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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, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 · VOL. CXXXV, NO. 92 · yaledailynews.com

INSIDE THE NEWS MORNING EVENING

RAINY SUNNY

36 44

CROSS CAMPUS

OLDEST MAMMAL RESEARCHERS MAKE PROTOTYPE

BREAKFAST IN BED

DAVID BROOKS

MEN’S SWIMMING

Yale students continue brunch delivery startup through blizzard

HUMBLE WRITER UNITES DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS

Bulldogs dominate Brown Bears in final home meet for seniors

PAGES 6-7 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

PAGE 3 NEWS

PAGE 3 NEWS

PAGE 12 SPORTS

Youth march for jobs

Admins target sexual misconduct, drinking

Trouble in Hollywood. Oscars season is always exciting for Hollywood — but this year, the drama is coming home to Connecticut. U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney stirred controversy when he complained that the Oscarnominated film “Lincoln” inaccurately depicted Connecticut’s stance on the 13th Amendment. Though Courtney demanded that the scene be refilmed or dubbed, “Lincoln” screenwriter Tony Kushner called the complaint “ridiculous.” “It’s like saying that Lincoln didn’t have green socks, he had blue socks,” Kushner said to The New York Times.

BY CYNTHIA HUA STAFF REPORTER

for justice for minority groups and more job opportunities for youth.

They dedicated the march in part to Tramire Miller, a baby shot and wounded in a drive-by shooting in October 2012 on Kensington Street.

Eidelson accredited the march to

As the University has taken steps in the past several years to change two aspects of campus social life — sexual climate and drinking culture — administrators have increasingly had to consider the intersection of these efforts.

Though administrators said the University has previously not combined programs aimed at creating a healthier sexual climate with those intended to reduce high-risk drinking on campus — partly in order to avoid confusion over where to assign blame in incidents of sexual misconduct — they noted that drinking is involved in a number of reported sexual misconduct cases. Several programs designed to prevent sexual misconduct already indirectly influence the drinking culture, such as the mandatory bystander-intervention training for sophomores, said Yale College Dean’s Office fellow Garrett Fiddler ’11.

“There are parts of the sexual climate that have nothing to do with alcohol and need very careful and deliberate addressing — but there is a very clear area where they overlap,” said

SEE YOUTH MARCH PAGE 4

SEE YCDO PAGE 5

Making a statement. Forty

Yalies traveled to Washington, D.C., last Sunday to join the 50,000 people who gathered together for the Forward on Climate rally. The trip — which was organized by members of Fossil Free Yale and the Yale Student Environmental Coalition — called on President Barack Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed expansion of the current Keystone pipeline that transports synthetic crude oil and diluted bitumen from oil sands regions in Canada to the United States.

NICOLE NAREA/CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

New Haven youth marched down Howe Street to Kensington Street promoting “Love, Jobs and Peace.”

BY NICOLE NAREA STAFF REPORTER The children of the New Elm City Dream youth group joined adult volunteers Monday evening in a Valentine’s March for Love, Jobs and Peace, led in part by Ward 1 Alderman Sarah Eidelson.

About 50 local residents, including members of New Haven-based immigrant rights group Unidad Latina and Yale’s Students Unite Now, gathered at the People’s Center before walking down Howe Street to Kensington Street in the march. The attendees cried “This is what democracy looks like!” calling

Says who? Yale Law School

pretty consistently outranks Harvard Law School in U.S. News & World Report’s rankings, but University of Chicago law professor Brian Leiter said in a National Jurist article last week that Yale Law School’s No. 1 status is due to its per capita expenditures.

Since Yale has fewer law students than Harvard, it spends more per student, but the “increased cost does not mean a better education,” Leiter contended.

Blizzard problems. The cost of the Elm City’s snowremoval effort totaled $1.6 million and nine days of around-the-clock work, according to the New Haven Register. City workers have worked 24 hours a day in 12-hour shifts to remove the nearly 34 inches of snow that dropped on New Haven earlier this month.

Luckily, the city won’t have to foot the entire bill: New Haven can receive up to 75 percent reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for storm cleanup costs.

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1968 Roughly 250 people gather in the Law School auditorium for a meeting of Yale Friends of the Hill Parents Association. At the event, some speakers — including representatives from the NAACP — accused Yale of discrimination and neglecting the city’s black community.

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City school break canceled

BY MONICA DISARE STAFF REPORTER Last weekend’s blizzard has struck one final blow on the city of New Haven: the cancellation of February break in New Haven Public Schools.

School officials decided last Wednesday that due to this year’s proliferation of snow and hurricane days, classes in city schools will meet this week — when February break was originally scheduled — to comply with state law, which stipulates that students must complete 180 days of school by June 30. Although the district had two snow days built into its schedule, it has already used 10 this year due to the blizzard and last fall’s Hurricane Sandy, leading to the decision to cancel break — a choice that has angered some parents and students.

Now it is time for [the students] to get back … to the business of learning.

REGINALD MAYO Superintendent, New Haven Public Schools “We don’t want our students out of school for too long,” NHPS Superintendent Reginald Mayo said in a statement last week. “We canceled school for a week out of concern for the safety of our students and a need to keep people off the roads during intense snow-removal operations. Now it is time for them to get back in the classroom and back to the business of learning.”

Despite the district’s reasoning, some parents and students said the unexpected turn of events will cause undue burdens on many in the community. Families that already had plans, plane tickets and appointments will have to choose between previous commitments and sending their children to school.

SEE PUBLIC SCHOOLS PAGE 4

Interfaith week begins

BY CYNTHIA HUA STAFF REPORTER This week, students can participate in a Muslim prayer service, a Shabbat Friday night dinner and a discussion of Buddhist principles — all as part of a new Chaplain’s Office initiative.

The office is organizing the religious talks and services as part of Interfaith Engagement Week, a series of 11 events from Feb. 18–24 known as OMG!Week that aims to encourage students to learn about other religions. The Chaplain’s

Office has run a similar three-day event called Interfaith Engagement Weekend for the past four years, Shuaib Raza ’14 said. The program’s expansion reflects the growing popularity of Chaplain’s Office events, as well as the addition of two interim Buddhist advisers and a Hindu life adviser to the Chaplain’s Office since the start of the semester, said Nathaniel DeLuca GRD ’06, the program coordinator for the Chaplain’s Office.

“We have been able to partner with undergraduate and graduate student organizations to really

broaden the scope of events with the hope that they will appeal to even more people in the Yale community,” University Chaplain Sharon Kugler said. “This entire program is organized by both students and staff working together with a shared purpose of highlighting the richly diverse religious and spiritual landscape that is all around us.”

The week’s main events include a panel where professors will discuss faith in the classroom, a concert, a tour of Yale’s religious spaces SEE INTERFAITH PAGE 5

Malloy sees highest approval yet

BY MICHELLE HACKMAN STAFF REPORTER Gov. Dannel Malloy earned his highest job approval rating to date in a new poll released last week.

The poll, which was conducted by conservative thinktank the Yankee Institute for Public Policy, sampled 450 respondents by phone and 50 via the Internet. It found that 54 percent of Connecticut residents approved of the governor’s performance and 45 percent disapproved, with a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points. The governor’s budget was viewed less favorably, with an approval rating of 51 percent.

Forty percent of sample respondents were registered Democratic voters, 28 percent were Republican voters and 32 percent were independent voters, underrepresenting unaffiliated voters in the state by 10 percentage points according to the secretary of the state’s office.

Experts interviewed said that these figures are a product of the particular time at which the poll was conducted. Scott McLean, a political science professor at Quinnipiac University, said that the poll was taken in the wake of several SEE MALLOY PAGE 4

GRAPH GOV. MALLOY’S APPROVAL RATING Disapprove

Undecided

Approve

100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%

42%

51%

54%

June 2011

Feb. 2012

Current

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YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

OPINION

.COMMENT “If it's harmful to anyone, grade inflation is harmful to stuyaledailynews.com/opinion

dents.”

'CHORLEYWOOD' ON 'THE CULTURE OF YALE COLLEGE

Education, our Yalies can grow old happily best investment A E

ducation is the best investment a country can make. Unfortunately, it is also the hardest. It demands significant capital upfront, requiring us to incur high taxes or forgo other government services.

But its quarterly dividends will appear to be low or non-existent for a long time. This means investing in education requires patience and foresight, qualities not in abundant supply in contemporary America.

Compounding the problem is the fact that students — the primary beneficiaries — are not the ones shelling out tax dollars.

That burden rests squarely on adults (some even childless) who believe they have no personal stake and therefore no incentive to fund education. And, worst of all, many middle- and upper-class adults are part of a vicious cycle undermining public schools. Parents, skeptical of the quality of public education, shift their kids to parochial or private schools. Because these families essentially pay twice — through taxes for public schools and tuition for private ones — they often push for smaller public school budgets to reduce their property tax burden. When public schools lose funding and motivated advocates in the form of quality-conscious parents, they become worse and prompt other parents to leave.

The result is that the kids who remain in public schools are often those whose parents cannot afford to exit the system. The pitiful educations they receive set them up for dismal economic futures.

Obviously, this is a simplified explanation of school finance’s political dynamics. But it illustrates my point — there is a collective action problem around education. Breaking problems of this nature takes bold leadership, foresight and political compromise. Thankfully, we finally have a president who understands this fact.

In his State of the Union, President Barack Obama proposed expanding preschool using federal-state partnerships, targeting those below 200 percent of the poverty line for a family of four. Part of a new legislative volley aimed at achieving a more egalitarian society, this suggestion resonates with liberals. No child should have their destiny dictated by the circumstances of his or her birth.

Unfortunately, conservatives have been characteristically recalcitrant. Their objections come in several forms.

Deficit-watchers decry further government spending in a time of debt. But these fiscal hawks should be cognizant of the ways in which these children’s educational failures create substantial drains on the future welfare state. Without a solid developmental foundation, kids fall behind in later grades.

Many will drop out; others will

barely graduate, with few skills and little preparation for higher e d u ca t i o n .

Unable to MICHAEL obtain jobs a competMAGDZIK in itive economy, they’ll Making require food s t a m p s Magic and housing vouchers. Many will turn to crime and drugs, and we’ll continue our costly mass incarceration. The choice is between an investment now or a fee later, after we’ve incurred a multitude of associated harms.

Conspiracy theorists argue that Obama is attempting socialist indoctrination, a swelling of the teacher unions’ ranks and general federal overreach.

The indoctrination claim is silly; it turns out that pre-schoolers aren’t particularly receptive to Marxist critiques when there are nearby blocks to play with (and Obama isn’t going to unilaterally mandate the curriculum here, even if there were ways to influence child psychology to vote Democrat). The president’s other education policies indicate his ideological distance from the unions (just ask them how they feel about the charters or datadriven accountability backed

by Race to the Top). And this doesn’t need to be federal overreach. States can work together to create great pre-schools, just like the National Governors’ Association did when it created the Common Core State Standards Initiative with the Obama administration’s sideline coaching and support.

Some object that pre-school just doesn’t have beneficial effects, saying it “fades out” such that any gains are gone after a few years in K-12 education.

But that sounds like a critique of K-12, not pre-school. As part of a holistic education reform, this proposal is a solid one. Early schooling can set one up to take full advantage of the learning opportunities presented later.

An educated population is perhaps our only chance to innovate our way out of many problems in contemporary America: climate change, inadequate cybersecurity and many more. The only way to get there is together, with shared sacrifice by taxpayers and meaningful engagement with the political opposition. We desperately need Republican critiques, but they need to be good-faith critiques, not obstructionist ones; smart government, not no government. It’ll require patience, foresight, and compromise — but we can do this. We have to.

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But while part of the reason behind last T h u r s d a y ’s event was to give college students a glimpse of the domestic HARRY happiness that LARSON people older and wiser than Nothing in them enjoy, another part Particular was to give Yale students a glimpse of the domestic happiness that highly successful Yale professors enjoy. Implicit in that message is the assumption that students at Yale need to be convinced that long-term romantic happiness and professional success are compatible.

Indeed, panel participants put the case explicitly, urging Yale students to make time for love and relationships during — and in spite of — their busy Yale careers.

It’s a story that’s told so often that it’s almost become an assumption: Yale’s student body is made up of ultra-high achievers who are secretly dying to date each other. Such desires go unrealized because Yale students are

too busy and too self-involved to make time for something that can’t go on a resume.

The result, the argument goes, is our assumed-to-be vapid hookup culture. Optimists hope Yale students will one day grow out of their narcissism. Doomsayers argue that we will continue to be victims our pathological need to succeed, which will lead us continually defer happiness in favor of more professional accomplishments.

What nonsense.

