"I've never seen anybody who can get things done like he can," said Janet MacKay-Galbraith, coordinator for the Arts and Lecture Series. "He's so good that we roped him into a second term." Yarema also initiated patron surveys to learn how to improve theater services, which led the committee to sell half-priced tickets to youths, create a permanent box office, and start the Gallery Chamber series--three classical performances held in the Art Gallery on Sunday afternoons during the winter.

"Despite a recent industry-wide drop in attendance to classical concerts, the Chamber series has consistently been able to attract full houses," MacKay-Galbraith said. Sound buffers and curtains had to be added to improve the gallery's acoustics and block the afternoon sun, but the concerts have proved to be very cost effective. "They're a financially responsible way of satisfying our audience," said Yarema. "And they give local musicians a chance to perform in an intimate setting."

Hank Glass, Deputy Head of the Development and Test Department, will become the new committee chairman. Yarema will remain a committee member.

"I ask Ray where he gets all the time and energy to do what he does, and he just shrugs," Glass said. "He's extremely organized and has lots of good ideas--everything you could want in a chairman. He'll be a tough act to follow."

When Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, a neurobiologist at Duke University, decided to release a groundbreaking study in an upstart online journal, his colleagues were flabbergasted. The research, demonstrating how brain implants enabled monkeys to operate a robotic arm, was a shoo-in for acceptance in premier journals like Nature or Science.

"Usually you want to publish your best work in well-established journals to have the widest possible penetration," Dr. Nicolelis said. "My idea was the opposite. We need to open up the dissemination of scientific results." The journal Dr. Nicolelis chose — PLoS Biology, a publication of the Public Library of Science — aims to do just that by putting peer-reviewed scientific papers online free, at the Web site www.plosbiology.org.

The high subscription cost of prestigious peer-reviewed journals has been a running sore point with scholars, whose tenure and prominence depend on publishing in them. But since the Public Library of Science, which was started by a group of prominent scientists, began publishing last year, this new model has been gaining attention and currency within academia.
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