Wednesday, March 5, 2014 by The Brown Daily Herald

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BROWN DAILY HERALD vol. cxlix, no. 29

since 1891

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2014

Food for thought: FYS combines chem and cooking Engineering, Students in unusual class enjoy opportunity to cook and eat laboratory experiments By MEGHAN FRIEDMANN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Every Wednesday, 14 first-years head to a kitchen to conduct “edible experiments” that help them see how chemistry applies to cooking. The lab is part of a new first-year seminar, CHEM 0080F: “Kitchen Chemistry,” taught by Associate Professor of Chemistry Sarah Delaney.

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

Potatoes ‘are not all the same’ The class consists of two parts

— Monday’s seminar portion, in which Delaney explains scientific concepts, and Wednesday’s lab section, in which students cook and eat. This week’s seminar focused on why humans perceive certain tastes as “sweet,” how pH levels affect the way potatoes cook and why different potato varieties have different textures when cooked. Delaney said people have certain taste receptors on their tongues that allow them to detect sweetness, adding that individual glucose molecules trigger those receptors, while chains of the same molecule — starches — do not. This is why potatoes, which contain starch, do not taste sweet, while foods containing glucose do. Delaney also talked about the phenomenon of miracle berries. These berries contain a protein that attaches to » See FOOD CHEM, page 4

digital course content set to expand

New School of Engineering building will bring better labs, more faculty and students By JOSEPH ZAPPA SENIOR STAFF WRITER

ALAN SHAN / HERALD

Sarah Delaney, associate professor of chemistry, said she is offering a food-themed first-year seminar to attract non-concentrators to the subject.

Paxson seeks diverse pool of provost apps Tuesday forum allows med students to discuss ideal qualities for next provost By EMILY WOOLDRIDGE SENIOR STAFF WRITER

LILIAN CRUZ / HERALD

Seth Magaziner ’06, a candidate for R.I. general treasurer, tells students to consider social and political factors that may affect investments.

Discussion about priorities for Provost Mark Schlissel’s P’15 successor, including fundraising and the implementation of President Christina Paxson’s strategic plan, stirred an Alpert Medical School Student Senate forum on the provost search process at the Med School Tuesday night. About 15 medical students attended the forum — moderated by Paxson and members of the provost search committee — which gave students

the opportunity to ask questions and offer their opinions on ideal qualities for the new provost. When Paxson asked for a concise definition of what the provost does, no student offered a response. Paxson said this response was not surprising, for the provost’s role is less publicly known, though the role is “incredibly important” to University governance. “The provost is the chief academic adviser of the University,” with responsibility over developing new programs, making tenure recommendations and chairing the Academic Priorities and University Resources Committees, Paxson said. Paxson said the search committee is considering internal and external applicants, adding that each type of » See FORUM, page 6

Two objectives in President Christina Paxson’s strategic plan — the expansion of the School of Engineering and the creation of the Laboratory for Educational Innovation — are still in the planning phases, though both are set to commence soon. An institute for environmental sustainability marks a third strategic plan goal that will likely be implemented in the coming year. The plan to build a new engineering facility was conceived when the Corporation approved the creation of a separate School of Engineering in 2010, said Lawrence Larson, dean of engineering. The building will allow the program to expand. Ideally, the project will be completed within the next four years, said Provost Mark Schlissel P’15. The number of engineering faculty members will rise from the current 48 to as high as the mid-fifties, and both the doctoral and master’s programs will accept more students in coming years, Larson said. Doctoral programs currently admit 30 students annually, and master’s programs currently admit between 60 and 80 students, he added. Thirty million dollars of the $160 million campaign the University launched last year to expand » See EXPANSION, page 2

General treasurer candidate advises student investors Student workers face obstacles, opportunities Seth Magaziner ’06 looks By EMILY DOGLIO STAFF WRITER

“I think we are due for a shake-up,” said Seth Magaziner ’06, candidate for Rhode Island general treasurer, at a Brown Socially Responsible Investment Fund meeting Tuesday night. Rhode Island’s pension system and high unemployment rate stand out as critical issues that need to be addressed by the next general treasurer, Magaziner said in his remarks at SRIF’s meeting in Wilson 305. Magaziner is the son of Clinton administration adviser and Open

inside

METRO

Some student workers sacrifice social time for job, while others find community through work By ELANA JAFFE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Last week, Nicole Salvador ’15 spent 15 hours in class and 35 hours working. In addition to her usual 15 hours a week at the Brown Annual Fund Call Center, Salvador was stage-managing the imPulse dance show. Instead of pursuing extracurricular activities, Salvador works many shifts so her parents don’t have to cover her personal expenses, she said. “I have a lot less time to be a student and a person at Brown, but it’s » See WORKERS, page 6

FEATURE

RYAN WALSH / HERALD

Student worker Joshua Espinoza ’14 balances his Modern Culture and Media coursework with his supervising duties at the Blue Room.

