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Light & Verity
October
2000
Hope
for Addicts From an Ancient Source
According to federal
statistics, nearly two million people in the U.S. abuse cocaine, which is one
of the hardest drug habits to break. But research at Yale suggests that the ancient
Chinese medical practice known as acupuncture may offer a safe and effective way
to overcome addiction.
In a study published
in the August issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, a
team of Medical School investigators, led by Arthur Margolin, a
research scientist in psychiatry, demonstrated that auricular acupuncture,
a technique in which four needles were inserted into a portion of
the ear, helped significantly more people remain cocaine-free than
did other treatment methods. The researchers examined 82 cocaine
addicts, about 60 percent of whom were male and whose mean age was
37, who were enrolled in a methodone-maintenance program to combat
heroin addiction. One group received acupuncture; a second group
was treated with "sham" acupuncture -- the needles were inserted
in a place on the ear that was not considered an effective site -- and
a third group received a no-needle relaxation treatment.
All were subjected
to thrice-weekly urine tests, and at the end of the eight-week investigation,
53.8 percent of the acupuncture group were found to be free of cocaine. By contrast,
only 23.5 percent of the sham-acupuncture group and 9.1 percent of the relaxation
therapy group had no traces of cocaine in their bodies.
While nobody knows
how the acupuncture treatment might work, the Margolin investigation is the first
to provide solid scientific evidence that corroborates the success that other
drug clinics have already reported with acupuncture, particularly when it is used
in concert with other techniques. "Our study shows that alternative therapies
can be combined with the arsenal of Western treatments for fighting addiction,"
said Margolin.
A
Green Guide to Things Blue
In
cities throughout the world, you can often spot a tourist by the
telltale Michelin Green Guide sticking out of a pocket or backpack.
Now, there is a Green
Guide to Yale and New Haven.
The 96-page book,
which is Michelin's first guide to a college campus, includes information
on hotels, restaurants, transportation, and the history of Yale
and New Haven. Also included are walking tours of the campus, the
Green, and Wooster Square. The idea for the guide emerged from Yale's
Tercentennial committee, which in 1997 discussed publishing a campus
guide that would be, in Secretary Linda
Koch Lorimer's words, "as much like the Michelin Green Guides
as possible without infringing on their intellectual property rights."
When committee member and history professor Robin Winks suggested
they approach Michelin themselves, the plan was launched.
When Yale offered
to supply text and photos for the guide, Michelin was convinced, and a print run
of 25,000 was released this summer. The guide sells for $14.95; Michelin is donating
one dollar from every sale to New Haven Reads, a local initiative to promote literacy.
Hospital
Assumes Control of YPI
On June 23, the
Yale Psychiatric Institute ended its 65-year run as a freestanding hospital. In
an agreement with the University, Yale-New Haven Hospital absorbed YPI into its
psychiatric department and took over the Institute's building at Cedar and Congress
Streets.
Dr. William Sledge,
medical director of YNHH's expanded psychiatric department, says the consolidation
was necessary because of the increasing complexity of the healthcare business.
"The University is not set up to run a hospital. It doesn't have the infrastructure
to deal with the complex administrative issues." Sledge also says that because
of its small size, YPI "had no clout" and was unable to negotiate favorable rates
with insurers, leading to annual deficits in the millions of dollars.
Yale
unions vigorously fought the proposal, since it involved replacing
YPI's unionized employees with nonunion hospital employees ("Light
& Verity," May). In trying to persuade state regulators to reject
the proposal, the unions argued that the change would compromise
patient care. They also objected to the hospital's proposal to provide
fewer total beds under the new arrangement than the hospital and
YPI had operated separately. The state granted approval for the
consolidation, but required the hospital to maintain more beds than
it had proposed.
Papers
Offer Peeks Inside the Law
Scholars
on the trail of subjects ranging from James Fenimore Cooper to the
Dalkon Shield may soon find clues at Yale, thanks to an unusual
gift from one of America's oldest law firms. The New York firm of
Cadwalader,
Wickersham, and Taft, founded in 1792, recently gave its archive
of case files -- some 300 boxes, dating back to 1803 -- to the
Manuscripts and Archives division of Sterling Memorial Library.
While Yale already
has strong holdings in legal history, they consist mainly of papers given by individual
attorneys. Cadwalader's gift is the first set of papers given by an entire firm.
