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T H E O L D E ST C O L L E G E DA I LY · FO U N D E D 1 8 7 8

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT · TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2012 · VOL. CXXXIV, NO. 81 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING

SUNNY CLEAR

41 47

CROSS CAMPUS

MOMENTUM SCIENCE BACKS WINNING STREAKS

POLICE TURMOIL

POP MUSIC

W. TENNIS

NHPD restructuring protested; East Haven chief resigns in scandal

BEATLES HITS ANALYZED FOR MUSICAL SECRETS

No. 35 Elis upset No. 21 Notre Dame before close loss to No. 10 Michigan

PAGE 6 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

PAGE 3 CITY

PAGE 5 NEWS

PAGE 12 SPORTS

YUAG renovations near end

Yale model back on track

Say goodbye? Alexander Nemerov GRD ’92, an esteemed art historian and chair of Yale’s History of Art Department, may leave for Stanford after this school year, he said in a Monday interview. Nemerov, whose “Introduction to the History of Art: Renaissance to the Present” was the most popular class on campus this semester, has not yet accepted or rejected a recent offer from Stanford. Brace yourselves. After a game of assassins brought panlist hijacking and breaches of privacy to class of 2013, this year’s Sophomore Class Council announced in a Monday email that the class of 2014 would begin its own round of the game on Feb. 4. The winning team will receive a $200 gift certificate to Miya’s. Sisterhood has started. After

an intense weekend rush period, 126 women received bids to Yale’s three sororities Monday afternoon. All three sororities had enough women accept their bids to make quota. One hundred percent of women who received a bid from Kappa Alpha Theta accepted.

Building a distillery. A group of Yale architecture students arrived in Louisville this week to design an urban distillery as part of an advanced design studios program. The project will only be designed, and will not be constructed. A spoonful of cinnamon?

The principal of Clinton Avenue School, an elementary school in Fair Haven, has been placed on paid administrative leave after she reportedly watched a student take the “cinnamon challenge,” in which competitors attempt to swallow a spoonful of cinnamon at lunch and did nothing to stop it, the New Haven Register reported.

Close one. A fire erupted at a residence on Winchester Avenue in Newhallville on Sunday, but firefighters were able to get all those inside out safely and contain the damage to the second floor. The Red Cross found shelter for 11 families displaced by the fire, the Register reported. Recompense. Today is the last day for Connecticut Light & Power customers statewide to apply for rebates for power lost during the snowstorm that struck Connecticut just before Halloween last fall and left many in the state without power for days, even weeks. Honored. Smilow’s Breast Center earned three-year accreditation as a breast center from the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers last week. THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1917 Freshmen in the Sheffield Scientific School begin their examinations. Submit tips to Cross Campus

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BY GAVAN GIDEON STAFF REPORTER T h e Un ive rs i ty ’s l a t est investment returns indicate that the Yale endowment model has regained momentum among its peers. Yale’s investment performance exceeded the average endowment return at colleges and universities nationwide in fiscal year 2011 by almost 3 percent, according to the 2011 NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments released today. Though the University’s endowment plunged by 24.6 percent when the recession hit in fiscal year 2009 — far worse than an average 18.7 percent lost by higher education endowments that year — Yale’s nontraditional investment strategy has helped the endowment recover and maintain strong long-term growth. Yale returned 21.9 percent on its investments in the fiscal year that ended June 30, while the national average among 823 colleges and universities included in the study was a 19.2 percent return. Those institutions also maintained an average annual return on investments of 5.6 percent over the past decade, while Yale’s endowment returned an annual average of 10.1 percent during the same period. Provost Peter Salovey praised Yale’s performance in light of the financial difficulties the University has weathered in

SHARON YIN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Yale University Art Gallery will reopen its doors in December 2012, ending 14 years of restoration and rehabilitation. BY URVI NOPANY AND NATASHA THONDAVADI STAFF REPORTERS A 14-year-long renovation project will draw to a close as the Yale University Art Gallery gears up to

open its doors to visitors in December 2012. The $135 million construction project involves a sweeping restoration and rehabilitation of the Art Gallery’s existing space and an extension resulting in

69,975 square feet of exhibition space in total, Art Gallery director Jock Reynolds said at a press conference in New York City Thursday. Although construction on the Art Gallery will end in early March, it will take the

museum’s staff the rest of the calendar year to reinstall the collections in their new spaces, said Duncan Hazard ’71 and Richard Olcott, the project’s head architects. SEE YUAG PAGE 8

TIMELINE YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY RENOVATION 1832 The Yale University Art Gallery opens in the Trumbull Gallery. 1866 The Art Gallery expands into Peter Bonnett Wright’s Street Hall. 1928 The Old Art Gallery, designed by Egerton Swartwout, unites the galleries along Chapel Street. The iconic bridge over High Street connecting the Old Art Gallery and Street Hall is constructed.

2008 The History of Art Department moves from Street Hall to the Loria Center, making room for the Art Gallery’s expansion back into its old home.

1953 The Art Gallery moves into Louis Kahn’s first modernist masterpiece at the intersection of Chapel and York Streets. 1972 The History of Art Department locates in Street Hall.

2012 Construction on the Art Gallery will finish in early March. Curators will finish installing the museum’s collections before reopening in December.

1998 Director of the Art Gallery Jock Reynolds first speaks with University President Richard Levin about renovating the museum.

SEE ENDOWMENT PAGE 8

Trayless trial finds critics BY MADELINE MCMAHON STAFF REPORTER Silliman College dining hall’s move to eliminate trays this semester — following the lead of the Trumbull and Morse/ Stiles dining halls — is receiving criticism from both students and dining hall staff. Over the past three years, the Sustainability Education Peers (STEP) has been coordinating with Yale Dining to present evidence that trayless dining reduces food, water and energy waste to residential college masters, who ultimately make the decision to remove trays. Silliman Master Judith Krauss said she has heard both positive and negative responses to the initiative during the first two weeks of school, and she said Silliman will remain without trays through at least the end of the semester. “The view is we need to give it a full term’s test run and that most people appear to be adjusting,” she said. Three years ago, STEP conducted a survey to measure the amount of

food wasted at the end of every meal and found that students who used trays wasted 40 percent more food than those without trays, according to Erica Rothman, director of STEP. Since that time, STEP studies have found that around 70 percent of students go trayless by choice. Rothman said she hopes more residential colleges will also move towards eliminating trays. “We’ve noticed a changing culture,” Rothman said. “With the last class that graduated, we have more freshman coming in now who are immediately subjected to the trayless campaign, and from the get go don’t pick up a tray.” Krauss said she has been trying to slowly transition away from trays in the dining hall for two years, first by suggesting optional trayless dining and then requiring students to dine without trays on Sundays. She added that trayless dining in Silliman alone saves 100 gallons of hot water per meal period. SEE TRAYLESS PAGE 4

Yale tops peer app growth GRAPH CHANGE IN APPLICATIONS Yale

+5.8%

-1.9% Harvard -1.7% Princeton -1.7% UPenn -7%

Brown +3.5%

Cornell

Columbia

-8.9%

+3%

Dartmouth

+7%

Stanford MIT +1% -10

-8

-6

-4

-2

0

2

4

6

8

Percent change in applications for Class of 2016

BY ANDREW GIAMBRONE STAFF REPORTER Yale has reported the highest percentage increase in applications in the Ivy League this year. The University received 28,622 applications for the class of 2016, a 5.8 percent jump from last year’s 27,283 applications. In contrast, Harvard and Princeton drew 1.9 and 1.7 percent fewer

applications, respectively, than they did for the class of 2015. Three college guidance counselors and admissions experts interviewed said the decrease in applications at Harvard and Princeton, as well as at other Ivy League universities, surprised them more than Yale’s increase. Though Cornell and Dartmouth saw application increases of 3.5 and 3 percent, respectively,

Brown, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania experienced drops of 7, 8.9 and 1.7 percent, respectively. Chuck Hughes, president and founder of Road to College, a college admissions consulting service, attributed the lower applications numbers at several Ivy League universities in SEE APPLICATIONS PAGE 4

PAGE 2

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION

.COMMENT “I am so happy that I’m gay.” yaledailynews.com/opinion

‘BOOGS’ ON ‘NEW BLOG HOPES TO GIVE YALE

MEN SOME LESSONS’

Moon base not so crazy Florida will be 2012’s kingmaker G U E S T C O L U M N I S T C H R I S T I A N VA Z Q U E Z

N

ewt Gingrich’s up and down campaign to be the GOP presidential nominee is likely to flame out today in Florida. After unexpectedly dominating the South Carolina primary, his political fortunes have wilted under an unrelenting barrage of attacks. In particular, Gingrich’s recent promise to build a permanent American base on the moon provoked many savage gibes. But a moon base is more than, say, an appealing exile for obnoxious politicians. Gingrich’s proposal is roughly aligned with what President Obama and many experts have been advocating for years. When President Obama released his plan for NASA that cancelled the over-budget and behind-schedule Constellation program, aerospace lobbyists and even some Apollo astronauts hysterically declared that America’s space agency was dying. Reality could not have been more different: President Obama is reigniting an exciting exploration program and enabling the commercialization of space. Gingrich, who claims (and actually has) a longstanding involvement in space policy, heralded the administration’s new course for NASA as “the real change that Americans are seeking” in a 2010 column in The Washington Times. A return to the moon, while not something NASA is currently planning, would not be a dramatic deviation from existing policy. Constructing a permanent lunar base within this decade is technically possible. NASA would simply need to adapt proven technologies from the Apollo and International Space Station programs. If Congress appropriated between $100 and $200 billion, few doubt that astronauts could soon begin building lunar condos, although the 13,000 colonists Gingrich joked about last Wednesday might not leave Earth anytime soon. The only serious obstacles to returning to the moon are political and economic. There is little public appetite to relive NASA’s glory days through more quick jaunts to the moon. But people are always interested in profit, and what Gingrich and others are proposing is strictly business. An army of astronauts and robots would descend on the moon to mine resources that are not readily available on Earth. Once government programs demonstrate that doing so is possible and perhaps profitable, private industry will have strong incentive to take over, freeing NASA to continue pushing the envelope in other areas of space. Sustainable outposts could harvest water and the ingredients of rocket propellant from the moon to support extraterrestrial habitats and transportation systems, according to visionary scientists like the Lunar and Planetary Institute’s Paul Spudis. Producing resources on site is desirable because hauling supplies out of Earth’s strong gravita-

tional field is expensive. Billions of years of solar wind may have embedded high conce n t ra t i o n s of helium-3, JOSEPH a rare isoO’ROURKE tope in high demand for Space Cadet nuclear fusion research, in the moon’s surface. Reasonable, educated people believe that lunar mining could pave the way for inexpensive, safe and non-polluting energy production on Earth. Gingrich, even if he doesn’t realize it, nails the economic rationale for returning to the moon, but his space policy contains serious weaknesses. He expresses little enthusiasm for unmanned missions, although these are relatively inexpensive and efficient. Two spacecraft, collectively called GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory), are currently orbiting the moon to map its gravitational field, which will elucidate its evolution and help explain the formation of terrestrial planets. Sadly, Gingrich seems to prefer unilateral space exploration despite the almost limitless potential for international cooperation in space. The Space Race is over. Politicians should want NASA to avoid fear-mongering and instead to ally with the China National Space Administration to accomplish missions. With help from other countries, American astronauts and scientists can accomplish otherwise impossible feats. Massive federal spending is important for much more than space exploration. Gingrich’s own logic — the federal government needs to sponsor economic projects of national importance until the private sector is capable of taking over — can be applied to everything from high-speed rail to housing development. Unfortunately, Gingrich, along with the vast majority of the GOP, is committed to slashing non-defense discretionary spending. So Gingrich’s critics should back off when it comes to Newt’s support of a vigorous space program. Committing to a permanent base on the moon seems rash, but it may be wise if lunar resources are as abundant as scientists hope. More important, Gingrich’s full-throated embrace of government spending to promote economic development should be applauded. If all American policymakers had such feelings, not only would people explore the far reaches of space, but life here on Earth might actually be improved.

O

nce again, all eyes are on Florida. As a Florida Republican, this has become routine to me. For the last month, the state with the third-greatest number of electoral votes has been the subject of intense campaigning on the part of not only GOP presidential hopefuls but also the president, who has visited Florida more times in January than he did in all of 2011. Especially in the primaries, where Florida’s winner-take-all structure would award the winner 50 delegates, Florida is a crucial state for presidential candidates. At a structural level, it also reflects the country most closely. South Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa are far from representative of the states Republicans will have to court in order to defeat Obama in 2012. They also poorly reflect the demographics of our country as a whole — none have a significant Hispanic voting block, a group that both parties will have to appeal to if they hope to win. The most important Hispanic block for Republicans in Florida is the Cuban vote. My grandparents have been constantly preoccupied with the primaries since January. Cubans have come out en masse in every Republican primary since they supported Reagan in 1980. Romney has made sure to fol-

low a strategy that connects to them. As a result, he has garnered the support of three major Cuban-American congressmen from Florida: Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana RosLehtinen. They’ve campaigned for him in many of the Spanishspeaking enclaves in the southern part of the state, and their support is likely to translate into an overwhelming victory tomorrow. Both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have filled their speeches in South Florida with vicious anti-Castro sentiment, something that will surely rouse the older exile community. But most Cuban-Americans simply want an alternative to Obama rather than the typical rhetoric politicians use to bolster their Little Havana credentials. They want someone who is electable. While we’re considering electability, Florida is also closest to the nation’s average in indicators such as income level and unemployment — factors that will play into an election that will be centered on the state of the economy. Romney’s experience as governor of Massachusetts will play to his favor in a state where voters strongly support candidates with executive experience. All points converge on Florida, as they surely will again in nine months. In a swing state with closed

primaries, the moderate voice of the party will win over the ideologues. Romney’s disciplined and well-organized campaign will win over the cacophonous crowds that Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul have used to keep their own campaigns afloat. Romney’s four-to-one campaign spending advantage in the Sunshine State will also help; Florida’s large size also poses a problem for smaller-scale campaigns like those of Paul, Gingrich and Santorum. Unlike Republicans in states like South Carolina, the Florida GOP has followed a trend of supporting the party establishment. And in a swing state, the most electable candidate tends to win over fringe members. Romney will be the clear victor.