Commentary

Science & Research Study finds attentional mechanism can mitigate effects of IQ on memory

New calibration of underground machine detects low-energy particles

Editorial: Higher education may not be worth the cost of tuition

Johnson ’14: Those who claim their values are under attack are aggressors in the “culture war”

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to address R.I. pension system, unemployment rate as general treasurer

Curriculum architect Ira Magaziner ’69 P’06 P’07. SRIF chooses to buy and sell stocks in companies that are socially responsible, basing its decisions on presentations that members put together, said Arielle Schacter ’16, social chair of SRIF. She added that they use these presentations as an educational tool to learn about social responsibility and finance. The event was small and personal — Magaziner spoke informally to a room of about 15 students. The tone was light-hearted as Magaziner asked members what stocks they like to follow and offered to connect students with internship positions on his campaign or with connections in the socially responsible investment field. Magaziner discussed his experience with Trillium Asset Management LLC, an investment advisory firm, as See MAGAZINER, page 2

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2 university news » EXPANSION, from page 1 engineering will be used to hire professors, Schlissel said. In addition to providing more space for a larger student body and faculty, the building will feature “stateof-the-art” laboratories for various engineering disciplines, Larson said. The University has yet to pick an architectural firm to design the building but will soon begin to accept proposals, Schlissel said. Pending Corporation approval, the likeliest location for the building is along Manning Walk by Barus and Holley, he added. The Laboratory for Educational Innovation, which will promote the exploration of digital technology in the classroom, will be constructed in the Sciences Library as part of a renovation of three of the building’s floors, said Kathy Takayama, executive director of the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning. “We’re starting with the learning first,” Takayama said, adding that the project will not be used to force lecturers who prefer a traditional style to digitize their methods, but will rather be a resource for those who would like to incorporate digital media into their instruction. The lab will partner both graduate and undergraduate students with faculty members to develop course content, she said.

To expand the Brown experience outside the classrom, the lab will facilitate the use of technology to connect students on campus to those at other universities and Brown students who are not on College Hill, Takayama added. Schlissel pointed to the flipped classroom piloted in ECON 1110: “Intermediate Microeconomics” last semester as an example of technological innovation in course content, adding that the University is developing a similar model for physics and chemistry courses. Last semester, Pedro Dal Bo, associate professor of economics, supplemented his traditional microeconomics lectures with shorter online instruction videos and replaced one of three weekly lectures with a problemsolving session, The Herald reported in January. The flipped classroom exemplifies the purpose of the lab, which is to question how the curriculum’s productivity can be maximized, Takayama said. Construction of the lab is set to begin this summer and will take at least a year to complete, Schlissel said. As part of the strategic plan’s goal to bolster integrative scholarship, the Environmental Change Initiative, an interdisciplinary research program on environment and society, will be developed into an institute that will

be the “intellectual home for people interested in environmental scholarship” at the University, said Amanda Lynch, director of the ECI and professor of geological sciences. The recently unveiled Building for Environmental Research and Teaching — the “mothership” of environmental research where those interested in the discipline can “congregate and interact” — will house the institute, Lynch said. The institute aims to bring attention to environmental stewardship, which is “by definition interdisciplinary,” Lynch said. The new space will bring together environmental researchers and students of various disciplines to address themes such as humans’ understanding of their relationship with the natural world, the availability of food and water, human health and well-being and equity and government, she said. The institute will facilitate scholarly cooperation by providing seed funds for meetings and symposia, working groups, development grants and student travel grants, Lynch said. The implementation proposal for the institute will go before the Academic Priorities Committee in the coming weeks, Schlissel said. If the committee approves the plan, the faculty will then vote on whether to send it to the Corporation. Schlissel said he hopes to see the project approved at the Corporation’s meeting in May.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2014

» MAGAZINER, from page 1 he gave investment advice to audience members. “You gotta walk a line,” Magaziner said when asked about mediating between different values of clients during the question-and-answer portion of the event. Trillium offered different “styles” of investing — for example, specialized styles for Christian clients, he said. Trillium professionals “tried not to make it too laundry list-y” in crafting investment options for clients, Magaziner said, emphasizing the importance of looking at the bigger picture when making investment decisions. Drawing a graph on the board, Magaziner also illustrated ways to compare social and financial factors that could affect investing. Audience members participated by listing environmental implications that might affect energy companies, such as government regulation and pollution. “There are certain things about Rhode Island that have been really out of whack,” Magaziner said when asked about pressing issues in the state. Twenty-five percent of the Rhode Island population either does not have

a bank account or is dependent on predatory financial services, such as payday loans with excessively high interest rates, he said. “The problem lies in people not having access to affordable financial services.” Providence should be able to share in the economic growth that Boston has experienced, Magaziner said, noting that Rhode Island has regained only a third of its jobs lost during the last recession. “I do think we have a lot of potential here,” he said, adding that the Ocean State has a unique opportunity to become a center for entrepreneurship. Brown students have “a tremendous amount of talent,” Magaziner told The Herald after the event. Students at the University are the kind of leaders he would want on his campaign, he added. Magaziner’s background in socially responsible investing would provide him with an understanding of how to make a positive impact if he were elected General Treasurer, Schacter said. “Hopefully (Magaziner’s talk will) generate interest in the club, but also in the speaker,” Schacter said.

university news 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2014

Faculty hear about new research site, endorse master’s program Faculty members also discuss performing arts expansion, ‘professor of the practice’ title By WING SZE HO SENIOR STAFF WRITER

A new online database of the University’s scholars and their research is now open for faculty members to edit and will be publicly launched May 1, said Provost Mark Schlissel P’15 at a faculty meeting Tuesday. Faculty members and administrators also discussed the University’s recently announced plans for the performing arts, a new faculty title of “professor of the practice,” a proposal to create a Master of Science program in population medicine and the clarification of emeritus faculty members’ professional privileges. The new database, Researchers@ Brown, will replace the Directory of Research and Researchers at Brown, a website developed in the 1990s. The site aims to make the University’s scholars “more visible to the outside world and people on campus,” Schlissel told The Herald. The DRR-B is archaic, and modern computers will soon be incompatible with the interface, Schlissel said. The new website is “more organized and searchable.” On May 1, the University will shut

