Russian Orthodox Music Performed in Indy

The Indianapolis Symphonic Choir performs Sergei Rachmaninoff's Vespers on 6 and 7 November in two Indy churches.

Hear what has been called "the greatest musical achievement of the Russian Orthodox Church" performed at 8 p.m. Saturday in downtown Indianapolis at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, and at 2:30 p.m. the next afternoon in the newly-constructed Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Carmel.

Tickets are available online.

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Notre Dame's Native American Initiatives

Native American Initiatives at the University of Notre Dame notes several events scheduled for Native American Heritage Month in November.

Grammy Award-winning recording artist, performer, songwriter, and activist Bill Miller will discuss the present and future impact of Native Americans on American politics on campus at 3 p.m. 2 November, followed by a concert at 8 p.m.

Navajo filmmaker Norman Patrick Brown will visit the Indiana University South Bend campus between noon and 9 p.m. 9 November.

Grammy and Native American Music award winning artist Joanne Shenandoah performs at 5 p.m. in the Legends of Notre Dame, South Bend. She is a Wolf Clan member of the Iroquois Confederacy.

For more information, go online.

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Daniels Off to China and Japan

Governor Mitch Daniels will lead a delegation of Hoosier business leaders and elected officials on an economic development and jobs trip to China and Japan. This will be Daniels' second trip to China and fifth trip to Japan since 2005.

The governor will depart Indiana on 6 November, returning 17 November. He will travel in China from 7 to 13 November in Shanghai and Zhejiang (Indiana's Chinese sister-state), then go on to Japan from 14-17 November, where he will visit Nagoya and Tokyo.

(Photo of Hangzhou, China, courtesy of the governor's office -- from his 2009 trip)

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Negishi to Receive Japan's Order of Culture

Dr. Ei-ichi Negishi (pictured), the Herbert C. Brown Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University, will receive Japan's highest distinction, the Order of Culture, on 3 November from the country's emperor.

It honors his contributions to Japan's cultural development through his work to create a method to build complex organic molecules necessary for numerous purposes, from pharmaceutical manufacturing to electronics. Negishi is a Japanese national and first moved to the United States in 1960.

Prof. Negishi was announced as a winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry on 6 October. The Order of Culture was established in 1937.

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Being Good in Life

"About Family, of the Virgin Marshmallow and about Being Good in Life" is the provocative title of a lecture reflecting on anti-Semitism and anti-Islamism in contemporary German discourse from the literary perspective. This presentation by Esther Dischereit will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. 1 November in Room 238 of the Campus Center at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. It's sponsored by the Max Kade German-American Center and the IUPUI German Program.

Dischereit, who is the Max Kade writer-in-residence at Oberlin College, will unfold thoughts on what it is like to be foreign or to be mainstream, challenging certainties about our personal origins. She counters desires to renew demarcations against the outsider, like the immigrant Muslim baker from Turkey with her shop in Berlin-Moabit. Her presentation ponders the ongoing debate about the relative higher or lower value of race, religion, genetics or other "targets".

Dischereit is a prolific and versatile Jewish-German writer. Her work challenges the repression that she feels characterizes German memory of the National Socialist past, bearing witness not to the Holocaust itself but to how it is both remembered and forgotten in twenty-first-century Germany. Her work addresses intergenerational discussions, themes of alienation and "otherness" in German society that include questions on minority and gender.

Her work covers a wide spectrum of genres: novels, stories and essays; poetry, plays, including radio plays; opera libretti and sound installations. She collaborates with composers and jazz musicians and founded the avant-garde project “WordMusicSpace/Sound-Concepts. A union activist and advocate for women, and later for art and culture with the German Trade Unions, she has played an increasingly prominent literary and cultural role in Germany since the 1980's.

