University of Rhode Island

A University of Rhode Island Professor is an eye-witness to the political upheaval in Ukraine where he's living on a Fulbright research grant.

Professor Nicolai Petro is safe, but paying close attention to the ongoing crisis.

Petro is studying the role of religion in regional politics in the coastal city of Odessa.

A team at the University of Rhode Island has launched a website about climate change and its impacts to our state. The website, Rhode Island's Climate Change: Waves of Change, is designed for a range of people: from high school students to parents to business people.

Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry congratulated the University of Rhode Island Friday for being selected to take part in a presidential initiative to send more students to Latin America. URI is one of four school selected for the project.

The goal of the presidential initiative is have 100,000 American students studying in Latin America and to bring 100,000 Latin American students to the United States.

Governor Lincoln Chafee has delivered his final state budget proposal and given his final State of the State speech. RIPR political analyst Scott MacKay parses Chafee’s Last Hurrah.

The cliché says: show me your budget and I’ll figure out your priorities. When it comes to Gov. Chafee’s final budget, that may be a trite description, but it’s true.

A University of Rhode Island professor who tracks the state’s economy says the last three months of 2013 were disappointing. 

URI economics professor Leonard Lardaro, author of a monthly index on the Rhode Island economy, says the fourth quarter of 2013 wasn’t horrible, but wasn’t great either.  Lardaro said Rhode Island is making slow progress but is still struggling to emerge from the grasp of one of the worst economic downturns in American history.  A continuing problem, he said, is a shortage of skilled labor.

Seventy four undocumented students have enrolled at the state’s public colleges and universities.

They’re taking advantage of a policy the state adopted in 2011.

The controversial policy allows undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at any of Rhode Island’s schools of higher education. The seventy-four students taking advantage of the policy is about half the number lawmakers predicted. Ana Cano-Morales is the head of the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University. She offers several reasons for the lower-than-expected numbers.

A University of Rhode Island professor says the state is seeing an unprecedented number of snowy owls this year.

The snowy owl lives in the Arctic, but when its population explodes and there is stiff competition for food, many fly south. That’s what’s happened this year, where sightings of the owl have been seen as far south as Bermuda. University of Rhode Island ecology professor Peter Paton said Rhode Island has received 15 reports of sightings.

College students have long been known to experiment with drinking when they’re blowing off steam, and even use illegal drugs like marijuana.

But a growing number of college students are now turning to prescription drugs to get ahead academically.

The drugs, like Adderall, are used legally to treat conditions like Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, and they’re increasingly common on college campuses around the country.

This month, the University of Rhode Island launched a new neuroscience research institute, where researchers will focus on fighting Alzheimer’s and other diseases. It’s the fourth such program to hang out a shingle in the state. This growing community could eventually help more Rhode Islanders battle some of the most debilitating diseases.

(Neurons firing)

This is what it sounds like when you think about opening and closing your hand.

The University of Rhode Island plans to unveil a new neuroscience research institute, thanks to the single largest private donation in university history. The institute will add to the Ocean State’s growing expertise in brain science.