RoboCanes recently competed in the 2013 Robo World Cup. From left are graduate student Andreas Seekircher, professor Ubbo Visser, and graduate student Saminda Abeyruwan.

While the 2014 FIFA World Cup is still a year away, another international soccer event recently astounded a fan base of a different sort in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, with a group of University of Miami graduate students among the competitors. Led by UM professor of computer science Ubbo Visser, the University of Miami’s robotic soccer team, RoboCanes, competed in two divisions at the RoboCup world championships. Read the full story

Julie Barroso, a nurse educator and clinician who has studied HIV-related fatigue and helped women overcome the stigma of being infected with the virus, has been named professor and associate dean for doctoral programs at the University of Miami’s School of Nursing and Health Studies. Barroso will begin her appointment on January 1, 2014. She is a professor at Duke University School of Nursing and a senior research fellow in the Duke Health Inequalities Program. Read the full story

Purple bacteria make a gel around the individual cells that binds them into a colony. That is why they appear as “clouds.” This image illustrates the general principle of the model used in the study. It depicts photons arriving, then being passed around the bacteria’s membrane, where the light harvesting mechanism is located, then arriving at the various reaction center “kitchens” being processed, and then being turned out as metabolic products for the bacteria to survive.

Purple bacteria contain pigments that allow them to use sunlight as their source of energy, hence their color. Small as they are, these microbes can teach us a lot about life on Earth, because they have been around longer than most other organisms on the planet. University of Miami physicist Neil Johnson, who studies purple bacteria, recently found that these organisms can also survive in the presence of extreme alien light. The findings show that the way in which light is received by the bacteria can dictate the difference between life and death.

Johnson, head of the interdisciplinary research group in complexity in UM’s College of Arts and Sciences, and his collaborators share their findings in a paper titled “Extreme alien light allows survival of terrestrial bacteria,” published online in Nature’s Scientific Reports. The study reveals new possibilities for life on Earth and elsewhere in the universe. Read the full story

Ian D. Hentall, left, and Jonathan Jagid.

Borrowing a treatment strategy proven to work for Parkinson’s disease, a multidisciplinary team of researchers led by Ian D. Hentall, research associate professor of neurological surgery, and Jonathan Jagid, associate professor of neurological surgery, expect to begin a clinical trial this fall to determine if electrically stimulating the brain of patients with spinal cord injuries can reduce their pain and other debilitating symptoms, perhaps permanently. Read the full story

Ricky Martin, the pop singer, musician, songwriter, and actor who achieved prominence, first as a member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo and later as a solo artist, electrifies the audience at Univision’s Premios Juventud Awards Show, held July 18 at the BankUnited Center on the University of Miami’s Coral Gables campus. Last Thursday’s show marked the ninth consecutive year that the BankUnited Center has hosted the event, which caters to Hispanic youth and covers all angles of pop culture. Other notable performers included Jennifer Lopez, Pitbull, Marc Anthony, Mexican singer-songwriter Thalia, and Prince Royce.