Highland Ave. closes until Friday for residence hall construction

Motorists will not be able to drive on North Highland Avenue between East Fifth Street and East Sixth Street starting Wednesday.

Highland will be closed until Friday so that construction crews can unload concrete floor planks for the new Highland Avenue Residence Hall. The street will be closed between 5 a.m. and 5 p.m., but will remain open all day to bike and emergency traffic. Construction officials predict that they will have to close Highland Avenue one more time this semester and six more times next semester. Motorists can use North Park Avenue and North National Championship Drive.

UA psychologists publish results of memory-forming experiments

UA scientists proved parts of a theory about how new memories are converted from an unstable short-term memory to stable long-term memories.

Psychology employees conducted experiments to show how brain cells replay events during sleep, possibly to consolidate memories. The theory hopes to explain why older memories are resistant to disruption when areas of the brain are damaged. Graduate student Kari L. Hoffman and Psychology Professor Bruce L. McNaughton used electrodes to monitor brain activity while the experiment participants performed various tasks. The results of the experiment were published in the magazine Science on Sept. 20.

New VP for women's health joins Health Sciences Center

The university's Health Sciences Center has hired a new associate vice president for women's health. Marietta Anthony was director of Women's Health Research and associate director of the General Clinical Research Center at Georgetown University Medical Center. Anthony has worked on health issues with the federal government, served as a science advisor with the National Institutes of Health and worked on the evaluation and management of early HIV infection.

After leaving the federal government in 2000, she worked with the department of pharmacology at Georgetown University Medical Center.

While at Georgetown she worked as a co-investigator on a number of research grants and projects

While working with the Health Sciences Center, Anthony wants to enhance and build existing women's health programs.

Anthony has a doctorate in medical microbiology and immunology from the UCLA School of Medicine

Meinel Optical Sciences Center addition to honor devoted couple

The university plans to break ground for an addition to the Meinel Optical Sciences Center on the same day they will celebrate two scientists contribution to the UA.

The $17 million dollar expansion is scheduled to begin Sept. 23 at 4 p.m., soon after the conference for Aden and Marjorie Meinel, a couple who have contributed more than 60 years of productive science and technology.

The cost of the addition does not include the price of technical instruments that the building will house. The new addition will increase the center's size by 47,000 square feet and will include a plaza, modern teaching and research laboratories, a lobby, an expanded reading room, offices and several conference areas. The addition is scheduled to be completed in 2004. The Optical Sciences Center is on the mall, just east of North Cherry Avenue. The original building was funded by the UA Foundation and the US Air Force.

The celebration for the Meinels' begins at 8 a.m. at the Optical and Sciences Center.