WE CAN FIND LOVE WITHOUT SETTLING Our generation may be less likely to go on dates, but that’s because we are able to meet the people we end up dating through more authentic and numerous interactions than a few trips to the movies or bowling alley. There may also be fewer couples at Yale than at some other colleges, but I’d argue that our couples tend to be at least moderately serious. In other words, it’s not that Yalies don’t refuse to date each other;

they just don’t call the participants of a three-week repeated hookup boyfriend and girlfriend (or whatever gender combination of those terms makes sense).

It’s true that several single students here claim that they don’t want to be in a relationship. But people’s stated views on the big subject aren’t usually a great predictor of their future relationship status; lots of people who say they’re too busy to date end up in committed relationships when they meet the right person. Moreover, Yalies will mostly prioritize a friend in need over that near-due paper; the narcissism narrative only goes so far.

The reason more people aren’t dating at Yale is because, as with academics and future careers, Yalies don’t want to settle for less than what they know is possible.

Meeting the right person can take time, and getting that person to reciprocate can take a lot of luck.

But judging from the professors at last Thursdays panel, the possibilities for love to grow our happiness are practically unlimited.

Why fake the real thing?

HARRY LARSON is a junior in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact him at harry.larson@yale.edu .

G U E ST C O LU M N I ST A L E JA N D R O G U T I E R R E Z

Easing the transition to Yale I

am a low-income, first-generation college student at Yale, and I’m definitely not the only one. Given the diversity of Yale’s student body, chances are you have friends and classmates who are the first in their families to go to college.

Currently, 12 percent of the freshman class is made up of first-generation college students. About 14 percent of Yale undergraduates are on full financial aid.

Before Yale, all we heard is that our university has some of the most generous financial aid policies in the country — a policy that brings first-generation college applicants to Yale.

But at Yale, a variety of problems arose: I didn’t have enough money to pay for plane tickets or textbooks. I wasn’t academically prepared for the rigorous workload at Yale. I didn’t have anybody in the family that could relate to the academic and social aspects of the college experience. Our university’s financial aid policies are only one of many steps toward bridging the education gap between low-income, first-generation students and their peers at Yale. The admis-

sions literature we see before Yale heavily advertises our percentage of first-generation college students, but any mention of the issue suddenly disappears upon matriculation.

Few students at Yale seem to know about the struggles that burden a significant portion of their peers. I faced this problem as I desperately tried to understand why I wasn’t passing exams, and why I had to spend weeks crafting a five-page paper.

I was told by freshman counselors to seek out a tutor, to study in groups and to go to office hours. This was great advice, but nobody told me the honest truth: I went to a high school that didn’t prepare me well enough for Yale, and I had to spend my first year catching up.

For me, high school consisted of memorization and regurgitation for the sake of doing well on standardized exams. It did not consist of critical analysis. I didn’t realize at the time that I had not been taught how to study properly, nor did I know how to write a critical essay. And the whole notion of speaking in a 15-person seminar was overwhelming given that most of

my classes had consisted of at least 30 students. I had spent my efforts simply applying the formula I had learned in high school: If I work hard, I’ll do well.

But arriving at Yale knowing that your suitemates had understood the college application process since birth — while for you it was a good amount of guesswork — was disheartening.

I didn’t even know about the early application process until I found out that many of my freshmanyear suitemates had applied early action. I’d hear about friends who would send essays to their parents for editing; I couldn’t do that with my parents.

And so you begin to feel alone.

There is no space that supports students who struggle through these very normal challenges transitioning to Yale. Not only was I discouraged by the difficulties I faced freshman year, but I also believed that it was my fault.

That is, until I met plenty of other students who came from similar backgrounds and had similar concerns.

Loyola Marymount University, Boston University and Princeton all take their low-income and first-generation college students

into account by hosting “bridge” summer programs that seek to aid these students with the social and academic transition into college. They provide personal counseling for students their first year, the option to take preparatory summer classes, study sessions and — most importantly — they provide a community of people going through the same experience. When will Yale follow suit?

It is a wonderful coincidence that we happen to have $10,000 at our disposal every year from the Yale College Council that we are “challenged” to find creative ways to spend. Why not then use these funds to establish such a program here at Yale? Not only would low-income, first-generation college students benefit, but it would also help the entire student body to understand the day-to-day experience some of their peers live. Starting such a program will help us talk about the issues of class and inequity at Yale, a conversation that’s long overdue.

ALEJANDRO GUTIERREZ is a senior in Calhoun College. Contact him at alejandro.gutierrez@yale.edu .

G U E S T C O L U M N I S T S B O B B Y G I B B S A N D J A S P E R WA N G

MICHAEL MAGDZIK is a senior in Berkeley College. Contact him at michael.magdzik@yale.edu .

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EDITOR IN CHIEF Tapley Stephenson

s I’m something of a sucker for romantic comedies (I only cry for a few minutes per movie, on average!), I was sad to have missed last Thursday’s panel of Yale professors discussing their marriages. At it, attendees heard three faculty couples share their love stories à la “When Harry Met Sally” on everything from their first meeting, proposing and sharing their lives together.

It sounds like a sweet event.

Reading afterwards that Professor Toni Dorfman’ heart still beats faster whenever she hears Professor John Gaddis come downstairs each morning elicited a couple fast beats from my own. (I didn’t quite have the same reaction to some of University President Rick Levin and his wife Jane’s courtship tales, which involved reading “War and Peace” and studying at Oxford.)

It’s encouraging and uplifting to hear from people whose passion for each other has endured the long haul. It reaffirms your faith in your own future happiness. It reminds you that somebody who knows you better than you know yourself might still love you. Perhaps most of all, it convinces you that growing older won’t be a totally a bad thing.

Looking back, still giving T

hree years ago, we were spamming panlists and visiting classmates’ rooms to convince people to donate to the Senior Class Gift. They took away our Yale email and keycard access after graduation, so now an op-ed will have to suffice. As young alumni, we still believe in the importance of giving back to Yale and participating in the Senior Class Gift.

We constantly reap benefits from Yale. In the couple years since graduation, our Yale classmates have been busy racking up impressive accomplishments and massive awards. Obviously they were all hardworking and naturally talented already, but almost all of them give ample credit to Yale for helping them along the way. Just as you’re experiencing, time on campus allowed us to discover passions, refine skills and gain leadership experience. Now, a simple recommendation from an old Yale professor, an introduction facilitated by a friend-ofa-friend or even a search through the Yale Alumni Network database can be the springboard to professional and academic success.

As alumni, we live with Yalies, work with Yalies, date Yalies and annoy our non-Yale friends with our obsession with Yalies. While

some people (particularly those in New York City) occasionally bemoan their inability to leave the “Yale bubble,” we are blessed to have a group upon which we can rely. Giving back to Yale now helps ensure that our community will continue to grow and remain strong long after all of our East Village apartments are washed away by hurricanes.

A few years out, we have a better appreciation of how costly it is to support an organization like Yale. Being employed has forced us to better understand and internalize how difficult it is to keep large organizations running, whether an investment bank, school system, growing startup or now-multinational university. Just as we did when we were undergraduates, we support and expect Yale’s investment in sustainable buildings, ethically responsible food and a living wage for campus employees. We recognize that none of this comes cheap, but these types of things make us proud to be Yale alumni and proud to help fund their continuation.

In retrospect, Yale was actually a pretty efficient place. Yes, sometimes navigating the Registrar’s Office was a mess, but you may find yourself pining for Yale bureaucracy when your landlord

charges you $300 for an extra set of apartment keys.

Winning is fun. Some of us have struggled to find appropriate competitive outlets outside of the inherently competitive structure of Yale colleges. “Which were the best or worst residential colleges” continues to come up amongst us surprisingly often. You may find yourselves some day gloating about every accomplishment your college had, whether it be Senior Class Gift participation, getting 12th place in the Gimbel Cup or who had the best tailgate. Do not miss out on any opportunity for additional bragging rights. Does that make us petty? Yes. Does that cause us shame? No.

DO NOT REGRET LOOKING BACK WITHOUT DONATING We wish we had been more grateful. By spring semester senior year, it was relatively common to hear our friends express how ready they were to leave Yale behind. They were tired of New

Haven and the weather and the “am-I-doing-enough” insecurities and the constant fear-ofmissing-out. They were ready to cut the cord on the long emotional malaise of impending graduation.

Many of you probably feel this way already, and that’s understandable. But do not let this malaise prevent you from expressing your appreciation for your time at Yale, as that’s surely something you’ll regret in the years (if not mere months or weeks) after you leave. Thank your professors, masters and deans and staff — and donate to the Senior Class Gift. It’s just one way to show your appreciation for their commitment to improving your Yale experience. You have only two days left.

We hope at least one of these reasons resonated with you.

Maybe you’ll end up giving so you can make some nosy alumni pay a little more out of their pockets — the two of us have committed to matching our college’s Senior Class Gift donation. There is no wrong reason to participate in Senior Class Gift … Maybe if you love Branford. Branford is the worst.

BOBBY GIBBS AND JASPER WANG are 2010 graduates of Jonathan Edwards College.

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 3

NEWS

“If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.” WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN UNION GENERAL DURING THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

CORRECTION MON, FEB. 18

Brooks talks modern presidency

The article “Activism encouraged at Black Solidarity Conference” mistakenly stated that roughly 200 students participated in the 18th Annual Black Solidarity Conference held at Yale this past weekend. In fact, around 550 students attended the conference, with over 600 students and community members present at the keynote address Saturday night.

State Dems favor Obama education plan

BY NICOLE NAREA STAFF REPORTER State and local legislators lauded President Barack Obama for initiating a federal push for a major overhaul of public education during his State of the Union address last week, which may help address the state’s worst-in-the-nation achievement gap.

Obama advocated funding universal high-quality preschool education, redesigning high school curriculums to emphasize science and math skills, and amending the Higher Education Act to improve college affordability. He also announced the implementation of “College Scorecards,” which grade schools based on the return on tuition paid, and praised German schools, whose high school degrees mirror U.S. technical degrees.

Democrats on both the state and national level voiced their support for most of the proposals, describing them as a worthy investment for a well-trained workforce and higher economic growth in the state. As the Connecticut General Assembly is controlled by Democrats, and the entire state congressional delegation is comprised of Democrats, the success of Obama’s education proposals in the state largely depends on their support.

“Early education resources are absolutely critical to every kind of occupational opportunity,” Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal told the News. “The best way to grow the economy is to provide skills and technical abilities that will fill jobs of the future.”

Blumenthal’s sentiment was echoed by other prominent Democrats, including Sen. Chris Murphy, whose spokesman Ben Marter said he offers broad support for all three of Obama’s proposals, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who called early childhood investment a “critical need” in a press release responding to the President’s address. Democratic State Rep. Roland Lemar said the reforms would mitigate the lack of highquality early education that ultimately ends up costing the state after students leave the public school system.

Republican State Senate Minority Leader John McKinney and Republican State Senator Rob Kane could not be reached for comment.

Blumenthal said he hopes to push for more investment in existing Connecticut community colleges and technical high schools in order to build what he described as the “best-trained workforce in the world.” He said there are currently twice as many applicants for specialized technical high schools as there are places available.

“I travel around the state and talk to Connecticut business people who say that they have jobs open, but can’t find people with the right skills to fill them,” Blumenthal said.

While Lemar said that

demand for vocational training should be filled, he disagreed with Obama’s proposal that it should be integrated universally into high school education as in the German public school system. But he said providing the option of vocational training in public education so that students possess the necessary skills to enter the workforce immediately after leaving high school is inherent to Obama’s State of the Union proposal to raise the federal minimum wage.

“Education reform does require extraordinary costs,” Lemar said. “But it would solve so many long-term issues.

There is no greater public investment that we can make.”

Blumenthal, who served on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions during his first two years in Congress and investigated debt incurred by students at for-profit colleges, also lauded Obama’s efforts to improve college affordability so that graduates are not crippled with loans. Lemar cited the proliferation of students dropping out of school before graduation buried with loans they cannot pay off without a degree as a problem that he hopes reforms would solve.

Education reform does require extraordinary costs. But … there is no greater public investment that we can make.

ROLAND LEMAR State representative, Connecticut But while state legislators commended the potential reforms, local advocacy groups expressed dissatisfaction with Obama’s proposal to continue federal funding allocations from Race to the Top, a state grant competition launched by Obama that encourages innovation in public school education. New Haven lost out on nearly $30 million in Race to the Top funds earlier this year after its funding application was not selected.

Dianne Kaplan deVries, project director for the New Havenbased advocacy group Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding, said Race to the Top utilizes a modest amount of federal dollars to “foment competition and favored White House education policies nationwide,” while only a few states or school districts receive the grant and the dollars are never enough to fund the reforms fully.

In his address, Obama also heralded tax reform, more American manufacturing jobs, combatting climate change and a higher minimum wage.

Contact NICOLE NAREA at nicole.narea@yale.edu .

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David Brooks, Jackson Institute senior fellow, spoke Monday in the Branford common room about the role of the executive branch in the 21st century.