down the DRR-B to external sources, and faculty members are encouraged to modify their profiles on the new website during the trial period between now and May 1, Schlissel said at the meeting. The University purchased the software for the new website — VIVO — two years ago and transferred the data from the old database to the new one, Schlissel told The Herald. The new database’s homepage features a slideshow of new books written by faculty members, Schlissel said at the meeting. President Christina Paxson told faculty members attending the forum about the new strategic planning initiative to expand performing arts on campus. Administrators have acknowledged a lack of performance space on campus, she said. The University has hired AMS Planning and Research, a consulting firm, to help identify and establish ventures for the performing arts, The Herald reported last week. The University recently formed a committee comprising faculty members and students in the Departments of Music and Theater Arts and Performance Studies to examine changes to

the performing arts, Paxson said. Faculty members on the committee include Joseph Rovan, professor of music, Erik Ehn, TAPS professor and department chair, and Matthew McGarrell, senior lecturer in music and director of bands, she added. Paxson also presented the Faculty Service Awards to Lundy Braun, professor of medical science and Africana studies, Tom Doeppner, associate professor of computer science, and Harold Roth P’17, professor of religious studies and director of the Contemplative Studies Initiative. The faculty passed a motion endorsing the creation of a new Master of Science program in population medicine, which would have to be approved by the Corporation. The proposed four-year, dual-degree program has a wider reach than a Master of Science, and would aim to train physicians who work with patients in diverse ways, said Assistant Professor of Family Medicine Paul George and Professor and Chair of Family Medicine Jeffrey Borkan. Graduates of the proposed program would receive a Master of Science and a doctorate of medicine, Borkan and George said. Faculty members discussed two additional motions, led by Iris Bahar, professor of engineering and chair of the Faculty Executive Committee.

A motion to amend the Faculty Rules and Regulations was passed unanimously to change the current membership of the Committee on Faculty Equity and Diversity to include the dean of the School of Public Health. The position is currently held by Terrie Wetle. A motion to recommend amending the Handbook for Academic Administration to include all privileges of emeritus faculty was also discussed, but was postponed for further review. Several faculty members suggested making sure that certain privileges for emeritus faculty, including the exemption of library fines and complimentary access to athletic facilities, were listed in the handbook. One faculty member expressed concerns that the Committee on Faculty Retirement had not appropriately reviewed the proposed carifications. Paxson suggested Bahar pass the proposal through the committee in time for the next faculty meeting April 1. Attendees discussed the Faculty Executive Committee’s suggestion to adopt a new title of “professor of the practice” at the University. The title is designated for “practitioners whose qualifications come through professional experience rather than scholarly credentials,” Bahar said. The proposed title is meant to replace the “clinical faculty” title installed in 2005, which is “frequently confused with the

clinical title used in the Division of Biology and Medicine,” Bahar said. Faculty members hired under the proposed new title will not have voting rights and will not be eligible for sabbatical leaves, Bahar said. These positions are also not eligible for tenure, and if the faculty member eventually receives a tenuretrack position, the period as professor of the practice will not be counted as part of the probationary period for tenure-track faculty, she added. Some faculty members expressed various concerns about the title, citing the fact that some peer institutions use the term exclusively in foreign language departments. Schlissel updated the faculty on the newly instituted doctoral student fellowships, which are meant to “attract the very best graduate students” to the University. The program has accepted six and declined eight applicants so far, he said. The program frees up resources, which can be used to increase stipends or research funding at the departments’ discretions, Schlissel added. During the faculty meeting, Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice Vincent Mor also led a memorial minute for Albert Wessen, professor emeritus of community medicine and sociology, who died last month.

4 science & research » FOOD CHEM, from page 1 the sweet receptor, altering it so that it only functions in conditions of low pH when people eat something very acidic. For example, after eating miracle berries, “you can just drink vinegar” because it will taste sweet, she added. Delaney also discussed the differences among potatoes, which “are not all the same,” she said, adding that once cooked, some potatoes have a more “mealy” texture while others have a more “waxy” texture. The chemistry behind these differences lies in the types and amounts of starches present in the potatoes, she said. Though Delaney taught about the differences between potatoes in a lecture, she kept the class interactive, even on a non-lab day. She set out containers of three different kinds of potatoes and had the class sample them, asking for their reactions to the textures. She then explained how the potatoes varied in their starch content, allowing the students to directly experience the effect of chemistry on the results of cooking. In this week’s lab, students will make home fries and potato salad to investigate another concept — the way pH conditions affect how a potato cooks. Potatoes contain pectin, which functions as a sort of “glue” that holds the potatoes together, Delaney said, adding that this glue works best under acidic conditions, or when the potatoes cook in a low-pH environment. The students will cook the potato salad under acidic conditions, so that the pectin will act like glue and the potatoes will remain “intact,” Delaney said in class. But then students will cook the home

fries in a high-pH, or basic, environment so that the pectin will break down, making the potatoes mushy, Delaney said. The softening of the potatoes will increase their surface area, making it easier to evaporate the water in them and giving them the crispy texture characteristic of home fries, she added. Inspired teachers Students in the course raved about the instructor. “We’re really lucky because we have Professor Delaney. She’s an amazing teacher … and it comes through in what she does,” said Taylor Viggiano ’17. Delaney said she wanted to teach a “broad-interest” class that would appeal to non-chemistry concentrators. “I thought that combining chemistry with food and cooking would be a way of having a topic that would be interesting to people,” she said. The course is currently offered only to first-year students simply because the kitchen has a limited capacity, Delaney said. But many upperclassmen were also interested in the course, so Delaney said she hopes to expand its capacity in future years. Iyad Owen-Elia ’16 said he saw the course description in Banner last spring and was disappointed that it was not open to upperclassmen, so he emailed Delaney and secured a position as the teaching assistant. As the TA, Owen-Elia helped Delaney design the course’s curriculum. Currently, he “oversees” the kitchen experiments, he said, making sure all goes well, and he helps to explain the overlap between chemistry and cooking.

