RateMyProfessors.com recently added a new feature that allows students to post photographs of faculty on the website along with anonymous ratings. Although the website will not ask faculty's permission to post photographs taken of them, company President Patrick Nagles maintains the company has instituted other mechanisms which will control the quality of posted photographs. Over 1,200 photographs have been posted since the site announced the new service. "Camera phones in the classroom have new meaning," Nagle said.
He said that any photographs which are altered, pornographic or depict a person different from the professor identified will be removed. Many professors who have previously objected to the taping and posting of their lectures without their permission have expressed concern that the photographs will be used primarily as a means of humiliation.
A group Dartmouth biologists recently released the results of a study that discovered how and why seeds store iron, which they hope can help address the global problems of iron deficiency and malnutrition. Iron deficiency is the most common nutritional disorder, afflicting more than three billion people worldwide, according to biology professor Mary Lou Guerinot, the study's head researcher. The discovery of where seeds store iron should prove invaluable to scientists who are working to increase the iron content of plants. Researchers mapped where iron is located in plant seeds through a combination of traditional mutational analysis and x-ray imaging. Other authors of the study include Sun Kim and Tracy Punshon, two Dartmouth postdoctoral fellows. The results of the study were published online on Nov. 2 at ScienceExpress, the advance publication site for the journal Science. Grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health funded the research.
Dartmouth and 26 other American universities are attempting to raise at least $1 billion for each for their respective colleges over the next several years. The 26 colleges have collected $919 million in total during the last month for which data is available. As of Sept. 30, Dartmouth had collected $757.3 million since the campaign started, including $13.1 million in September. Dartmouth hopes to raise $1.3 billion by 2009. Other Ivy League universities seeking to raise similar amounts include Cornell University, Brown University, Columbia University and Yale University.