BY JOSEPH TISCH STAFF REPORTER On President’s Day, New York Times columnist David Brooks shared his experiences interacting with the United States president as a political commentator during the last two presidencies.

The Yale College Democrats and Yale College Republicans co-hosted a talk Monday evening with Brooks, a Jackson Institute senior fellow, to discuss the role of the president in the 21st century. This semester, Brooks is teaching a seminar entitled “Humility” and co-teaching “Studies in Grand Strategy.” During the speech, Brooks used a discussion about the persona of the president as a starting point to analyze broader issues of leadership and politics.

“You hear the exact same comments in the same offices, but from different people in different parties,” Brooks said.

“They all think everyone is opportunistic except themselves. … They all think it’s unique to them.”

Brooks said meeting with a president for the first time is “like a TV screen running into

you.” But after spending 15 minutes with the president, he said, he felt comfortable with him as a human and felt “reasonably free to criticize and joke” — although the president’s staffers continue to treat the commander-inchief as an idol.

People who have the presidential bug have it until the day they die.

DAVID BROOKS Columnist, The New York Times The role of the Cabinet has decreased, Brooks said, as he has noticed the president’s circle of trusted advisers shrink with each successive administration.

He added that he thinks Obama trusts only four or five people in the White House.

Brooks said he found differences between the presidents’ public personas and their styles of meeting in person. Bush was “60 IQ points higher in private than he was in public,” and he read many more books than

Obama does — according to White House records, Bush read 113 books per year, Brooks said.

He added that he finds Obama to be “the most self-confident person I’ve ever met in my life” and that Obama’s self-confidence impacts his executive operations because he feels that “he doesn’t need a team of equals.”

Twitter and other social platforms’ growing influence has caused presidents and campaign leaders to be “obsessive about leaks,” decreasing journalists’ access to campaigns and making politicians trust those around them less, Brooks said. He recalled a visit to a casino to shoot craps with Sen. John McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign, adding that such a casual interaction between a presidential candidate and a journalist would now be “impossible.”

He said he hopes to see a more “Hamiltonian” Republican party that advocates for a “limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility” with greater appeal to Asian and Latino populations and those living in the Northeast and on the West Coast. Brooks added

that he thinks Sen. Marco Rubio is currently the most viable presidential candidate for 2016.

Though Hillary Clinton has not announced whether she will run for president in 2016, Brooks said he is confident that she will join the presidential race.

“I suspect she’d run, but I think she’ll be pretty formidable,” he said. “People who have the presidential bug have it until the day they die.”

Students interviewed said they enjoyed hearing Brooks’ anecdotes about the human aspects of the chief executive.

“I liked that he gave a very nuanced and insider’s look at the whole political process,” Aaron Lewis ’16 said. “Normally you don’t get that.”

Brooks has written three books — “Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There,” “On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense” and “The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement.”

Contact JOSEPH TISCH at joseph.tisch@yale.edu .

Student startup delivers brunch

BY EMMA GOLDBERG STAFF REPORTER Instead of making the trek to the dining halls on Saturday mornings, students can have brunch delivered right to their rooms by a new student-run startup.

Last month, four juniors founded a brunch delivery service called The Reading List, a startup that brings homemade pancakes and assorted breakfast food directly to customers’ entryways. Since starting business two weeks ago, the founders have filled 24 orders and hosted a tasting for 75 students. The four students who created the startup, Nicole Ivey ’14, Yohanna Pepa ’14, Mona Cao ’14 and Cora Ormseth ’14 — the latter two of whom are former production and design editors for the News — said they aim to address a lack of affordable brunch food available to students outside of the dining halls on campus.

“We wanted to try our hand at offering people at Yale a special, sustainably produced brunch,” Ivey said. “I’m from the South, where brunch is a huge deal. We want to make delicious products so our customers can treat themselves.”

The Reading List menu features seven different kinds of pancakes, all sold for $6, as well as a variety of breakfast sides for $2 that includes fried eggs and country maple bacon. Each type of pancake on the menu — which students can pay for with cash or a credit card — is named after a famous book, such as a pump-

kin pancake called The Cinderella and a carrot-cake flavored pancake called The Watership Down.

They chose to name the startup The Reading List because so many students share a passion for literature, Ivey said, adding that in the South, communities come together through their love for brunch, but at Yale, students connect over their common interest in books.

“We thought the name was a good way to tap into the Yale culture,” Ivey said. “People say they don’t like to read for their classes, but secretly everyone loves a good book.”

We wanted to try our hand at offering people at Yale a special, sustainably produced brunch.

NICOLE IVEY ’14 Co-founder, The Reading List After a conversation between the four founders about their love of food in January, they held a food tasting on Feb. 2 to see whether other students would enjoy their cooking, Ivey said.

Students who attended the tasting filled out a survey, and the group received overwhelmingly positive feedback so they decided to proceed with opening the business, she added.

Customers are required to submit their orders by 3 p.m. on Friday afternoons, after which

Ivey, who spends Fridays working in New York City, purchases the exact amount of ingredients necessary from the Union Square Farmer’s Market so the chefs do not end up with extra inventory.

Pepa creates spreadsheets tracking all the orders and preparing for delivery, and Ormseth is in charge of writing personal notes to customers to include with the food — personal connection with customers is an integral part of The Reading List business model, Ormseth said. Cao said the group has made a profit so far.

Though Ivey said The Reading List has focused on deliveries, the group has also been contacted about hosting study breaks and catering private brunches at which they plan to serve mock mimosas. The Reading List plans to host a formal Easter brunch open to all students and to cater other religious holidays that involve a large meal. They eventually aim to own a restaurant entirely dedicated to serving brunch.

“We don’t see this as a shortterm thing,” Cao said. “We want to make it sustainable when we graduate and eventually find a physical location where we can serve brunch.”

The Reading List founders have attended office hours at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute to take advantage of the resources offered by the University to startups, Cao said.

Hallie Meyer ’15, who founded a sustainable catering business called the Northern Greening with Emma Schmidt ’15, said the Yale community is conducive

to startups, but that creating a food-centered business requires commitment and effort.

After two weeks of deliveries, customers said the food was well-prepared and delivered on time. Customer Joseph Marquez ’14 said he was impressed with the food quality and the variety of options on the menu.

“This project will be of great value for many students who want to take a break from dining hall food or want to enjoy a brunch where they don’t even have to leave their suite,” Marquez said.

The Reading List founders held their first week of service during last week’s blizzard, but they were able to conduct deliveries regardless, Ivey said. Pepa said that although they considered canceling deliveries on the day of the blizzard, they decided they did not want to disappoint customers.

Customer Amy Xiao ’14 said she was grateful that Cao and Ormseth were able to bring her pancakes to Rosenfeld Hall, across from Timothy Dwight College, despite the weather conditions. Julia Schwartz ’16, whose friend surprised her by sending her a Reading List brunch on her birthday, also said she appreciated The Reading List’s perseverance during the storm.

All food prepared by the founders of The Reading List is cooked in the Davenport College kitchen.

Contact EMMA GOLDBERG at emma.goldberg@yale.edu .

PAGE 4

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

FROM THE FRONT

“The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.” JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH AMERICAN WRITER AND NATURALIST

Eidelson calls for youth participation YOUTH MARCH FROM PAGE 1 the organizing efforts of New Elm City Dream, a youth coalition that attempts to combat city street violence and works with children as young as age 3. Thirteen-year-old New Elm City Dream member Areliz Marks knocked on neighborhood doors with her family to spread the word about the march and encourage community members to participate over the past several weeks. She said the youth often attend public Board of Alderman hearings in hopes of creating opportunities for their peers within the Elm City.

“We need you to keep holding us accountable,” Eidelson said to the children. “The recent shift in youth participation at city hall has been extraordinary.”

Elm City Dream’s ongoing survey of 328 local youth between ages 10 and 25 indicated that over 60 percent of respondents do not have access to a community center. Eidelson’s major priorities as chair of the Board of Aldermen’s youth services committee have included the renovation of the Dixwell Q House and the Goffe Street Armory as spaces for youth to socialize and gather. Seventeenyear-old Montell Wright said New Elm City Dream presented him with opportunities to make friends, mentor younger members of the community and find a support group.

“A lot of our youngest ones want to have a voice,” 17-yearold New Haven resident and

organizer for Elm City Dream Capria Marks said. “It is great to catch them while they are young to give them this mindset.”

After signing petitions for youth job creation and receiving packages of Valentine’s Day sweets from the children of Elm City Dream, Ward 10 Alderman and New Haven mayoral candidate Justin Elicker said it is a critical time to address the agenda of existing youth organizations such as the Boys & Girls Club and Youth Rights Haven in order to engage youth in activities that reinforce positive behavior and keep them away from street violence. More than half of the individuals surveyed by Elm City Dream said that they or people close to them had personally been affected by an act of violence in New Haven.

Elicker also said the youth committee’s creation of an inventory of children’s programs has been helpful in establishing a baseline for city funding allocations for youth services.

“Personally, I’m done with austerity,” Kenneth Krayeske, administrator for the New Haven Democracy fund, said of funding for city youth services.

“There is nothing more compelling than supporting jobs for urban youth.”

Roughly 28 percent of New Haven County’s population is under the age of 19, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Contact NICOLE NAREA at nicole.narea@yale.edu .

The New Elm City Dream surveyed youth in the New Haven area between the ages of 10 and 25: Q: Do you feel you have had a good education?

Yes

232

Mostly

59

Sort of

23

Not really

9

No

6

Q: Do you think if you or other youth had access to more jobs it would prevent youth from getting involved in gangs, drugs or street violence?

Q: Do you feel safe on your street/in your neighborhood?

Yes

104

Most of the time

85

Sometimes

83

Almost Never

39

Q: Do you know your neighbors?

Yes

164

Yes, most of them

Maybe

104

I know some of them

97

No

49

I don’t know many

83

138

Malloy earns high polling despite new budget MALLOY FROM PAGE 1 tragedies and weather-related disasters to hit the state this year, including Hurricane Sandy, the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., and a massive blizzard.

Each time another misfortune befell Connecticut, McLean said, Malloy was seen as a leader.

“There was a lot of [Malloy] in a sort of take-charge position,” McLean said. “Typically when executives have those opportu-

nities to be front and center, the public tends to respond by giving them higher job approval ratings.”

One year ago, when Malloy’s approval rating was last assessed by the Yankee Institute, the governor was fighting for controversial bills including an abolition of the death penalty and an education reform package. His approval rating registered at 51–46.

Moreover, the poll may have been conducted too early for the lay voter in Connecticut to under-

stand the implications of the governor’s proposed budget, said Ronald Schurin, a politics professor at the University of Connecticut. The poll was conducted just four days after the governor first announced the details of his budget plan, before a coalition of mayors and first selectmen across the state denounced it for diverting too much money from municipal aid. Nonetheless, given basic information about the budget, 54 percent of voters said the pro-

posed package spends too heavily.

When voters were asked if they would re-elect the governor against a generic Republican, 42 percent said yes and 39 percent said no – a 3-percentagepoint difference that falls within the poll’s margin of error. Schurin said that Malloy faces an uphill battle in a Democratic state that elected Republican governors in five of the last six gubernatorial elections.

“There is a very unusual tradi-

Break bumped by blizzard PUBLIC SCHOOLS FROM PAGE 1 Ira Rosofsky, the parent of a sophomore at Wilbur Cross High School, said the problem does not only affect “the relatively affluent who are heading off to a Caribbean island,” explaining that families with academic enrichment experiences or medical appointments scheduled will also have to cancel their plans or skip school.

Rosofsky planned to visit potential colleges with his son this week, but the new school schedule may force them to cancel part of their plans.

Aneurin Canham-Clyne, a sophomore at Wilbur Cross High School, started an online petition calling on school officials to rescind their decision, with a total of nearly 400 signatures. School officials acknowledged that their decision is inconvenient but contend that,

under the circumstances, canceling February break is the most responsible action.

“We know this is frustrating for many, so we’re going to be working with the families on this,” NHPS spokeswoman Abbe Smith said.

We know this is frustrating for many, so we’re going to be working with the families.

ABBE SMITH Spokeswoman, New Haven Public Schools Students whose families already made plans will have excused absences, she added, and school officials will coordinate classroom coverage with

teachers and administrators who had previous plans. She noted that a similar situation occurred when New Haven Public Schools had to retract some days from February break in 2011 due to snow days, but student attendance during those days was only slightly lower than normal.

Smith explained that officials had hoped school would resume on Thursday — which later proved impossible given road conditions — and that no formal announcements were made about how the snow days were going to be handled before Wednesday. She added that

by Wednesday, school officials realized that the safest option was to cancel school for the rest of the week, forcing the school district to cancel February break.

Rosofsky said that even if the school district was obligated to

add days to the calendar, there were better options than removing February break. He suggested tacking on days to the end of the school year or canceling April break, giving families more time to prepare for the cancellation. He said he believes the school district wanted to hold classes this week, in part because school officials are concerned about scores on Connecticut state exams, which take place in March.

