The award, which is one of the most prestigious honors a scientist can receive, is given to one individual in a different field of biology each year. The last time it was given for ecology was in 1993, when Edward Wilson, the renowned Harvard evolutionary biologist, was the recipient. Other past recipients include scientists from California Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Oxford, Stanford, Duke and other leading research universities around the world.

Tilman was selected for research proving that biodiversity makes ecosystems more productive and resistant to drought, disease and pests. His seminal findings were published in Science and Nature during the 1990s. More recently, he has applied his discoveries to renewable energy, showing that biofuel created from diverse prairie grasses is more efficient and better for the environment than fuel made from food crops such as corn and soybeans. All of his research was carried out at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve, which is operated by the College of Biological Sciences, where Tilman is a faculty member. He is director of Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve.

"I am deeply honored by this award, and want to thank everyone with whom I have been privileged to collaborate during my 32 years at the university," said Tilman. "The world is facing immense environmental challenges. There is no scientific goal more important than pursing solutions to these problems. We have an ethical obligation to preserve the Earth's ecosystems for future generations."

"This is one of the most prestigious scientific prizes in the world," said Bob Elde, dean of the College of Biological Sciences. "And no one deserves it more that Dave Tilman. His stature as a scientist honors the university, the college, his colleagues and our students. We are very fortunate that he has chosen Cedar Creek as his laboratory."

The International Prize in Biology was created in 1985 to commemorate the 60-year reign of Emperor Showa of Japan and his longtime interest in and support for the biological sciences. The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science selects recipients. This year, the society distributed nearly 2,000 nomination forms to universities worldwide, and based their selection on nominations from institutions in 17 countries. Criteria included originality, impact on ecology, and contribution to biology in general.

Tilman was named the most cited environmental scientist for 1997-2007 by Essential Science Indicators in June.

The way the federal government values the troubled mortgage assets it will buy will ultimately determine exactly how much the $700 billion bailout bill developed by Congress will affect the budget deficit, experts said today. "When we spend [federal money] to purchase these mortgage-related securities, we end up with an asset that is worth something," said Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' federal fiscal director Jim Horney. "The real question is how much are those things worth, and that is one of the reasons that the Treasury is proposing this purchase because right now the market is not functioning very well in determining what those assets are worth." Horney added that those assets will be worth "more than zero and eventually we will sell the assets and recover some portion, maybe some significant portion, maybe even all of what we spend in purchasing them," which could ultimately leave the budget deficit unaffected.

In 1992, college diploma fresh in hand, I decided to take a year off before going to graduate school. (By “decided” I mean “forgot to take the GRE.") A friend suggested that, in terms of good places to squander 12 months of one’s youth, it was hard to beat Chapel Hill, N.C. So we found a cheap apartment near the UNC campus and got jobs waiting tables at a barbecue restaurant. (Want to out yourself as a damn Yankee? Use the word “barbecue” as a verb.) Slinging pulled pork sandwiches paid just enough to cover rent, gas, drinks, and music. For the latter, I spent a great deal of time in Schoolkids Records, one of those iconic stores where every aisle held the promise of a long-sought European bootleg and the girl behind the counter was unattainably cool.

But single men in barracks, most remarkable like you. (“Tommy,” Rudyard Kipling, 1892)

Picture it: Marine Corps boot camp, Parris Island, summer, circa 1965.

Five weeks into the program, two Marine recruits find themselves on mess duty, assigned to the pot shack, a small detached building out behind the mess hall proper. For the first time since arriving on the island, these two are out from under the watchful eyes of drill instructors and able to talk freely to one another. Up until then, a strict code of silence had been enforced, with recruits allowed to speak only to their drill instructors, and even then, only when spoken to.

Battered by a worsening economy, college students are seeking federal financial aid in record numbers this year, leading Bush administration officials to warn Congress that the most important federal aid program, Pell Grants, may need up to $6 billion in additional taxpayer funds next year.

The federal student-aid system makes college possible for a lot of people. It is also needlessly complicated and confusing.

The Senate on Saturday passed a measure that ends a 27-year-old oil drilling ban and keeps the federal government funded until March 2009, leaving only a massive bailout bill for Wall Street on Congress’s weekend to-do list.

Washington — The U.S. House of Representatives, preparing to adjourn this Friday for the election season, has overwhelmingly passed a spending bill that would provide a substantial boost for defense research in the 2009 fiscal year while financing student aid and research at current levels through March.

If a bill’s impact or importance were measured by its length or the amount of time Congress spent working on it, the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HR 4137) would be one for the ages. At more than 1,150 pages, the bill is about 20 times longer than the Higher Education Act of 1965 that it modifies, creating 64 new programs and touching on issues as diverse as the availability of Pell Grants and illegal downloading of digital music and video. And the legislation, which finally passed both the House and the Senate by overwhelmingly margins on Thursday, has been in discussion on Capitol Hill, in one form or another, for most of this decade. It is five years overdue.

But attempts to break with recording industry run into legal hurdles

Talk to the chief information officer at just about any American university, and he will probably say that his institution has bent over backward to help the Recording Industry Association of America curb illegal file sharing on his campus.

Liberal Democrats may have drafted the Higher Education Act reauthorization bill that cleared Congress last week, but conservative Republicans weren't left out of the process entirely.