THESE SWING STATE VOTERS CARE ABOUT ELECTABILITY Marco Rubio, who is probably one of the most promising young members of the Republican ranks, has yet to publicly support any of the candidates.

Florida’s winner would also be posed to gain an exciting running mate in Rubio. Rising stars in the party seem to be waiting before declaring their support, and Rubio is no exception to this rule. In any case, a RomneyRubio ticket would make many Republican mouths water. The Cuban-American junior senator would likely deliver a Republican victory in Florida in the general election. Florida also holds a particularly important strategic point for the GOP. The 2012 Republican National Convention will be taking place in Tampa Bay, and a victory in Florida would surely bolster Romney at the convention this summer. The other candidates will probably attempt to hold on until Super Tuesday, when their chances of victory may be somewhat higher in states like Nevada, Alaska and Georgia. Romney’s 20-point lead in a recent poll in Florida is likely to translate to more votes in his favor in Florida than all of the other candidates have accumulated in the last three states combined. Tonight, a Romney victory will likely pave the way for his eventual nomination. CHRISTIAN VAZQUEZ is a junior in Branford College. Contact him at christian.vazquez@yale.edu .

S TA F F I L L U S T R AT O R AU B E R E Y L E S C U R E

Feeling the pressure

JOSEPH O’ROURKE is a senior in Silliman College. His column runs on alternate Tuesdays. Contact him at joseph.orourke@yale.edu .

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Science in Singapore

While the question of whether Yale-NUS students will be adequately prepared for graduate study is indeed “legitimate,” the answer to that question is clearly “yes.” A science student at Yale-NUS will take two semesters of double-credit “Integrated Science” as part of the Common Curriculum in their second and third semesters. This is a model of introductory science education already in use at places like Harvard and Princeton with considerable success. Many majors are likely to have one or two pre-requisites beyond the Common Curriculum. These will generally be taken as electives in the fourth semester. Then in years three and four, we expect students to take a total of 10 courses in the major, culminating in a two-semester capstone project similar to Yale’s senior projects. Thus, a typical science major will have taken 16 courses in the major, including the senior project. This is roughly the same as science majors here at Yale. Yale-NUS students will be as well prepared for further study as their counterparts in New Haven. CHARLES BAILYN JAN. 30 The writer is the Thomas A. Donnelly Professor of Astronomy and Physics and the inaugural Dean of the Faculty at Yale-NUS College

English seeks to expand offerings In his thoughtful piece last Friday (“For More Open Courses,” Jan. 27), Jasjit Singh describes his frustration at failing to secure a space at the beginning of the term in English 120, a course designed for freshmen and sophomores, on Reading and Writing the Modern Essay. Singh, a senior who is not an English major, was absolutely right to want to enroll in this splendid course, which, as he notes, is one of the most demanding, as well as popular, courses in Yale College. Singh seems to suggest that we give priority to underclassmen in allotting the spaces for English 120. But that is not the case. Although English 120 is a course designed for freshmen and sophomores, the randomizing computer program that slots applicants into sections just before the term begins doesn’t give preference to any students. I encouraged Singh at the beginning of the month to persist in his shopping of 120 until the end of the Course Selection Period (spaces really

do open up in the second week of classes), but, as he told me, he quit shopping sections of 120 after the first week. What Singh’s opinion piece impresses on me is the ongoing importance of expanding this challenging and exciting course to accommodate more of the students eager to take it. The long-standing 120 Course Director, Fred Strebeigh, has already overseen a significant annual increase in the number of sections we offer, an undertaking that has had the remarkable (and wonderful) effect not of fulfilling but intensifying the student interest in the course. Strebeigh and I are already at work to make certain that the English Department offers even more sections of 120 in both semesters of the next academic year. JOHN ROGERS JAN. 29 The writer is the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the English Department.

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

PAGE THREE TODAY’S EVENTS TUESDAY, JANUARY 31

East Haven, Conn. The town of East Haven, which has about 28,755 residents, borders New Haven to the east. Its population is 91.72 percent white and 5.68 percent Latino.

State Dems outline agenda

12:30 PM “The Academicians.” Matthew Hargraves, associate curator and head of collections information and access at the Yale Center for British Art, will give this Art in Context talk. Yale Center for British Art (1080 Chapel St.). 4:00 PM “Two Ways a Cell Annotates its Genome: Histone Methylation and Large Non-Coding RNAs.” Matthew Simon of Mass. General Hospital will speak. Bass Center for Molecular and Structural Biology (266 Whitney Ave.), Room 305. 5:00 PM “The Revolution That Wasn’t.” Sally McBrearty of the University of Connecticut will speak as part of the Shulman Lectures in Science and the Humanities focusing on music and human evolution. Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall st.), Room 208.

CORRECTIONS MONDAY, JAN 30

The article “Med School website wins national grant” and its headline incorrectly identified the professional school with which the researchers for the study were affiliated. It was the Nursing School, not the Medical School. The article “Sciences broaden for Yale-NUS” incorrectly identified the name of one of Yale-NUS College’s three science majors. It will be “life sciences,” not “natural sciences.”

E. Haven top cop resigns in scandal

JESSICA HILL/ASSOCIATED PRESS

East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. looks down at his notes as he announced the resignation of police chief Leonard Gallo on Monday. BY JAMES LU STAFF REPORTER After four of his officers were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last Tuesday for systematic mistreatment of Latino residents, East Haven Police Department Chief Leonard Gallo will resign Friday. East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. announced this resignation Monday morning press conference at Town Hall. The officers were indicted on several counts of excessive force, false arrest and conspiracy against rights — that conspiracy, the indictment said, included a “Coconspirator 1” who impeded investigation into the misconduct and helped create a “climate of fear” in the local community. Fred Bow, the chairman of the East Haven Board of Police Commissioners, identified Gallo as “Coconspirator 1.” “Chief Gallo has always been an unwavering supporter of the town of East Haven,” East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. said at the press conference, according to the New Haven Register. “His decision to retire at this time is a selfless act, designed to assist in the healing process.” Although Gallo was not indicted last Tuesday, U.S. Attorney for Connecticut David Fein said at the time more arrests would likely be made as the FBI continues its investigation. The four arrested EHPD officers were accused of conducting unlawful searches and seizures and assaulting people already handcuffed, as well as preventing civilians from videotaping police on duty. After the arrests, Maturo told the News he stood by his police department “from top to bottom.”