“I don’t think the decision really has to do with some basic belief that this is good for the education of our children,” Rosofsky said.

All after-school programs in New Haven Public Schools have been canceled for this week.

School was not in session for President’s Day. Contact MONICA DISARE at monica.disare@yale.edu .

tion of not looking very favorably on Democratic governors,” Schurin said.

Still, he added, Malloy’s reelection prospects are relatively high despite a tax increase he pushed through in his last biennial budget, as well as his support for controversial education reform measures and the ban on the death penalty. The fact that Malloy is slightly ahead, he said, gives the governor reason to hope for a successful campaign in 2014.

Spokesmen for the Connecticut Republican Party could not be reached for comment.

Tom Foley, the 2010 Republican candidate for governor, as well as Senate Minority Leader John McKinney and House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero are expected to enter the 2014 Republican primary.

Contact MICHELLE HACKMAN at michelle.hackman@yale.edu .

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 5

FROM THE FRONT Alcohol and sexual misconduct examined YCDO FROM PAGE 1 Paul McKinley DRA ’96, a YCDO spokesman. “You have to see them separately and together in order to get the full issue.”

Of all sexual complaints brought to University officials since July 2011 — when a new reporting system was introduced — many involved people under the influence of alcohol, said University-wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct chair Michael Della Rocca and Deputy Provost and University Title IX Coordinator Stephanie Spangler. Alcohol is often a factor in these sexual misconduct cases because drinking is a part of most social situations on campus, YCDO fellow Hannah Peck DIV ’11 said.

Efforts to change students’ drinking habits and the campus sexual climate overlap because they both involve shifting community standards and expectations, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd ’90 said, changing students’ perceptions of what is “normal.” Boyd said these efforts aim to create a community in which people routinely receive and expect high levels of sexual respect and have healthier relationships to alcohol, adding that sexual misconduct and excessive drinking will stand out more in a context in which such actions are not considered normal.

“Intoxication and sexual misconduct each carry a wide range of possible harms — harms which may be compounded when the two behaviors occur together,” Spangler said.

Programs aimed at changing campus sexual climate are further along in their development than initiatives surrounding alcohol, and the intersection between sex and drinking cultures will become more concrete after the conclusion

of the YCDO Task Force on Alcohol and Other Drugs, which will make recommendations on alcohol and drug policy based on information gathered on campus, Peck said. Fiddler said the communication and consent educators, who work within the Office of Gender & Campus Culture, often hold nonalcoholic “pregame” events before dances, adding that these settings promote both a healthier sexual climate and give students an alternative to drinking.

Still, Boyd emphasized that the belief that alcohol causes sexual assault is a cultural myth. While drinking can increase the risks associated with any social situation, Boyd said alcohol is not the root cause of sexual assault and should not be presented as an excuse for sexual misconduct perpetrators or a reason to blame victims.

“Oftentimes, people frame the alcohol conversation as [an issue of] personal responsibility, which makes sense for people committing acts as perpetrators, but that’s a really difficult framework for potential victims,” Boyd said.

“That’s one of the ways in which it is not parallel and that slippage is the problem.”

CCE workshops for freshmen discuss how alcohol hinders communication, but emphasize that alcohol does not eliminate one’s ability to discern consent, Boyd said.

Yale College Dean Mary Miller said the University will begin developing more concrete “independent and intersecting agendas” with regard to alcohol consumption and sexual climate when the YCDO Task Force on Alcohol and Other Drugs releases its initial report in the coming weeks.

Contact CYNTHIA HUA at cynthia.hua@yale.edu .

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. LEADER OF THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

OMG!Week urges dialogue

VIVIENNE ZHANG/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The Interfaith Engagement Week is held from Feb. 18 to 24. Its first event was a Dharma talk held Monday night in Harkness Tower.

INTERFAITH FROM PAGE 1 and a study session of various religious texts, said Ariella Kristal ’14, a Chaplain’s Office peer liaison. Students from all religious backgrounds will also have the opportunity to attend services held regularly by different religious groups on campus, such as Islamic prayers, Shabbat services and Christian services, Kristal said.

She added that Interfaith Engagement Week will contribute to an atmosphere of openness and enthusiasm on campus, and she said the events will help create an environment that encourages students to welcome others into their religious communities. Kristal added that the event series will draw on religious services that take place regularly during

termtime.

DeLuca said the office decided to organize Wednesday’s faculty forum — which will bring together Timothy Dwight College Master Jeffrey Brenzel and professors Geetanjali Chanda, John Hare and Daniel Abadi — in part as a response to student feedback.

“One of the most common things I’ve heard from students is that they do not feel like they can share that they have particular religious beliefs in the classroom, let alone include them in the discussion,” DeLuca said. “What do you do when your religious beliefs or practices contradict a professor’s opinion?”

A concert Thursday evening will feature performances from the religious music groups Magevet, Living Water and the Raga Society. The diverse per-

formances at the concert represent the Chaplain’s Office’s philosophy of welcoming all students from all religions, DeLuca said, adding that music and dance are the highest forms of worship in many religious cultures.

Events such as Interfaith Engagement Week allow for necessary conversations between people from diverse backgrounds, Chanda said. Maintaining this dialogue on a regular basis, rather than waiting for conflicts to develop, is essential, she added.

The first event in the series was a Dharma talk held Monday night at the Buddhist Chapel in Harkness Tower.

Contact CYNTHIA HUA at cynthia.hua@yale.edu .

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

“If you are in the job for glamour, you’re in for the shock of your life. The media is a huge shark pool.”

TRISHA GODDARD BRITISH TELEVISION PRESENTER AND ACTRESS

Scientists reconstruct mammalian ancestor

BY JOSH MANDELL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER This month, an international team of scientists, including several Yale faculty members and alumni, unveiled the first evolutionary reconstruction of the earliest placental mammal ancestor.

Humans, and all mammals that give live birth, are descended from this ancestor, the study found. This mammal, which does not yet have a scientific name because it is a simulation rather than a fossil find, may soon receive a “popular name” for easy referencing, said study lead author Maureen O’Leary ’87, a professor of anatomical sciences at Stony Brook University.

An article detailing the six-year study was published in the journal Science on Feb. 8.

To visualize the earliest placental mammal, the research team compiled a matrix of over 4,500 “characters” — physical traits that could be observed in living and fossilized mammals.

O’Leary said she defined a character as the smallest unit of physical detail that can also be seen on a similar species.

“Any one bone might have hundreds or thousands of characters on it,” she added.

The researchers gathered and compared their data on MorphoBank — a web application pioneered by O’Leary — to evaluate thousands of characters in 86 fossil and living species. When they had completed a spreadsheet with all of their anatomical observations, the researchers combined that data with DNA sequences to produce an evolutionary tree leading back to the placental mammal ancestor.

The tree gave scientists a list of characteristics of the mammalian ancestor. After compiling this list, the researchers teamed up with natural history illustrator Carl Buell to create a detailed image of the first placental mammal.

“Literally everything was researched,” Buell said. “Every tooth on that mouth, I drew. I did

every cusp they wanted me to.”

Throughout the project, the researchers also generated a surprising hypothesis about the timing of placental mammal evolution. Their data suggests placental mammals did not diversify until 300,000 to 400,000 years after the extinction of nonavian dinosaurs, which occurred about 65 million years ago. Previous estimates, based solely on genetic data, estimated that the ancestor of today’s placental mammals existed over 30 million years before this extinction.

John Gatesy GRD ’93, an associate professor of biology at the University of California, Riverside who was not part of the study, said that the hypothesis of rapid mammal diversification is the most controversial aspect of the paper.

“I think this will not be accepted by many geneticists, who instead simply assert that these basal lineages extend deep into the Cretaceous,” Gatesy said in an email.

mal species to the matrix.

“There’s still a lot more work to do, especially with living creatures. Hopefully we can score 500, or 1,000 specimens and see how it changes our view,” Sargis said.

Other Yale-affiliated researchers on the international team include John Flynn ’77, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, and Jonathan Bloch, an Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Environmental Scholar of Yale’s Anthropology Department.

BY CLINTON WANG STAFF REPORTER

Contact JOSH MANDELL at joshua.mandell@yale.edu .

There’s still a lot more work to do, especially with living creatures.

KAREN TIAN/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

ERIC SARGIS Anthropology professor, Yale University Study co-author and Yale anthropology professor Eric Sargis said the online tools and unprecedented data set are important contributions of the study. The character matrix that the researchers assembled is much larger than any previous matrix and is now available to researchers and the public through MorphoBank.

“MorphoBank is a huge advance,” Sargis said. “It’s going to make future studies much more explicit and repeatable.”

Sargis said the team’s Science paper marks only the end of the initial stage of their research — the next step is to add more mam-

Solar technology improved

BY CATHERINE WANG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

KAREN TIAN/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

Hospital readmissions and deaths unrelated

Yale researchers have developed cost-effective technology that increases the efficiency of solar cells.

In two papers published in the science journals Energy and Environmental Science and Nano Letters in December, the team of researchers details its new technology — hybrid solar cells made of carbon nanotubes and silicon. These cells — which convert sunlight to electrical energy more efficiently than traditional solar cells — are physically robust, flexible and “optically thin,” making them more suitable for a wider range of applications, said Kelsey Sakimoto ’12, a co-author of one of the papers.

“Our research bridges the cost-effectiveness of traditional organic solar cells with the efficiency of silicon,” said lead author Xiaokai Li GRD ’14, who studies in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering.

Silicon-based solar cells are highly efficient due to silicon’s optical properties allowing it to absorb sunlight easily and convert it into energy, Li said. But processing silicon is costly and requires “extremely high” temperatures, he added.

In order to create their hybrid solar cell, the research team developed a low cost method that can be performed at room temperature. The researchers applied thin, smooth carbon nanotube films to silicon and then used an acid wash to dissolve the carbon, allowing the nanotubes to collapse together to form a highly conductive network, according to Andre Taylor, assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering and a principal investigator of the study.

“The cell’s final structure is thin and therefore flexible,” Sakimoto said. “The cell is very strong and mechanically robust.”

In addition to improving the effectiveness of traditional solar panels, these solar cells may pave

the way for innovative solar technology.

“Imagine your automobile if paint was a solar cell. We can integrate that with the new electric vehicle,” Taylor said. “Imagine rooftop shingles and other nonfunctional surfaces where you can integrate photovoltaic cells.”

Applications of the new technology are not limited to solar panels and solar-powered devices — the cells may be used in photodetectors, sensors and displays as well. These cells could also be used on various surfaces, not just those that are flat and square, said applied physics student Nitin Rajan GRD ’13, a coauthor of one of the papers.

A new study refutes the common claim that low death rates increase patient rehospitalization rates.

Preliminary studies, as well as a letter to the editor in 2010 in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggested that hospitals with higher patient mortality rates within 30 days of discharge tend to have lower rates of readmission within that same time period, possibly because patients most likely to die during that period are also more likely to be rehospitalized if they survive initial treatment.

But a study published Feb. 13 in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests a possible different trend. Yale researchers found little or no correlation between the death and readmission rates in hospitals nationwide in Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized for heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia, said lead author Harlan Krumholz, cardiology professor at the Yale School of Medicine “There are many critics claiming that you can’t have both low mortality rates and low readmission rates,” Krumholz said. “But we saw many hospitals excelling in both.”

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, evaluate hospitals’ mortality and readmission rates for patients with heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia, and issues financial penalties based on both measures by cutting Medicare reimbursements to hospitals with above-average rates.

Instituted last October, the readmissions penalty is already more severe than the penalty for high mortality rates and is set to increase over the next few years.

Over 2,000 hospitals have been penalized for readmissions, including many of the most renowned, such as Massachusetts General Hospital and Mayo Clinic, according to Kaiser Health News.

Krumholz said the belief that mortality and readmission rates are linked partly reflects growing concerns with the CMS’s readmissions penalty.

“Some hospitals are saying you can’t really improve it, or it’s not their fault. So some people are grasping for things that are wrong with it,” Krumholz said.

But Krumholz’s study does not com-

Contact CLINTON WANG at clinton.wang@yale.edu .

Cartoon shark joins ocean conservation

BY PAYAL MARATHE STAFF REPORTER The cause to protect endangered marine species has a new versatile spokesperson.

Shark Stanley, the internationally recognized mascot of an ongoing campaign to regulate the international shark trade, is also the protagonist of a new children’s book.

“The Adventures of Shark Stanley and Friends,” written by students at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, features four marine characters that are threatened by overfishing and the exploitation of ocean environments. The book was

first released online on Jan. 30 and is currently available in print.

The character of Shark Stanley was born last year when Leah Meth FES ’14 and Onon Bayasgalan FES ’13 decided online petitions were not contributing enough to the fight to implement sustainable shark fishing practices. Instead of presenting a list of signatures at the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) in Bangkok this March, Meth and Bayasgalan will be presenting a collection of over 1500 photographs of individuals from 111 countries posing with a Shark Stanley cutout.

