Paul Sereno, Professor in Organismal Biology & Anatomy, and his wife Gabrielle Lyon, an educator and executive director of Project Exploration, a Web-based program that brings the adventure of scientific expeditions to city children, have been writing weekly dispatches from the Sahara Desert for readers of the Sunday, Chicago Sun-Times. Two of their recent dispatches about their current expedition in Niger appeared in the Sunday, Oct. 29 and the Sunday, Nov. 5 issues. The first dispatch described what it takes to prepare for such adventurous fieldwork, and the second described some of the dinosaur fossils they have been discovering during the trip.

Jonathan Lear, the John U. Nef Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, was the subject of a full-page feature story that appeared in The New York Times Arts & Ideas section, Sunday, Nov. 5. The story described Lear’s research, teaching and personal history, as well as his continuing work on Freud and Aristotle in his newest book, Death, Happiness and the Remainder of Life.

President Randel’s inauguration on Thursday, Nov. 2, was covered by the local press with stories appearing in the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. The Sun-Times quoted one of Randel’s special guests at the event, his high school teacher Donald Musselman (A.M., ’50), who taught him when he lived in Panama with his mother and father. Both stories also quoted from Randel’s inaugural speech. “It is naive to suppose that universities have ever existed independent of cultural, economic and political forces,” he said in his speech. “. . . The question is how can it exist with dignity?”

A concept that explains how stocks can overreact and underreact to news events, which Nicholas Barberis, Associate Professor of Finance in the Graduate School of Business, and Robert Vishny, the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance in the GSB, wrote about in a paper that appeared in the Journal of Financial Economics, was cited in a news story in the Tuesday, Nov. 7 Wall Street Journal. The authors (Andrei Shleifer is a third author of the paper) attribute the stock behavior to two notions: conservatism and respresentativeness. “People don’t want to change their opinions when faced with new evidence. That’s where the underreaction comes from,” said Barberis.

Robert Kirschner, Clinical Associate in Pathology and Pediatrics, was cited in an Associated Press Newswires story as the physician who led medical and forensic investigations in Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to determine how Palestinian protesters had sustained injuries. The AP Newswire reported the story Saturday, Nov. 4, and the Chicago Tribune carried the story Sunday, Nov. 5.

Robert Hsiung, Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychiatry, was quoted in a Chicago Tribune story, on Thursday, Nov. 2, about individuals who seek psychotherapy on the Internet, a practice that is being dubbed e-therapy.

Douglas Baird, the Harry A. Bigelow Distinguished Service Professor in the Law School, was quoted in a Wall Street Journal article that appeared Thursday, Nov. 2. Baird commented on two federal appeals-court cases that are raising questions about the FCC’s move to auction off wireless licenses once held by NextWave Telecom Inc. and Metro PCS.

The National Bureau of Economic Research published a recent paper written by Mark Duggan, Assistant Professor in Economics, which was cited in an article in the Christian Science Monitor Monday, Oct. 30. Duggan’s paper, titled “More Guns, More Crime,” found that increased gun ownership leads to a higher gun-homicide rate. The article stated that while scholars have made gun violence a priority for study, the presidential candidates did not make it a priority issue in their campaigns.

The research of David Galenson, Professor in Economics, and a colleague was explored in a story published Saturday, Oct. 28, by The Economist. The story focused on three studies that have taken economics into the social and cultural realms. Galenson and his colleague Bruce Weinburg studied the economic success of leading 20th-century painters, and discovered that what the public deemed as important artworks varied between 1900 and 1940, bringing some painters early success and others success in mid-life. New painting techniques also factored into the age at which an artist reached his or her peak of what was considered quality work.

A study, which will be led by Douglas MacAyeal, Professor in Geophysical Sciences, and George Weidner, a research scientist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was the subject of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article published Monday, Oct. 30. MacAyeal and Weidner will travel to Antarctica to place automated weather stations and global positioning devices on a group of icebergs that broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf earlier this year. The researchers want to monitor the icebergs’ movement, as two of the largest icebergs could interfere with activities at McMurdo Station should they drift toward the base. McMurdo Station serves as a staging area for the Amundsen-Scott station at the South Pole and numerous field camps on the continent, where thousands of scientists engage in research, including many scientists from the University.

Allen Sanderson, Senior Lecturer in Economics, wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Tuesday, Oct. 31 Chicago Sun-Times. Sanderson wrote that although politicians may support paying off the national debt, it shouldn’t necessarily be the government’s highest priority. Sanderson wrote that the federal government’s borrowing and spending practices are not unlike those of individuals and families, writing that debt is often an investment, “as long as the purpose for which funds have been borrowed is a prudent one, and the borrowing does not exceed some sustainable level,” he wrote.