Her fiction has earned her international acclaim and translation of several of her novels into English and Spanish. She was a fellow at the Moses Mendelssohn Centre for European and Jewish Studies and has lectured widely in the United States, Canada, Columbia and Israel. Esther Dischereit has won stipends from the Hessian Ministry for Science and Art, the Stiftung Preussische Seehandlung in Berlin, the Berlin Senate and the Erwin-Strassmann-Stiftung. A symposium about Esther Dischereit's work was held at the University of Wales, Swansea, in 2003, and she was writer-in-residence at Deutsches Haus, New York University, in 2004. In 2009 Esther won the Erich Fried Prize, the most prestigious literary prize awarded by Austria.

For more information, contact Claudia Grossmann, 317:274-3943. Visitor parking is available in the IUPUI Vermont Street Parking Garage.

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Purdue Investigates Causes of Haiti Quake

Researchers at Purdue University have found that a previously unmapped fault was responsible for the devastating earthquake on 12 January in Haiti, and that the originally blamed fault remains ready to produce a large earthquake.

The team determined the earthquake's origin is a previously unmapped fault, which they named the Léogâne fault. The newly discovered fault runs almost parallel to the Enriquillo fault, which was originally thought to be the source of the earthquake.

The team analyzed data they recorded before the earthquake and new measurements taken after the event. Their work is detailed in a paper that will be published in the November issue of Nature Geosciences.

What's Next in Global Fashion?

David Wolfe (pictured), global trend forecaster, will present a free, open-to-the-public lecture from 7-9 p.m. 2 November in the Frangipani Room of the Indiana Memorial Union on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington.

The event is sponsored by the 250-member Retail Studies Organization, a student group in IU's Department of Apparel Merchandising and Interior Design. Wolfe is creative director of The Doneger Group in New York City.

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CTS Expanding Asian Facility

Elkhart-based CTS Corporation says it plans to nearly double the capacity of a manufacturing site in Thailand, reports Inside INdiana Business. The company says the expansion of the facility near Bangkok should be completed by mid-2011.

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Science and Society in the 21st Century

"Science and Society in the 21st Century" is the topic for a presentation by Sir Harry Kroto (pictured), who shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996.

He'll be speaking from 5:30-7 p.m. 10 November in Room CE450, Campus Center, Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. Registration is online.

Kroto, who is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and holds an emeritus professorship at the University of Sussex in Brighton, United Kingdom, will discuss a necessary condition for creativity in the science and the arts -- a liberal/democratic sociopolitical environment.

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Localizando Food

"Localizando Food", an innovative documentary and a stop-motion animation film, both created by local youth, explore the social implications of insufficient food choices.

Part of "Spirit & Place", the films showcase local projects challenging the status quo and changing the way Indianapolis eats. Dialogue with local filmmakers and residents, facilitated by youth, will follow the screening, set for 1 p.m. 7 November in the Indianapolis Art Center, 820 East 67th Street, Indianapolis.

It's presented by the Latino/a Youth Collective, Indianapolis Art Center, Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianap-olis Center for Urban and Multicultural Education, IUPUI Common Theme Project, IUPUI Multicultural Center, and the IUPUI Office of International Affairs.

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New ISO Music Director from Poland

Conductor Krzysztof Urbański (pictured) becomes the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s seventh Music Director effective 1 September 2011, according to an announcement today by the ISO. At age 28, he is the youngest music director among major orchestras in the United States. Urbański will return to Indianapolis to conduct in concerts on 20 and 21 May, and will lead the ISO in its Opening Night Gala in September 2011.

In April of 2010, Urbański made his U.S. debut with the Indianapolis Symphony and returned for a second visit during Marsh Symphony on the Prairie in June. In September, the ISO’s search committee unanimously voted to appoint Mr. Urbański to the post, and the ISO musicians overwhelmingly supported the recommendation.

Urbański graduated from the Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw in 2007, and in the same year, was the unanimous First Prize Winner of the Prague Spring International Conducting Competition. He works regularly with all the major Polish orchestras, including Sinfonia Varsovia, the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra and served as Assistant Conductor to the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra from 2007-2009.

Urbański, who was born in Pabianice, Poland, and his wife Joanna currently reside just outside Warsaw. He will become an Adjunct Professor of Music (Orchestral Conducting) at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music when his tenure with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra begins in 2011.

