A timely idea for the new year
No more '30 days hath September, April, June and November...'

Physicist Richard Conn Henry is waging a Web-based campaign to adopt a new calendar that would put your birthday on the same day every year.

Wouldn't it be convenient if your birthday, Christmas and the Fourth of July — not to mention most other major holidays — fell on the same day of the week, year after year? Wouldn't it make life — or at least planning — easier, for instance, to know that Dec. 17 would always fall on a Saturday, or that Jan. 1 — New Year's Day — would always be celebrated on a Sunday?
Full story...

Symposium touts 'third new biology'
Six of the world's most notable scientists will convene at a Johns Hopkins-hosted symposium later this month in celebration of interdisciplinary research and the recognition that science and medicine have entered a period that will increasingly see the coupling of chemistry and mathematics with biology.
Full story...

Humanities prof honored by Mellon Foundation
Michael Fried, professor of the humanities and history at Johns Hopkins, is one of four scholars to receive the fourth annual Distinguished Achievement Award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The foundation awarded a $1.5 million grant to Fried, who is the James R. Herbert Boone Professor of Humanities and Professor of the History of Art.
Full story...