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Light & Verity
November
2001
$15
Million For "Next Step" in Genome Research
In
September, Yale became one of the first two universities to receive
a much sought-after, five-year, $15 million grant from the National
Human Genome Research Institute to set up a Center of Excellence
in Genomic Science. (The University of Washington was the other
recipient.) Yale's CEGS principal investigator, Michael
Snyder, who chairs the department
of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology, says that
the purpose of the program is to develop new technologies that will
be used to understand the vast amount of data that has come from
the recently completed Human
Genome Project.
"We
have finished sequencing the genome, so we have what amounts to
a dictionary," says Snyder. "The next step is to try to figure out
how the words are put into sentences."
At the Center, Snyder and his colleagues, who include biologists
Sherman M. Weissman, Richard P. Lifton, Mark Gerstein, and Perry
L. Miller, will be determining how certain key genes and groups
of genes are turned on and regulated. Understanding regulatory processes
is critical in research that is aimed at combatting cancer, a disease
whose hallmark is often cellular regulation gone awry, says Snyder.
"Mapping out DNA and seeing where the regulatory areas are located
and how they work will help us design better cancer treatments."
Snyder explains that one of the most important tools that Yale's
CEGS will use was invented in his laboratory by Christine Horak,
a current graduate student in molecular, cellular, and developmental
biology, to study the genetic structure of yeast, which, like the
fruit fly, is a key organism in this kind of research. "Our goal
is to focus on developing new technologies that will ultimately
have a strong impact in the fight against cancer and other human
diseases," says Snyder.
Elm
City Housing Market Heats Up
The
recent economic downturn notwithstanding, New Haven has been enjoying
a renewal over the past few years that has both town and gown smiling.
But those looking to live in the city are beginning to discover
the down side of urban uplift. Incoming graduate students and junior
faculty are finding higher housing prices -- if they can find a
place to live at all.
In late September, there was only one single-family house on the
market in East Rock, a neighborhood north of campus favored by Yale
students and faculty. Real estate agent Betsy Grauer says the lack
of inventory in the city is driving up prices. "Many junior faculty
have been priced out of the New Haven market," says Grauer, adding
that the house-hunters are looking to Hamden or other nearby suburban
communities.
The increased popularity of urban living is one reason for the higher
prices, although real estate agents say New Haven is also attracting
new residents from the shoreline suburbs to the east of the city.
(Some people in those communities fear massive traffic problems
when the bridge that carries Interstate 95 over New Haven Harbor
is rebuilt beginning next year.)
The tight market is not affecting only those who wish to buy. Rents
are also up after being stable for many years, in part because some
rental units are leaving the market. "People have been buying multi-family
homes and turning them into single-family homes," says Grauer, "so
there has been some dimunition in the rental stock."
Lisa Brandes, director of the McDougal
Center at the Graduate School, says graduate and professional
students are paying more for housing. "The low rents are gone in
the desirable areas," says Brandes. "The availability is still there,
but you have to look to a higher price range or move farther out."
Brandes says that the University's own graduate housing is full.
Will the strong housing market begin to affect Yale's ability to
compete for students and faculty? Grauer doesn't think so, given
the fact that Yale's peer institutions are mostly in pricier markets.
"New Haven still looks like a great value compared with other cities,"
she says.
A
Promising AIDS Vaccine?
More
than 300 years ago, cows played a role in the development of the
first vaccine -- vacca, in Latin, means cow -- against smallpox,
and in the modern battle against AIDS, cattle may again prove important.
At the first international AIDS
vaccine conference in Philadelphia in September, Yale School
of Medicine biologists John and Nina Rose announced that they had
successfully tested a new vaccine in rhesus monkeys that worked
against simian HIV, a variety of the virus similar to the one which
causes the disease that has killed more than 22 million people around
world. The raw material for the substance is a weakened form of
vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), a microbe that infects cows, horses,
and, occasionally, humans, and results in a relatively mild illness.
The Roses, who are married but had never conducted research together,
created their vaccine by stitching AIDS genes into the genetic code
of VSV. This was delivered by injection, as oral drops, or as a
nasal spray into seven healthy rhesus monkeys, each of which was
then infected with the simian AIDS virus. Eight monkeys, which were
also deliberately infected, received none of the experimental vaccine.
While all of the animals eventually carried HIV, seven of the eight
unvaccinated monkeys developed full-blown AIDS. However, more than
a year after infection, none of the vaccinated animals showed symptoms
of the disease. The vaccine apparently boosted the recipients' immune
systems enough to prevent the onset of the fatal illness.
"We
think it is likely this could be an effective AIDS vaccine in humans,"
says John Rose, professor of pathology and cell biology and senior
author of a paper on the work that was published in the September
issue of the journal Cell. It might be especially useful in developing countries, he explained,
because "it does not require multiple injections."
There are more than a dozen different AIDS vaccine candidates in
the development pipeline. Wyeth Lederle Vaccines, a unit of American
Home Products, has purchased the license to begin testing the Yale-developed
substance in humans, a painstaking and often frustrating process
that can take several years or more before a final approval is issued
by the US Food and Drug Administration. "In an emergency situation
like this, especially in the developing world, I think the whole
process of vaccine approval should be accelerated," said Rose.
Local
Pastor Seeks Corporation Post
When
David Lee '93MDiv was a first-year student at the Divinity School,
his nephew was shot and killed at a drug-dealing spot in Newhallville,
just down Prospect Hill from the School. Recalls Lee: "I said to
my fellow students, 'What are we doing up on this hill when people
are dying on the streets?' I vowed that if I could ever make a difference
in Yale's relationship with the community, I would."
Ten years later, Lee, a native of Ansonia who went to Syracuse on
a football scholarship, is the pastor of the Varick Memorial AME
Church on Dixwell Avenue, and he is trying to make good on his vow
by mounting a petition campaign to be elected an alumni fellow of
the Yale
Corporation. As a representative of the New Haven community,
Lee says he wants Yale to accept more responsibility for the welfare
of its home city.
The Corporation, Yale's governing body, includes ten "successor
fellows" chosen by the Corporation itself and six fellows elected
by alumni to serve six-year terms. Candidates for alumni fellow
are almost always chosen by a standing committee of the Association
of Yale Alumni, but a candidate may be placed on the ballot
if he or she gathers signatures from 3 percent of the alumni electorate.
(This method has been employed only twice, in 1964 and 1965 by William
Horowitz '29, who was elected on his second try and became the Corporation's
first Jewish fellow.) Lee delivered 4,870 signatures to the AYA
on the October 1 deadline, substantially more than the 3,252 required.
If the AYA determines that enough of the signatures are valid, Lee
will appear on the ballot next spring along with the candidates
nominated by the committee.
Lee's quest is also unusual in that he is actively campaigning for
the job. He sent promotional material to 120,000 alumni in support
of his petition drive, and he plans to do more such mailings before
the election. (He has also set up a Web site at www.yalealum.org.)
But Lee is not doing it alone: His first mailing was paid for by
Yale labor unions,
of which he is a longtime supporter. A better deal for Yale's unions
is part of his platform, along with increased Yale support for New
Haven schools. "Yale has done so much for New Haven," he says, "but
there's so much more we can do."
WYBC:
On Air But Off Campus
For
55 years, aspiring disk jockeys, radio technicians and managers
have learned their fundamentals in WYBC's office and studio on the
first floor of Hendrie Hall. But in October, the station moved off
campus and across the Green to a commercial building at 142 Temple
Street after being forced out of its space by the University.
The move was precipitated by Yale's decision to renovate Hendrie
for the exclusive use of the School of Music. The Associated
Student Agencies, which also occupy space in Hendrie, will probably
move to another campus location, but administrators said that no
University space could be found for WYBC, which paid no rent for
its space in Hendrie. The University argues that the station is
not a traditional undergraduate organization, since it has paid
non-student employees and an advertising sales agreement with Cox
Broadcasting, and that it can afford to pay for its own space.
WYBC general manager Katherine Kunz '03 says that having to move
was "upsetting" for the station, and that having to pay rent for
the first time will cause them financial difficulties. But Kunz
also says the new space -- which includes offices, four studios,
and advanced equipment -- will make for a better station. "There
are more options for people here now," she says. "And the excitement
is great."
To help pay its rent, the station renegotiated its contract with
Cox, agreeing to drop its hip-hop programming in favor of more mainstream
urban music. For the past several years, WYBC-FM has been broadcasting
a syndicated "urban contemporary" format with little on-air involvement
by students. But in 1998 WYBC bought an AM
station in order to give students an opportunity to produce
their own shows and get on-air exposure.
A
Practical Take On Intelligence
For
many years, researchers have been puzzled by the frequent gap between
high scores on standard intelligence tests and success in life.
Robert Sternberg, the IBM Professor
of Psychology and Education, believes he knows why.
"The
problem is that traditional IQ and other tests of academic intelligence
are too narrow," says Sternberg, who directs the Psychology of Abilities,
Competencies, and Expertise (PACE)
Center at Yale, which was dedicated in February.
Instead of attempting to measure such abstractions as IQ, Sternberg
has developed a way to test what he calls "practical intelligence,"
the kind of common-sense savvy that characterizes people who excel
in a wide variety of fields, from carpenters and musicians to athletes
and business professionals.
In recent studies, Sternberg and psychologist Elena Grigorenko,
the PACE Center's deputy director, examined the relationship among
three aspects of intelligence -- the analytical, creative, and practical
-- and the ability of people in rural Kenya and urban Russia to
cope with their environment.