But on Monday, he announced Gallo’s resignation and said a search for a new chief will begin immediately. “The new chief must possess the ability to effectively restructure the department; implement suggested reforms; and reach out to and work closely with members of all segments of the East Haven community to build trust between the community and the department,” he said, the Register reported.

[East Haven Police] Chief Gallo has always been an unwavering supporter of the town of East Haven. JOSEPH MATURO JR. Mayor, East Haven Gallo’s resignation comes as calls intensify for Maturo to step down. Three members of the state’s Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission met with Maturo before the press conference and urged him to resign, the Hartford Courant reported. “The Latino community feels [Maturo and Gallo] are not fit to be our stewards, so to speak,” commission member Isaias Diaz said. As of Monday night, 15,201 people signed an online petition at Change.org telling Gallo to resign from his post. EHPD Deputy Chief John Mannion will serve as chief until a new chief is chosen, Maturo said. Contact JAMES LU at james.q.lu@yale.edu .

BLAIR SEIDEMAN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

State Sen. Martin Looney discussed statewide advocacy plans with 40 members of the Yale College Democrats on Monday night. BY NICK DEFIESTA STAFF REPORTER The Yale College Democrats launched their statewide advocacy work Monday night, outlining the causes they plan to push in the state legislature’s upcoming legislative session. Around 40 members of the Dems met with State Sen. Martin Looney and State Reps. Roland Lemar and Gary HolderWinfield, members of New Haven’s delegation to Hartford, to discuss what should be the focus of the Dems’ advocacy efforts in the legislative session that will begin Feb. 8. At the same time, several members of the Dems attended a campaign kickoff for State Rep. William Tong, a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat that Sen. Joseph Lieberman ’64 LAW ’67 will vacate next year. Looney, Lemar and Holder-Winfield discussed with the Dems about what they said would be the state Democrats’ three biggest legislative priorities: voting reform, removal of the state death penalty and statewide education reform. All three legislators were hopeful that some of their bills affecting these issues would pass because Gov. Dannel Malloy currently holds the state executive’s seat, the first Democrat to do so in two decades. “Now you’ve got a governor who will do things,” Lemar said. While Malloy is a “staunch advocate” of death penalty repeal, Looney said, efforts to that end were stymied under former Gov. Jodi Rell — in 2009 she vetoed a bill that would have abolished the death penalty in Connecticut. With advocacy support from the Dems,

the legislators said they hoped to have a bill repealing the death penalty on Malloy’s desk before the end of the legislative session in May. The Dems will also be pushing for voting reform in concert with Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, who is preparing a package of legislation that would allow Election Day voter registration, online voter registration, broader use of absentee ballots, and stiffer penalties for voter harassment and intimidation. Malloy has said he will stand behind such legislation, and the legislators present Tuesday evening said passing it will be one of their priorities when they head back to Hartford next week.

We can’t afford to give up on 40 to 60 percent of the young people living in some of our urban areas. DANNEL MALLOY Governor, Connecticut The difficulty, they said, would be Election Day voter registration, a measure opposed by many Republicans. The trio also explained to those present that education reform is another major goal of this legislative session, and that it has bipartisan support. Four weeks ago, Malloy said that 2012 is the “year for education reform,” adding that he sees the issue as one of civil rights. “We can’t afford to give up on 40 to 60 percent of the young people living in some of our urban areas,” Malloy said on

a radio show three weeks ago. “It is morally repugnant to do that.” Lemar said education reform will rely on as much evidence-based change as possible, although he admitted that nobody “really knows” how to improve education. Connecticut currently has the largest achievement gap in the nation, according to the legislators. While the majority of the Dems met with Looney, Lemar and Holder-Winfield, five attended Tong’s campaign kickoff at Great Wall, a Chinese restaurant on Whitney Avenue. There, they listened to Tong speak about his parents, who came to the United States as immigrants with only 57 cents and eventually came to own a Chinese restaurant. “It’s great to be home, here, in a Chinese restaurant,” Tong said. Tong said that he was worried that the “American Dream,” as experienced by his parents, was no longer viable. Marcus Paca, former Ward 24 alderman, also attended the kickoff in order to get more information about Tong as a candidate, he said. He said he had already been contacted by Tong’s opponents, U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy and former secretary of the state Susan Bysiewicz ’83, although he has yet to make a decision about which candidate he would support. According to campaign disclosures from the end of December, Murphy had raised nearly $2.7 million, Bywiewicz had brought in almost $1.3 million and Tong counted less than $720,000 in his campaign coffers. Contact NICK DEFIESTA at nicholas.defiesta@yale.edu .

NHPD leadership shakeup protested BY JAMES LU STAFF REPORTER Two community activists held a press conference Monday at noon outside the New Haven Police Department’s Union Avenue headquarters, asking Chief Dean Esserman to reconsider his request that Assistant Chief Petesia Adger step down to make way for a new leadership team. In front of half a dozen people, former mayoral candidate Clifton Graves and community leader Barbara Fair said they wanted Esserman to keep Adger, who has served the NHPD for 20 years, on his new leadership team. Although Graves and Fair acknowledged the new chief’s right to choose his own four assistant chiefs, they stressed that Adger’s connection to the community would help bolster the department’s new community policing strategies. “[Adger] was born and raised in New Haven, has served for 20 years and has strong community ties,” Graves told the News Monday. “It seemed to us if Chief Esserman is serious about community policing, then there should be a place for Adger on his management team to help implement this policing policy.” Esserman announced Friday that he had informed the three current assistant chiefs — Adger, Patrick Redding and Tobin Hengsen — that he would be appointing four new assistant chiefs. Because the city’s budget allots funding for four NHPD assistant chief positions, the move would require Adger, Redding and Hengsen to retire or resign, joining

John Velleca, a former assistant chief who resigned last month after serving 20 years with the force. Given Adger’s desire to continue serving the NHPD, Graves said he and Fair were asking Esserman to reconsider his decision. Graves and Fair held Monday’s press conference independently from Adger, who did not ask for the event to take place. Adger, who was not present at the press conference, could not be reached for comment Monday.

Adger has long been a strong voice in the New Haven community for women, minorities and victim services. BARBARA FAIR Community leader Graves and Fair have managed to obtain an in-person meeting with Esserman “in the next day or so” along with other community leaders, Graves said. “Adger has long been a strong voice in the New Haven community for women, minorities and victim services,” Fair said in a Sunday evening email advertising Monday’s event. “Her record of service to New Haven citizens seeking justice and fairness from NHPD has earned her the full trust and support of all city residents.”

