able to consider the long-term consequences of their actions. The research also concludes that adolescents are more susceptible than adults to peer and environmental influences.

Neuroscientists have found that the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the frontal lobe area that is related to functions such as impulse control, planning and risk evaluation, is not fully developed in adolescents. Developmental psychologists also find that adolescents are less psychologically mature. During the teen and young adult years, the major psychological developmental task is forging identity. Scientific evidence indicates that these ongoing developmental processes yield adolescents who are capable of behavioral change.

On Nov. 9, these research findings should be at the heart of the U.S. Supreme Court’s consideration as it addresses two cases where juveniles who committed non-homicide crimes were sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. In both the Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida cases, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether such a sentence for juveniles is cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

Joe Sullivan was convicted of raping a 72-year-old woman after he and two older boys burglarized her house in Pensacola in 1989. Terrance Graham, of Jacksonville, was convicted of armed burglary, then violated his probation when he fled from police after a home invasion. Sullivan, at 13, was barely a teenager at the time of the offense. Graham was 17 when he violated his probation.

Both were tried and sentenced in adult criminal court as a result of Florida’s direct file laws, which allow prosecutors to file cases in criminal court rather than juvenile court.

Some argue that the legal system has already incorporated the developmental factors that distinguish teens from adults into its consideration of juvenile crimes by creating a separate juvenile justice system. But adolescents who receive a sentence of life without parole are prosecuted and sentenced in adult criminal court. Because they are not tried in the juvenile justice system, these adolescents bypass any consideration of their developmental status that might be imbedded in that system. As criminal defendants, these youth receive no consideration of their immaturity or ongoing development.

In the 2005 Roper v. Simmons case, the U.S. Supreme Court held that teenage defendants should not face the death penalty because, “the susceptibility of juveniles to immature and irresponsible behavior means that their `irresponsible conduct is not as morally reprehensible as that of an adult,’ ” quoting Thompson v. Oklahoma.

The court further reasoned that because adolescents are still forming their identities, they are still capable of ceasing risky or antisocial activities.

Our new understanding of teenagers only strengthens that line of reasoning. The U.S. Supreme Court should determine that a sentence of life in prison without parole imposed on juveniles meets the definition of cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Constitution.

“Most economists think the recession is over, but people are afraid to spend money as unemployment keeps going up, which creates problems for every sector of the real estate market,” said Timothy Becker, director of UF’s Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies, which conducts the quarterly survey.

Florida’s unemployment rate climbed to 11 percent in September, its highest level since 1975, Becker said. That, along with a large number of foreclosures, places Florida near the bottom of states expected to recover from the economic downturn, he said.

“Florida was the first one into the recession and it’s probably going to be the last one out,” he said.

The latest survey finds commercial real estate the weakest sector of the economy, with no improvement expected until the job market turns around, Becker said. As retailers struggle, they are asking landlords for rent abatements, and instead of expanding, are deciding not to renew leases and even close stores, he said.

“Discount retailers like the Dollar Store and Dollar Tree seem to be weathering the hard times, but in most cases retailers are not doing well,” he said.

In some cases, though, vacant storefronts may be a sign that some retailers have departed for fancier venues, Becker said. Retailers with money on hand are able to find better locations at better rents than were available in the past, he said.

“One of our respondents said that the old adage of ‘location, location, location’ really means something right now in the ability to lease at premiere locations,” he said. “It’s the second-tier properties that are struggling.”

The state’s high unemployment rate also has taken its toll on the housing sector, Becker said. Although the foreclosure market is “going gangbusters” right now because of extremely low prices, total sales of single-family homes will probably decline as people’s uncertainty about whether they will continue to have jobs grows, he said.

Survey respondents expressed fear about another large wave of housing foreclosures if more people lose jobs and fall behind on their mortgage payments, Becker said. “There is a lot of speculation that there could be a double-dip recession, where we recover just a little bit and then go back into recession again,” he said.

An $8,000 tax credit available to first-time home buyers is scheduled to be phased out after November, Becker said. The foreseeable end to that government initiative, along with the high unemployment rate and large number of foreclosures, has resulted in fewer new homes, he said.

“Builders are being very selective about what they build,” he said. “They don’t want to get into a situation where they have large inventories again.”

One positive finding in the survey was increasing optimism about one’s own business outlook, Becker said. Respondents believe that an expected wave of foreclosures in the commercial real estate market will lower depressed prices even further, offering tremendous opportunities for future investment, he said.

Although the outlook for readily available capital has not improved as banks continue their reluctance to lend money, survey respondents believe that foreign investment may provide some relief, Becker said. With the favorability of exchange rates for the Euro against the dollar and the availability of desirable commercial property at low prices, international investors are starting to enter Florida’s real estate market, he said.

“Everybody thinks that Florida will rebound because we have so much going for us – the sun shines every day and there are a lot of advantages to living here, he said. “Foreign investors see that too and believe their prospects are good for long term investments.”

Until some of the uncertainties in the marketplace are resolved, though, including the fate of foreclosures and availability of financing, it is unlikely that confidence in Florida’s real estate markets will make steady gains, Becker said.

“As one of our respondents put it, ‘Uncertainty is the most dangerous market condition delaying recovery,’” he said. “While there are going to be improvements some quarters and declines other quarters, we’re mostly going to be bouncing along the bottom for awhile.”

The quarterly report is the most extensive survey of Florida professional real estate analysts and investors conducted on an ongoing basis. The 268 participants in the most recent survey represent 13 of the state’s urban regions and up to 15 property types.