In the Kenya study, published in the journal Intelligence 29, Sternberg compared the scores of 85 schoolchildren on typical academic
tests with their knowledge of local plants that were useful in making
herbal medicines. "Ninety-five percent of these kids have parasitic
infections, so this kind of practical intelligence is serious stuff,"
says Sternberg, who found a negative correlation between tests that
predict success in school and the plant test, which measures a kind
of life-and-death common sense.
"For
many people, spending time developing academic skills is lost time,"
says Sternberg, who has argued for a broader view of intelligence.
Indeed, a study of 452 Russian women and 293 men, coauthored with
Grigorenko and also published in Intelligence 29, suggests
that practical intelligence predicts both physical and mental well-being.
The researchers administered tests to men and women between the
ages of 26 and 60 who were from the Russian city of Veronezh. Sternberg
and Grigorenko were interested in the relative importance of various
aspects of intelligence in adapting to the rapidly changing environment
of the post-Soviet Union era. Of the three types, they found that
the practical variety was the best predictor of success.
"We
now know that children and adults have important skills that traditional
intelligence tests don't reflect," says Sternberg.
Turning
to the "Tobin Tax"
Many
people may dream of having their names live on in history, but being
the eponym for a new type of tax probably isn't what they have in
mind. Nevertheless, Sterling Professor
Emeritus of Economics James
Tobin is proud to be the father of the "Tobin
tax" that is gaining new interest in Europe. He just wishes
his idea wasn't so intimately associated with forces opposed to
globalization and free trade.
Tobin, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1972, developed the
idea for the tax in 1978 as a response to what he calls "unproductive"
speculation in world currency markets. He proposed that nations
levy a small (less than 1 percent) tax on currency exchanges to
discourage such speculation. The idea did not go far at the time,
but the recent volatility of currency markets has caused governments
to take another look at the tax. The premiers of France and Germany
have endorsed the idea, and European Union finance ministers gave
it serious consideration at their most recent meeting.
The tax has also become a cause celebre for opponents of
the new global economy such as those who disrupted World Trade Organization
meetings in Seattle and Davos. Anti-globalization groups say it
would raise money to aid developing countries and, as the French taxe-Tobin advocacy group ATTAC
says, "put sand in the gears of speculation."
Tobin still stands behind his idea, but he has gone to great pains
in recent months to distance himself from his admirers. "I'm an economist, and like most economists an advocate of free trade,"
Tobin told Der
Spiegel. "Moreover, I support the International Monetary
Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization -- everything
that these movements are attacking. They're misusing my name." Tobin
says the tax's stabilizing influence on the global economy -- not
the revenue it would provide for international development -- is
its most important feature.
Frisbee
Teams Uphold "Spirit of the Game"
Not so long ago, the idea of a collegiate frisbee team was absurd enough to inspire a parody article in the pages of this magazine
by humorist Calvin Trillin '57. In November 1970, Trillin wrote
of a fictional Yale team concerned about injuries, the big game
with Hobart, and the "controversial M-wing formation defense." But
whether Trillin knew it or not, a real sport called ultimate
frisbee was being developed at just that time. It would surely
only be a matter of time before "ultimate" spread to the University
whose students first had the idea of tossing Mrs. Frisbie's pie
tins for fun.
Unlike Trillin's imagined squad of disc-hurling Frank Merriwells,
though, Yale's real ultimate teams reflect the decidedly countercultural
nature of the sport. The differences start with the team's names:
No Bulldogs are to be found on the ultimate field. The men's team
is called Superfly,
the women's team Ramona, after the children's
book heroine. (Both teams are among the 35 "club sports" registered
with the athletics department.) Another distinction is what players
call the "spirit of the game," which allows players to make their
own penalty calls instead of relying on conventional referees.
The basic idea of ultimate is similar to football or other field
games. There are seven players on each team who try to pass the
frisbee down the field and catch it in the endzone to score. Contact
is prohibited. Superfly co-captain Matt Prince '02 says the
game requires conditioning (teams may play up to four games a day
during tournaments), speed, and intelligence. "Some of the rules
are counterintuitive, and you can't really translate what you know
from other sports," says Prince. "So you have to learn quickly."
The Ultimate Players
Association divides the country into regions for tournament
play; 16 of the nation's best college teams make the national tournament every year. Ramona won the national tournament in 1998, which is
the last year Superfly qualified. Both teams say their chances
of returning to nationals are strong this year.
Men's co-captain Ameet Talwalker '02 says that ultimate is becoming
a more competitive and athletic endeavor across the country, something
that he worries may affect the game's unique culture. "Even three
years ago, teams used to cheer their opponents after the game, and
that doesn't happen anymore," says Talwalker. "And there are observers
now at some tournaments to settle disputes. But for now I think
the spirit of the game is pretty strong."  |
