Chronicle of Higher Education Looks in on Grad Student's Project

Hurley Goodall, writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education and its Buildings & Grounds Blog, reported on a project designed by Kelsey Felthousen, a graduate student pursuing a master of fine arts in the art department.

Her master's thesis project involved constructing what she describes as an inside-out home, one in which the garden and blooming tulips are enclosed by walls and the living room, bedroom, kitchen and bath are exposed to the world. Felthousen said her intent was to make a visual statement about the amount of privacy people give up by posting personal and intimate details on such social networking sites as MySpace and Facebook.

As part of her project, her inside-out home can be viewed through April 5 on the university's webcam. On April 7, she expects to have a yard sale.

Reuters, BBC Cover Egyptian Research by University Professor

Both Reuters and the BBC interviewed professor Jerome Rose, chair of the anthropoogy at the University of Arkansas, about research that he and colleague Barry Kemp conduted in Egypt.

Reporting for Reuters news service, Alaa Shahine interviewed Rose about their findings regarding ancient cemeteries near Tell el-Armana. Studying the remains of ordinary Egyptians who lived in Tell el-Armana between 1379 and 1362 BC, Rose and Kemp found evidence of a population suffering from anemia and stunted growth and working under dangerous conditions. The picture that emerges differs sharply from earlier images of wealth and abundance based on the art records of the city. Shahine wrote in his Reuters story that "Tell el-Amarna was briefly the capital of ancient Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten, who abandoned most of Egypt's old gods in favor of the Aten sun disk and brought in a new and more expressive style of art."

Rose told Reuters that adults buried in the cemetery were probably brought there from other parts of Egypt. "This means that we have a period of deprivation in Egypt prior to the Amarna phase," he told an audience of archaeologists and Egyptologists in Cairo.

The BBC conducted a lengthy interview with Rose about his findings and the work to find the site where the many people who lived and worked during Akhenaten's reign were buried and then the research to quantify the health and well-being of this group and draw some conclusions about it. Rose's experience in osteology, the study of the skeleton, provided ample help in comparing the Tell el-Armana group against healthy populations.

University of Arkansas Expert Provides Both Cents Worth

When BusinessWeek went looking for a couple of experts to provide the pros and cons of whether to allow Michigan and Florida to have Democratic delegates, the magazine found the perfect experts: Andrew Dowdle and Andrew Dowdle.

Dowdle, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, argued both the Pro and the Con of whether to seat the delegates from the two states that moved their primaries ahead of what the Democratic National Committee had approved. The close race for the Democratic nomination between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has given the delegate question more urgency. Large states such as Michigan and Florida were not supposed to move their primaries before Feb. 1, which theoretically would allow less well-known candidates a chance to compete in smaller states and gain some foothold before the larger states began voting. The two states did move their primaries into January, and the Democratic National Committee decided their delegates would not be counted.

Dowdle's research on elections and his specialty in the history of primaries gave him the background to plausibly argue both sides of the debate without sounding like a partisan for either side.

Political Scientist Tells New York About Arkansas and the Election

Political scientist and University of Arkansas professor Janine Parry was interviewed for 15 minutes by Leonard Lopate of WNYC, an NPR affiliate in New York City, as part of the radio station's series "States of the Union." Parry and Lopate discussed a wide range of subjects related to Arkansas and the election.

Parry predicted that Arkansas will get more attention in the general election than in the primary.

"For the general election, Arkansas is one Southern state that will very much be in play," Parry said."I think right now as things look, it's likely to go back into the Democratic column in 2008."

A link to listen to the full radio interview is available at

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/2008/01/30/segments/92710 .

Professor Cited on CBS News on Huckabee's Presidential Campaign

Dr. Andrew Dowdle, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, is quoted in a story on CBSNews.com about Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign.