Latest News

• share
• favorite_border

A guided tour of Jerusalem, an award-winning love story from Yemen and a spiritual journey from Tunisia are on the bill as Florida State University presents its fourth annual Middle East Film Festival. The festival, which runs from Sunday, Sept. 23, to Thursday, Sept. 27, will take place at FSU's Askew Student Life Cinema, located at 942 Learning Way on the FSU campus. All films are free and open to the public.

• share
• favorite_border

Whether we are seeking a mate or sizing up a potential rival, good-looking people capture our attention nearly instantaneously and render us temporarily helpless to turn our eyes away from them, according to a new Florida State University study.

• share
• favorite_border

Outsourcing. Offshoring. Compartmentalizing. More than corporate buzzwords, these trends are redefining the nature of work for millions of Americans, as well as their counterparts all over the world. But what are the ramifications of these trends for the people who actually do the work?

• share
• favorite_border

How is matter created? What happens when stars die? Is the universe shrinking, or is it expanding? For the past few months, members of the department of physics at Florida State University have begun using a groundbreaking new research facility to conduct experiments that may help provide answers to just such questions.

• share
• favorite_border

Far from the everyday world occupied by such common elements such as gold and lead lies a little-understood realm inhabited by radioactive, or unstable, elements. Recently, a nuclear physicist from Florida State University collaborated with other scientists from the United States, Japan and England in an experiment that illustrated how the "normal" rules of physics don't apply for some of these radioactive elements.

• share
• favorite_border

A key challenge facing doctors as they treat patients suffering from cancer or other diseases resulting from genetic mutations is that the drugs at their disposal often don't discriminate between healthy cells and dangerous ones -- think of the brute-force approach of chemotherapy, for instance. To address this challenge, Florida State University researchers are investigating techniques for using certain molecules that, when exposed to light, will kill only the harmful cells.

• share
• favorite_border

A collaboration between the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University and industry partner SuperPower Inc. has led to a new world record for a magnetic field created by a superconducting magnet.

• share
• favorite_border

If you have ever marveled over the orderly process by which cars, buses and other modes of transportation are directed toward their destinations in a big city, you'll really appreciate the work of one Florida State University chemist. Thomas Fischer, an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at FSU, is designing a "smart" traffic system similar to those in major metropolises.

• share
• favorite_border

American women have gotten fatter as it has become more socially acceptable to carry a few extra pounds, according to a new study.

• share
• favorite_border

To those in the conservation movement, Archie Carr was one of the great heroes of the 20th century. A pioneering biologist, ecologist and nature writer, he launched an international campaign to protect various species of migratory sea turtles all over the world. In so doing, Carr, who died in 1987, created the template for many successful environmental campaigns that followed.

• share
• favorite_border

There's depression, and then there's double depression. Sound bad? It is, according to Thomas Joiner, who has identified hopelessness as a distinguishing feature of double depression in a new paper published in the Journal of Affective Disorders. The finding could help therapists diagnose and treat the mood disorder.

• share
• favorite_border

In an out-of-this-world experience they describe as "monumental" and "mind-blowing," three intrepid artists from Florida State University have become the first Americans to exhibit at one of the largest provincial museums in China.

• share
• favorite_border

As U.S. companies continue to wrestle with the implications of the federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a Florida State University researcher has provided evidence that certifying financial statements doesn't sway investors.

• share
• favorite_border

He was America's first explorer; an associate of such historical figures as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, John Paul Jones and the Marquis de Lafayette; and the writer of the first U.S. book ever protected by copyright. But for more than 150 years, the exploits of John Ledyard have been lost to history.

• share
• favorite_border

The Library of Congress has no shortage of reading materials with more than 134 million items in its collection. This summer, a Florida State University chemist will use his knowledge of cellulose, a key component of paper, to help the world's largest library find ways of preserving its vast treasure trove of books, manuscripts, maps, newspapers and pamphlets, many of which are irreplaceable.

• share
• favorite_border

From prediction to recovery, Florida State University's experts are among the best in the nation when it comes to the study of hurricanes and their impact on people and property. These experts are available to answer media questions and give perspective to news stories throughout the 2007 hurricane season.

• share
• favorite_border

A Florida State University engineering professor is looking to develop new technologies that could replace bone mass lost to the disease, as well as treat traumatic bone injuries such as those suffered in automobile accidents or combat.