Graves said several officers came out of NHPD headquarters during the press conference to express their support for Adger. Sgt. Rich Miller, vice president of the NHPD’s union, told the New Haven Independent that the union wants Adger to stay. Adger is “one of the most quality people” in the department, Miller told the Independent, adding that it will be “unfair” and a “disservice to the city” if Esserman replaces her. Despite the support of some rankand-file officers, NHPD spokesman David Hartman said the press conference did not cause any disturbance to the department. “We were not invited to the event, we weren’t told about it, it was a non-event for us,” he said. When reached Monday, Richard Epstein, the chairman of the Board of Police Commissioners, said his board would support Esserman’s personnel decisions. In order for Esserman to “do the job he was brought in to do” the chief “needs to have his own team,” said Epstein, adding that Adger has been a “valiant police officer for a long time” and he wished her the best in whatever she does. Esserman has not announced the date on which he will name the new assistant chiefs. New Haven will have seen 11 assistant chiefs in just three years when the replacements are made. Contact JAMES LU at james.q.lu@yale.edu .

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

UNITED STATES

App increase tops Ivies’

TRAYLESS FROM PAGE 1

APPLICATIONS FROM PAGE 1

Three dining hall staff members said trayless dining complicates the dish-clearing process and creates more work for the staff. “We have to clean the floors more often, there are more spills and the clearing window isn’t set up for just plates,” said Schymon Griffin, a dish washer in Silliman. “It’s not feasible for us or for students.” Michael Powell, another Silliman dining hall employee, said the staff has not yet adjusted to the change. He said that the process of cleaning dishes becomes much messier for dish washers because the clearing station is designed to stack trays, not plates. Although Krauss said bins intended to hold plates and silverware have been added to absorb the overflow at peak hours, Silliman dining hall staffer Danny Lowery said students often forget to use them. Students interviewed expressed mixed reactions about the trend to reduce the use of trays in dining halls. Six of nine students interviewed said having no access to trays is inconvenient. Matthew Lindsey ’14 said the layout of Silliman dining hall exacerbates the problem since it was designed with the intent that diners use trays. He added that the recently renovated Morse/Stiles dining hall was designed for the use of plates without trays, so the lack of trays there presents less of a challenge. Alex Allouche ’13 said because students often only have 20 minutes to eat a meal between classes, it is unlikely

part to a growing awareness of the extreme selectivity of elite universities. “I think what we are seeing as college consultants is kids who are really good kids who recognize when they don’t have that exceptional hook or distinguishing talent,” Hughes said. “Over the past few years, there is definitely a greater sense of realism about where they should be looking.” But Andrew McNeill, senior associate director of college counseling at the Taft School — a private school in Watertown, Conn. — said he does not expect applications to elite schools to start trending downward in the long run. “Until there is a paradigm shift, expect onward and upward

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“It doesn’t really bother me because I didn’t use [trays] when we had them,” Rouse said. Harvard, Columbia and Brown have also experimented with implementing trayless dining.

Ya le

they can make multiple trips to and from the food distribution area during the busiest hours. But other students said they are not affected by the change. Two students interviewed said they do not mind dining without trays because of the resources conserved, and Katherine Rouse ’14 said the policy would not alter her dining routine.

Contact ANDREW GIAMBRONE at andrew.giambrone@yale.edu .

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Gallons of water saved at Silliman College dining hall, per day, because of trayless dining, according to Silliman master Judith Krauss.

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This year marked the first application cycle in four years that Yale, Harvard and Princeton each offered early admissions poli-

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Percent of students who do not use trays by choice, according to STEP. Percent more food wasted by people who use trays versus those who do not, according to STEP.

ANDREW MCNEILL Senior associate director, College Counseling at the Taft School

31,127

BY THE NUMBERS GOING TRAYLESS 70 40

Until there is a paradigm shift, expect onward and upward for God and Yale.

cies, but experts said they cannot yet draw conclusions about their effects on the distribution of applications since the change is so recent. Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel said in an email Monday that too many variables affect application counts to pinpoint why they vary across years or between schools. Over the past 10 years, he said, application counts for Ivy League institutions as well as for Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have risen at “roughly similar” rates. Last year, Yale’s acceptance rate for the class of 2015 was 7.35 percent.

GRAPH NUMBER OF APPLICATIONS, CLASS OF 2016 34,285

SHARON YIN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Commons’ 2009 push for trayless dining ended in under a week.

for God and Yale and other top places,” McNeill said. “The forces that have driven the increase in applications to leading schools are still in place, so the numbers will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.”

26,663

Trayless push draws fire

“All great change in America begins at the dinner table.” RONALD REAGAN FORMER PRESIDENT,

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

NEWS

275

Media executive shares story BY KARIN SHEDD CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Though Richard Kaplan said he once dreamed of living in the White House as president of the United States, he settled for being president of two major news networks instead. Kaplan, executive producer of ABC’s “This Week with Christiane Amanpour” and former president of both CNN and MSNBC, discussed his five-decade career working for American news organizations in front of roughly 30 members of the Yale community Monday afternoon at Sterling Memorial Library. During the event, which was arranged by the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, Kaplan recounted stories from his career as a TV show producer and expressed concerns about the current state of politics and the media.

I’m not big on fires or shootings at the corner. If there are enough of them, we’ll feature them, but I like to make a point of covering all the news that needs to be covered. RICHARD KAPLAN Producer, ABC With an early interest in politics, Kaplan worked on various political campaigns in the 1960s before landing his first reporting job as a copyboy at WBBM-TV, a CBS-owned station in Chicago, when he was 23. Five years later, he had risen within the station to become an associate producer for CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Over the next 50 years, Kaplan moved on from CBS to serve as senior vice president of ABC News, president of CNN and president of MSNBC, among other positions. He has also won 46 Emmy awards. Kaplan said he decided to work in broadcast journalism rather than print because he thinks it “covers the world,”

The number, roughly, of songs the Beatles wrote and produced.

Due to disputes about what does or does not constitute the Beatles, there could be more.