"I don't know of any comparable gift of lawyers' papers," says Robert Gordon,
a professor at the Law School who specializes in legal history. "Most firms destroy
them as a matter of routine to make room for new records."
One of New York's
most prominent corporate firms, Cadwalader has a history that includes landmark
cases and work for the famous and socially prominent. The firm and its principals
were instrumental in the crafting of antitrust law in the early 1900s, and its
past client list includes Astors, Vanderbilts (the firm represented Gloria Vanderbilt's
trust in the famous 1934 custody case), Margaret Mitchell, and W.C. Handy. The
firm also represented the class-action plaintiffs in the landmark 1980s lawsuit
over the Dalkon Shield birth control device.
Gordon says the papers
will help illuminate areas of the law that seldom end up in the public record.
"It is in lawyers' advice to clients that the law is made real and effective,"
he explains. "A large part of a law firm's job is keeping the client out of court.
So the real gold is in the day-to-day interaction between lawyers and clients."
Milestone
Map For Ribosomes
In
an accomplishment with important evolutionary and medical implications,
Yale molecular biochemists Thomas Steitz, Peter Moore, and their
colleagues have developed the most detailed map to date of the structure
of the ribosome, the site in the cell where genetic information
is used to manufacture the proteins required for life. The scientists
described their findings in two extensive articles in the August
11 issue of the journal Science, and in an accompanying commentary,
Thomas Cech, who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for chemistry with
Sterling Professor of Biology
Sidney Altman, hailed the work as a "milestone" of fundamental research.
Cech and Altman were
honored for their discovery that the genetic material called RNA could both convey
information and help carry out chemical reactions. Using a process called x-ray
crystallography, the Steitz-Moore team built on this finding to describe the precise
molecular landscape where proteins are assembled.
"You can't have life
as we know it without the ribosome, and clearly RNA was the central player in
the origin of life before there were proteins," says Steitz, the Eugene Higgins
Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry.
But the discovery
may also give pharmaceutical researchers an important tool for the development
of a new strategy called structure-based drug design. "The ribosome is a major
target for antibiotics," says Steitz, "and there are hundreds of compounds that
kill bacterial cells by stopping protein synthesis."
However, resistance
to antibiotics is growing, and the medical community is worried that if this trend
continues, bacterial infections could re-emerge as a significant cause of death.
"Drug development has often been a matter of shooting in the dark," says Steitz.
"But because we can now see how antibiotics bind to the ribosome, we should be
able to design molecules to fit its cracks and crevices in new ways and help avoid
the problem of resistance."
Are
AP Classes the Road to Success?
In
the 1987 movie Stand
and Deliver, an inspiring inner-city teacher led an unlikely
group of students to success in an advanced-placement (AP) math
class. The movie, based on the true story of teacher Jaime Escalante,
helped spark a movement to increase the number of and enrollment
in AP classes across the country. But a study by physics professor emeritus William Lichten, a
fellow at Yale's Institution of Social and Policy Studies, suggests
that the Stand and Deliver story is none too common, and
that increasing the budget for AP classes may not be the best use
of education money.
In AP classes, high
school students are taught college-level material with the goal of allowing them
to pass the College Board's AP exams and earn college credit. But this spring,
Lichten published in Educational Psychology Review the results of a study indicating
that the vast majority of students in inner city schools are unlikely to pass
the AP exams. Lichten came to this conclusion by examining the Preliminary Scholastic
Aptitude Test (PSAT) scores of the inner city students. Lichten says that the
College Board, which administers both the PSAT and the AP exams, has data that
show that PSAT scores are an effective predictor of performance on the AP exam.
Lichten followed up the article with another arguing that the College Board's
scoring of the exams is inflated, and that the scale should be adjusted.
Lichten's study was
quickly condemned by the College Board and by public education officials, particularly
in Connecticut, where Lichten's article was published just as the state received
a $516,000 federal grant to provide AP courses in low-income school districts.
"We believe that all students are capable of high academic achievement," said
state Department of Education spokesman Tom Murphy.
But Lichten says
students without a demonstrated aptitude are unlikely to benefit
from AP courses without an exceptional effort like Escalante's,
which "only happens once in a while and is not likely to recur in
American education." Indeed, his study says, six years after the events depicted in Stand and Deliver, the number of students
passing the AP calculus test at Escalante's school had shrunk from
85 to 19.