Interdisciplinary love Delaney said she created the course to fuse her passion for cooking with her academic career. “I always enjoyed cooking, and the more you learn about science, the more you realize that it applies to cooking,” Delaney said. “Cooking is an applied science, and a lot of that science is chemistry.” Owen-Elia also expressed excitement for both science and cooking. “I love cooking and have loved it for a long time,” he said. “I’m really interested in how science and cooking intersect because in school I mainly do science, but out of school my main passion is cooking. And this class seemed like a chance to combine those.” Students also showed enthusiasm for both elements of the course. “I’m also really into food so I love learning the concepts behind it, and why fish changes color as it cooks and how the proteins are denatured and that kind of thing,” Viggiano said. Marley Rafson ’17 said the class provides “a unique glance at chemistry. … (It) shows you that chemistry can be fun.” She said her “favorite part of the class is that you get to eat at the end of the lab.” Viggiano said she believes the class is improving her skills as a chef, and Owen-Elia seemed to share Viggiano’s sentiment. “I think that a knowledge of science and an understanding of the chemistry of what’s going on in food can really allow a cook to execute their ideas much more effectively and to achieve really cool dishes that maybe wouldn’t be possible without that knowledge,” he said.

Study probes attention-memory link Research explores ‘selective attention’ and relationship between IQ and memory By MARINA RENTON CONTRIBUTING WRITER

When children engage certain attentional mechanisms, their IQ scores no longer predict how well they remember what they have seen, according to a new study by University researchers published online this month in the journal Cognition. This finding emerged from the work of researchers in the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences who have been exploring “selective attention” for the past three years. Selective attention is engaged when people must select what to focus on from a variety of surrounding stimuli, said Julie Markant, a postdoctoral research associate in the CLPS department who led the study. “We live in a busy world, and we have to allocate our resources in a meaningful way,” she added. Selective attention comprises two components — enhancement and suppression, Markant said. For example, when reading a book in a coffee shop, a person must “enhance” his or her attention toward the words on the page and simultaneously “suppress” the “interfering information” like background conversations, Markant said. The research team investigated the hypothesis that suppressing competing information would “promote improved learning and memory,” Markant said. They studied children aged seven to 17 and divided them into two groups. Both groups were presented images of

everyday objects, but the researchers manipulated the timing of the stimuli so that participants in each group engaged different attentional mechanisms. While participants looked at a fixation cross in the center of the screen, a cue appeared in the periphery, followed by a picture of an object. Variation in the timing of the cue and the side on which the picture appeared engaged different components of attention. In the “facilitation” condition, the cue and target picture appeared on the same side of the screen, separated by a very short delay. This short delay meant the cue would draw participants’ attention to the side of the screen where the picture appeared, enhancing their attention to the target. But in the other condition, after the cue appeared on one side of the screen, there was a significantly longer delay, which caused the participants to shift their attention from the cued side to the other side of the screen, where the target picture ultimately appeared. The longer delay not only enhanced participants’ attention to the side of the screen where the target ultimately appeared but also caused them to simultaneously suppress attention toward the cued side, a phenomenon that researchers call “inhibition of return.” After completing the task, participants were given a surprise memory test to see if they could recognize the target pictures they had seen. “They had no idea that it was a memory task,” Markant said. “We tried really hard to make sure that they didn’t guess it was a memory study.” The researchers then looked at how participants’ engagement of attentional mechanisms and their scores on IQ tests

influenced their performance on the memory task. In the facilitation condition, “the only predictor of recognition memory was IQ,” Markant said, adding that this finding was not surprising and that many studies have found that higher IQ scores correlate with better memory performance. This result suggests that attention in the facilitation condition is not correlated with “memory performance,” Markant said. But in the “inhibition of return” condition, researchers observed no relation between IQ and memory performance, a “stunning reversal of what is normally found,” Markant said. This finding suggests that “suppression counteracted individual differences in IQ.” Philip Tate, a senior lecturer at the School of Education at Boston University, said he was not surprised by the result that children with lower IQs did just as well in the “inhibition of return” condition. “They’re tapping into some sort of basic human processing thing — it means there are ways human beings learn that are not related specifically to IQ,” he said. “In the old days we used to think that IQ meant that you were efficient or inefficient at learning, … but that’s not true at all. So that was encouraging.” Markant said she sees the study as important to future efforts to understand learning and memory. “When we’re thinking about the development of learning and memory, we should also be thinking about what’s changing in the attention system. So we want to be thinking about the integrated system,” she said.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2014

Science & Research Roundup BY SARAH PERELMAN, SCIENCE & RESEARCH EDITOR

Researchers determine binding structure of PP1 New research offers predictions for how protein phosphatase 1 — a protein necessary for turning on and off a wide range of biological processes — binds to 43 of its approximately 200 suspected targets. The predictions were derived from structures of PP1 bound to three proteins. A picture and full description of one of these structures were recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Meng Choy, a senior research associate, and a team of University co-authors. Comparing the newly discovered PP1 structure to the previously discovered ones allowed the researchers to determine two “binding motifs,” or common zones on the protein that bind different targets in a similar manner, said co-author Rebecca Page, associate professor of biology, in a University press release. Learning how PP1 binds different targets is key to understanding how it behaves in different situations, which could help potential future studies examining the possibility of PP1 as a drug target. Scientists currently do not understand PP1’s specific mechanisms well enough to interfere with detrimental processes without short-circuiting necessary ones. “It’s not like you could just target the PP1 active site for, let’s say, diabetes, because then you are going to affect drug addiction, Alzheimer’s disease and all these other diseases at the same time,” Page said in the release.

