Tuition due today

Tuition and fees for fall are due today in the Bursarās Office, which is located in the Administration building.

Payments can be made via the RSVP phone line at 884-7787; by clicking "financial information" online at Student Link; at drop boxes located at the north and south sides of the Administration building; at a drop box next to the Information desk in the Student Union Memorial Center, or in person in the Administration building.

Checks should be made out to "University of Arizona" and include a student identification number.

The Bursarās Office is scheduled to stop accepting payments at 4 p.m.

Students who pay after today will be charged a $50 late fee.

Classes will be cancelled for those students who have not paid tuition by Sept. 4.

UA is best value for buck

Kaplanās new "Unofficial, Unbiased, Insiderās Guide to the 320 Most Interesting Colleges" named UA as the best value for tuition in the nation.

UA managed to beat out Harvard in the category of best value, but in the "Hot & Trendy" category Harvard came in number one, with UA at number 13.

Harvard was also named the university with the highest academic standards.

The recognition comes on the heals of a tuition debate in April that increased UA tuition by 4 percent. Still, Arizonaās tuition is cheapest in the nation.

Fewer ASU employees lose jobs than UA employees

Between 30 and 40 ASU employees have lost their jobs or did not get their contracts renewed because of budget cuts, Milton Glick, ASU executive vice president and provost, told the State Press, ASUās student paper.

That number doesnāt include 75 who left their ASU jobs willingly, up from the normal annual average of 45.

At UA a total of 380 employees lost their jobs in 2001-2002, had contracts that were not renewed or will not be renewed this fall.

ASU took budget cuts comparable to UA in 2001-2002, at $20 million compared to UAās $16.6 million.

Visitor Center to relocate

The Visitor Center near North Cherry Avenue and East University Boulevard will be moving off campus Aug. 8 to make way for expansion of the Meinel Optical Sciences building this fall.

The center, now at 1600 E. University Blvd., will temporarily reopen at 845 E. University Blvd., Suite 145, on Monday, Aug. 12 said Andrea Hernandez, an employee at the Visitor Center.

UA has not found a permanent location for the center yet.

Visitor Center employees had begun packing for the move before Friday, Hernandez said.

Construction to expand the Meinel Optical Sciences building by 47,000 square feet to the west could begin in November, if campus planners can find the right contractors to build the addition, said May Carr, senior architect for Facilities Design and Construction.

UA linguistics researcher finds babies language-savvy

Babies between six and 18 months have the ability to differentiate between correct and incorrect speech in a number of languages, a UA researcher has found.

A 17-month-old baby is able to learn the Russian language, which uses words that have different genders, and can discern correct from incorrect Russian in as little as two minutes, according to LouAnn Gerken, an associate professor of speech and hearing sciences and linguistics.

The babies are too young to hold a conversation, so Gerken uses a test with lights and sounds to determine which parts of speech a baby prefers.

The infant sits on a caregiverās lap in a soundproof booth, with three glowing lights ÷ one on each side and one in front of the baby.

The lights glow while Russian words play from a computer station outside the booth for as long as the baby looks toward the lights, with a video camera monitoring the baby.

The length of the time the baby looks at the light are said to indicate which words and suffixes the baby prefers.

Then the researchers play Russian words with correct and incorrect suffixes, combining masculine and feminine word endings correctly and incorrectly.

When infants look longer toward the light they prefer, during which the correct word and suffix is playing, it means they are applying a pattern to the language, learning which word applies to the correct suffix, Gerken stated.

The test lasts about two minutes and gives researchers insight into what babies know about their native languages and how they learn new ones.