Different
Angles On the Frontier
More
than three centuries have passed since Connecticut was part of the
American frontier. Still, some of the best scholarship on the American
frontier experience has come out of the urbane halls of Yale, much
of it the work of former President and Sterling Professor Emeritus of History
Howard Lamar. Now, in
order to build on Lamar's work, the University has established the
Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders.
"It is a way of making
permanent Yale's commitment to the study of frontiers, borders, and the American
West," says Jay Gitlin, a lecturer in history and the new center's executive coordinator.
"We're about adding resources to an existing strength."
The Lamar Center
will hold an annual conference in addition to lectures and other events. Its inaugural event, held September 8 and 9, featured a
lecture by history professor Robin Winks and a panel discussion
on America's national park system. The center will also provide
research and travel grants to graduate and undergraduate students, and may support graduate and postgraduate
students who are studying frontiers and borders.
While
other universities have centers devoted to the study of the American
West, Yale's will look at the frontier as a worldwide historical
and cultural phenomenon, just as Lamar did in his book Frontiers
in History, a comparative treatment of the American and South
African frontiers. The Center's organizers believe that studying
the frontier is of special importance to a more global, multicultural
world. "A lot of us feel that Americans need a new history to take
us into the 21st century," says history professor John Mack Faragher,
the Center's academic director. "Frontier history could be that
history, as it's about negotiating borders and complex cultures.
Howard was one of the originators of that idea."
The Center's initial
funding comes from Roland W. Betts '68, a member of the Yale Corporation and a
part-time resident of Santa Fe with a special interest in the West.
A
Wordless Twelfth Night
You
don't read the script for Trumbull College dean Peter Novak's new
production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. You watch it.
Novak, a doctoral candidate at the School of Drama, recently led
a 16-month project to translate the play into American
Sign Language (ASL). The production, which features a cast of
13 actors -- seven of them deaf -- had its premiere last month
in Philadelphia.
Because ASL is a
language of its own, with its own syntax and structure, the translation is more
complex than simply substituting signed words for spoken ones. Novak and the team
that helped translate the play had to come up with ways to restate Shakespeare's
words as elegantly and expressively as he wrote them. Because the audience was
not expected to know ASL, the production included actors at the side of the stage
speaking Shakespeare's lines as the actors on stage signed them.
The "script"
for the production is a CD-ROM of video segments that Novak made
with a grant from Yale's Digital
Media Center for the Arts. Actors learned their lines by reviewing
the CD-ROM. (Samples from the script can be viewed at the project's
Web site, www.yale.edu/asl12night.)
Another
Kind of Horse Power
Most denizens of University
housing move out in the summer. Among the exceptions -- along with college masters
and officers of the University -- are Pete, Gracie, and Dakota, three good-natured
horses who live at the Yale Equestrian Center at the athletic fields. They stay
behind for summer school: Some 50 children between the ages of 5 and 15 come for
a week-long riding camp, which is one of the summer programs run by the athletics
department.
The goals of the
riding camp, according to director Anne Gallant, vary with the students. With
younger children, she says, "I want them to be confident around horses and learn
basic safety. They learn to walk and trot. With the older kids, it varies, because
there are different levels of experience." Gallant says the summer program often
inspires riders to continue with the riding lessons she offers at the Equestrian
Center throughout the year.
Gallant
came to Yale through an unusual sequence of events. While she was
a horse lover from childhood, she spent 12 years as an attorney
before leaving the law to pursue a master's degree in therapeutic
recreation at the University of Connecticut. In 1996, she started
a program called Leg
Up, which teaches at-risk youth ages 9 to 16 about horses. The
program started in a barn in Guilford, but within a year New Haven
mayor John DeStefano Jr. made arrangements with Yale to move the
program to the city, where many of the youths in the program live.
In the Leg Up program, which is housed at Yale but raises its own
funds, about 45 boys and girls who have had run-ins with the juvenile
justice system come to the Equestrian Center weekly for a two-hour
session in which they learn to ride and care for the horses. "It's
all about basic life skills: self-esteem, the ability to communicate,"
says Gallant. "It's great for these kids to see that this large,
strong animal is willing to listen to them. They learn about anger
management, impulse control, and their ability to nurture."
Besides Leg Up, the
summer camp, and the riding lessons, Gallant also operates a program called Star
Riders that puts people with autism in contact with horses. After a lifetime with
the animals, Gallant has seen what horses can do for the soul. "This is just such
powerful medicine," she says.  |