Both Meth and Bayasgalan said

they believe the Shark Stanley campaign has the potential to be more successful in the cause for conservation of marine environments than previous petition campaigns have been.

“There’s much less commitment with other petitions, when all you have to do is sign or type your name in,” Bayasgalan said. “But getting a photograph taken with Shark Stanley requires more investment because you have to cut it out and think about the issue more.”

The new children’s book serves as an educational tool as well, Bayasgalan added.

While previous campaigns have

Carbon nanotubes are very novel and have great potential in other applications.

XIAOKAI LI GRD ’14 Taylor said his lab is currently carrying out further experiments to continue their thin-film research.

“This is a research project,” he said. “There’s always room for improvement.”

These improvements may include removing silicon from the equation.

Li said the team hopes to create pure carbon solar cells.

“Everyone knows about silicon. Carbon nanotubes are the mystery. Carbon nanotubes are very novel and have great potential in other applications,” he added.

The National Science Foundation, NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Yale Institute for Nanoscience and Quantum Engineering provided support for the research.

Contact CATHERINE WANG at catherine.wang@yale.edu .

pletely contradict the findings of the 2010 study — his team found that mortality rates of patients suffering from heart failure were lower when readmissions rates were higher. Patrick Romano, a professor at the University of California Davis School of Medicine, added that readmissions rates may not reflect quality of care for patients with heart failure as reliably as they would for those with other conditions.

Krumholz said researchers need to examine how these CMS measures change across different types of hospitals, adding that large teaching hospitals tend to have higher readmission rates. A key challenge will be to identify the factors behind the low readmissions rates of some teaching hospitals, he added.

“We’re trying to solve the problem, not just understand the metrics,” Krumholz said. “Our real drive is to make the health care system more effective.”

Still, the readmissions penalty remains controversial. Harvard School of Public Health professor Karen Joynt said the fact that readmission and mortality rates are unrelated does not necessarily mean that readmissions reflect a hospital’s quality of care, pointing out that many established quality measures such as patient satisfaction, process quality and staffing do tend to correlate with each other.

Harvard School of Public Health professor Jha Ashish added that hospitals that are recognized for high quality of care tend to have higher readmission rates because they care for sicker, poorer patients.

“If you got sick, would you go to Yale New Haven Medical Center — which tends to have among the highest readmission rates in Connecticut — or one of the myriad of small, community hospitals that have much lower readmission rates?” Ashish said. “Readmissions are not a good quality measure [of the hospital itself], but may be a good measure” to make hospitals accountable for care after patient discharge.

Readmission rates are currently at around 20 percent for Medicare beneficiaries and cost taxpayers over $17 billion each year, according to CMS.

OMAR MALIK

Shark Stanley, a new mascot that advocates for the regulation of the international shark trade, is in a new children’s book.

relied on catchy taglines, the idea for the children’s book is to depict the complexities of the issue, which increases awareness and makes the campaign more effective, Meth said.

The story includes a description of the global nature of the shark fin trade and an explanation of how killing these predators can harm the entire environment, she added.

Ben Goldfarb FES ’13, who cowrote the storybook with Meth, said that personifying the four main characters is a good way to reach children and convey “the moral horror of killing really beautiful creatures.” Instead of just signing a petition to protect sharks, readers get to know Stanley the hammerhead shark, Pierre the porbeagle, Waqi the whitetip and Manta Reina the manta ray, all of whom come with “rich back story,” Meth said.

The goal is not to convince CITES to enforce an absolute ban on the shark fin trade, but rather to “bring in a more strict system in terms of export and import” so that these species are fished sustainably, Meth said.

Lack of data on marine species and the popularity of shark fin soup in Asian countries are the primary reasons it has been difficult to win protection for these sharks in the past, Goldfarb said.

“If tigers were as depleted as hammerhead sharks are right now, there’s no question that they’d get protection,” he said. “We don’t know as much about the oceans as we do about terrestrial systems, so it’s been harder in the past to make a case that these species are endangered.”

But Goldfarb said he is “confident” that this year, CITES will recognize the need to protect these species because of increased support for the issue.

While getting CITES to enact policies to stop overfishing of these shark species is the immediate goal, the campaign’s long term hope is that Asian consumers will view shark fin soup as “morally incomprehensible” and reduce the global shark fin market, he added.

The team plans to expand the Shark Stanley campaign with an illustrated ocean conservation workbook.

Contact PAYAL MARATHE at payal.marathe@yale.edu .

THALYANA SMITH-VIKOS

Controversy over gene patenting T

here has been much controversy recently regarding whether it is legal for human genes to be patented. Although approximately 20 percent of all human genes have been patented over the past 30 years, the patenting of BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes by the biotech company Myriad Genetics has resulted in a landmark opportunity for the Supreme Court to reassess whether a patent on any human gene is legal. Last November, the Supreme Court accepted to review claims against the BRCA1 and BRCA2 patents in the case now known as Association of Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes (especially BRCA1) have been linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. Of the women who have a deleterious mutation in BRCA1, 50 to 65 percent will develop breast cancer by age 70, and 35 to 46 percent will develop ovarian cancer by age 70.

Myriad Genetics discovered the chromosomal locations of BRCA1/2, applied for seven patents for these two genes in 1997 and 1998 and received them all in 2001.

Myriad does not technically hold patents on the naturally occurring genes in the body, as a product is only patentable if it is “markedly different” from a product of nature or is a new composition of matter. Rather, Myriad’s BRCA1 and BRCA2 patents are for the isolated DNA of the genes, fragments for the genes to be used as probes for sequence identity and a diagnostic test comparing an individual’s genetic sequence with known mutations and variants associated with breast and ovarian cancer.

These patents provide Myriad with the right to exclude all researchers, clinicians and companies from using their “invention” — only Myriad can conduct the BRCA1 and BRCA2 diagnostic test and disclose the results of the test to a patient. Because of this monopoly, Myriad charges $3500 for the diagnostic test, which some health insurances will not cover. Furthermore, a patient cannot ask for a second opinion because Myriad claims that their diagnostic test is the “gold standard,” and it is illegal for clinicians and researchers to develop new diagnostic tests or even evaluate the accuracy of Myriad’s test.

There are many stakeholders in this legal case: on the one hand, patients do not have proper ownership over their own medical information, and other researchers who are investigating BRCA1 and BRCA2 may be forced to halt their research due to issues with violating Myriad’s patents.

On the other hand, one could argue that Myriad may not have identified the diagnostic importance of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic sequences in the first place without knowing that they could patent their discoveries, as holding the patents provides security for the substantial monetary investments in this research.

Additionally, patents in general create incentive to develop products commercially, which would be necessary, for example, for a pharmaceutical company that needs to conduct clinical trials with a drug but does not want any other companies to generate the drug in the meantime.

It is also worth noting that gene sequencing technologies are actually cheaper than Myriad’s diagnostic test, so any trained scientist could hypothetically sequence BRCA1 and BRCA2 in an individual’s DNA and compare this to the published sequences readily available online.

However, only Myriad Genetics holds the information regarding what the appropriate disease variants of these sequences are, and it has not even been confirmed that the research on these variants is scientifically sound. The nature of scientific research is to have a transparent, peerreviewed evaluation of any discoveries, and the patents have gotten in the way of this entire process, destroying the foundation of how research is conducted and validated.

In addition, the American Civil Liberties Union has claimed that holding a monopoly on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 diagnostic test denies patients of fundamental information and violates the First Amendment. In today’s society, there should be no question regarding whether a patient should have the right to all of his or her medical information using the best diagnostic tools available.

It seems unfair that there has been so much time and money spent debating this issue instead of focusing these efforts on diagnosing the cancers themselves. Still, companies like Myriad Genetics have the right to make a profit from their research, and holding patents would be an appropriate route to protect their investments for 20 years. This case has become so notorious, though, because the genes in question have been linked to breast and ovarian cancer, two of the most common types of cancer diagnosed in women.

The Supreme Court should decide that different rules need to apply in these situations where human health is at risk, and thus genes that can be used as cancer diagnostic tools should not be patented. This is the only way to provide universal patient accessibility to these tests by offering them at a reasonable cost.

It is safe to say, however, that no matter the outcome, the case will have had an unprecedented effect on the world of gene patenting.

THALYANA SMITH-VIKOS is a graduate student in the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Department. Contact her at thalyana.smith-vikos@yale.edu .

PAGE 6

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 7

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

“If you are in the job for glamour, you’re in for the shock of your life. The media is a huge shark pool.”

TRISHA GODDARD BRITISH TELEVISION PRESENTER AND ACTRESS

Scientists reconstruct mammalian ancestor

BY JOSH MANDELL CONTRIBUTING REPORTER This month, an international team of scientists, including several Yale faculty members and alumni, unveiled the first evolutionary reconstruction of the earliest placental mammal ancestor.

Humans, and all mammals that give live birth, are descended from this ancestor, the study found. This mammal, which does not yet have a scientific name because it is a simulation rather than a fossil find, may soon receive a “popular name” for easy referencing, said study lead author Maureen O’Leary ’87, a professor of anatomical sciences at Stony Brook University.

An article detailing the six-year study was published in the journal Science on Feb. 8.

To visualize the earliest placental mammal, the research team compiled a matrix of over 4,500 “characters” — physical traits that could be observed in living and fossilized mammals.

O’Leary said she defined a character as the smallest unit of physical detail that can also be seen on a similar species.

“Any one bone might have hundreds or thousands of characters on it,” she added.

The researchers gathered and compared their data on MorphoBank — a web application pioneered by O’Leary — to evaluate thousands of characters in 86 fossil and living species. When they had completed a spreadsheet with all of their anatomical observations, the researchers combined that data with DNA sequences to produce an evolutionary tree leading back to the placental mammal ancestor.

The tree gave scientists a list of characteristics of the mammalian ancestor. After compiling this list, the researchers teamed up with natural history illustrator Carl Buell to create a detailed image of the first placental mammal.

“Literally everything was researched,” Buell said. “Every tooth on that mouth, I drew. I did

every cusp they wanted me to.”

Throughout the project, the researchers also generated a surprising hypothesis about the timing of placental mammal evolution. Their data suggests placental mammals did not diversify until 300,000 to 400,000 years after the extinction of nonavian dinosaurs, which occurred about 65 million years ago. Previous estimates, based solely on genetic data, estimated that the ancestor of today’s placental mammals existed over 30 million years before this extinction.

John Gatesy GRD ’93, an associate professor of biology at the University of California, Riverside who was not part of the study, said that the hypothesis of rapid mammal diversification is the most controversial aspect of the paper.

“I think this will not be accepted by many geneticists, who instead simply assert that these basal lineages extend deep into the Cretaceous,” Gatesy said in an email.

mal species to the matrix.

“There’s still a lot more work to do, especially with living creatures. Hopefully we can score 500, or 1,000 specimens and see how it changes our view,” Sargis said.

Other Yale-affiliated researchers on the international team include John Flynn ’77, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, and Jonathan Bloch, an Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Environmental Scholar of Yale’s Anthropology Department.

BY CLINTON WANG STAFF REPORTER

Contact JOSH MANDELL at joshua.mandell@yale.edu .

There’s still a lot more work to do, especially with living creatures.

KAREN TIAN/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

ERIC SARGIS Anthropology professor, Yale University Study co-author and Yale anthropology professor Eric Sargis said the online tools and unprecedented data set are important contributions of the study. The character matrix that the researchers assembled is much larger than any previous matrix and is now available to researchers and the public through MorphoBank.

“MorphoBank is a huge advance,” Sargis said. “It’s going to make future studies much more explicit and repeatable.”

Sargis said the team’s Science paper marks only the end of the initial stage of their research — the next step is to add more mam-

Solar technology improved

BY CATHERINE WANG CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

KAREN TIAN/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

Hospital readmissions and deaths unrelated

Yale researchers have developed cost-effective technology that increases the efficiency of solar cells.

In two papers published in the science journals Energy and Environmental Science and Nano Letters in December, the team of researchers details its new technology — hybrid solar cells made of carbon nanotubes and silicon. These cells — which convert sunlight to electrical energy more efficiently than traditional solar cells — are physically robust, flexible and “optically thin,” making them more suitable for a wider range of applications, said Kelsey Sakimoto ’12, a co-author of one of the papers.

“Our research bridges the cost-effectiveness of traditional organic solar cells with the efficiency of silicon,” said lead author Xiaokai Li GRD ’14, who studies in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering.

Silicon-based solar cells are highly efficient due to silicon’s optical properties allowing it to absorb sunlight easily and convert it into energy, Li said. But processing silicon is costly and requires “extremely high” temperatures, he added.