• share
• favorite_border

A pair of Florida State University researchers have received a major grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study ways of preventing the body from developing scar tissue around biomedical devices such as coronary artery stents "” a problem that affects thousands of patients each year.

• share
• favorite_border

Few have been unaffected by the rapidly increasing price of gas, which has inched its way up toward $4 a gallon in some parts of the United States. And consumers aren't feeling those effects just in their wallets, a Florida State University professor in Tallahassee, Fla., has found.

• share
• favorite_border

\A new doctoral program being unveiled at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla. will prepare students for highly specialized careers in dozens of fields in academia, industry and government.

• share
• favorite_border

In the business world, it's a fact of life that companies sometimes let their customers down. Whether the letdown is minor "” such as forgetting to provide silverware at a restaurant "” or major, such as making airline passengers sit on a stuffy plane for 10 hours during bad weather "” all companies have a vested interest in addressing such "performance failures" in a way that encourages customers to keep coming back.

• share
• favorite_border

A Florida State University researcher in Tallahassee, Fla,, who is developing methods for regenerating blood vessels damaged by secondhand tobacco smoke, has received a fellowship award that could provide as much as $450,000 over five years for her to pursue new scientific approaches.

• share
• favorite_border

To help manage some of the pressures associated with such relentless growth, while also improving energy efficiency, sustainability and overall quality of life, Florida State University's Center for Advanced Power Systems (CAPS) in Tallahassee, Fla., has partnered with three other organizations to design a new community that could revolutionize the way future residential developments are constructed.

• share
• favorite_border

A Florida State University anthropologist from Tallahassee, Fla., has new evidence that ancient farmers in Mexico were cultivating an early form of maize, the forerunner of modern corn, about 7,300 years ago - 1,200 years earlier than scholars previously thought.

• share
• favorite_border

The Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin has contracted with the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla. to build an $8.7-million hybrid magnet for "neutron scattering" experiments.

• share
• favorite_border

For Florida State University researcher Okenwa Okoli, testing his latest research is vital. Okoli, an associate professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering in the Florida A&M University-Florida State College of Engineering in Tallahassee, Fla., and his research team at FSU's High-Performance Materials Institute have been working on bullet-proof body armor for U.S. military men and women.

• share
• favorite_border

Some of the nation's most successful actors from stage and screen will be performing this weekend as the School of Theatre at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla., presents a staged reading of "The History of Cardenio," an unfinished play believed to have been co-written by William Shakespeare.

• share
• favorite_border

Research performed by a team at Florida State University's National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Fla. suggests that the benefits of building higher-field superconducting magnets likely will far outweigh the costs of building them.

• share
• favorite_border

"Build a better mousetrap," the saying goes, "and the world will beat a path to your door." In the complex field of organic chemistry, that path leads to Florida State University, where a newly developed substance could make the jobs of scientists throughout the world a little easier as they work to develop new drugs and other chemicals that benefit humanity.

• share
• favorite_border

At Florida State University, a growing number of Hispanic students are finding a welcoming educational and social environment as the university works to recruit the fastest-growing and largest minority group in America.

• share
• favorite_border

"This jacket makes you look 20 pounds lighter!" Sales pitches such as this can be heard every day in just about any mall in the United States. However, such ploys likely do little to clinch a sale "” and may, in fact, create negative perceptions among shoppers, says Peter Darke, an assistant professor in the department of marketing of Florida State University's FSU College of Business in Tallahassee, Fla.

• share
• favorite_border

The juvenile justice system emerged a century ago out of the belief that young offenders were less culpable and more salvageable than their adult counterparts, but today, that system is under attack by get-tough policymakers claiming wide public support that Florida State University criminologists in Tallahassee, Fla. say simply doesn't exist.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists know that a better understanding of how proteins bond could lead to more effective treatments for genetic disorders and other life-threatening conditions. Now, a pair of Florida State University researchers' new theory has been proven to accurately predict the association rate for proteins. Their theory is outlined in the February issue of the scientific journal Structure.

• share
• favorite_border

Magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, has revolutionized health care, providing doctors with a highly accurate, non-invasive tool for diagnosing cancer, injuries and other maladies within the human body. Now, a Florida State University researcher in Tallahassee, Fla., has collaborated in a research project that could lead to ways of producing even sharper medical images.