Rats learn better while looking down, study finds A recent study suggests rodents learn tasks four to six times faster if they are looking down, not straight ahead, at visual stimuli. The research, conducted by Rebecca Burwell, professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences, was published in the Journal of Visualized Experiments. Results suggest a contrast between human and rodent subjects in psychology experiments: Humans tend to learn best when visual stimuli are presented in front of them, while rats learn better when images are projected below them. This finding makes sense due to the structure of rodents’ eyes, Burwell said in the release. They have an especially high number of photoreceptors and retinal ganglion cells in the upper part of their retina, which makes them adept at looking downward. “For anyone interested in using rats or mice as a model for visual information processing, presenting the information on the floor makes good sense behaviorally and biologically,” Burwell said in the release.

Prof. named director of research facility Professor of Pediatrics Catherine Gordon was named medical director of Lifespan’s newly launched Clinical Research Center, according to a Lifespan press release. The center’s creation was announced Monday. “By bringing together this outstanding collection of resources, we intend to significantly increase the capacity of our faculty to engage in important clinical research that will improve the clinical care and lives of our patients,” said Peter Snyder, Lifespan’s senior vice president and chief research officer. The center will provide researchers a place to meet with participants in clinical studies, helping hospitals affiliated with Lifespan expand the scope and scale of their research, Gordon said in the release. The space will also serve as a site for experimenters to work on designing their studies and to analyze their collected results with medical oversight and nursing support. Medical researchers will also be able to store specimens used in clinical trials at the new space. Lifespan hospitals are the main teaching hospitals for students at the Alpert Medical School, and many researchers affiliated with Lifespan are Brown faculty members.

The study may have implications for education, Markant said. For example, there may be opportunities to study whether training in attention can improve memory, she added. But, she noted, “we’re a long way from that at this point.” To improve learning and memory, an intervention or training program “that focuses on driving the two systems together rather than focusing on one alone could be more successful,” she said. She added that she is also interested in studying the role of suppression in infants’ learning and memory.

Though Tate called the study “carefully done” and “another good step in the process of understanding memory and how attention relates to memory,” he said that in order to apply its findings to educational settings, more research and testing in schools would be required. “It’s like the difference between finding something that seems to work in mice and actually testing it on mice, and then actually testing it on people,” Tate said. “So they’re a couple levels of development away from things that might actually work with real people in schools.”

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2014

menu SHARPE REFECTORY

u n p l u g f o r pa x s o n VERNEY-WOOLLEY

LUNCH Spring Garden Fried Chicken, Spring Vegetable and Pork Stir Fry, Pasta Primavera, Grilled Bok Choy

Fried Fish Sandwich, Vegetable Stuffed Red Peppers, Vegan Gumbo Casserole, Steamed Vegetable Melange

DINNER

Marinated Beef au Jus, Vegan OvenRoasted Tofu, Red Fish Provencal, Spinach with Lemon, Broccoli Rice Pimento

Korean Style Marinated Beef, Vegetarian Sweet and Sour Tofu, Vegetables in Honey Ginger Sauce, Asian Vegetables

JOSIAH’S

THREE BURNERS

QUESADILLA OR GRILLED CHEESE

Banh Mi

Grilled Cheese

BLUE ROOM

SOUPS

DINNER ENTREES

Chicken and Wild Rice, Baked Potato, Butternut Squash and Apple

Naked Burritos

sudoku

BRITTANY COMUNALE / HERALD

Brown EcoReps’ fourth annual Do It in the Dark competition began Friday. The dormitory that saves the most energy during the month of March will get to have dinner with President Christina Paxson.

comics Culture Shock | Chloe Hequet ’17

RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle c rNorris o s sandwJoyce o rNichols d Lewis Edited by Rich ACROSS 1 Humanities degs. 4 Bullpen stats 8 Not exceeding 12 “__ way!” 14 Soft tissue 15 Consequences of most missed birdie putts 16 Outing for four 18 __-Z: classic Camaro 19 Make beloved 20 Pixar film in which Richard Petty had a voice role 22 FDR power project 23 Some Iberian kings 24 “Don’t tell me!” 26 Soak (up) 28 Days gone by 29 Took out for a while 34 Dvorak’s last symphony 37 Three-part snack 38 Delight 41 Work with an artist, perhaps 42 Make sense 44 “Hawaii” novelist 46 Decorative sewing case 48 Star quality 49 World waters 53 Meet competitor 58 Hero in the air 59 Patio furniture protector 60 Concert hall cry 61 “Copacabana” temptress 63 Author suggested by the starts of 16-, 24and 49-Across 65 __ vera lotion 66 Mr. T’s TV outfit 67 “A Streetcar Named Desire” director Kazan 68 Quick swims 69 Frosty coating 70 Cong. bigwig DOWN 1 Justice Ruth __ Ginsburg 2 Advice to a sinner 3 Quiet room

4 Former times, formerly 5 Get through to 6 Take __ at: try 7 Amontillado, for one 8 News gp. 9 Acropolis temple 10 Hidden treasure 11 Boxer De La Hoya 13 Busy as __ 14 Not agin 17 Rodeo ring 21 Shortly 24 Autobahn auto 25 Baloney 27 Haven’t paid off yet 29 Something to wrap around one’s neck ... or maybe not 30 Traffic reg. 31 Improve, as a downtown area 32 Travel plan 33 Water holder? 35 “The Waste Land” poet’s monogram 36 “... and sat down beside __ ...” 39 Gifts for grads or dads

40 Heart chart, for short 43 Pre-euro Irish coin 45 Lena of “The Wiz” 47 “Swords into plowshares” prophet 49 Dieter’s lunch 50 Bacteria in rare meat, maybe 51 Muse for Shelley 52 Sleep lab subject

Let’s Talk | Nava Winkler ‘14

54 Cartoon supplier of anvils and explosive tennis balls 55 Hoses are often stored in them 56 Adopted son on “My Three Sons” 57 Sister of Goneril 60 Scary movie street 62 DDE rival 64 “__ out!”