In order to create their hybrid solar cell, the research team developed a low cost method that can be performed at room temperature. The researchers applied thin, smooth carbon nanotube films to silicon and then used an acid wash to dissolve the carbon, allowing the nanotubes to collapse together to form a highly conductive network, according to Andre Taylor, assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering and a principal investigator of the study.

“The cell’s final structure is thin and therefore flexible,” Sakimoto said. “The cell is very strong and mechanically robust.”

In addition to improving the effectiveness of traditional solar panels, these solar cells may pave

the way for innovative solar technology.

“Imagine your automobile if paint was a solar cell. We can integrate that with the new electric vehicle,” Taylor said. “Imagine rooftop shingles and other nonfunctional surfaces where you can integrate photovoltaic cells.”

Applications of the new technology are not limited to solar panels and solar-powered devices — the cells may be used in photodetectors, sensors and displays as well. These cells could also be used on various surfaces, not just those that are flat and square, said applied physics student Nitin Rajan GRD ’13, a coauthor of one of the papers.

A new study refutes the common claim that low death rates increase patient rehospitalization rates.

Preliminary studies, as well as a letter to the editor in 2010 in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggested that hospitals with higher patient mortality rates within 30 days of discharge tend to have lower rates of readmission within that same time period, possibly because patients most likely to die during that period are also more likely to be rehospitalized if they survive initial treatment.

But a study published Feb. 13 in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests a possible different trend. Yale researchers found little or no correlation between the death and readmission rates in hospitals nationwide in Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized for heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia, said lead author Harlan Krumholz, cardiology professor at the Yale School of Medicine “There are many critics claiming that you can’t have both low mortality rates and low readmission rates,” Krumholz said. “But we saw many hospitals excelling in both.”

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, evaluate hospitals’ mortality and readmission rates for patients with heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia, and issues financial penalties based on both measures by cutting Medicare reimbursements to hospitals with above-average rates.

Instituted last October, the readmissions penalty is already more severe than the penalty for high mortality rates and is set to increase over the next few years.

Over 2,000 hospitals have been penalized for readmissions, including many of the most renowned, such as Massachusetts General Hospital and Mayo Clinic, according to Kaiser Health News.

Krumholz said the belief that mortality and readmission rates are linked partly reflects growing concerns with the CMS’s readmissions penalty.

“Some hospitals are saying you can’t really improve it, or it’s not their fault. So some people are grasping for things that are wrong with it,” Krumholz said.

But Krumholz’s study does not com-

Contact CLINTON WANG at clinton.wang@yale.edu .

Cartoon shark joins ocean conservation

BY PAYAL MARATHE STAFF REPORTER The cause to protect endangered marine species has a new versatile spokesperson.

Shark Stanley, the internationally recognized mascot of an ongoing campaign to regulate the international shark trade, is also the protagonist of a new children’s book.

“The Adventures of Shark Stanley and Friends,” written by students at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, features four marine characters that are threatened by overfishing and the exploitation of ocean environments. The book was

first released online on Jan. 30 and is currently available in print.

The character of Shark Stanley was born last year when Leah Meth FES ’14 and Onon Bayasgalan FES ’13 decided online petitions were not contributing enough to the fight to implement sustainable shark fishing practices. Instead of presenting a list of signatures at the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) in Bangkok this March, Meth and Bayasgalan will be presenting a collection of over 1500 photographs of individuals from 111 countries posing with a Shark Stanley cutout.

Both Meth and Bayasgalan said

they believe the Shark Stanley campaign has the potential to be more successful in the cause for conservation of marine environments than previous petition campaigns have been.

“There’s much less commitment with other petitions, when all you have to do is sign or type your name in,” Bayasgalan said. “But getting a photograph taken with Shark Stanley requires more investment because you have to cut it out and think about the issue more.”

The new children’s book serves as an educational tool as well, Bayasgalan added.

While previous campaigns have

Carbon nanotubes are very novel and have great potential in other applications.

XIAOKAI LI GRD ’14 Taylor said his lab is currently carrying out further experiments to continue their thin-film research.

“This is a research project,” he said. “There’s always room for improvement.”

These improvements may include removing silicon from the equation.

Li said the team hopes to create pure carbon solar cells.

“Everyone knows about silicon. Carbon nanotubes are the mystery. Carbon nanotubes are very novel and have great potential in other applications,” he added.

The National Science Foundation, NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Yale Institute for Nanoscience and Quantum Engineering provided support for the research.

Contact CATHERINE WANG at catherine.wang@yale.edu .

pletely contradict the findings of the 2010 study — his team found that mortality rates of patients suffering from heart failure were lower when readmissions rates were higher. Patrick Romano, a professor at the University of California Davis School of Medicine, added that readmissions rates may not reflect quality of care for patients with heart failure as reliably as they would for those with other conditions.

Krumholz said researchers need to examine how these CMS measures change across different types of hospitals, adding that large teaching hospitals tend to have higher readmission rates. A key challenge will be to identify the factors behind the low readmissions rates of some teaching hospitals, he added.

“We’re trying to solve the problem, not just understand the metrics,” Krumholz said. “Our real drive is to make the health care system more effective.”

Still, the readmissions penalty remains controversial. Harvard School of Public Health professor Karen Joynt said the fact that readmission and mortality rates are unrelated does not necessarily mean that readmissions reflect a hospital’s quality of care, pointing out that many established quality measures such as patient satisfaction, process quality and staffing do tend to correlate with each other.

Harvard School of Public Health professor Jha Ashish added that hospitals that are recognized for high quality of care tend to have higher readmission rates because they care for sicker, poorer patients.

“If you got sick, would you go to Yale New Haven Medical Center — which tends to have among the highest readmission rates in Connecticut — or one of the myriad of small, community hospitals that have much lower readmission rates?” Ashish said. “Readmissions are not a good quality measure [of the hospital itself], but may be a good measure” to make hospitals accountable for care after patient discharge.

Readmission rates are currently at around 20 percent for Medicare beneficiaries and cost taxpayers over $17 billion each year, according to CMS.

OMAR MALIK

Shark Stanley, a new mascot that advocates for the regulation of the international shark trade, is in a new children’s book.

relied on catchy taglines, the idea for the children’s book is to depict the complexities of the issue, which increases awareness and makes the campaign more effective, Meth said.

The story includes a description of the global nature of the shark fin trade and an explanation of how killing these predators can harm the entire environment, she added.

Ben Goldfarb FES ’13, who cowrote the storybook with Meth, said that personifying the four main characters is a good way to reach children and convey “the moral horror of killing really beautiful creatures.” Instead of just signing a petition to protect sharks, readers get to know Stanley the hammerhead shark, Pierre the porbeagle, Waqi the whitetip and Manta Reina the manta ray, all of whom come with “rich back story,” Meth said.

The goal is not to convince CITES to enforce an absolute ban on the shark fin trade, but rather to “bring in a more strict system in terms of export and import” so that these species are fished sustainably, Meth said.

Lack of data on marine species and the popularity of shark fin soup in Asian countries are the primary reasons it has been difficult to win protection for these sharks in the past, Goldfarb said.

“If tigers were as depleted as hammerhead sharks are right now, there’s no question that they’d get protection,” he said. “We don’t know as much about the oceans as we do about terrestrial systems, so it’s been harder in the past to make a case that these species are endangered.”

But Goldfarb said he is “confident” that this year, CITES will recognize the need to protect these species because of increased support for the issue.

While getting CITES to enact policies to stop overfishing of these shark species is the immediate goal, the campaign’s long term hope is that Asian consumers will view shark fin soup as “morally incomprehensible” and reduce the global shark fin market, he added.

The team plans to expand the Shark Stanley campaign with an illustrated ocean conservation workbook.

Contact PAYAL MARATHE at payal.marathe@yale.edu .

THALYANA SMITH-VIKOS

Controversy over gene patenting T

here has been much controversy recently regarding whether it is legal for human genes to be patented. Although approximately 20 percent of all human genes have been patented over the past 30 years, the patenting of BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes by the biotech company Myriad Genetics has resulted in a landmark opportunity for the Supreme Court to reassess whether a patent on any human gene is legal. Last November, the Supreme Court accepted to review claims against the BRCA1 and BRCA2 patents in the case now known as Association of Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes (especially BRCA1) have been linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. Of the women who have a deleterious mutation in BRCA1, 50 to 65 percent will develop breast cancer by age 70, and 35 to 46 percent will develop ovarian cancer by age 70.

Myriad Genetics discovered the chromosomal locations of BRCA1/2, applied for seven patents for these two genes in 1997 and 1998 and received them all in 2001.

Myriad does not technically hold patents on the naturally occurring genes in the body, as a product is only patentable if it is “markedly different” from a product of nature or is a new composition of matter. Rather, Myriad’s BRCA1 and BRCA2 patents are for the isolated DNA of the genes, fragments for the genes to be used as probes for sequence identity and a diagnostic test comparing an individual’s genetic sequence with known mutations and variants associated with breast and ovarian cancer.

These patents provide Myriad with the right to exclude all researchers, clinicians and companies from using their “invention” — only Myriad can conduct the BRCA1 and BRCA2 diagnostic test and disclose the results of the test to a patient. Because of this monopoly, Myriad charges $3500 for the diagnostic test, which some health insurances will not cover. Furthermore, a patient cannot ask for a second opinion because Myriad claims that their diagnostic test is the “gold standard,” and it is illegal for clinicians and researchers to develop new diagnostic tests or even evaluate the accuracy of Myriad’s test.

There are many stakeholders in this legal case: on the one hand, patients do not have proper ownership over their own medical information, and other researchers who are investigating BRCA1 and BRCA2 may be forced to halt their research due to issues with violating Myriad’s patents.

On the other hand, one could argue that Myriad may not have identified the diagnostic importance of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic sequences in the first place without knowing that they could patent their discoveries, as holding the patents provides security for the substantial monetary investments in this research.

Additionally, patents in general create incentive to develop products commercially, which would be necessary, for example, for a pharmaceutical company that needs to conduct clinical trials with a drug but does not want any other companies to generate the drug in the meantime.

It is also worth noting that gene sequencing technologies are actually cheaper than Myriad’s diagnostic test, so any trained scientist could hypothetically sequence BRCA1 and BRCA2 in an individual’s DNA and compare this to the published sequences readily available online.

However, only Myriad Genetics holds the information regarding what the appropriate disease variants of these sequences are, and it has not even been confirmed that the research on these variants is scientifically sound. The nature of scientific research is to have a transparent, peerreviewed evaluation of any discoveries, and the patents have gotten in the way of this entire process, destroying the foundation of how research is conducted and validated.

In addition, the American Civil Liberties Union has claimed that holding a monopoly on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 diagnostic test denies patients of fundamental information and violates the First Amendment. In today’s society, there should be no question regarding whether a patient should have the right to all of his or her medical information using the best diagnostic tools available.

It seems unfair that there has been so much time and money spent debating this issue instead of focusing these efforts on diagnosing the cancers themselves. Still, companies like Myriad Genetics have the right to make a profit from their research, and holding patents would be an appropriate route to protect their investments for 20 years. This case has become so notorious, though, because the genes in question have been linked to breast and ovarian cancer, two of the most common types of cancer diagnosed in women.

The Supreme Court should decide that different rules need to apply in these situations where human health is at risk, and thus genes that can be used as cancer diagnostic tools should not be patented. This is the only way to provide universal patient accessibility to these tests by offering them at a reasonable cost.

It is safe to say, however, that no matter the outcome, the case will have had an unprecedented effect on the world of gene patenting.

THALYANA SMITH-VIKOS is a graduate student in the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Department. Contact her at thalyana.smith-vikos@yale.edu .

T

Dow Jones 13,981.76, +0.06%

S

NASDAQ 3,192.03, -0.21%

S

NATION

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

Oil $95.67, -0.20%

Colo. house favors gun-control

BY IVAN MORENO ASSOCIATED PRESS DENVER — Limits on the size of ammunition magazines and universal background checks passed the Colorado House on Monday, during a second day of emotional debates that has drawn attention from the White House as lawmakers try to address recent mass shootings.

The bills were among four that the Democratic-controlled House passed amid strong resistance from Republicans, who were joined by a few Democrats to make some of the votes close.

The proposed ammunition restrictions limit magazines to 15 rounds for firearms, and eight for shotguns. Three Democrats joined all Republicans voting no on the bill, but the proposal passed 34-31.

“Enough is enough. I’m sick and tired of bloodshed,” said Democratic Rep. Rhonda Fields, a sponsor of the bill and representative of the district where the shootings at an Aurora theater happened last summer. Fields’ son was also fatally shot in 2005.

Republicans argued that the proposals restrict Second Amendment rights and won’t prevent mass shootings like the ones in Aurora and a Connecticut elementary school.

“This bill will never keep evil people from doing evil things,” said Republican Rep. Jerry Sonnenberg.