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Lilly to Close Singapore Center

Eli Lilly and Company is closing a facility in Singapore, impacting approximately 130 employees, reports Inside INdiana Business The pharmaceutical manufacturer says some of the projects and capabilities will be shifted to Indianapolis.

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Sagamore's Indiana-Africa Connections Project

Senator Richard G. Lugar (R.-Ind.) will speak at the Sagamore Institute on 21 October as part of the Indianapolis-based think tank's unveiling of its Indiana-Africa Connections Project. This database lists more than 250 Indiana individuals and organizations who regularly engage with sub-Saharan Africa. The event will be from 10:30 a.m. to noon.

Senator Lugar's experience as Ranking Member and former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and advocate for improving Africa's economy and health care makes him an ideal partner with Sagamore in showcasing Indiana's role as an important global citizen.

Through leadership on crucial legislation such as the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, PEPFAR, the African Growth and Opportunity Act and Tropical Rain Forest Conservation Act, and a heavy interest in energy and hunger security, Senator Lugar has shown time and again the need for a strong and healthy relationship between the United States and countries throughout the African continent.

Sagamore worked with University of Indianapolis graduate students to compile the database, which includes entries such as the Bryantsville Hunger Relief Project, a farm that sends corn to South African countries, and The Institute for Affordable Transportation, an Indianapolis-based group that manufactures and distributes low-cost utility vehicles to individuals in developing countries. (NOTE: such groups also are listed on the Nationalities Council's international links pages.)

Sagamore Institute is an Indianapolis-based nonpartisan research group that brings policymakers and practitioners together to turn ideas into action.

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Heartland Film Festival Runs Through 23 October

Heartland, the annual 10-day celebration of international film, includes movies from Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan (and the United States).

For more information, including a schedule, go online.

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Lilly to Unveil Several Studies in Canada

According to Inside INdiana Business, Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Company will present 14 studies involving its osteoporosis medications at the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research annual meeting, which begins today in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The drugmaker will share data about Forteo and Evista.

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Oscar Arias to Speak at DePauw

Oscar Arias (pictured), a Nobel Peace Prize recipient and two-time president of Costa Rica, will visit the campus of DePauw University in Greencastle on 8 December. Arias, who stepped down as president five months ago and is known as a crusader for peace, will discuss "Moral Leadership in Today's World."

The program begins at 7:30 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium, located in DePauw's Green Center for the Performing Arts (605 South College Avenue, Greencastle). The speech is presented free of admission charge and the public is invited.

Dr. Arias served two terms as Costa Rica's president, first leading the country from 1986 to 1990 and then returning to the presidency from 2006 until his term ended86174 in May of this year. In 1987, he authored what came to be known as the Arias Peace Plan, an initiative that led to the end of military conflicts in five Central American countries. His efforts led to his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on 10 December 1987.

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McRobbie Becomes U.S. Citizen

Indiana University President Michael McRobbie has been sworn in as a U.S. citizen, reports Inside INdiana Business. The Australian has been in the U.S. for more than a decade and was named IU president in 2007. His three college-age children, who were born in Australia, also took the oath of citizenship.

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Native American Frybread Cook-Off

The Native American Frybread Cook-Off and Round Dance is set for 1-3 p.m. 7 November at Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, 500 West Washington Street, Indianapolis.

Learn about the history of frybread and the many variations that exist within Native American cultures while you watch participants battle it out for the Golden Frybread Award. Sample frybread and cast your vote for the People's Choice Award. Guest judge, Chef Nephi Craig (White Mountain Apache/Navajo) will select the Judges Choice award.

Following the competition, join Tony Showa (Navajo) in a round dance to celebrate community.

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Electric Vehicles Confab

Members of the United Kingdom’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders will meet with American electric vehicle manufacturers next week to discuss potential investment opportunities. Representatives will be in Indiana from 10-12 October.

The UK summit, sponsored by Ice Miller, Indianapolis Power and Light and Purdue University, will allow representatives from UK-based electric vehicle developers and manufacturers to meet with Indiana-based manufacturers in the industry to share information and discuss potential partnerships in areas including powertrain technology, battery management, infrastructure engineering and testing.