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

calendar xwordeditor@aol.com

03/05/14

TODAY

MARCH 5

4:30 P.M. GEORGE HART, MATHEMATICIAN AND SCULPTOR LECTURE

Renowned sculptor George Hart will lecture on his work as an artist and mathematician. Hart is known for his innovative approach to mathematics. Barus & Holley, Room 168 6 P.M. TASTEBERRIES

The Science Center will celebrate its fourth birthday with Tasteberries, fruit that alter how different foods taste. Online registration begins at 5:30 p.m. Science Center Sciences Library

TOMORROW

MARCH 6

6 P.M. SKETCHBOOK CLUB

Students can meet to work on art such as doodling, project planning and other forms, as well as meet fellow artists and eat pizza. List 225 6:30 P.M. THE STORY OF YOU BY BRIAN KELLY By John R. O’Brien (c)2014 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

03/05/14

Brian Kelly ’79 will present a series of monologues that he wrote. Kelly is well known in the art and music world in New York. Granoff Center, Studio 1

6 science & research

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2014

Research moves toward detection of dark matter particles Calibration with neutrons allows for more accuracy in detecting low-energy particles By JASON NADBOY STAFF WRITER

A recent calibration of the Large Underground Xenon shows that researchers have come one step closer to detecting the elusive dark matter particle, according to results presented by a Brown graduate student Feb. 19 at the Lake Louise Winter Institute in Alberta, Canada. Located a mile underground in South Dakota, the LUX is a large tub filled with a third of a ton of xenon liquid, said Richard Gaitskell, professor of physics. If a dark matter particle — a type of weakly interactive massive particle, or WIMP — interacts with a xenon nucleus, it will release a light and charge signal that will be picked up by sensors. The machine’s deep underground location minimizes radiation and other particles interfering with the intended dark matter interactions, he added. Researchers completed the LUX’s first 90-day trial run in October, but the experiment’s initial results yielded no dark matter, The Herald reported in November.

» WORKERS, from page 1 important for me to have this job” at the call center, she added. “Honestly, it’s just a matter of prioritizing.” While many students balance employment with academics, extracurricular activities and other commitments, each has a different threshold for the number of hours he or she can commit outside the classroom. In interviews, many students working over a dozen hours a week agreed that having a job helps them stay motivated, gives them a sense of independence and is overall a positive and rewarding experience. But working the number of hours equivalent to a part-time job can also present unique challenges: Some students find they must choose between employment and social life. Timothy Genovese ’16 said he often sacrifices his social time in order to work at the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center’s welcome center and

The new calibration showed that if dark matter particles had passed through the LUX, they would have been detected, said James Verbus GS. He called this finding “the biggest thing since October.” “When you say you are looking for WIMPs, you have to be able to demonstrate you would have seen them if they were there,” Verbus said. “The way you do this is by shooting neutrons into your detector, and (examining) the detector’s response.” Neutrons are used because they and dark matter particles interact the same way with xenon atoms, Verbus said. “James took the neutron source to the LUX a mile underground and was able to direct the neutrons coming from the source directly into the heart of LUX,” Gaitskell said. The calibration works almost “like billiard ball scattering,” Gaitskell said. The neutrons are shot into the LUX and then bounce off multiple xenon atoms before being detected by the machine’s sensor, he added. The researchers are able to measure the energy released by the interaction and calibrate the LUX accordingly, Gaitskell said. “The energies we were able to go down to were extremely low,” he added. Calibrating the LUX to detect very low-energy particles is necessary to

get around the difficulty of visualizing such low-energy particles as WIMPs, Verbus said. The new calibration “further shows the robustness of LUX’s WIMP detecting capacity,” he added. Recalibrating the machine allowed researchers to “determine that (their detector was) actually sensitive to lower-energy collisions than they had previously assumed,” wrote Associate Professor of Physics Ian Dell’antonio, who was not involved in the study, in an email to The Herald. “Because the lower-energy yield collisions are more common than higher-energy collisions, they showed that interaction rate had to be even lower than they had previously measured.” “It’s about as big a gain as if they had run the experiment for three more years, so it’s a big deal,” he wrote. For this experiment to be reliable, understanding the sensitivity of the detector is critical, Gaitskell said. People have done many calibrations previously with an “entire spectrum of kinetic energy,” Verbus said. Unlike other calibrations, this one took place in the LUX itself, allowing multiple collisions to take place without leaving the detector, he added. The size of the detector is crucial in discovering dark matter. If collisions took place in a smaller detector, the

as a lifeguard at the Jonathan Nelson ’77 Fitness Center, usually 12 to 15 hours a week. Though Genovese said his schedule limits the time he has to spend with friends, he added that the community at his workplace is “one of the top reasons for going to work every day.” Cellie Pardoe ’16 works 15 hours a week at multiple jobs — as a shift supervisor at the Ivy Room and in the management office of Brown Dining Services. But she said she does not have to give up social time for work time. “I don’t consider it a balance with social life because I’m really close with my coworkers,” she said. Salvador, Genovese, Pardoe and Caroline Fenn ’14 all said working around 15 hours a week did not interfere with their academics. Fenn, who works 15 to 18 hours a week for BuDS, said management usually provides a substitute if an employee has an academic conflict.

