AMHERST, Mass. – Van Jones, a prominent environmental advocate, civil rights activist and a former green jobs advisor to President Barack Obama, will speak at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Thursday, Oct. 18, at 7:30 p.m. in Mahar Auditorium and sign copies of his new book, Rebuild the Dream.
The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required for this limited seating event.
Jones was instrumental in passage of the Green Jobs Act signed by President George W. Bush in 2007, and was appointed in 2009 as green jobs advisor to the White House by President Obama.
AMHERST, Mass. – Scientists studying how early land vertebrates evolved from fishes long thought that the animals developed legs for moving around on land well before their feeding systems and dietary habits changed enough to let them eat a land-based diet, but strong evidence was lacking. Now, for the first time fossil jaw measurements by Philip Anderson at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and others have tested and statistically confirmed this lag.
AMHERST, Mass. – A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is proposing a new investigative roadmap for the field of evolutionary developmental biology, or “evo devo,” to better understand how innovation at the genetic level can lead to ecological adaptations over time. Evo devo seeks to understand the specific genetic mechanisms underlying evolutionary change.
AMHERST, Mass. – Geoscientist Michele Cooke and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst take an uncommon, “Earth is lazy” approach to modeling fault development in the crust that is providing new insights into how faults grow. In particular, they study irregularities along strike-slip faults, the active zones where plates slip past each other such as at the San Andreas Fault of southern California.
AMHERST, Mass. – New recommendations by a National Research Council (NRC) expert panel on green and sustainable building performance could lead to a revolution in building science by creating the first large building performance database, says panel member Paul Fisette, a nationally recognized sustainable building expert at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
AMHERST, Mass. – Evolutionary ecologist Sonya Auer of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has won the Elton Prize, one of only five British Ecological Society (BES) young investigator awards given each year to recognize the best research papers published in the society’s journals by early-career scientists.
AMHERST, Mass. – University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers, experts in revealing molecular structure by X-ray crystallography, have identified two new small “chaperone” molecules that may be useful in treating the inherited metabolic disorder known as Schindler/Kanzaki disease. This offers hope for developing the first ever drug treatment for this very rare disease. 
These results place UMass Amherst fourth in the U.S. behind the University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco State and University of California, Santa Barbara.
AMHERST, Mass. – Shelly Peyton, a chemical engineer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, says scientists know that breast cancer will spread to many different types of tissues in the body, and that this migration is the key reason the cancer is deadly. What they don’t know is why some forms of the cancer move to the brain, while others seek out bone or lung tissues.