Med school exhibit to aid child healthcare BY MARIANA LOPEZ-ROSAS STAFF REPORTER

JOYCE XI/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Richard Kaplan, a TV producer at ABC, shared experiences from his career working at various major news networks at a master’s tea Tuesday. citing a broader reporting focus. “I’m not big on fires or shootings at the corner,” he said. “If there are enough of them, we’ll feature them, but I like to make a point of covering all the news that needs to be covered.” Despite his focus on broadcast journalism, Kaplan offered advice to all those developing their media interests and skills. He suggested they report from first-hand experience, cautioning that an individual perspective is not sufficient to cover world events. During a 40-minute question-andanswer session, Kaplan responded to audience members’ inquiries about his career and his opinions of today’s media. Neil St. Clair GRD ’13 asked Kaplan what he thought of the current state of journalism in the United States, and in

particular about talking heads on major news networks. “There are many great programs, but a lot of it is just noise,” Kaplan told St. Clair. Kaplan also expressed frustration about how news networks often fuel political mud-slinging and “coarseness in society.” He added that both politics and the media are going through an “evil period of time,” and expressed concern that political coverage by major news networks is devolving into “two sides barking at each other.” Kaplan was named executive producer of “This Week with Christiane Amanpour” in 2011. Contact KARIN SHEDD at karin.shedd@yale.edu .

Afghan rug sellers arrived at the School of Medicine this week for a two-day exhibition to promote cultural exchange and children’s healthcare. On Monday and Tuesday mornings, the Zamani House of Heritage — a Virginia-based Afghan crafts business — exhibited and sold Afghan handmade rugs, textiles, jewelry and handcrafts at the Harkness Lounge in the School of Medicine. Part of the proceeds went to Children’s Chance, a nonprofit organization that brings children with medical needs from all over the world to the United States to receive treatment. “This is our way to bring our culture to America,” Temur Zamani, manager of the business, said. “We want to show the world that there is more to Afghanistan than the violence.” The exhibition featured colorful silk and wool rugs of different sizes and patterns, which can take from two months to two years to complete, according to Zamani. Other goods included leather and embroidered bags, necklaces, rings, bracelets and pottery made of the gemstone lapis lazuli, of which Afghanistan is one of the main producers. One of the embroidered textiles was an American flag, while another featured the Afghan and the American flags joined by a dove. One more featured the “Afghan Girl,” the subject of the well-known June 1985 National Geographic cover photograph. The Zamani family has been in the rug-making business since the 1970s, Zamani said, adding that his grandfather was a farmer in the Shamali Valley north of Kabul. After completing his college stud-

ies in London, Zamani settled in the United States with his family, where they continued the business, opening their first store in 2002. He obtains the imported rugs, Zamani said, from the villagers near his ancestral home. For them, Zamani said, this is one of their main sources of income. Children’s Chance director Dorita Urrata commended the efforts of the Zamani family to provide a different view of their homeland, at the same time offering an economic impulse to the rural places in the country. “If we can support organizations like this, it’s the same as adding jobs,” Urrata said. “It helps local people help themselves.” Part of the proceeds from this event, she said, will go towards bringing Lydia — a handicapped Middle eastern girl whose last name is unknown — to the United States to receive medical help. In the past, she said, Children’s Chance has brought several children to the U.S. for medical treatment from all over the world, including Latin America and West Africa. Helen Roginiel, a senior administrative assistant for plastic surgery, who helped set up the event, said that she supports this type of cultural exhibition because it provides an “honest income” to people in foreign countries at the same time offering Americans the opportunity to buy crafts. According to the U.S. State Department, Afghanistan exports $252 million in fruits and nuts, hand-woven carpets, wool, cotton, hides and pelts, and precious and semiprecious gems. Contact MARIANA LOPEZ-ROSAS at mariana.lopez-rosas@yale.edu .

Beatles’ genius analyzed

JACOB GEIGER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Scott Freiman ’84, a composer, analyzed the evolution of Beatles music at a master’s tea Tuesday. BY ALEKSANDRA GJORGIEVSKA STAFF REPORTER Composer and producer Scott Freiman ’84 used audio and video material that he has collected over the course of several years to analyze the origin and evolution of a hit Beatles song at an Ezra Stiles College master’s tea Monday night. About 50 students and faculty members attended Freiman’s hour-long multimedia presentation about “Strawberry Fields Forever,” a Beatles song released in 1966. In his presentation, which featured early versions of Beatles songs, Freiman said the Beatles’ willingness to experiment with their music was instrumental in their achievement of extreme popularity. “What makes the Beatles so pertinent to the evolution of music is that they liked breaking the rules and constantly looking for new sounds,” Freiman said. Freiman, whose original music has been performed at Lincoln Center and Carnegie

Hall, said John Lennon conceived of the idea for “Strawberry Fields Forever” since he associated strawberry fields, which surrounded his home in the United Kingdom, with freedom. Freiman said “Strawberry Fields Forever” embodies the Beatles’ musical transformation from a concert band from a studio band. The band grew reluctant to perform live because the limitations of their audio technology prevented them from hearing themselves play, he said, adding that they became involved in several uncomfortable situations on tour, such as conflicts with hostile crowds in the southern United States after Lennon claimed that the Beatles had become more popular than Jesus. While undeveloped technology inhibited their ability to perform on stage, Freiman said the limitations of their instruments led them to create a unique sound and style. Lennon’s tape recorder and the Beatles’ synthesizer did not allow

them to edit their music, which is why mistakes can be found on almost all of their tracks, Freiman said, adding that “Strawberry Fields Forever” took 27 takes to complete. But in Feldman’s opinion, this imperfection is part of the reason why so many people identify with the Beatles’ music. All three students interviewed said they enjoyed seeing and hearing the rare materials Freiman had compiled. Erica Lin ’14 said she learned much both about the history of the Beatles and the process of creating music. Stephanie Adcock ’15 said she enjoyed Freiman’s interactive approach to explaining the creation of Strawberry Fields Forever. Freiman holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and music from Yale and a Masters of Music Composition from New York University. Contact ALEKSANDRA GJORGIEVSKA at aleksandra.gjorgievska@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2012 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

“Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.” PLATO PHILOSOPHER

Hot hand

Fischer hunts exoplanets

effect clear

LEAKS

F R O M T H E

LAB

discovered over 300 planets in QYou’ve your career so far. What’s your biggest

BY ROBERT PECK STAFF REPORTER In her 15-year career as a “planet hunter,” Yale professor Debra Fischer estimates that she has discovered at least “a few hundred” worlds outside our solar system, though she has long since stopped keeping track of the exact number. The founder and leader of the Yale Exoplanet Group, Fischer co-discovered the first multi-planet system beyond our own solar system. The News sat down with Fischer to learn more about her and her work. built up the research team known as QYou the Yale Exoplanet Group. What exactly does your team do?

A

We are a research team that works to detect planets outside of our own solar system. We have a survey of about 600 stars at the Lick Observatory in California, a new planet survey at the Cerra Tololo Observatory in Chile and a survey of 800 stars at the Keck telescope in Hawaii. Since arriving at Yale, my team has detected several planets using the Keck telescope.

QHow does one search for planets?

A

Our technique does not directly see the planets: Rather, we observe the “wobble” of the stars around which the planets orbit. Because their gravity pulls, however slightly, on their star, planets can subtly change the velocity of their star’s movement. If there isn’t a planet orbiting the star, its velocity will never change; it’s constant. But if there’s a planet, then that velocity increases and decreases. We map those changes out and model them mathematically to detect a planet. Given the amplitude of the planet’s pull on the star, we can actually deduce where the planet is in its orbit and how massive it is.