COURTESY OF THE LUX EXPERIMENT

James Verbus GS led a team that calibrated the Large Underground Xenon for detecting dark matter. dark matter “would scatter once and then leave the detector,” Gaitskell said. “We have only scratched the surface of what is possible,” Verbus said. The team is now working to prepare the LUX machine for the next attempt to find dark matter, which will be led by University researchers. Though dark matter has yet to be

found, “the LUX detector could still discover something in its next 300-day run,” Verbus said. The researchers are also working on an even bigger detector called the LUXZeplin, Gaitskell said. This machine will be 20 times as big as the current LUX and will be more sensitive by a factor of 50.

“Working makes it easier to get schoolwork done because I don’t have free time to procrastinate,” said Genovese, who is taking five classes this semester. “I don’t have the luxury of being able to put it off, which forces me to get my work done,” he said. Salvador expressed a similar sentiment. “I feel like I have more time because I have less time,” she said. Students will always feel like they have too little time, regardless of their commitments, she added. But for other students, having insufficient time for academics is often a reason for quitting jobs at BuDS, said Pardoe, who helps hire students for BuDS. Salvador said working many hours has given her a unique perspective that other students may not understand. “At Brown, class is one of the things that we don’t really talk about,” she added. Pardoe, who is also a facilitator for

$ocial Classmates, an organization that sponsors discussion about class disparities, said socioeconomic class is less of a “taboo topic” in the student workplace than in other settings. Students who participate in campus employment also have a significantly lower dropout rate at Brown, said Jim Tilton, director of financial aid. The higher retention rate is attributed to these students’ sense of community involvement and the stability in their schedules, Tilton added. While every student has the opportunity to work on campus, Federal Work-Study is also part of the standard financial aid package, Tilton said. Approximately 44 percent of students are awarded need-based scholarships. “Each student receiving (a) University scholarship has a $2,700 work component in their financial aid package, which allows them to work on or off campus and receive a paycheck every two weeks,” he said. Tilton added that many students choose to use

scholarship money as a substitute for the work-study component of their aid package, but some may choose to work more than $2,700 worth of hours. “Financial aid is not where it stops,” Salvador said, explaining that many students supplement their aid packages with extra work hours. The Office of Financial Aid recommends that students work eight to 12 hours per week to meet the requisite work-study amount. “We generally hear back from students that that is a reasonable amount to work,” Tilton said, adding that it is conditional on the functionality of the aid package’s other components. “Federal Work-Study or Campus Employment is a work opportunity — not a requirement,” according to the University’s Student Employment website. Many students in campus employment do not receive financial aid. Pardoe estimated that 50 percent of BuDS workers are on Federal-Work Study.

» FORUM, from page 1

but should have the capability “to balance the business- and mission-driven aspects of the enterprise,” Paxson said. Provosts can foster knowledge, community service and the training of the next generation of physicians, but “you also have to pay the bills,” Paxson said. Honora Burnett MD’15, president of the Med Student Senate, said she is concerned about a lack of diversity among provost applicants. When she was on the search committee to select the new dean of the Med School, there were only two women and two people of diverse backgrounds among the hundreds of applicants, Burnett said. The higher tiers of academic

administration continue to be dominated by white people and men, Paxson said. But the University’s nationwide search for the next provost creates a more diverse pool, she added. The new provost will continue to maintain a close relationship with Dean of Medicine and Biological Sciences Jack Elias to turn Med School priorities into fundraising opportunities, Paxson said. One medical student asked how the new provost will address Paxson’s vision for the Med School, articulated in her strategic plan. “I would like to see its standing continue to rise,” as the Med School stimulates more research and partnerships with hospitals, Paxson said.

candidate brings certain advantages. “An internal search means you can move more quickly — you don’t have to take a year getting to know everyone’s names,” Paxson said. But “a national search builds a more diverse pool,” she added. Schlissel also serves as a professor of biology at Brown and has spent most of his career as an academic in the life sciences. As provost, he helped lead the the creation of a separate School of Public Health last year and the Med School’s transition to its new Jewelry District space. Prospective candidates “don’t have to know how to treat kidney disease,”

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2014

Culture war aggressors GARRET JOHNSON opinions columnist

Here at liberal Brown in liberal Rhode Island, we often feel immune from the nationwide struggle with social politics. Personally, I watch the news and feel relieved to live in a place that is — relatively — socially progressive. Like last week, when Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) vetoed SB 1062, a measure that would have allowed companies in the state to discriminate against people in the name of religious freedom. While the bill was broadly worded, most agree that it was a targeted measure aimed at allowing Arizona businesses to refuse service to gay individuals. Due to immense political pressure from Democrats and Republicans, Brewer rejected the proposal. But in many ways, her veto was actually meaningless. In Arizona, the gay population is not protected against discrimination by state law, and there are still no such federal laws in place. So even with the dismissal of this bizarre piece of legislation, businesses in Arizona are still free to turn away people who are gay, are divorced, eat shellfish, have tattoos or in any other way disobey the Bible. Thank God for freedom! SB 1062 is part of a larger, nationwide phenomenon that has been going on since the 1970s and has only accelerated in recent years. It is often called the “culture war,” but it is the strangest war I have ever seen — there is only one side. Groups on the extreme right periodically put out legislation like SB 1062, claiming that their values “are under attack.” The problem with this stance is that no one is attacking them. They are the aggressors in this fight. Those of us who believe in marriage equality, abortion rights and non-discrimination are not attempting to change or destroy anyone’s religious beliefs. If you belong to a religion that says gay individuals should not be able to marry, go ahead and keep believing that. I won’t even mention the fact that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. But please know that your religious views

have no place in our secular country’s laws. The Constitution doesn’t say anything about Christianity — your religion is not the religion of the country. So when we pass laws guaranteeing equal rights for all Americans, we’re not touching your religion. We’re preventing your religion from touching us. And let’s drop the pretense that you are protecting “religious freedom.” Can anyone say with a straight face that these Arizona Tea Partiers would be up in arms if a Muslim business owner were sued over not serving a woman whose hair was uncovered? Their fight is about protecting their perceived right to govern America as a nation under Christianity. They are the only aggressors in the culture war. The rest of us are just trying to protect the rights of all Americans. Remember in 2011 when the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property came