The House also approved a bill requiring background checks on all gun pur-

S

PAGE 8

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S&P 500 1,519.79, -0.10% 10-yr. Bond 2.01%, +0.01

T Euro $1.33, -0.06

Cruise ship fire caused by leak

BY KATE BRUMBACK ASSOCIATED PRESS

JOE AMON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Colorado State Rep. Lois Court, left, defends her bill, which proposes fees for gun background checks. chases, including those between private sellers and firearms bought online.

Other proposals would ban concealed firearms at colleges and stadiums, and another requires that gun purchasers pay for their own background checks. Democrats eked out the closest vote on the background check measure, which passed on a 33-32 vote.

Democratic Rep. Ed Vigil, who represents rural southern Colorado, voted against the four bills, saying his decision was rooted in the state’s rugged history.

“This is part of our heritage. This is part of what it took to settle this land. I cannot turn my back on that,” he said.

But even though a few Democrats joined Republicans in voting no for the bills, the Democrats’ 37-28 advantage in the House gave them enough leeway.

The Senate still needs to consider the proposals. Democrats will need to be more unified in their support there because their advantage is only 20-15. That means Republicans need only three Democrats to join them to defeat the bills.

ATLANTA — A leak in a fuel oil return line caused the engineroom fire that disabled a Carnival cruise ship at sea, leaving 4,200 people without power or working toilets for five days, a Coast Guard official said Monday.

Cmdr. Teresa Hatfield addressed the finding in a conference call with reporters and estimated that the investigation of the disabled ship, the Carnival Triumph, would take six months.

Hatfield said the Bahamas — where the ship is registered, or flagged — is leading the investigation, with the Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board representing U.S. interests in the probe. The vessel was in international waters at the time of the incident.

She said investigators have been with the ship since it arrived Thursday in Mobile. Since then, she said, interviews have been conducted with passengers and crew and forensic analysis has

been performed on the ship.

She said the crew responded appropriately to the fire. “They did a very good job,” she said.

In an email after Monday’s conference call, Coast Guard spokesman Carlos Diaz described the oil return line that leaked as stretching from the ship’s No. 6 engine to the fuel tank.

A Carnival Cruise Lines spokesman said in an email Monday that the company agrees with the Coast Guard’s findings about the fire source.

Andrew Coggins, a former Navy commander who was a chief engineer and is now a professor at Pace University in New York and an expert on the cruise industry, said the fire could potentially have been serious.

“The problem is the oil’s under pressure,” he said. “What happens in the case of a fuel oil leak where you have a fire like that is it leaks in such a way that it sprays out in a mist. In the engine room you have many hot surfaces, so once the mist hits a hot surface it will flash into flame.”

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 9

BULLETIN BOARD

TODAY’S FORECAST

Showers, mainly after 1 p.m. High near 46. Light south wind increasing to 6 to 11 mph in the morning.

TOMORROW

THURSDAY

High of 35, low of 21.

High of 36, low of 22.

ZERO LIKE ME BY REUXBEN BARRIENTES

ON CAMPUS TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19 5:00 PM “The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe” History professor Marci Shore will give the Benjamin and Barbara Zucker Lecture on her new book. It is not a conventional history with a straight narrative, though it tells an important story about the legacy of the three utopian ideas of the 20th century — fascism, communism and Zionism — that transformed Europe. It is part memoir, part reportage and part romance written with lyrical beauty. Sponsored by the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism. Free and open to the general public. Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall St.), Room 208.

THAT MONKEY TUNE BY MICHAEL KANDALAFT

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20 5:30 PM “Buddhist Nuns in Late Choson Korea” Hyangsoon Yi, assistant professor of comparative literature at the University of Georgia, will argue that nuns continued their monastic life in this period despite anti-Buddhist policy. She will present three sets of counterevidence to the popular image of the “invisible” nun. Hall of Graduate Studies (320 York St.), Room 217A. 9:00 PM Senior Class Gift Closing Event This is a celebratory event for seniors to come together, and also one last chance for people to donate to the Senior Class Gift campaign, which officially ends Wednesday at midnight. Anyone who has donated to the SCG campaign will receive one free drink. Briq Restaurant (266 College St.).

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21 5:30 PM “Performance, Sound and Furies: A Performance of Die Ursonate and Other Lautgedichten” Contemporary poet Christian Bök of Calgary University performs Dada sound poems

by Kurt Schwitters and other early 20th century modernists along with his own poetry. Free and open to the general public. Yale University Art Gallery (1111 Chapel St.).

SCIENCE HILL BY SPENCER KATZ

y SUBMIT YOUR EVENTS ONLINE yaledailynews.com/events/submit DOONESBURY BY GARRY TRUDEAU

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CLASSIFIEDS

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Edged out 5 Haka dancers of New Zealand 10 NetZero, e.g., briefly 13 South American chain 15 36-year Senator Hatch of Utah 16 Neither partner 17 Reached an agreement 19 Civil War nickname 20 Bordeaux buddy 21 Mothers on a farm 22 “I’d like to say something” 23 Thoroughly evil 28 Laundromat lineup 29 Snug as a bug in a rug 30 Followers: Suf. 31 Doesn’t enunciate 33 Magazine VIPs 34 Very eager 38 Atty.’s group 41 Naval slammers 42 Peril 46 Rainy season 48 Family support group for some rehab patients 50 “My pleasure!”

53 Squeezes (out) 54 “__ Yankees” 55 California ball club, in sports crawl lines 56 Census datum 57 Sibling who stereotypically feels left out, and a hint to the little one hiding in 17-, 23-, 34- and 50Across 61 Having four sharps, in music 62 Bit of broccoli 63 Singer Tennessee __ Ford 64 Do simple math 65 Hal Prince’s record 21 66 Quaint oath DOWN 1 Rum brand with a cocktail named for it

CLASSICAL MUSIC 24 Hours a Day. 98.3 FM, and on the web at WMNR.org.

“Pledges accepted: 1-800345-1812” Tuesday is Opera night!

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CALL (203) 432-2424 OR E-MAIL BUSINESS@ YALEDAILYNEWS.COM

2/19/13

By C.C. Burnikel

2 Bewitches 3 “Fess up!”

4 Golf bag item 5 Choral work 6 Childish comeback 7 Bruin great Bobby 8 Part of most eyeglasses 9 Car owner’s pmt.

10 Having serious debts 11 Got serious 12 Docs-in-training 14 Herd member 18 Holds 22 Make a move 24 New Ager John 25 Letter-shaped fasteners 26 Haus husband 27 Pump name seen in Canada 31 Stretch 32 Fireplace fuel 35 Wind in the orchestra 36 Walked all over 37 Air__: Floridabased carrier 38 Memory malady 39 Shelf support 40 Took over, as territory

Monday’s Puzzle Solved

(c)2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

43 Hint 44 Horn of Africa country 45 Prepared for baking, as bread dough 47 French possessive 48 [Sigh!]

49 With 58-Down, judge in ’90s news

SUDOKU EASY

2/19/13

51 Not in a predictable way 52 Spills the beans 57 Rockies hrs.

58 See 49-Down 59 “The __ Patrick Show”: sports talk program 60 Centuries-long realm dissolved in 1806: Abbr.

3 9 2 4 8 5 2 3 1 8 5 6 1 3 3 1 7 6

8 6 1 7

1 2 6 4 9 7 9 7 5 4 5 8 2 4

5 4 1 9

PAGE 10

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WORLD

“When someone has cancer, the whole family and everyone who loves them does, too.”

TERRI CLARK CANADIAN COUNTRY MUSIC ARTIST

Kurdish refugees have mixed feelings about Syria

BY KARIN LAUB ASSOCIATED PRESS DOMIZ REFUGEE CAMP, Iraq — Syrian Kurds who fled their country’s civil war have mixed feelings about a future without Bashar Assad: They hope to win a measure of autonomy after the fall of the regime, but fear chaos and the rise of Islamists could instead make their lives worse.

More than 81,000 Syrian Kurds have found refuge in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region in recent months

and hundreds more arrive every day. Few seem in a rush to go home.

The Kurdistan Regional Government allows fellow Kurds from Syria to work and move freely in the three provinces of northern Iraq it controls. Some 30,000 refugees still live in a camp of tents and cinderblock shacks near the Syrian border, while the rest have found jobs and homes in towns across the autonomous region, some staying with relatives.

Even those struggling with the hardships of camp life say

they prefer to stay in Iraq after the fall of the regime, until they have a better idea how Islamists and other groups in the Sunni Arab-dominated Syrian opposition will deal with Kurds, Syria’s largest ethnic minority.

“If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over and there are problems in the future, we want to stay here,” said Faroush Fattah, a 28-year-old laborer from the northeastern Syrian town of Qamishli who arrived in the Domiz camp three months ago.

The refugees’ ambivalence about the upheaval in Syria is

Chavez returns to Venezuela

BY FABIOLA SANCHEZ AND IAN JAMES ASSOCIATED PRESS CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chavez returned to Venezuela early Monday after more than two months of treatment in Cuba following cancer surgery, his government said, triggering street celebrations by supporters who welcomed him home while he remained out of sight at Caracas’ military hospital.

C h a ve z ’s re t u r n wa s announced in a series of three messages on his Twitter account, the first of them reading: “We’ve arrived once again in our Venezuelan homeland. Thank you, my God!! Thank you, beloved nation!! We will continue our treatment here.”

They were the first messages to appear on Chavez’s Twitter account since Nov. 1.

“I’m clinging to Christ and trusting in my doctors and nurses,” another tweet on

Chavez’s account said. “Onward toward victory always!! We will live and we will triumph!!”

Vice President Nicolas Maduro said on television that Chavez arrived at 2:30 a.m. and was taken to the Dr. Carlos Arvelo Military Hospital in Caracas, where he will continue his treatment.

I’m clinging to Christ and trusting in my doctors and nurses.

HUGO CHAVEZ President, Venezuela Chavez’s announced return to Caracas came less than three days after the government released the first photos of the president in more than two months, showing him looking bloated and smiling alongside

his daughters. The government didn’t release any additional images of Chavez upon his arrival in Caracas, and unanswered questions remain about where he stands in a difficult and prolonged struggle with an undisclosed type of pelvic cancer.

Chavez was re-elected to a new six-year term in October, and his inauguration, originally scheduled for Jan. 10, was indefinitely postponed by lawmakers in a decision that the Supreme Court upheld despite complaints by the opposition. Some speculated that with Chavez back, he could finally be sworn in.

Government officials didn’t address that possibility.

Information Minister Ernesto Villegas broke into song on television early Friday, exclaiming: “He’s back, he’s back!”

“Bravo,” Villegas said, before state television employees joined him in the studio clapping and celebrating.

shared by Iraqi Kurdish leaders, who have carved out an increasingly prosperous quasi-state in the autonomous region, aided by an oil-fueled economic boom.

Kurdish autonomy in postAssad Syria, similar to the Iraqi model, could strengthen longstanding Kurdish demands for an independent homeland for the more than 25 million Kurds in parts of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq.

But the emergence of yet another autonomous Kurdish region would likely spook Turkey, a regional power that is key

to plans by Iraq’s Kurds to export their oil riches directly, if necessary without permission from the central Iraqi government.

Turkey is home to an estimated 15 million Kurds, some with self-rule aspirations, and has been battling Kurdish insurgents for nearly three decades.

Adding to Turkey’s concerns, the dominant Kurdish faction in Syria, the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, is seen as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, the leader of the armed rebellion in Turkey.

The president of Iraq’s Kurd-

ish region, Massoud Barzani, has tried to exert influence over Syrian Kurdish groups, presumably in part to protect his strategic relationship with Turkey. Last year, he helped form an umbrella group of Syrian Kurdish groups that includes the PYD and smaller factions loyal to him.

“Barzani has some sway over Syrian Kurds,” said Washington-based Turkey expert Soner Cagaptay. “He has been reaching out to a spectrum of Syrian Kurds, including the PYD, to stop the hostile rhetoric and attitude toward Turkey.”

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19 , 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 11

SPORTS

“To me, being the best means proving it in different countries and championships.”

CRISTIANO RONALDO, PORTUGUESE SOCCER PLAYER

Last home meet for the seniors

HENRY EHRENBERG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Tyler Pramer ’14, James McNelis ’16 and Aaron Seriff-Cullick ’13 swept the top three spots in the 1-meter diving event.

MEN’S SWIMMING FROM PAGE 12 edging out Lazris by 0.22 seconds. Kevin Stang ’16 rounded up the sweep with a thirdplace finish. Brian Clark ’16 and Paschall Davis ’14 continued the Bulldogs’ dominance, taking the top two spots in the 50-yard freestyle within 0.01 seconds of each other.

Brown (5–5, 2–5 Ivy) entered the meet off a win against Cornell, in which the Bears produced a strong performance by defeating the Big Red 178.50–121.50. Lovett noticed a difference in Brown’s performance compared to last Saturday’s matchup against Yale.