Surprisingly, it’s not China

goal for the future — or is it unclear?

A

I feel very clear about our top priority: We need to build better instruments to obtain more precise measurements, so that we can discover analogs of our own beautiful world — a small rocky planet ladled with oceans of water. Those instruments do not yet exist; we are going to have to think outside the box to figure out how to achieve the factor of ten improvements in our measurement precision. But if we don’t make this breakthrough, we will not be able to reach the goal of detecting Earth-like planets.

QWhy would we want to find planets at all?

A

The reason is that we’re really interested in figuring out if there is life somewhere else in the universe. However, we think it’s unlikely that life forms on “gas giant” planets like Jupiter or Saturn: Gravity on the surface of such planets is crushingly powerful. You can’t have liquid water on such planets, either, and we think our oceans played a big role in the formation of life on Earth. We want liquid water, and we want rocky planets so that the water can pool on the surface of the planet.

CREATIVE COMMONS

SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY

Astronomy professor Debra Fischer said she has discovered “a few hundred” exoplanets.

students involved with the search for QAre exoplanets?

dents who help collect data, carry out analysis, run theoretical simulations and analyze stellar spectra. They are also helping with the commissioning of a spectrograph that we built and commissioned at Cerra Tololo. There are also undergrads who participate in research: Nick van Nispen ’11, AJ Eldorado Riggs ’11, Joe O’Rourke ’12, Charlie Sharzer ’12, Zak Kaplan ’13 and Farris Gillman ’13 all help with the program. The students work on instrument development, they write computer code to carry out theoretical simulations, they go to the observatories to collect data and they model the data to detect planets.

A

makes Yale’s astronomy program QWhat so special compared to its peers?

likely do you think it is that there’s QHow really an “Earth Mark II” out there?

A

I’ll bet my salary for the next year on it. It’s true that we can’t detect Earths yet, [but] we’re getting really close, and the number of planets we can see just keeps rising and rising.

Students are very involved in the research. I have three graduate stu-

A

I think the thing that’s special about Yale is the access we have to time on the Keck Telescope in Hawaii: being able to use the world’s largest telescope means that the quality of data we get is second almost to none. I say “almost” because we’re commissioning an instrument in Chile right now that may surpass what we’re able to do with the Keck Telescope. But I think the fact that Yale has invested real money in getting access to the Keck time and real money in helping me set up our exoplanet lab made a huge difference.

Pediatric wards show high infection rates

Contact ROBERT PECK at robert.peck@yale.edu .

Infection, one of the major causes of death in hospitals, is 20 percent more common for children than adults. A study by Consumer Reports found that Yale-New Haven Hospital is only “average” at preventing infections in its pediatric intensive care unit. According to ctpost.com, Vince Faustino, associate medical director of Yale-New Haven’s pediatric ICU, said the infections were caused by factors beyond the unit’s control.

CREATIVE COMMONS

A new study by postdoctoral associate Gur Yaari and professor Gil David, published in the journal PLoS ONE, supports the idea that athletic performance improves during winning streaks. BY CASEY SUMNER CONTRIBUTING REPORTER When bowlers talk about having “hot hands,” they may be onto something. A new study by Gur Yaari, a Yale pathology postdoctoral associate, and mathematics professor Gil David offers evidence supporting the popular notion of “hot hands,” the idea that an athlete’s performance improves during winning streaks. Published Jan. 12 in the journal PLoS ONE, the study found that professional bowlers had streaks that were more than just random variation. The authors said that this study contradicts previous research which generally found the idea of “hot hands” to be a mistake of

perception. For example, 1985 study that Yaari called “influential” determined that each attempt to make a free throw in basketball had a completely independent chance of success. This would imply that a hot streak is a variation on the gambler’s fallacy, the false idea that past results in independent trials, like flipping a coin, will change future results. In their recent publication, Yaari and David claim to have found evidence for “hot hands” in bowling. “It’s not so surprising that luck doesn’t perfectly model human performance in sports,” Yaari said. The study used data from over 40,000 games played by the top

100 bowlers from the Professional Bowling Association. They found that bowlers who bowl more strikes than their average in the first eight frames will be extra likely to bowl strikes in the last two frames. But Yaari said that the results do not necessarily imply a direct causal relationship between any two successive strikes. Or, in other words, bowling a strike on one frame will not directly increase the likelihood of bowling a strike on the very next frame. Instead, bowlers appear to have identifiable “good games” and “bad games,” which are strong enough to suggest that each attempt is not completely independent, like successive coin tosses.

“There is a large amount of evidence that suggests that the ‘hot hand’ phenomenon that sports fans [think] they are observing nearly every time they watch a sporting event does not exist,” said Jonathan Koehler, a professor at Northwestern Law School and expert in behavioral sciences. He said he had not read this particular study, but cautioned against over-interpreting “hot hands” research because, on the whole, the phenomenon has proven remarkably difficult find scientifically, despite how often people tend to identify it in sports. Sidney Redner, a physics professor at Boston University, said the study’s analysis looked legitimate, but added that the effect appears to be much subtler than

people often realize. Yaari agreed, and he said that the hot hands effect should not be overstated. “People have in mind causality, but it may have more to do with streaks that don’t involve explicitly psychological feedback,” he said. The study refrained from making any conclusions on what might be causing the effect. Yaari’s previous study, published in PLoS ONE last October, found a similar effect in basketball free throws, and he said that the findings might be relevant to any task, like playing video games, that requires intense concentration.

Men and women feel addiction differently

Contact CASEY SUMNER at casey.sumner@yale.edu .

Study confirms antidepressant efficacy BY MITCHELL MURDOCK STAFF REPORTER On the debate over the effectiveness of antidepressants versus placebos, Yale scientists have weighed in on the side of the antidepressants. Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine have published a statistical analysis showing that patients receiving antidepressant drugs recover from depression better than patients on a placebo treatment. The study, published in Archives of General Psychiatry in December, analyzed clinical trials involving a total of 2,515 patients with major depression who were either given an antidepressant drug or a placebo. One of the leaders of the study, John Krystal MED ’84, chair of the department of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, said that the research contradicted earlier research claiming that placebos were just as effective as antidepressants.