When we pass laws guaranteeing equal rights for all Americans, we’re not touching your religion. We’re preventing your religion from touching us. to Brown to protest Rhode Island’s consideration of marriage equality legislation? As I recall, nobody went to TFP’s headquarters demanding that it, as a private group, recognize gay marriages. While Brown’s counter-protesters may not have been the most respectful group, there is no debate over who the aggressor was in our campus’ battle in the “culture war.” The marriage equality legislation, which eventually was passed and signed into law by Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 P’17, was a defensive measure in the “culture war.” Marriage, as it relates to the government, is an economic and legal issue. To guarantee that all citizens have the right to marry is to say that no group’s

Garret Johnson ’14 is currently attacking the pillars of American society and is a former Herald opinions editor. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays. He can be reached at garret_johnson@brown.edu.

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Bubbling to the surface Last week, a New York Times column by Suzanne Mettler brought attention to the evolution of college from a mediator of equality to one of inequality, categorizing the current system of higher education as a caste system. Mettler contends that the astronomically large cost of college has become too much to bear for many low- and middle-class students, either effectively constraining their choice of university or forcing them to graduate with large amounts of student debt. This is particularly worrisome given the poor job market, in which a college degree is now a requisite for many jobs but is by no means a guarantee of employment after graduation. And yet people keep paying the ridiculous expenses of college tuition, along with all that comes with it, including high textbook rates, meal plan expenses and dormitory rent. This debate has to force us, as students at a school that costs nearly $60,000 a year at full tuition, to ask the question: Is our education really worth it? This question should be posed not just for ourselves and for our own personal gain, but from the wider perspective of society as a whole. As we keep paying into a system with rising costs and one that may indeed be to the detriment of economic equality, where is the future of higher education headed? The answer might be even worse than anticipated. The Wall Street Journal reported recently on the number of people seeking student loans not as a means to obtain a college degree, but to finance other expenditures, such as rent and living expenses. Not only are the costs of college education rising steadily, but the quantity of student loans taken out is also increasing, and expanding into other, non-educational markets. Economically, there is usually a trade-off between price and quantity for desirable goods. When price goes up, quantity demanded usually goes down. But for higher education, the reverse has been true. Despite constant tuition increases, especially at Ivies and other so-called “elite” universities, top schools report ever-higher application numbers, in addition to concurrent increases in college enrollment throughout the country. There is a precedent for this situation in the not-so-distant past. The housing bubble of the early 2000s showed clearly the negative effects of what can happen when price and quantity continue rising together at such a quick rate. This type of growth is simply not sustainable, and it resulted in the inevitable collapse of the housing market. Will the same happen for higher education? If these trends keep progressing, then it’s almost assured we’ll reach some breaking point relatively soon. There is a bright spot in this bleak picture, and one that involves our unique place as Brown students. We are in a position to demand that the University bring costs down by reducing unnecessary expenditures, and increasing fiscal responsibility and transparency. We need greater transparency about nonacademic administrative expenses, which have grown precipitously in recent years. In addition, some of our benefits, such as gyms and other support services, could be converted to add-ons rather than mandated expenses. Higher education doesn’t have to go the way of the housing bubble. We need to do all we can to prevent it from growing to the point of bursting. Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board: its editors, Matt Brundage ’15 and Rachel Occhiogrosso ’14, and its members, Hannah Loewentheil ’14 and Thomas Nath ’16. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.

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beliefs are more important than our equality as Americans. Yet for some strange reason, groups on the far right continue to view themselves as the victims of some unnamed combatant who wants to strip them of their views and beliefs. CNN’s Anderson Cooper had an incredible and revealing interview with Arizona State Sen. Al Melvin (R), who voted for SB 1062 and is running for governor. Melvin told Cooper, “All the pillars of society are under attack in the United States.” When Cooper pressed him, Melvin was unable to name one instance in which an Arizona business had its values “attacked.” The interview also served to show the central, seductive delusion of the right wing. During his conversation with Cooper, Melvin claimed that he doesn’t know of “anybody in Arizona that would discriminate against a fellow human being.” So according to Melvin, discrimination no longer exists in his sunny, utopian state. The supreme irony of this falsehood is that, while denying the existence of discrimination, Melvin was attempting to pass a law legitimizing it. The effort of pro-discrimination conservatives in Arizona to codify anti-gay discrimination shows us the nationwide strategy of the conservative base of the Republican Party. The crux is to attack the rights of society’s marginalized while they claim to be attacked themselves. These policies serve only to prevent those who have been marginalized over the course of our history from gaining equal treatment as Americans. Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that these folks act this way. After all, their economic policies are designed with exactly the same aim in mind. Socially and economically, the “culture warriors” want to protect the rights of the few to control the laws and government of the many. Why? Because that’s the way it has always been.

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An article in Tuesday’s Herald (“Task force proposes gun reform legislation,” March 4) incorrectly stated that professors could not research gun violence under a federal ban. In fact, President Obama lifted the ban in January 2013. It also incorrectly stated that University researchers have investigated gun violence prevention despite the ban. In fact, they have investigated violence prevention. The Herald regrets the errors.

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