• share
• favorite_border

After the skeletal remains of an 18,000-year-old, Hobbit-sized human were discovered on island of Flores in 2003, some scientists thought that the specimen must have been a human with an abnormally small skull. Not so, said Dean Falk, a world-renowned paleoneurologist and chair of Florida State University's anthropology department, in Tallahassee, Fla..

• share
• favorite_border

Buried under 243 acres in an East Tennessee valley adjacent to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Y-12 National Security Complex, toxic waste from weapons manufacturing at the facility between 1951 and 1983 leaches into groundwater that extends in radioactive plumes for miles from the contaminated site. But soon, Professor Joel Kostka and his FSU oceanography department team will help clean up the mess.

• share
• favorite_border

Nearly eight years later, a businessman's promise to donate $7 million worth of company stock to Florida State University's program in hospitality management in Tallahassee, Fla., is yielding huge dividends. As a result of Robert Dedman's generosity, the Dedman School of Hospitality could receive as much as $12.6 million, once matching funds from the state of Florida are factored in.

• share
• favorite_border

In a basement on the Florida State University campus in Tallahassee, Fla., one of the world's foremost scientists is working to ignite a revolution. But Sir Harold Kroto's mission isn't the overthrow of a government; instead, he is making use of modern technology to launch what he calls a "revolution" in the way schoolchildren all over the world are taught about science.

• share
• favorite_border

Labor unions are down, but they're not necessarily out. That's the verdict of Jack Fiorito, a professor of management in the Florida State University College of Business in Tallahassee, Fla. Fiorito has analyzed various changes in the marketplace, the workplace and the political realm that have challenged organized labor in a new paper, "The State of the Unions in the United States," which will be published in the Journal of Labor Research.

• share
• favorite_border

Could a handful of nutrient-rich dried plums each day help keep the doctor away by actually reversing bone loss in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis or osteoarthritis? A unique clinical study under way in the Florida State University College of Human Sciences in Tallahassee, Fla. means to find out.

• share
• favorite_border

The abusive boss has been well documented in movies ("Nine to Five"), television (Fox's "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss") and even the Internet (http://HateBoss.com). Now, a Florida State University professor and two of his doctoral students in Tallahassee, Fla. have conducted a study that shines some light on the magnitude of the problem and documents its effects on employee health and job performance.

• share
• favorite_border

It is one of the premier national honors bestowed in the visual arts; now, two faculty artists from the Florida State University art department in Tallahassee, Fla. each have painted their way to a 2006 Joan Mitchell Award and the $25,000 grant that goes with it.

• share
• favorite_border

Florida State University has identified a number of its faculty members who are both fluent in Spanish and available to share their expertise with Spanish media. Please retain this listing and feel free to contact them for comment as needed.

• share
• favorite_border

Parents, take note: longstanding theory contends that low self-control is more strongly correlated with crime than any other known factor. Now, a study offers strong empirical evidence that supports -- and challenges -- the "stability thesis," an idea that suggests parents have just 10 years or less to affect lasting patterns of self-control (e.g. the ability to delay gratification and thoughtfully consider the consequences of actions) in their child.

• share
• favorite_border

A Florida State University professor of chemistry and biochemistry in Tallahassee, Fla, Rafael P. Brüschweiler, has been elevated to the rank of Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

• share
• favorite_border

A diagnostic test developed by a Florida State University education professor in Tallahassee, Fla. has been selected by the New York City Department of Education for use in determining whether students in that city's schools are gifted.

• share
• favorite_border

Money changes everything, and that includes changing people's motivations for the better and their behavior toward others for the worse, according to a new study published in the international journal Science.

• share
• favorite_border

Three Florida State University programs have joined forces to research how to better prepare teachers to combat science illiteracy in the United States "” and they are receiving a helping hand from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

• share
• favorite_border

As the Northern Hemisphere braces for another flu season, researchers at Florida State University's National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Fla. are making strides toward better understanding the mechanics of the virus that causes it "” a virus that kills between one-quarter and one-half million people each year.

• share
• favorite_border

People who get scared when they experience a pounding heart, sweaty palms or dizziness "” even if the cause is something as mundane as stress, exercise or caffeine "” are more likely to develop a clinical case of anxiety or panic disorder, according to a Florida State University researcher in Tallahassee, Fla.