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Purdue Teams with Russian Universities

Purdue University and three other U.S. universities have announced a multiyear partnership aimed at strengthening efforts by Russian National Research Universities to commercialize their research and foster campus entrepreneurship, according to the Purdue News Bureau.

In launching the Enhancing University Research and Entrepreneurial Capacity, or EURECA, program, Purdue will collaborate with the University of California-Los Angeles, University of Maryland and the University of Washington and a consortium of program operators, led and financed by the U.S. Russia Foundation for Economic Advancement and the Rule of Law.

The initiative, officially announced on 30 September, will be administered by a consortium of non-governmental organizations: the Russian-based New Eurasia Foundation and two U.S.-based non-governmental organizations, the American Councils for International Education and the National Council for East European and Eurasian Research.

A Russian delegation will visit Purdue from Sunday through Tuesday (10-12 October) to tour the university's research facilities, technology transfer offices and business incubators. Meetings also are planned with researchers, graduate students and faculty members to discuss potential collaborations.

University representatives from Purdue, UCLA, Maryland and Washington joined five Russian research universities today at an event to formally launch EURECA in Washington, D.C.

The participating Russian universities are Lobachevsky State University, St. Petersburg Institute of Information Technology along with the National University of Science and Technology, National Research Nuclear University and Bauman Moscow State Technical University.

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Purdue Prof Shares Nobel Prize in Chemistry

This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki for the development of palladium-catalyzed cross coupling.

Ei-ichi Negishi (pictured) is a Japanese citizen who was born in 1935 in Changchun, China (then ruled by Japan). He received his Ph.D. in 1963 from University of Pennsylvania. He is the Herbert C. Brown Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University, West Lafayette.

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First, Japan; Next, Germany

The Indiana State Fair will spotlight Germany in the International Pavilion at next year's state fair. German heritage throughout the Hoosier state will be highlighted. It's estimated that at least 1/4 of all Hoosiers claim some German heritage.

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Taiwnese Group Visits Indiana This Week

On Tuesday (5 October), a delegation from Taiwanese DDGS (dried distillers grains – a co-product of the ethanol industry) and grain buyers will be visiting the farm of David and Mary Howell of Middletown. In addition to the morning farm visit, the Indiana Corn Marketing Council (ICMC) is hosting a welcome reception for the group and local leaders in Muncie that evening.

The U.S. Grains Council (USGC) is sponsoring the Taiwanese delegation on a tour of Ohio and Indiana prior to the USGC-Export Exchange Conference in Chicago. David Howell serves as chairman of the Asia Advisory Team of U.S. Grains Council, as well as a farmer-director of the Indiana Corn Marketing Council. The group will also be touring the POET ethanol facility in Alexandria and Rydman & Fox, a farm fertilizer service and grain elevator in Anderson.

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It's Almost International Festival Time in Indy!

Plans are well underway for the next International Festival. It's set for 18-21 November in the West Pavilion of the Indiana State Fairgrounds, 1202 East 38th Street, Indianapolis.

Hours for school groups and other student tours are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. both 18 and 19 November. The festival's open to the public from 2 to 9 p.m. 19 November, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. 20 November and noon to 6 p.m. 21 November.

Come see the world without leaving home (and bring your appetite: there'll be authentic, traditional cuisine from around the globe).

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Indy’s Ethnic Heritage

"Indy’s Ethnic Heritage", the 15th annual genealogy conference, will be held from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. 13 November in the Indianapolis Senior Center, 708 East Michigan Street, Indianapolis. It's sponsored by the Genealogical Society of Marion County.

Cost (which can be paid at the door) is $30. To register, send an email to GSMC-Indiana@Comcast.net.

Among the topics are Native Americans in Indy, German-American Landmarks of Indianapolis, Scottish and Scots-Irish in Indiana, Ethnic Populations of Indy and the Roman Catholic heritage of Indianapolis.

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