“They threw down some really fast times, so we were expecting it to be a bit closer than it was,” Lovett said. “The Brown team that faced Cornell and the Brown team that faced us really were two different teams.”

Lazris said he expected a better perfor-

mance from Brown in March at the Ivy League Championships.

For Lovett, and seniors Dominski and Seriff-Cullick, the meet was a perfect way to end their college swimming careers: with a win.

Although he will never again compete in the Robert J.H. Kiphuth Exhibition Pool, Lovett is hoping his best performance is still ahead of him.

“I’ve been doing this competitively since I was 11, and it’s kind of bittersweet to see it coming to an end,” he said. “But I’m still looking to put up one pretty solid showing at Ivies.”

The Elis will have two weeks to rest and train before heading to Providence, R.I., for the Ivy League Championships on March 7.

Contact DIONIS JAHJAGA at dionis.jahjaga@yale.edu .

Elis record season highs GYMNASTICS FROM PAGE 12 The Elis have increased their team score at each meet so far this season, setting another record at Saturday’s meet.

“We have a strong team this year,” Joyce Li ’15 said in an email to the News. “Scoring well was just a matter of consistency and focus, both of which have improved dramatically throughout the season.”

Li led the Elis in the individual all-around competition, placing second. Teammate Morgan Traina ’15 finished just behind Li in third place.

In individual events, Tara Feld ’13 set the tone of the meet with second-places finishes on the vault and in her floor routine, posting scores of 9.85 in both events. The team recorded no falls and hit season-highs on the vault, beam and floor routines, team captain Stephanie Goldstein ’13 said, but Feld fell on her bars routine. Goldstein and Li both expressed admiration for how Feld was able to bounce back from her mishap. Feld went on to receive a 9.625 on the beam, which was good for seventh place.

“As a team, we always try to envision each event as very separate,” Goldstein said. Li added that since Feld was the first Eli to perform on the beam, she helped to set a positive tone for her teammates for that round.

Yale showed great balance in both the team and individual all-around competitions. The Elis displayed all-around dominance by taking second through fifth place in the individual allaround. In addition, at least one Eli finished in the top four of each event in the team competition.

Goldstein said that there is no one event that is the team’s specialty, but that they instead are solid in every event.

“It shows that our team has

PHILIPP ARNDT/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Joyce Li ’15 led the Bulldogs by finishing second in the individual allaround competition. gymnasts who can compete allaround,” Goldstein said.

As Saturday’s invitational was Yale’s final regular-season meet, Goldstein and Li said that the Elis look strong going into the meet that will decide the Ivy League champion. The Ivy Classic will take place in Payne Whitney Gymnasium, and the Elis are hoping for a home-field advantage. “[Our performance] is really

exactly where we want to be,” Goldstein said. “It helps that the Ivy meet’s at home. We treated this past meet sort of like a dress rehearsal.”

Yale will look to vault to the top of the Ivy League when the Ivy Classic kicks off at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 23.

Contact CHARLES CONDRO at charles.condro@yale.edu .

Bulldogs crush the Bears and the Colonials, but fall to archrival Crimson MEN’S TENNIS FROM PAGE 12 despite losing to No. 47 Harvard in the first round, with an upset over No. 61 Brown and a win against unranked George Washington. Last year in the ECAC Championship, Yale suffered three losses to Columbia, Harvard and Princeton.

“We wanted to go into ECACs and really prove ourselves against the other teams,” John Huang ’13 said. “We haven’t had the greatest success at this tournament over the past few years, and we did a great job of battling and proving our talent over the course of the weekend.”

The first round of play pitted the Elis against archrival Harvard. Harvard was able to clinch the win 4–2 after Yale dropped the doubles point early on. Yale’s No. 2 and No. 3 doubles teams were both defeated 8–5.

The only two wins for the Elis came at the No. 2 and No. 3 singles positions. Veteran Marc Powers ’13 and team captain Daniel Hoffman ’13 each won in three

sets apiece. Powers recovered from a set lost in a tiebreaker to end his match 6–7, 6–3, 6–1.

“Marc had a fantastic weekend,” Hoffman said. “He is very talented and has been working really hard this semester. He has really committed himself, and I’m glad that his work is paying off.”

We proved to the league that we are a legitimate threat at all positions.

MARC POWERS ’13 Men’s tennis team Powers followed up his victory with an easy 6–0, 6–1 win at No. 2 against Brown’s Soufiane Azargui on Saturday. By winning the doubles point in a close competition, the Bulldogs were able to pull off a win 4–3. Yale’s top three singles players, Huang, Powers and Hoffman, stepped up to fin-

ish the Bears off.

Early the next morning Yale went up against George Washington for the consolation title.

The match format flipped on the last day, and singles went before doubles. Yale stepped up with a 4–0 sweep victory and ended the match play early. Powers finished the weekend with a perfect 3–0 singles record and was the only Bulldog to go undefeated all weekend.

“This weekend proves that we are on the right path,” Powers said. “We proved to the league that we are a legitimate threat at all positions, and we proved to ourselves that we have a real chance at taking home the title this year.”

After a weekend off at home, the Bulldogs will host three teams at the Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center on March 2 and 3: Fairleigh Dickinson, Marist and Stony Brook. Yale still remains undefeated at home.

Contact ADLON ADMAS at adlon.adams@yale.edu .

MARIA ZEPEDA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Marc Powers ’13 finished the weekend with a 3–0 singles record and was the only Eli to go undefeated.

Successful exhibition matches against Quinnipiac and Tufts MEN’S LACROSSE FROM PAGE 12

SARA MILLER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Elis will dive into the regular season on Feb. 23 when they head to New York to take on St. John’s.

tal mistakes, and the players did just that.

“Ultimately that’s what we wanted to accomplish,” Shay said.

“We played with more urgency on defense, we communicated more on offense, and played a little harder overall.”

The Elis also overcame adversity in adjusting to the new NCAA lacrosse regulations in their first exhibition matches. The most notable differences in the rules are the absence of a horn for substitutions and a modification to restarts, in which players no longer have to come to a complete stop before resuming play.

McCormack noticed a change in the pace of the game due to the new rules, which he believes can aid the Bulldogs in their transition game.

“The new rules and regulations definitely speed up the game,” McCormack said. “We’ve been

known to get up and down in transition, so I think that the new rules will actually serve as an advantage to us.”

Contributions from the freshman class were evident over the weekend. McCormack praised midfielder Jon Reese’s ’16 success on face-offs and Michael Quinn’s ’16 wing play.

Shay also commended junior midfielders Dylan Levings ’14 and Alexander Otero’s ’14 for their performance in the face-off circle.

The Bulldogs will dive into regular season competition on Feb. 23 when they head to New York to take on the St. John’s Red Storm, whom the Elis have defeated in the past two season openers. After last year’s Ivy Tournament Title, the Elis are looking for another fruitful season.

The face-off at St. John’s will be at 1 p.m. this Saturday.

Contact ASHTON WACKYM at ashton.wackym@yale.edu .

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SOCCER Man Utd 2 Reading 1

NBA ALL-STARS West 143 East 138

SPORTS QUICK HITS

MEN’S LACROSSE SEASON STARTS The No. 17 Yale men’s lacrosse team will kick off its season this Saturday at St. John’s. The Bulldogs won the 2012 Ivy tournament title and made their first NCAA appearance in 20 years last season. The team defeated the Red Storm 19–6 last year.

THE IVY LEAGUE CELEBRATES BLACK HISTORY MONTH The Ivy League is taking a different spin to mark the monthlong celebration of African-American culture. Sixteen student-athletes will offer their insights on the African-American ideal from their viewpoints as the future leaders of the next generation.

NHL Colorado 6 Nashville 5

y

NHL Philadelphia 7 New York 0

NCAAM Notre Dame 51 Pittsburgh 42

FOR MORE SPORTS CONTENT, VISIT OUR WEB SITE yaledailynews.com/sports

“I’m still looking to put up one pretty solid showing at Ivies.”

JARED LOVETT ’13 CAPTAIN, MEN’S SWIMMING

YALE DAILY NEWS · TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

Milestone for Bulldogs on Senior Night MEN’S SWIMMING

HENRY EHRENBERG/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Bulldogs secured the best win-loss record Yale has seen since 2004 on Saturday after defeating the Brown Bears 213–86.

BY DIONIS JAHJAGA CONTRIBUTING REPORTER In the last home meet for the seniors on the men’s swimming and diving team — team captain Jared Lovett ’13, Mike Dominski ’13 and Aaron Seriff-Culick ’13 — the Bulldogs secured the best win-loss record Yale has seen

since 2004, defeating the Brown Bears 213–86 on Saturday.

Despite the significance of Senior Night, the Elis (8–2, 5–2 Ivy) said they treated the meet like any other.

“Most of our attention was going toward the meet, rather than something nostalgic,” Mike Lazris ’15 said.

Yale finishes 5th at ECAC

The Elis gained momentum after a quick start. Tyler Pramer ’14, James McNelis ’16 and Seriff-Cullick swept the top three spots in the 1-meter diving event to open up the meet.

Seriff-Cullick delivered strong performances in his final home meet at Yale, producing careerhigh scores in the 1-meter and

3-meter events, with 272.18 and 302.70.

“I definitely came to play, especially as it was my last chance to compete at home,” Seriff-Cullick said. “But I also can’t take all the credit. I had so much support from the team, and from my coach, and from my friends, and with their support I was able

to give it my all.”

The Elis rode the momentum into the 200-yard medley relay, taking the top two spots. Yale’s “B” team of Dominski, Jake Goldstein ’16, Ed Becker ’14 and Paschall Davis ’14 performed admirably, coming in just 0.01 seconds behind Yale’s “A” team of Lazris, Andrew Heymann ’15, Alwin Fir-

mansyah ’15 and Pat Killian ’14.

From there, the Elis would not stop, taking two of the top three spots in 13 of the final 14 events, including three more sweeps of the top three spots.

Dominski placed first in the 100-yard backstroke in 50.50, SEE MEN’S SWIMMING PAGE 11

Elis begin season with scrimmages

BY ASHTON WACKYM STAFF REPORTER While the No. 17 Yale men’s lacrosse team will open up regular season competition next weekend, the snow interrupted the team’s preseason scrimmage schedule.

MEN’S LACROSSE The Bulldogs were originally set to play Le Moyne on Feb. 9, but the severe weather made it impossible for the Dolphins to travel to Yale. As a result, after taking on Division-III Tufts on Sunday, Yale took on Quinnipiac for a scrimmage later that day. While the Elis defeated the Quinnipiac Bobcats 11–3, they tied Tufts 10–10. The Bulldogs were leading the Jumbos 10–5 at the half, before removing their starters.

Head coach Andy Shay said the team found early success on face-offs and on wing play but struggled with a few mental errors against Tufts, which came in the form of missed ground balls and lack of communication.

“I think that our biggest weakness [on Sunday] came in the form of mental mistakes,” captain Michael McCormack ’13 said. “However, after we watched film and finely tuned some things in between games, we came out against Quinnipiac and were able to correct a lot of the mental errors that we had previously made.”

While the lack of a normal practice at Reese Stadium due to the snow storm inhibited the Elis’ ability to address areas on which they otherwise would have concentrated, Shay said the teams’ goal for the weekend was to correct its menSEE MEN’S LACROSSE PAGE 11

SARA MILLER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Elis defeated the Quinnipiac Bobcats 11–3 and tied Tufts 10–10 on Sunday.

Gymnastics breaks team score record MARIA ZEPEDA/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

After losing to No. 47 Harvard, the Elis went on to clinch fifth place over the weekend.

BY ADLON ADAMS STAFF REPORTER The unranked Yale men’s tennis team overcame a low seed to place fifth at the ECAC Men’s Indoor Tennis Team Championship in Ithaca, N.Y., over the weekend.

MEN’S TENNIS

BY CHARLES CONDRO STAFF REPORTER In its final meet before the Ivy Classic next weekend, the women’s gymnastics team turned in a consistent performance to clinch second place in the Bulldog Invitational on Saturday.

GYMNASTICS

Going into the tournament, the Bulldogs received the No. 7 seed out of eight teams competing, seven of which come from the Ivy League. Yale was able to clinch fifth place

Bridgeport took home first place with a score of 194.725 to top the Elis (191.325). They were followed by West Chester (186.000) and Springfield (182.050).

SEE MEN’S TENNIS PAGE 11

SEE GYMNASTICS PAGE 11

TOP ’DOG

PHILIPP ARNDT/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Yale gymnastics team turned in a consistent performance to clinch second place in the Bulldog Invitational.

MARC POWERS ’13 WAS THE ONLY PLAYER ON THE YALE MEN’S TENNIS TEAM TO REMAIN UNDEFEATED DURING THE ECAC INDOOR TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP OVER THE WEEKEND. HE TOOK DOWN OPPONENTS FROM HARVARD, BROWN AND GEORGE WASHINGTON IN A 3–0 WINNING STREAK.