Photo by Chris Meyer Edward Castronova, in front of a virtual Merry Olde England, is exploring the possibilities that immersive spaces provide as educational tools in the social sciences.

Today's Feature

Virtual archives

Nicole Jacquard (left), a professor of fine arts at the Henry Hope School of Fine Arts on the IU Bloomington campus, is using an IU New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities grant to wed nuclear physics to the fine arts. She has been using prototyping equipment at the IU Cyclotron Facility to produce utilitarian art renderings from a corn starch material from her own virtual 3-D designs and working with IUCF director Paul Sokol to expand access of the facility beyond the sciences to other intellectual activities at the university. Read about her work and other faculty at this IU research web site.

In the current Research and Creative Activity magazine, read about William Newman's alchemy, Terri Bourus' Shakespeare Team and Susan Gubar's take on Judas, among other great features in the "Humanities: Then and Now" issue. And to read some other IU-affiliated publications online, click on the following icons:

Additional top stories

 

All the world's immersive

IU's Edward Castronova is exploring the possibilities that immersive environments can provide as educational tools in the social sciences, and Shakespeare scholar Linda Charnes is helping him re-create the Bard's 16th-century backdrop.

Charging cell phones on Hoosier corn?

IUPUI researchers will collaborate with the U.S. Army in the development of fuel cells powered by electrical power generated from the grain alcohol ethanol. Can you ear me now?

Out of Africa

The Stone Age Institute is bringing paleoanthro-
pologist David
Lordkipanidze of the Republic of Georgia to Bloomington Nov. 8. He and his team are providing new fossil discoveries showing surprisingly early occupation of Eurasia by 1.8 million year ago.

Who's coming to the campuses?

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak; Ambassador James Joseph; biochemist Bruce Alberts; playwright Vincent Woods; Islamic scholar Asma Afsaruddin; actress-activist Alfre Woodard; Pulitzer Prize winner Sonia Nazario; and classical archaeologist Jeannette Forsén and historian Bjorn Forsén.

When in Rome

Historian Edward Watts' new book on Greco-Roman cities and schools draws some interesting parallels to modern issues regarding religious belief and secular education.

Cracking the code

Whether it is an art historian piecing together Venetian Domenico Tiepolo's New Testament cycle of drawings or an anthropologist who finds a hand-written document that sheds light on the 1863 consecration of Gettysburg, Pa., scholarly pursuit requires equal parts passion and inspiration, sometimes mixed with a bit of good fortune.