This is a part of medical research that can never be concluded. STEVEN JULIOUS Researcher, University of Sheffield “Antidepressant response seemed to fall into two categories: responders and nonresponders,” Krystal said, with only the former group improving as a result of the medication. By

contrast, the other 25 percent of the patients, the “non-responders,” responded worse to the antidepressants than patients responded to the placebos. Krystal said his team had not expected that some patients would be worse off from medications than patients on placebo. This effect might have been caused by the stressful nature of clinical studies or the progressive accumulation of different medications taken “like barnacles on a ship,” Krystal said. Krystal said that overall, patients benefitted from the antidepressant drugs, and any negative effects could be dealt with by improving the communication between doctors and patients. He said that a better understanding of when to lessen drug prescriptions for patients who did not respond positively to them was one possible application of this research. Steven Julious, who conducts research in medical statistics at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, said that the condition of patients on placebos may improve by virtue of the attention doctors give them during clinical trials. “When you’re in a clinical trial, you get better treatment,” Julious said. “When you’re on a placebo, you still get treatment.” Krystal said the Yale study was more accurate than traditional statistical methods because it took into account “built-in biases,” such as variations in patient response times to different treatments. R a l i tza G u e o rg u i eva , a

An environmental study led by researchers at Yale and Columbia has found that India has the most toxic air quality of any country. The research, presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, gave India a score of 3.73 out of 100 points, much behind the second to last place country, Bangladesh, which got 13.66 points. The study blamed the use of dried cow dung, agricultural wastes and firewood as cooking fuel, which are still used by a majority of Indians. India was ranked 125 out of 132 in terms of overall pollution control, and China was ranked 116. Predictably, Switzerland’s pristine Alps took first place.

YALE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND COMMUNICATIONS

NASA

A study at the Yale School of Medicine has found that individuals with cocaine addictions showed different mental patterns depending on their gender. Specifically, stress activates cocaine-related areas in female brains, while “drug cues” activate similar areas in male brains. Researchers hailed the study for its implications in improving treatment for drug addiction by giving men and women different treatments.

The Yale Exoplanet Group has surveys in Chile, California and Hawaii. Scientists in the group find new exoplanets by observing the effects of their gravity on the movement of their star.

Viruses show fantastic ability to adapt

Negative data is still data I CREATIVE COMMONS

A recent study showed that 75 percent of patients taking antidepressants responded positively to the treatment. researcher in the Yale School of Public Health, led the statistical analysis by using a growth-mixture model, which uses the natural response time to antidepressant drugs to better understand the comparative response time for drugs compared to placebos. “The benefits of antidepressants take several weeks to take effect. Growth-mixture modeling allowed us to take this into account,” Krystal said. Like the Yale study, Julious

conducted a statistical analysis of data from clinical trails to analyze the potency of antidepressant treatments. Julious said his findings agreed with previous research that antidepressants are effective but can lead to suicide risks in adolescent patients. Julious said science might never find “a definitive answer” to the source of the effectiveness of antidepressants because of the complexity of the disease,

but that these studies are still valuable to conduct. “This is a part of medical research that can never be concluded,” Julious said. The Yale research study was accepted for publication on July 11, 2011. Contact MITCHELL MURDOCK at mitchell.murdock@yale.edu .

am exceedingly good at failing. Even though I’m getting my Ph.D. in one of the best immunology departments in the world, the common thread running through my graduate school career has not been success, but failure. I’m not an anomaly, however. I am simply a scientist. For those of you who haven’t tried research, let me explain. Most experiments don’t work. There are the experiments where you’ve been up for 16 hours straight, and you accidentally forget to add a critical enzyme. And there are those where you spend six months developing a new assay, only to discover that the background is too high, and it’s completely worthless. Then there are experiments that test a perfectly reasonable hypothesis in a perfectly effective way. It’s just that it turns out your hypothesis is wrong. The latter situation is the most frustrating, because negative data like this is often still ‘good science’

— meaning it’s carefully executed, and well controlled, so you can draw solid conclusions from it. But for the most JESSICA it’s not MCDONALD part, going to make the cut for QWERTY publication, especially in Thoughts high-profile journals like Science or Nature — the ones every biologist strives for. As a result, negative data generally doesn’t reach other scientists who could use it. Another research group might think of the same hypothesis a year after you’ve already tested it, and they decide to pursue it, wasting time and money in uninformed redundancy. (In clinical trials of drugs, negative data is an even thornier problem involv-

ing questions of fraud, which I will not go into here.) Another consequence of publication bias is an overinflated perception of science as successful, both by the public, and often by the struggling, increasingly stressed graduate students doing the work. Indeed, take a look at the research featured on the covers of the first 2012 issues in these journals. Science describes work that may allow the next touchscreens to be free of pesky fingerprints; in Nature astronomers report that a gas cloud is on its way to being consumed by a black hole an amazing “four million times the mass of the Sun.” These are all valuable discoveries and deserve to be shared with the scientific community, but they don’t provide an accurate picture of most of the science that’s happening. To fill some of the void, several small, often online-only journals have sprouted up, including the Journal of Negative Results

in Biomedicine, The All Results Journals and the most recent arrival to the hidden part of science, The Journal of Errology (JoE). Not yet publishing, JoE is a self-described “experimental online research repository that enables sharing and discussions on those unpublished futile hypothesis [sic], errors, iterations, negative results, false starts and other original stumbles that are part of a larger successful research in biological sciences.” (Clearly, The Journal of Errology perhaps takes the idea of error as acceptable too far. In addition to that mistake, on their own website they also refer to themselves as The Journal of Errorology.) The emphasis here is not so much on the paper in the ‘journal,’ but on providing details you might only get from close scientific peers. While I appreciate the effort of these journals, I don’t think they will solve the problem of underreported negative data until sci-

entists themselves value all data more highly, and institutional changes alleviate the fear of being scooped with a refreshing bolus of cooperation. But they’re a step in the right direction. Until then, don’t be fooled by the flagship journals that will only rarely publish negative findings. To be sure, whichever way it flops, the Large Hadron Collidor’s search for the Higgs boson (and other particles) will make Science. But this is an exception to the way we’ve structured the establishment of science to operate. Everyone interested in scientific progress must keep pushing to find a way for science to be as visible as possible — and include our successes as well as our failures. JESSICA MCDONALD is a sixth-year graduate student in the Department of Immunobiology. Contact her at jessica.mcdonald@yale.edu .

New research at the University of Michigan has shown an unprecedented ability of viruses to develop new adaptive mutations. Researchers set up a hostile environment for the virus which required it to develop four separate mutations. In 24 of 96 virus strains, the viruses developed all four mutations within three weeks. This sort of rapid and coordinated mutation could explain how the H5N1, an avian flu virus, could jump from birds to mammals, a process reportedly requiring five separate mutations.

Connection between diabetes, immune system found Yale researchers have conducted new studies suggesting that suppressing the immune system can help prevent Type I diabetes. In Type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks cells in the pancreas responsible for the producing insulin, which leads to increased levels of blood sugars. By suppressing the immune system, the insulin-producing cells can be preserved. The experiment, done on mice, may predict ways to prevent Type I diabetes in humans, according to Richard A. Flavell, professor of immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine.