Friday, February 3, 2012

Daily

Herald

the Brown

vol. cxxii, no. 8

Friday, February 3, 2012

Since 1891

Bankruptcy looms as mayor threatens legal action Classes pilot anticheating software

By Kat Thornton City & State Editor

By Claire Schlessinger Staff Writer

About 30 classes will be trying Turnitin, an anti-plagiarism program that compares student work with millions of other student papers, journal articles and Internet sites.

Students in classes participating in the semester-long trial submit their assignments to Turnitin. com, which then highlights text that matches content from other sources and quantifies the matches with a percentage, according to the website. Professors can then look over the paper to judge its originality.

The initiative to use software to detect plagiarism began in earnest when Thomas Doeppner, associate professor of computer science, co-chaired the Standing Committee on the Academic Code.

In his 2009-10 end of year Academic Code Committee Report, Doeppner suggested that a service such as Turnitin might reveal a level of cheating in other departments similar to that in computer science, which — due to its use of Measure of Software Similarity, a program that regularly checks for cheating — consistently turns over continued on page 2

Providence Mayor Angel Taveras announced Thursday morning that the city could face bankruptcy in June unless it reins in its $22.5 million budget deficit, in part by increasing payments from nonprofits like the University. Later that day, Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 convened a meeting with President Ruth Simmons, Chancellor Thomas Tisch ’76 P’07 and Taveras to address the issue.

city & state At the meeting, representatives from the city and the University agreed to “renew conversations regarding the University’s payments,” said Marisa Quinn, vice president for public affairs and University relations. Taveras has threatened legal action if an agreement with nonprof-

its cannot be reached cooperatively.

Taveras also demanded sacrifices from retirees at the morning press conference, calling for the suspension of cost-of-living increases in retiree pensions, and he said the city may need to increase residents’ taxes, though he did not specify when or by how much.

Success or failure

Taveras will again ask the University for an additional $4 million per year for the next ten years, he said at the press conference. Unless both parties come to an agreement voluntarily, the General Assembly will pursue a legislative alternative, Taveras said. The mayor will meet with the state legislature’s Providence delegation today to discuss legislative options.

“You cannot be successful in a continued on page 7

Kat Thornton / Herald

Taveras threatened legal action to force nonprofits to up contributions to the city.

Staff celebrated on BEAR day U. will not

By Phoebe Draper Senior Staff Writer

Turn to the staff member next to you and let them know they are “awesome,” Beppie Huidekoper, executive vice president for finance and administration, told a jampacked Salomon 101 at the start of the eighth annual Brown Employee Appreciation and Recognition Day Thursday afternoon. Wearing dining caps, jeans, suits and orange vests, hundreds of University employees gathered at the event held

to celebrate staff contributions to the University.

BEAR Day, which President Ruth Simmons started in 2005, has become an annual tradition that honors exceptional staff members and “puts people on stage who have done great things,” said Angela Hilliard, manager of employee programs.

The ceremony began with a video featuring this year’s thirty Excellence Award recipients. Each year, the ceremony honors peernominated staff members who

were department standouts with excellence awards. Each recipient receives $2,500. Among the recipients was Maria Araujo, a custodian with facilities management who was lauded for “caring for the buildings as if they were her own home” and bringing homemade pastries to work.

Simmons spoke to the enthusiastic audience about the importance of maintaining the University’s special sense of community.

By Lauren Pope Contributing Writer

tions shown on the front.

“I was interested in the ways that memories and stories circulate from generation to generation,” wrote Biggs, a Providence and New York-based artist, in an email to The Herald. “I was thinking about the way that the postal system puts this kind of circulation into physical or material form.”

Rather than hoping to project a certain message, Biggs wrote that she acted as a listener while compiling the project and took in the memories from places across Providence.

One intention of the Postcard Project is to explore personal memories and “show how the collective accumulation of these stories can sometimes create more potent effect and social importance than any historical monument,” wrote Ian Alden Russell, curator of the David Winton Bell Gallery in the

continued on page 2

Postcards mark sights and stories of city

Arts & Culture

inside

Rachel Kaplan / Herald A postcard exhibit in the Granoff Center provides glimpses into Providence life.

news....................2-4 Arts & Culture.....5 Sc i e n c e............6 City & State.........7 SPORTS...............8-9 Editorial..........10 Opinions.......11

Poisonous Spencer-Salmon ’14 spills on lead paint opinions, 11

The project is the brainchild of Betsey Biggs, a postdoctoral fellow, who put together the exhibit of 1,000 postcards featuring 100 photographs of areas around Providence. On the back of the postcards are letters written by Providence residents about memories or moments that took place at the loca-

By Sahil Luthra Science Editor

The University will not support an effort to retract a controversial study co-authored by Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior Martin Keller, wrote Edward Wing, dean of medicine and biological sciences, in a recent letter to the global nonprofit Healthy Skepticism.

The study — commonly referred to as Study 329 — identified

Science the drug Paxil as an effective combatant of adolescent depression.

Since its publication in 2001, the study has raised concerns due to findings that link Paxil to higher rates of suicidal tendencies.

Citing claims that Keller’s study intentionally misrepresented the effectiveness of Paxil by suppressing data, Healthy Skepticism asked the University to write to the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and request a retraction of the findings, The Herald reported in November.

Jon Jureidini, a co-author of the Healthy Skepticism letters and

continued on page 4

Dino soars?

High-tech grad student looks for clues on dino flight science, 12

weather

Brunonians looking to soak in the spirit of Providence now do not have to venture far from College Hill. The Postcard Project, currently on display on small shelves lining two walls in the lower level of the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, is a collection of postcards featuring Providence residents’ recollections of areas around Providence.

support Keller retraction

continued on page 5 t o d ay

tomorrow

42 / 27

39 / 26

2 Campus News calendar Today

February 3

7 P.m.

ToMORROW

February 4

“The Twilight Saga: New Moon,”

Baking with Chocolate,

Petteruti Lounge

Tech House Lounge, Harkness House

7:30 p.m.

Writing is Live Festival: Liquorland,

Writing is Live Festival: Our Town,

Leeds Theatre, Lyman Hall

Leeds Theatre, Lyman Hall

menu SHARPE REFECTORY

VERNEy-WOOLLEY DINING HALL LUNCH Breaded Chicken Fingers, Vegan Nuggets, Vegan Rice Pilaf, Whole Kernel Corn

Sliced Roast Beef, Zucchini Frittata, Curried Tofu With Coconut Ginger Sauce, Hot Pastrami Sandwich

DINNER Baked Stuffed Pollock, Cheesy Zucchini Casserole, Tortellini Italiano, Fresh Vegetable Melange

Vegan Lentil Stew, Manicotti Piedmontese, Tilapia W/Provencale, Butternut Squash

U. celebrates staff excellence continued from page 1

1 p.m.

7:30 p.m.

The Brown Daily Herald Friday, February 3, 2012

Sudoku

“I know you all value it — I know you treasure it, but we have to work pretty hard to maintain it just the way it is,” Simmons said.

“We know you are out there in this community working hard to make Brown look better.”

Simmons said she was “in such a good mood” because she had just met with Providence Mayor Angel Taveras, who called for increased contributions to the debt-strapped city from nonprofits like the University at a press conference Thursday morning.

Staff members were also honored based on long-term service to the University and were called up by five-year intervals of service. As the ten-year group was announced, Simmons said, “We’re a bit older, so we take some more time to get on stage.”

Simmons, who has served as the University president for ten years, was presented with a bouquet of roses by Chancellor Thomas Tisch ’76.

“You set the standard like a ratchet,” Tisch told Simmons. “We keep raising the bar, and we keep exceeding the bar as a community

Alexandra Urban / Herald

BEAR Day recognized and celebrated exceptional staff members.

and as individuals because of your leadership and the inspiration that you’ve set for all of us.” Simmons was honored with thundering applause and a standing ovation.

“That was a little surprise,” Simmons said.

Several staff members have worked at the University for over 40 years. “The 30 years are near babes,” Simmons joked.

The program was followed with a reception at Sayles Hall.

“I thought it was great. I think

it’s very nice to have something like this to recognize those people who put in time and really enjoy being here at Brown,” said Julieta Thomas Decosta, an operation assistant in the department of biomedicine who was celebrating 25 years of service.

The event was sponsored by the department of Human Resources.

“We want to create a culture of appreciation … where saying thank you is not only common sense, but common practice,” Hilliard said.

New program targets plagiarism continued from page 1

RELEASE DATE– Friday, February 3, 2012

Los AngelesCrossword Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Pre-Columbian Indians 6 Went headfirst, maybe 10 Persian, for one 13 Wild weather 14 Heavy reading 16 Suffix with Seattle 17 Communications problem?

19 Sleep acronym 20 Summary of a shrinking mass?

22 Capital of Colorado?

24 T designation 25 Marlin’s son, in a 2003 film 26 Caused an insurrection 28 Court maneuver 32 Jungle noise 33 Characterize 36 Title for the longest bridge?

40 Two-part answer 41 Vet 42 Bangkok natives 43 Pennsylvania home of Lafayette College 45 Control 48 Well-chosen 49 Colorado native 50 Construction site order?

56 Signs of press conference uncertainty 57 Hardly the award for Chernobyl?

60 Type of screen, briefly 61 Put down 62 Prey catcher 63 “__-hoo!”

64 Marine: Abbr.

65 City south of Florence DOWN 1 Co. for surfers 2 Degree in math?

3 Work together 4 Florence’s river 5 Is suspicious 6 Firewood measure

7 Activity centers 8 Apple’s G5, e.g.

9 Take out 10 Enchantress who lived on the island Aeaea 11 Starters 12 Presto, for one 15 35mm camera initials 18 Continue violently 21 Draws in 22 Medicine, one would hope 23 Modeling aid 27 Agamemnon’s avenger 28 Lowly workers 29 “This __ joke!”

30 Taper?

31 Its processing produces slag 33 Actress Conn 34 Critter in a domed shell 35 Cereal killer 37 “Forget it!”

38 “‘Twas white then as the newfa’en __”: Alexander Anderson

39 Thing to do in style 43 Foil alternative 44 Diamond turns 45 For real 46 Transmission repair franchise 47 Screw up 48 Stop on the Métro?

51 “Charlotte’s Web” monogram

52 Beach flier 53 Yu the Great’s dynasty 54 Famous last words 55 Berry used as a dietary supplement 58 Bass ending 59 Proteinbuilding polymer

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

xwordeditor@aol.com

02/03/12

a disproportionately high number of students to the Academic Code Committee.

Using Turnitin is a response to “wanting to know the answer” to the question of the pervasiveness of cheating at Brown, said Keith Brown, associate professor of international relations and co-chair of last year’s academic code committee.

According to a 2009 Herald poll, 17 percent of students admitted to cheating, mostly by copying another student’s homework responses.

Turnitin’s services would cost the University $13,000 per year for use in unlimited courses, said Deputy Dean of the College Stephen Lassonde. He said the University has a free trial period for this semester with the company, which offered its services to any interested professor. According to Lassonde, about 20 to 30 professors opted in, with some using it in multiple classes. Most of the participating courses are large lectures.

Daily

the Brown

David Sobel, associate professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences, is teaching two courses but only using Turnitin for CLPS 0200: “Human Cognition,” the larger of the two. He said he has caught several students plagiarizing in the past — about one student every semester he has taught the course, though he once discovered four in a single semester.

Conor Kane ’14, a student in ENGL 0210: “Beowulf to Alpha Behn: The Earliest British Literatures,” a class participating in the trial, said using Turnitin “makes sense.” He said his high school teachers used the software, and he said it is a “reliable system” as long as professors understand that the existence of similar sentences does not automatically indicate plagiarism. Turnitin also highlights direct quotations, so professors must verify themselves whether the student cited a quote correctly.

Kane said those who had used the program before “kind of chuckled” when they heard about its use at Brown because it “might feel a bit like overkill.” He said he doubt-

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ed the program would affect him.

Students in “Human Cognition” have already submitted one paper to Turnitin. Naomi Heilweil ’12, a teaching assistant for the course, was responsible for putting the one-page papers through the program, she said. So far, she said she has not found any plagiarism, though it is “early in the game.” She said she thinks the program works well for its purpose and added that it eliminates paper copies, which she appreciates.

In the age of Wikipedia and Girl Talk, concepts such as originality, common knowledge and intellectual property are increasingly illdefined and misunderstood. But “ignorance isn’t an excuse” for plagiarism, Lassonde said.

Some students cheat knowingly, justifying their behavior by saying that everyone is doing it, he said. But honest students maintain their upright practices, thinking everyone is playing by the rules, he said. Lassonde said if one student cheats, others might be compelled to do the same in order to gain the same advantage — unless there is a deterrent like Turnitin.

Consequences for plagiarism range from receiving a warning to receiving no credit for the class and a note on the student’s transcript, Lassonde said.

Professors using the software stressed that they do not believe cheating at Brown to be the norm, but “the small percentage who do (cheat) greatly impact the vast majority of students who do not,” Sobel said. He added, anything that can be done to “weed out that small subset … is a worthwhile endeavor.”

The University will solicit faculty feedback at the end of the semester, Lassonde said.

Campus News 3

The Brown Daily Herald Friday, February 3, 2012

MCAT to add psych, sociology, biochem

By Mathias Heller Senior Staff Writer

The Medical College Admission Test has been markedly consistent in its material since 1991, with subject matter drawn from biology, chemistry, organic chemistry and physics.

But this is slated to change in 2015.

A proposal to revamp the MCAT, the exam all medical school applicants must take, was drafted last year by the Association of American Medical Colleges and is likely to be approved by the organization’s governing board in the coming weeks.

Although the revised version of the MCAT will not take effect until 2015, the changes will be significant.

The new exam will place more emphasis on psychology, sociology and biochemistry, three areas that are not included in the current test version, according to the association, which creates and administers the test on behalf of medical school admission offices. In fact, the 2015 MCAT is set to place twice as much emphasis on psychology as organic chemistry and more on sociology than physics. It will also be lengthened to around seven hours, from its current five and a half.

The proposed exam requires students to have taken semester-long courses in each of the new areas, in addition to two semesters of each of the four science areas already tested.

Beyond the basics

Since most medical school applicants take the exam during their senior undergraduate year, pre-med students entering college this fall will be the first to experience the revised MCAT in large numbers.

But current first-years and sophomores planning on taking time off after graduation before completing the MCAT will also have to deal with the 2015 version.

“The change will be significant enough to affect everyone thinking about applying to medical school,” said George Vassilev, director of preprofessional advising and assistant dean of the College. Vassilev said he believes the revised MCAT is based on the desire of medical schools to adapt to vast changes in the medical field since 1991, the last time the exam underwent a change.

“We live in a highly diversified society, and there is a need for physicians being able to make the connections between science and the social contexts of medicine,” Vassilev said, citing the rise of new medical technology and the importance of health specialists developing a greater understanding for the humanities and behavioral sciences.

“The new MCAT aims to capture these changes.”

Jeff Koetje, director of pre-health programs at Kaplan Test Prep, agreed that the changes would be beneficial. Focusing on the additional subject matter will help physicians appreciate the influence of sociology and psychology on caregiver-patient relations. “The prevalent mindset amongst the academic leadership” in medical schools is that students need to understand these subjects, he said.

“Frankly, at this point, we can say that almost any student is going

Tenure review case number drops by half

By Alexandra MacFarlane Senior Staff Writer

Lisa Cheung / Herald

A new, lengthened version of the MCAT is expected to debut in 2015.

to be impacted by these changes,” Koetje said, citing a Kaplan survey showing that 73 percent of medical school admission officers believe these changes will help medical students have a better understanding of the “biochemical basis of diseases.”

He said he views the new MCAT as aiming to make students “look beyond the basic pre-med track.”

Meeting the requirements

Pre-med students and health career advisers have expressed concern that the new sections will leave medical school applicants with less time to devote to areas like the humanities because of the need to satisfy the additional course requirements. Many colleges and universities have starting planning ways to assist students in fulfilling both the traditional “hard science” and new behavioral science requirements, Koetje said.

Anxiety about the changes has also reached Brown undergraduates.

“We’re already stressed, and we have a lot of requirements already,” said Kelly Shan ’15, who is pre-med.

“It does put a damper on things, although de-emphasizing physics will help relieve some of the stress.”

But she added that as a human biology concentrator, she was already planning on taking courses in some of the newly prioritized areas of the MCAT. Philip Gruppuso, associate dean for medical education and professor of pediatrics, said Brown’s open curriculum blunts the impact of the proposed changes, since most pre-med students at Brown already take courses in a wide array of disciplines. “I don’t think this is going to hurt students at Brown, and it may actually be to their advantage,” he said. “I think that commitment to education and the behavioral and social sciences is really critical to the overall outcome of educating compassionate caregivers.”

While pre-med students should consider how the changes to the MCAT could affect their schedules, Gruppuso said, Brown’s Program in Liberal Medical Education already serves as a catalyst for implementing the new requirements, as it provides future physicians with a broad interdisciplinary education.

Noting that around half of Brown undergraduates who apply to medical school decide to concentrate in

non-science areas, Vassilev said the diversity of students’ extracurricular and academic interests already puts them in a strong position to adapt to the new MCAT requirements.

Consequently, there are currently no plans to revamp the pre-med courses or departments at Brown, Vassilev said.

“We already encourage students to focus on exploring psychology or the behavioral sciences,” Vassilev said. In addition, health careers advisers hold six workshops each academic year to assist pre-med first-years and sophomores in planning their undergraduate education.

Vassilev said the University’s support structure for pre-med students will address any added pressure related to the new MCAT. Adding ‘a new dimension’

Many pre-med students expressed similar views, saying they already had an interest in the newly emphasized areas of the exam. Emily Wilkins ’14 said there are already many required classes for pre-meds, but she also sees the benefit of having a background in psychology and sociology.

Pre-med student Kwame McCain ’15 noted the benefit of an expanded area of study. “It adds a new dimension to preparation for med school,” he said, adding that he does not expect the changes to alter his undergraduate experience at Brown.

Still, some students said they thought that although it was important to study the behavioral sciences to become more capable caregivers, they felt the lengthening of the test by an hour and a half was unnecessary.

“I think the MCAT is already long enough,” said Libby Stein ’15, a likely biology concentrator.

“There’s a point when mental acuity goes down the toilet.” Stein said she was excited about taking courses in psychology, biochemistry and sociology, but that the new sections simply add stress for pre-meds.

Acknowledging these criticisms, Koetje said he feels the new MCAT is a step in the right direction. “Nobody wants any of these proposed changes to reduce the diversity of experiences or opportunities for premed students,” he said. “The goal is to help students become more diverse in their educational pursuits.”

The number of tenure cases up for review this year fell sharply as revisions to the tenure review process came into effect this semester. Last year, there were 23 cases up for review, but this year there are only seven or eight, wrote Dean of the Faculty Kevin McLaughlin P’12 in an email to The Herald. Previously, the University had averaged about 15 cases per year over the last five years, according to data from the Office of the Dean of the Faculty.

The shift in the number of cases is directly related to the option given to junior faculty members to extend their first contracts by one year, one of the changes approved in the new tenure regulations, McLaughlin said.

Junior faculty members who have been with the University for three years and would be up for review for a contract renewal under the old policies now have the option to wait an extra year before their case is evaluated by their department and the administration. Assistant professors can now choose either a three or four-year contract before they are first reviewed by the University, allowing them to extend an assistant professorship from seven years to eight years before they are reviewed for tenure.

Though both the offer of extension and other tenure changes were met with considerable debate, almost everybody took the extension, said Peter Shank, chair of the Faculty Executive Committee and professor of medical science.

“I think the overall solution is a good one,” he said.

James Hays, assistant professor of computer science, said his department was not “keen” on extending the tenure clock. After meeting with other junior faculty members in his department, Hays is concerned that the changes are an attempt to lower the tenure rate.

“It is the place of the senior faculty to decide about tenure,” Hays said, adding that he was puzzled junior faculty members were asked to provide input on the issue when

they had not been here as long.

When Mark Dean, assistant professor of economics, decided to extend his contract by a year, he said,“it didn’t seem like there was any downside to doing so.” For economists, publication timelines are often much longer than for life sciences, he said, so a fouryear initial contract is better than a three-year one.

“There are some mixed feelings,” McLaughlin said. But he added that it takes many professors the extra year in order to provide strong evidence of their teaching and research. The optional extra year “is not a fundamental change in the way we evaluate junior faculty for tenure,” he said.

Most junior faculty members just wanted to clarify the criteria for a tenure track following the changes, McLaughlin said.

McLaughlin, Shank and several administrators met with junior faculty members to discuss the tenure changes since their approval.

Though the administration and the departments can provide guidelines regarding the quantity of work that is required to build a strong resume, it is difficult to be clear about the overall quality needed to receive tenure, McLaughlin said. With the external review of a reviewed professor’s work, there is no automatic formula to become tenured, he said.

Because the University has high expectations for students, the administration should also have high expectations for faculty members, McLaughlin said. He added that the changes are meant to emphasize teaching and research. “We are committed to the teaching part, and we are not compromising on that,” he said.

As these changes have just begun to affect faculty members, “I don’t think it’s clear what will happen yet,” Shank said, though he said he hopes the tenure changes will not affect the level of teaching.

One of Brown’s strengths is the lack of barriers between students and professors, Shank said. “It would be tragic if Brown lost its emphasis on teaching students.”

www.browndailyherald.com

4 Campus News

The Brown Daily Herald Friday, February 3, 2012

As interest blooms, School of Engineering seeks room to grow

By Eli Okun Senior Staff Writer

In its second year, the University’s School of Engineering has set its sights on fulfilling a number of long-term priorities, including expanding space, renovating laboratories, hiring new faculty and implementing curricular changes.

Under the direction of Lawrence Larson, dean of engineering, these changes are coinciding with an increase in research funding and in undergraduate and prospective student interest in the program.

“We’re poised at a very exciting moment,” said Kenny Breuer, associate dean for academic programs at the School of Engineering.

But the road to impending changes and expansions is not without some growing pains, said University officials.

Expecting expansion

To fully utilize its increased funding, the School of Engineering will need more extensive and high-quality laboratory and research space, said Eric Suuberg, associate dean for research and graduate initiatives at the School of Engineering. Much of Barus and Holley, where most of the school is currently based, has outdated equipment.

As the school looks to expand its faculty ranks, there is simply not enough room to conduct cutting-edge research, said Nancy Carroll, chief administrative officer for the School of Engineering.

“Space is critical. You can’t expand without it,” Carroll said.

“Barus and Holley is outdated, so it does make it very difficult for us in administration to assist faculty when we have nothing to

offer them.”

Students said they have felt the effects of overcrowding. “For one of the engineering classes I did last semester, we ended up not doing part of a design project because there were too many students in the class for the resources available,” said Hannah Varner ’14, a mechanical engineering concentrator.

The School of Engineering has already begun addressing these concerns.

Improvements include renovations on the Prince Engineering Laboratory, which will house research facilities for two recently hired faculty members. Begun in 2005 and going through three phases of renovations, the laboratory’s upgrades are expected to be completed by May. Engineering also expects to benefit from the reshuffling of other departments — the former Medical Research Lab and part of the now-empty Hunter Laboratory will house parts of the school as well.

“This is the way it has to be in an urban campus environment like this where there simply aren’t open, empty lots on which you can build,” Suuberg said.

The School of Engineering is also exploring possible options for an eventual new building. Since space on campus is scarce, locations in downtown Providence — including the Jewelry District — have been considered in addition to potential sites on College Hill. Richard Spies, vice president for planning and senior adviser to the president said it was unclear how current tensions between the city and Brown might affect such plans if an off-campus site were chosen.

“What I will say is that we rec-

ognize in engineering that any new building is several years off,” Suuberg said. “It’s not going to happen any sooner than five years and can easily be longer than that.”

Larson and others are already engaged in fundraising for possible future expansion. “Until we’ve achieved some level of success, you can’t start the process of specific planning,” Spies said. The greatest share of the funds will likely come from alums and parents, but the school will also look to corporate and federal sources, Spies said, especially for research and equipment grants.

Hired hands

Another long-term priority for the School of Engineering is the expansion of its faculty ranks.

Current plans call for 12 new tenure-track faculty positions over the next 10 or more years. The first two professors are scheduled to start as early as July, though no one has been hired yet. Though the 12 spots are not specifically allocated to certain branches of engineering, the new faculty proposal emphasized certain up-andcoming areas, including energy and biomedical engineering, Carroll said.

The engineering faculty is also involved in discussions about curricular changes. In addition to exploring the expansion of graduate offerings, including master’s programs, professors are considering adjustments to the undergraduate concentration. These include steps to make it easier for students to enter the program during sophomore year, attempts to modernize classes and keep students up to date with recent trends like the influx of biology and nanotechnology, Breuer said.

Though large changes are not on the table, Breuer said, faculty have discussed making the core classes smaller and providing different “flavors of courses.” Though the number of engineering undergraduates is increasing, the rate of change is not significant enough to suggest any major upheaval. “I hope that we’ll see some invigoration of the curriculum,” Breuer said.

Success stories

Many of the School of Engineering’s changes are still in the planning stages, but a number of improvements have already appeared. Chief among these is the school’s enhanced ability to attract high-profile professors.

Professor of Engineering Nitin Padture, who will be one of the beneficiaries of the renovated Prince Lab facilities, came to the University last month from Ohio State University, where he oversaw a $17 million research center.

“What really attracted me to Brown is the expansion of the School of Engineering,” Padture said.

Padture said the University’s School of Engineering stands out from most programs because it is small enough not to be fragmented into separate departments, allowing for greater interaction across subject areas. “It’s becoming more useful because of the interdisciplinary nature of future research,” he said.

The establishment of the school has also led to an increase in research funding and expenditures.

Research expenses and overhead generated from grants and contracts are “a good gauge of how we look at our research,” Carroll said.

By that measure, expenses were

up about 16 percent in fiscal year 2011, while overhead rose about 13 percent, according to Carroll.

The majority of the grants come from the federal government, Carroll said, but the school has also been exploring greater corporate partnership in recent years.

Among the students accepted early for the class of 2016, engineering was the most popular intended concentration. Dean of Admission Jim Miller ’73 told The Herald in December that interest in engineering had risen among both applicants and admitted students.

Annie Cappuccino, director of admission for science recruitment, attributed the rise to a combination of the national economic climate and University recruitment efforts. “We’ve really tried to promote Brown sciences and physical sciences even more heavily, and the news of engineering becoming the School of Engineering has reached a lot of student populations,” she said.

In recent years, the emphasis among prospective students has shifted somewhat from an attraction to the open curriculum to an attraction to the engineering program specifically, she said, while the heightened visibility of the school has helped influence families.

A continuing challenge for the engineering school is boosting the ranks of women and minority students. Cappuccino said current efforts include attending national conferences centered on diversity in the sciences. Thirty-four percent of first-year engineering students are women, a proportion higher than at many peer engineering programs, Cappuccino said.

Exhibit links Brown to community through postcards continued from page 1 List Art Center, in an email to The Herald.

The process through which Biggs chose the 100 places she photographed reflects the amount of time that went into the project. After finding a list of all the neighborhoods in Providence,

Biggs drove, bused or biked to each neighborhood, asking people about important places in their town.

Biggs distributed the postcards with the help of the librarians at the Providence Community Library. She also distributed them at youth organizations and retirement homes, hoping to reach all age groups. Biggs added that there

are still blank cards on display in the exhibit in the Granoff Center, and she encourages students to record their memories.

Russell, Biggs and project coordinator Jess Unger GS chose to display the exhibit in the Granoff Center because “it was important to use the exhibition of the postcards on Brown’s campus as a way of inviting the local communities of Providence to Brown and hopefully heal some of the separations … that are experienced between Brown and the rest of the city,” Russell wrote.

The Granoff Center is a great location for the exhibit because it will help students further understand the city in which they live, wrote Steven Lubar, professor of American civilization, in an email to The Herald.

“It’s easy for the Brown community to forget how isolated we can be from the rest of the city,” Biggs wrote.

The exhibit is interactive — viewers can pick up each postcard and read the letter on the back.

According to Lubar, the ability to interact with the exhibit is key. “It allows for story-telling between people,” he wrote. “The writer is

talking to the reader.”

“If there’s any message I have,

personal bursts of narrative such as first kisses, favorite meals and

Rachel Kaplan / Herald

Providence Postcard Project brings images of the city to the Granoff Center.

it’s simply that our personal lives are important,” Biggs wrote, adding that history is made from “small

daily rituals.”

The exhibit will be displayed in the Granoff Center until Feb. 24.

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Arts & Culture 5

The Brown Daily Herald Friday, February 3, 2012

Playwriting festival celebrates raw theater By kah Yangni Arts & Culture Staff Writer

When Laura Colella’s GS play “Liquorland” hits the stage Friday evening, it will open the third annual Writing Is Live, a free playwriting festival featuring new work by graduate and undergraduate students. Colella and five other student playwrights in the Departments of Theater Arts and Performance Studies and Africana Studies will be premiering their work over the next ten days in Leeds Theatre, Rites and Reason Theatre and the Production Workshop Downspace.

According to a festival press release, Writing Is Live “stresses and plays with the idea of the Live.” The plays themselves are still in flux, raw and emerging.

“The audience is crucial,” said Vanessa Gilbert, the festival’s director and a TAPS lecturer. Several of the workshop plays will include Folkthought discussions after the performances. Theatergoers, Gilbert said, will have “the distinct opportunity to see a play grow.”

The festival process begins each year when graduate students are admitted into the Writing for Performance program, Gilbert explained.

The writings of the master’s students are the seeds that are nurtured throughout the year and become the productions shown at the festival.

The students themselves become the festival’s curators, she added.

The themes of the plays are as

varied as the backgrounds of the playwrights themselves. The playwrights come from Uganda and the Sundance Institute and from backgrounds in art history, radio and acting. They have collaborated on projects such as “‘Bothness and a Play’: a google doc.” Others include college sophomores and experienced filmmakers.

“Everyone is grappling with what it means to be alive today,” Gilbert said. “I think the graduate students are writing into a world they would like to see.”

Past playwrights have had their work grow into new things, both expected and unexpected, after the festival ended. Playwright Jackie Sillies Drury will be opening the play she premiered at the Writing Is Live festival two years ago at the Victory Gardens Theatre in New York next month. She has also shown it at the Prelude Festival in New York City.

Two multimedia artists’ play that debuted at Writing Is Live bloomed into a short film based on the play.

It will be shown at the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts’ exhibition in a few days.

“Theater is a collaborative art form,” Gilbert said. “The Writing Is Live Festival is one of the only places where graduate students and undergraduate students truly collaborate.”

Most importantly, in the joyous and productive environment of Writing Is Live, they can collaborate as peers, she pointed out, because they are equals as workers.

U. defies critics of prof’s Paxil study continued from page 1

a professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia, received Wing’s most recent reply on Monday. In an email to The Herald, Jureidini wrote that Healthy Skepticism would not be discouraged by the University’s response, though he added he was unsure how the group would proceed.

“One hopes that universities are leaders in moral and scientific integrity, but how can they expect students to acquire such values when their behavior directly contradicts their stated policies?” wrote Healthy Skepticism co-author Leemon McHenry in an email to The Herald. McHenry is also a researcher, lecturer and part-time professor at California State University in Northridge.

Wing declined to comment, citing confidentiality reasons.

In its initial letter to the University last October, Healthy Skepticism expressed concerns that the study’s continued citation is misleading doctors and harming adolescents. The letter accused Paxil’s parent company GlaxoSmithKline of ghostwriting the study and alleged that the study’s authors withheld data connecting Paxil usage to suicidal tendencies to protect GlaxoSmithKline’s

profits.

The allegations have their roots in several ethical examinations of Study 329, including an investigation by the Senate Finance Committee, a documentary by the BBC, a 2008 book and several journal articles.

Keller acknowledged in a 2006 deposition that he had received tens of thousands of dollars from GlaxoSmithKline and its affiliates over the years, The Herald reported in 2008.

Wing first responded to Healthy Skepticism’s letter in November. “The University takes seriously any questions about the soundness of faculty-conducted research,” Wing wrote in the letter. “I would caution you not to confuse the University’s policy of confidentiality with inactivity.”

Healthy Skepticism replied in December, reiterating its call for an open letter requesting retraction and asking for a date by which the University would complete its internal review of the charges against Keller. Wing’s most recent reply did not include an estimated date.

Keller, who stepped down as chair of the psychiatry department in 2009 but remains a professor, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Granoff hosts Pakistani Renaissance woman

By Katherine Long Senior Staff Writer

Samina Quraeshi is a Renaissance woman in every sense of the phrase. A native of Pakistan, she has worn the hats of author, artist, architect, speaker, academic, photographer, curator — and now filmmaker.

Quraeshi presented clips from her upcoming documentary, “The Other Half of Tomorrow: Women Changing Pakistan,” to a rapt audience of roughly 30 students and Rhode Island natives Wednesday night in the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts. The richly detailed and tenderly shot film tells the stories of women in Pakistan trying to make positive changes in their surroundings as entrepreneurs, public health workers and dance instructors, among other jobs.

In an address before the

screening, Quraeshi said her motive behind producing the film was to present the human face of a region often vilified in the media.

“I want to use art to introduce complex cultural nuances,” she said. “Sensationalist portrayals begin to warp the public’s consciousness of the people who live in (Pakistan).”

Soft-spoken and often dryly humorous, Quraeshi also emphasized that understanding a place’s history is essential to understanding its culture.

“During the past Bush era, there was a culture of fear on top of a lack of awareness,” she told The Herald. “It made people want to get into their houses and watch their TVs, but all the media coverage was doing was propagating stereotypes.”

The film preview was part of a national series called “Caravan-

serai: A Place Where Cultures Meet,” which aims to introduce American audiences to contemporary Muslim artists. The Providence nonprofit FirstWorks competed fiercely with organizations across the country to host Caravanserai in the city, said Kathleen Pletcher, executive artistic director of FirstWorks. Only four other U.S. nonprofits earned a spot as a stop on the tour.

“There’s this idea of a caravanserai as a place where weary travelers along the road stop and rest and share their stories,” Pletcher said. “It’s a very collective act.

And that’s what we’re hoping to do here — connect art with audience.”

The next Caravanserai event is a Feb. 7 screening of “Made in Pakistan,” a documentary from Pakistani filmmaker Ayesha Khan. Quraeshi’s film is slated to be released in October.

Play explores the drama of medicine

By Nicole grabel Contributing Writer

“You don’t know who you are until you experience … tragedy,” Deborah Salem Smith, playwrightin-residence at Trinity Repertory Company, told students and medical professionals crowded in Pembroke Hall as she spoke about complicated reactions to medical malpractice Wednesday. The lecture, entitled “‘But I’m a Good Doctor’: A Playwright Takes on Medical Malpractice,” was part of the Cogut Center for Humanities’ Creative Physician Series. Smith discussed her play, “Love Alone,” excerpts from which were read by two actors in the play and three actors in the Brown/Trinity MFA program.

“Love Alone” portrays the aftermath of an unsuccessful surgery when the patient’s family sues the doctor for malpractice. “It all begins with a personal story in my family,” Smith said of her motivation for writing the play. She went on to tell the story of her uncle, who was tragically hit and killed by a bus. Her grandmother forgave the bus driver and ended up forging a close relationship with him.

“You can be empowered by forgiveness,” Smith said, but forgiveness can also be difficult and complex. This idea, along with many medical malpractice depositions she read, became her inspiration for writing the play.

The four excerpts performed were pulled from scenes that provided both perspectives. Two of them showed a family’s coping process, and the other two showed how doctors deal with losing a patient and facing a medical malpractice suit.

After each scene was read, Smith spoke about her writing choices. For example, she explained her inclusion of the bag of a patient’s valuables that his or her family receives from the hospital if he or she dies in surgery. “The bag can become a symbol to the patient’s family of the absolute moment their lives changed. For this reason, it is pres-

Stephanie Vasquez / Herald

“Love Alone” depicts the struggle and sadness that follows a fatal operation.

ent on stage throughout the play,” Smith said.

Smith’s inspiration came from her frustration with people simplifying such situations “into black and white terms,” she said, adding that she wanted to show the multiple sides of the story. Smith also said that theater is the perfect outlet for reminding us “of the humanity we all possess and share.”

Smith allotted time at the end of her lecture for questions and comments, and the audience expressed diverse reactions. Many relayed understanding and gratitude that

Smith was taking on such a topic, but others questioned how some aspects were portrayed. One audience member commented that various components of the story seemed disconnected, but Smith responded that the play when shown in its entirety displays a more “complicated” situation.

“Love Alone,” which was recognized with an Honorable Mention by the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award and received the Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award, will be performed at Trinity Rep from Feb. 28 to May 27.

6 Science

The Brown Daily Herald Friday, February 3, 2012

Climate change linked to extinction Prof highlights melanoma subtype

By Sandra Yan Staff Writer

continued from page 12

Some dermatologists may not specifically record nodular melanoma when they turn in their pathology reports, the study reported.

But dermatologists remain hopeful that future research might target nodular melanoma specifically with the goal of detecting it in its early

stages.

As research progresses, dermatologists will continue to work through the alphabet.

“Once we get to ‘Z’ we’ll have to go to Greek letters,” joked Robert Kirsner, professor and vice-chairman of dermatology and cutaneous surgery at the University of Miami School of Medicine.

Long-term global climate shifts are correlated with the successive rise and fall of different evolutionary mammal groupings, according to recent research by a team that includes Professor of Biology Christine Janis.

The researchers looked at North American mammal populations in the Cenozoic Era — which covers the past 65 million years — and found correlations with long-term climate patterns in an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The scientists identified six associations of large mammals that shared similar patterns of population rise and fall and grouped them together as faunas. They then compared the evolution of these faunas to past temperatures inferred from oxygen isotopes. They found that, with the exception of two faunas, the transitions between groups were correlated with climatic changes.

“When that group first appeared, rose to prominence and then disappeared is tied by and large with measurable changes in the global climate,” Janis said. The two faunas that showed a lesser correlation were perhaps influenced by migrations of large mammals to North America from other continents.

Janis cautioned against using these results to predict future trends in mammal populations in the context of global warming.

Still, the findings help “us better understand something about how

Courtesy of Carl Buell

Prehistoric mammal populations correlated with long-term climate change.

organisms are responding to global climate change,” said David Polly, associate professor of geological sciences at Indiana University at Bloomington, who commented on an earlier draft of the article.

In an email to The Herald, John Alroy, future fellow in the Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, criticized some of the statistical methods used in the study — including performing “no correction for variation in sample size” — as well as the study’s failure to look at small mammals.

Janis defended her work. “We did not include the small mammals with this study because it is well known that the collection biases for small mammals are different to those of the larger ones,” she wrote in an email

to The Herald.

“However, we do intend to include them at a later date — in fact to study them separately and see if the same patterns hold up,” she wrote.

“The fact that they could quantify the faunas in the way that they did and then be able to correlate the record with the oxygen isotope curve was clearly innovative and produced new results,” said Thompson Webb III, professor emeritus of geological sciences at Brown, who also commented on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Future research directions include looking at herbivores versus carnivores, as well as studying the significance of certain kinds of fauna to “understand the underlying structure of what’s causing those kinds of animals to group together,” Janis said.

Glucose sensor may nix painful pricks continued from page 12 But there are foreseeable challenges in developing this technology into a functional device. The team’s tests were carried out using solutions containing only glucose, “but there’s a lot of other stuff in saliva,” Pacifici said.

There are several ways to get around that, he said, such as incorporating a filter into the device.

Alternatively, “you could find a glucose signature” in the fingerprint and isolate that signal to determine the glucose concentration, Palmore said.

The project did not start out with the goal of creating a device for diabetes. Originally, the team was focused on ways to monitor cytokines, which are indicators released in the blood after an injury, said Mehta.

Palmore was the one who suggested trying to monitor glucose, which she said presents a bigger and simpler target than cytokines.

In scientific research, diabetes “is one of the holy grails,” Pacifici said.

“We got a lot of emails from parents, asking us, ‘Please keep working on this.’” Especially for young children, finger pricks can be a painful and unpleasant way of checking glucose, so diabetes patients are eager for a better option.

Ava Runge ’15 was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in high school and still tests her blood five or six times a day. Though Runge said she is used to the sensation of pricking the same spot on her hand all the time, she said that she does not always check her blood when she should, because “it’s an extra inconvenience

and a lot of setup.” Runge said she would use a device if it required her to check her glucose less frequently.

One question that remains is whether saliva glucose concentrations are accurate indicators of blood glucose concentrations — ­ and this correlation is essential for the usefulness of the potential device. The team could not find any systematic studies definitively linking the two, said Pacifici, but their device could end up being a tool in such a study.

Even if the device is not applicable to diabetes, Palmore said, the potential for this technology is immense, since it can measure the amount of a substance with incredible sensitivity.

For example, doctors could eventually do full blood screening tests on the same chip, Pacifici said. For engineers, “this is dreaming,” he said.

Ph.D. candidate explores winged dinos continued from page 12 the past year,” Carney said. “As more and more gaps in the fossil record are found, the distinction becomes blurred.” Different studies have placed the archaeopteryx on different sides of the divide between birds and other dinosaurs.

Though some articles have called the archaeopteryx the “missing link” between dinosaurs and modern birds, both Carney and Padian said this is a misnomer. “Things in fossil records are never exact intermediates,” Padian said. Though the ar-

chaeopteryx has many intermediate structural features and may be close to the direct ancestor of birds, “we would never say it’s a direct ancestor,” he added.

To celebrate both his finding and the 150th anniversary of the naming of the archaeopteryx, Carney had an image of the feather fossil tattooed on his arm, magnified by a scale of pi. “The actual feather is fairly small (around seven centimeters),” Carney wrote in an email to The Herald.

“I wanted the tattoo to be roughly the same size as my old band’s guitar tattoo on my other arm to balance

it out,” he wrote. “The proportion ended up being about three times so I used the more mathematically meaningful pi for the ratio.”

Carney scouted out different locales before settling on whom to entrust with his feather tattoo. He decided on Black Lotus on Wickenden Street when, after bringing in a picture of the feather, tattoo artist Mike immediately identified it as belonging to the archaeopteryx.

Carney said the feather may not be his final tattoo — he has potential plans to get one of the full archaeopteryx.

City & State 7

The Brown Daily Herald Friday, February 3, 2012

Providence to gain two City seeks more contributions from U. more charter schools continued from page 1

By elizabeth carr City & State Editor

The Board of Regents of the Rhode Island Department of Education voted 5-4 last night in favor of a proposal to allow Achievement First, a nonprofit that has established charter schools throughout New England, to continue plans to bring two corporate charter schools to Providence.

City Councilman Bryan Principe hosted a press conference yesterday morning urging the Board of the Regents to postpone the vote. Principe has been a leader in the movement against Achievement First and spoke to the board at last night’s meeting.

“There is widespread community opposition to this plan,” he said. Principe presented a long list of those opposed to Achievement First, including 22 members of the General Assembly, seven members of the Providence City Council and 33 various community, parent and labor organizations.

Megan Hines, a mother of two living on the West Side of Providence — where four public schools were closed last year due to budget shortages — told the board she feared the addition of a corporate charter school to the city would lead to further closures because of the state education funding policy, whereby the funding follows the child. If a child were to leave a public school in favor of a charter school, that school would lose the funds it received for that child. It is estimated that the charter school would siphon an additional $6 million from public schools, she said, which would lead to a “domino effect,” with school after school being closed.

“If we’re going to have a charter school, let’s do it right,” Hines added. Instead of a corporate model, she said the city should pursue community-based models.

“Achievement First is wrong for my city and wrong for Rhode Island,” she said.

Chris Mastrangelo, a member of Occupy Providence and longtime Providence citizen, also questioned how the city could afford to transfer funds from public schools to an Achievement First charter school after last year’s school closures.

“These aren’t reformers, these are vultures — which smell, honestly,” he said.

“The people who are pushing for this reform aren’t going to be around when the damage is done.

The (Providence Mayor) Angel Taverases, the (Education Commissioner) Deborah Gists, they’re not going to be around when the damage is done,” Mastrangelo said. “They will have moved on to sunnier pastures, as they always do.”

“The corporate model has

consistently exploited specialneeds students,” he added, referring to accusations that Achievement First schools have a history of neglecting the needs of disabled and English language learning students.

“This is robbing students for the benefit of Wall Street,” Mastrangelo said, “which is a crime.”

Aaron Regunberg ’12 shared a letter from May Ferrow-Mosleh, a parent leadership committee board member at an Achievement First school in New York.

In the letter, she wrote that the strict disciplinary measures at the school had a negative effect on the students.

“Children will have lost the love of learning and never have dreams,” Regunberg read. “I have seen previously very smart children sink into depression.”

She also accused the charter school of sending students home with letters just weeks before state examinations asking parents to contact doctors to give students notes to allow for extended time on the tests.

Before the vote, Colleen Callahan, secretary for the Board of Regents, voiced her own concerns about the proposal. “We need to go back to the drawing board,” she said. “We need to look at the things people have said.”

Callahan was one of four board members to vote against allowing Achievement First to move forward in Providence.

Douglas Gablinske, president of Appraise R.I., a residential appraisal service, spoke in support of Achievement First.

“I do not believe that charter schools are the end-all and beall of education,” he said at the meeting. But “charter schools are a very important component in changing the direction of educational outcomes in Rhode Island.”

“Charter schools strive for excellence and are innovative,” he said, because “they are childcentered, not adult-centered.”

Board of Regents Chairman George Caruolo recognized the vote was tied before casting the deciding vote in favor of the proposal. After he announced the decision, cries of disapproval broke out from the crowd.

“People have the right to actual schools that work for them,” Mastrangelo shouted at the board.

“Children have the right to actual schools that work for them.”

After the vote was announced, Bill Fischer, spokesman for the Rhode Island Mayoral Academy, declined to comment on the accusations made during the meeting. “We’re more concerned about looking forward at this point in time,” he said.

“The board was able to cut through the noise and choose what’s best for Providence students,” he added.

twitter.com/the_herald

failed city,” Taveras said.

In 2011, Brown paid about $1.2 million in voluntary payments to the city. If the University were taxed to the full-assessed value of its property holdings, its tax bill would total $38 million.

The city has recently been outspoken in calling for the University to make additional contributions to Providence. Taveras alleged last month that the University reneged on a deal to provide $4 million in additional contributions to the city each year. The University countered that such a deal was never reached, let alone presented to the Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, for approval.

Together, Providence’s nonprofits would pay $105 million if taxed to the value of their properties, Taveras said at the press conference, adding that he is seeking for nonprofits to contribute an additional $7.1 million toward paying down the city’s deficit.

The Providence City Council passed a resolution Jan. 19 that would strip Brown of its tax-exempt status.

It also issued a report that recommended increasing payments to the city made by local universities and hospitals.

“If Brown were to increase its current contribution by $4 million, that would fall within the range of what we’re recommending,” said City Councilman Sam Zurier, Ward 2.

The meeting with Chafee and University administrators yesterday was “productive,” said David Ortiz, the mayor’s press secretary. But “this is not only about Brown,” he added.

The mayor has requested that all taxexempt institutions pitch in to help the city, he said.

The University maintains that it already contributes enough to Providence, but that it would consider making additional contributions to the city if such payments aligned with its educational mission. If the city government pursues legal strategies to make Brown pay more, the University will argue that targeting institutions of higher education is detrimental to Providence’s economic well-being, Quinn said.

“I think it’s a very challenging time for the city,” Quinn said, adding that the University depends on Providence’s success.

Simmons spoke briefly about the meeting an event honoring University employees yesterday. “I had a very, very good meeting with the mayor, where happily he reaffirmed that he really wants to work with us to develop the right ideas for how Brown can continue to support the city,” she said.

Pension problems

The mayor will hold a town hall style meeting March 3 to discuss suspending yearly increases in employee pension payments. Retiree pensions increase by 5 to 6 percent annually

to adjust for inflation.

“As a city, we no longer have the ability to sustain these benefits,” Taveras said at the press conference. “It must stop now.”

The Rhode Island Superior Court ruled Monday against a motion by the city to shift eligible retirees from private insurance to Medicare, which would have cut costs. The city will file an appeal against the ruling, Taveras said.

Paul Doughty, president of Providence firefighters Local 799, said the mayor has not yet asked retirees to make a change. “I’m adamant that there has to be conversation,” he said, adding that he is confident the retirees will be willing to work with the mayor.

The mayor has taken the first right step by announcing the town hall meeting, he said.

While suspending cost-of-living increases would hurt retirees, Doughty said it would be worse for everyone if the city declares bankruptcy.

Taveras said he will let the courts take care of pension costs if he cannot work with the retirees. “Either the retirees will accept the suspension of their guaranteed yearly raises and changes in health care, or they will follow the path of Central Falls’ retirees, who have had their full pensions slashed drastically in bankruptcy courts,” Taveras said.

—With additional reporting by Phoebe Draper and Sona Mkrttchian

8 Sports Friday

The Brown Daily Herald Friday, February 3, 2012

M. Hockey

Men’s hockey team leaves an IMPACT on kids By ethan mccoy Sports Editor

As the puck slid through the crease and into the net, the Brown men’s hockey team erupted into cheers. The goal wasn’t an overtime game-winner. It wasn’t a goal to upset a ranked opponent. It was not even a goal in a game. But this goal was special.

That goal — on the Bears’ home ice at Meehan Auditorium — was the first time Ethan Bairos lit the lamp. The men’s hockey roster includes the names, years and hometowns of 30 players. In truth, that number is 31. The name Bairos won’t show up in any scoring sheets or scouting reports, but it is the name of the newest Brown Bear to join the men’s hockey family. Ethan is a seven-year old boy from nearby Berkely, Mass., who for the last year has been undergoing treatment in his battle against Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. In October, Ethan joined the men’s hockey team, and for the past few months, the two have developed a bond neither will soon forget.

“The first time he got on that ice, when they taught him how to skate, it was awesome,” said Debbie Bairos, Ethan’s mother. “When he scored, they cheered just like they had scored a goal in their biggest game. They cheered for him, and when we watched that, the tears came to our eyes.”

Ethan and the team were brought together through Team IMPACT, a non-profit organization in Quincy, Mass. that matches children with life-threatening illnesses with collegiate sports teams in the New England area. The program has created connections with hospitals and medical practitioners, as well as a network of 100 colleges and universities, with Brown being one of 24 schools that have added a child to one of its teams. Both Dan Walsh, executive director of Team IMPACT, and Bobby Farnham ’12, assistant captain of the team, said the closeness of college athletics is what makes the program so powerful for both the child and the players.

“The vibrancy and the support of each other — through good and bad — that comes with being part of a team, whether it’s in treatment or after treatment,” Walsh said.

“That’s what benefits the child.”

“I think in college sports, the camaraderie and everything about being on a college sports team works so well with this organization,” Farnham said. “It’d be different at a professional level because it’d be a different atmosphere. In college, everybody is best buddies.

Everyone goes through the same things together, and it’s just a way more tightly-knit group.”

The hockey team became involved with Team IMPACT after Farnham heard of the program

from a high school teammate now playing at St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, N.H. Ethan and his family have since become a mainstay at Meehan.

Ethan has been out on the ice at team practices and can be seen in his own jersey, with his name and number on it, high-fiving players and wishing them luck as they head out onto the ice before every home game. Last weekend, the family hit the road with the team for its games against Dartmouth and Harvard, with Ethan riding on the bus and his family driving behind.

“He doesn’t think of himself as the kid from Team IMPACT who’s with the team,” Bairos said.

“He thinks of himself as a member of the Brown University hockey team, and the guys make him feel that way, too.”

Farnham in particular has emerged as a role model and mentor for Ethan. Since taking the initiative to involve the team in the program, Farnham, who is a finalist for college hockey’s Humanitarian Award, has spent time with Ethan at the family’s home hanging out, playing video games and even helping build an ice rink in the backyard.

“I was distracted the whole time

by Ethan because he just wanted to play all the time, so I didn’t get enough work done as I should have,” Farnham said.

“Bobby has gone above and beyond what we expected of this program,” Bairos said. “He takes calls from Ethan whenever, and talks to him for two seconds, or talks to him for a half hour.”

Bairos said the impact the team has had on Ethan has been incredible for his confidence, self-esteem and energy, and that the family sees the team as the “30 big brothers he’s never had.”

“We live, breathe, eat, sleep, wake up and it’s time for hockey now,” she said. “It gives him something to look forward to.”

“Hearing his parents talk about it, I think is the true telling of what it’s done for him,” Farnham said.

“They say all he wants to do is come to the rink. All he wants to do is be around the guys. He loves every guy on the team so much, and he loves playing hockey. It is the best possible therapy he can have.”

Farnham also pointed out how the relationship has worked in the opposite direction, adding that Ethan’s presence has left a lasting impression on the team.

“For us, on the other end, it’s been pretty rewarding to see a kid who has a life-threatening illness to be as strong as he is and have as much energy as he has,” Farnham said.

The challenges the Bairos family face have inspired them to take action, as well. Thinking of the

support the family received when Ethan was first diagnosed, Debbie Bairos founded the Kids Kickin’ Cancer Foundation in April.

Bairos says the foundation hosts fundraisers and events, and with the money raised, provides $500 grants to families with children under the age of 18 undergoing chemotherapy or radiation treatment. In less than a year, Bairos says the organization has given grants to over 30 families.

As for Team IMPACT, Walsh said the organization is hoping both to expand geographically and to include children facing different types of adversity. Though no other Brown team has added a child to its roster, Farnham said the program is “life-changing” and that he hopes more Bruno squads will get involved.

With under a month remaining in the hockey regular season schedule, Ethan’s first season as a Bear will soon be reaching an end.

But Farnham, who will be graduating in May, said he has developed a “lifelong relationship” with Ethan, and the season’s end will by no means signal a hitch in the team’s bond with the Bairos family.

“We have different guys in different classes all the way down who are going to take the lead,” he said. “Every guy is so close to Ethan, and he is going to be a part of Brown hockey for as long as he wants to be a part of it.”

Sports Friday 9

The Brown Daily Herald Friday, February 3, 2012

We shouldn’t be here By sam sheehan Sports Columnist

It was a snowy night in Foxborough, Mass. Jan. 19, 2002. It was an even snowier night along the coast of eastern Maine. The seventh-grade incarnation of myself sat on the floor of my aunt and uncle’s house and watched the fourth quarter of the New England Patriots AFC Divisional Game against the Oakland Raiders. An unimposing, awkward pre-teen, I wasn’t typically interested in watching most sports because I was so uncoordinated and unable to play them myself. The exception was the Patriots, a tortured team that had lost two Super Bowls and won none. I had been watching the team for four years. And it was only the second time they had made the playoffs.

I was also incredibly upset.

Our rookie quarterback, Tom Brady, had just fumbled the ball when he was hit by Heisman Trophy winner Charles Woodson on a corner blitz. Deep down, I knew what that meant. Oakland recovered the ball. The game was over. All that needed to happen was a confirmation from the referee that the play would stand as called. Since I was a 12-year-old kid who had probably only watched 40 football games up until this point, I was optimistically cheering for the ball back. I still remember my dad’s friend leaning in from the recliner he sat in and firmly telling me, “It’s over.”

But lo and behold, the call was overturned on an obscure, rarely used — but correct — call known as a the “Tuck Rule.” The Patriots kept the ball and won the game because of it.

A week later, the Patriots were in the AFC Championship game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Even as a snotty-nosed seventh-grader, I can remember thinking, “We shouldn’t be here.” But the Patriots won that game, too, and suddenly they were in the Super Bowl. It was then I thought, “No, but we really shouldn’t be here.” If you want to believe that the only reason the Patriots beat the St. Louis Rams that day was because of alleged signal stealing, you go right ahead, but that isn’t what happened.

No, this was something different.

It was a power that I saw at work six years later. A power that we were up against in Super Bowl XLII against the New York Football Giants.

That Super Bowl was a matchup of one of the three greatest football teams ever assembled against a team that was fortunate to make the playoffs. What happened next was a string of miracles that still haunts me to this day. When Eli Manning scampered out onto the field to lead the Giants’ final drive of the game, they were down 14-10.

The Giants looked lost on offense.

Suddenly, it was fourth and one.

Stopping Brandon Jacobs ends the game. But… Vince Wilfork slips and the hole he leaves gives Jacobs the first down.

Next play, a terrified Eli Manning flees a collapsing pocket, running with the unprotected ball outside of his body. Adalius Thomas knocks the ball from his hands for a fumble,

but…

The ball bounces underneath Eli and the Giants retain possession. Next play, a similarly scared Eli whips a ball off of his back foot into the Patriots secondary. Asante Samuel measures up the interception, but…

The ball bounces off of his hands and harmlessly to the ground. Next play…

The Tyree catch.

I’m incredibly bitter about this loss — in case you couldn’t tell — but it’s tough to argue that the Patriots were supposed to win that game with the overwhelming evidence in the string of miracle plays that happened. Just as the lowly Patriots of 2001-02 were destined to beat the Rams, the Giants of 2007-08 were destined to beat the Patriots.

This sounds like I’m joking, but I’m not. At a certain point, an underdog football team reaches a belief that it is their destiny to win the championship, and that certainty manifests itself into an unbeatable aura that trumps all else. Look at the 2005 Steelers championship team, the Green Bay Packers 2011 championship team, or even this Giants 2012 playoff team.

In football, it’s almost always better to be the team who is not supposed to be there. The thing is, that team doesn’t exist in this Super Bowl. That’s what’s so interesting.

This Super Bowl should have been some combination of the Steelers, Houston Texans, New Orleans Saints, Packers or even the San Francisco 49ers. But the Steelers and the Texans were robbed by their injuries, and the Saints, Packers and Niners were undone by miscues.

Suddenly, the Super Bowl is between a team that needed an 11th-hour field goal block to keep their season alive and a team who didn’t beat an opponent with a winning record until last week.

The Patriots are — for some reason — three-point favorites despite being beaten in their own house by the Giants earlier this year. These same Patriots had the incredible good fortune of an easy schedule, in which they played two above .500 teams all year, had a first round bye, and had the easiest playoff win ever over the Denver Broncos. Everyone knows this, and the Giants are the popular pick to win the Superbowl.

But… That makes the Patriots the favorites and the underdogs. It makes the Giants the underdogs and the favorites. Both teams are incredibly fortunate to be where they are today, and both truly seem to believe that this title is their destiny. Both teams seem to have this “power” that I mentioned before working for them and teams that have that power don’t lose.

But… Something has to give, and I personally hope it’s one of those passes Eli throws off of his back foot.

Sam Sheehan ’12 watched the Patriots lose his freshman year at Brown and would like some demons banished before graduating. Talk sports with him at sam_sheehan@ brown.edu or follow him on Twitter @SamSheehan.

Athlete of the Week

Burr earns milestone 300th win By madeleine wenstrup Sports Staff Writer

The ceiling of women’s basketball Head Coach Jean Marie Burr’s office is a flurry of color. After Burr picked up her 300th career win over Dartmouth Jan. 27, her squad decorated her office with signs and streamers and baked her a cake. From the ceiling, 300 pieces of paper hang down, one for each win, each displaying the name of the opponent and the score of the game. As the winningest coach in Brown basketball history, Burr has had 15 winning seasons in her 24 years as a Bear. For her dedication to Brown and in celebration of her career milestone, The Herald has named Burr Athlete of the Week.

The Herald: Congratulations on your 300th career win. Do you remember your first win?

Burr: I just know that when I came to Brown, I just really wanted balance. The year before I came, they were 6-20, so my expectations were that some of my players that I was recruiting for (the) scholarship program would play in the league. The attraction would be the quality of education we have, the professors, the balance. I just knew we would do well. But I think it’s more the players I remember than (the specific games). I think of Krista Butterfield ’89 taking charges or looking at Margaret Fuchs ’91 on the bus and thinking, “Thank God she’s on my team.” It is the experience of working with people you work with and what they bring, consistently at Brown. I am proud of the players that have been on both the sides of the triumphs and the losses.

This is your 24th year at Brown.

What is it about Brown that has made you stay so long?

It’s the student-athletes. It’s the quality, the commitment, their passion for the game. You really have to work hard as a coaching staff to find the right balance of players that can be the best basketball players and have that type of dedication,

Dave Silverman / Herald

With 300 wins under her belt, Coach Jean Marie Burr is a fierce Bear in action.

polish and skills and help us win an Ivy League Championship and play at the NCAA level. And then have success, a drive, a passion and a work ethic for their academics.

You look at players like Hannah Passafuime ’12, Aileen Daniels ’12, Caroline King ’13, Sheila Dixon ’13 and Lindsay Nickel ’13 — they are really the models for a studentathlete at Brown. And that is what really has kept me here. That’s what makes it exciting.

What is your favorite part of the season?

It’s as the season is getting started — I love practice. I love the development. … And then when the games start up — it is almost like going to a test everyday. You want to get tested and you want to get ready. It’s really driven by the players, everything we do is driven by the players — what their goals are. Each game, the next game, is the best game.

What position did you play at the University of New Hampshire or on the New Jersey Gems?

I played whatever position the coach wanted me to play. I think when you are in that position you just like playing the game and you hope that people recognize your strengths, and when someone asked you to do something, you do it, and just appreciated the opportunity.

What you find when you are able to step back from those playing years is the connection you made with all the people, and you just wish you could run the court just one more time, or play, or practice.

Do you follow college or

professional basketball? Any teams you support?

I love the (Boston) Celtics. I grew up in Massachusetts, so I am very loyal to my New England teams. I’m rooting for the Patriots this weekend (in the Superbowl). In terms of college basketball, I probably find myself following coaches more than I follow teams — I just find it a good way to grow your game. I like studying the game.

You have four daughters — do any of them play basketball?

Two of them were first team AllState in volleyball, if you believe it, in Rhode Island. One of them is playing Division I volleyball at George Washington University. My husband coached my girls throughout their youth in my community in Coventry, Rhode Island. But my family grew up on buses. They have tailed many of my players like Krista Butterfield who graduated ’89 — I can think of Judee, her first words being “Krista.” Then Jessica following around Kate Veronneau ’06 and Joanna with Julie Amato ’99 and Jenna with Shae Fitzpatrick ’10. After they graduated, they were like, “Where did they go?” They have been a very positive influence on my family.

Any plans for the future?

Beat Princeton on Friday night.

We’ve got our hands full with a team that made it to the tournament last year. I’m very confident with the teamwork and energy and bonding that this team has, and I am very excited to have the opportunity to coach them and work with them to achieve our goals this year. I’m living in the moment.

comics Fraternity of Evil | Eshan Mitra, Brendan Hainline and Hector Ramirez

Dreadful Cosmology | Oirad Macmit

10 Diamonds & Coal

The Brown Daily Herald Friday, February 3, 2012

Diamonds & coal Diamond to GISP 0001: “Underwater Archaeology,” which attracts a lot of members of ARRR!!!, the University’s pirate a cappella group.

This is not to be confused with the GISP entitled “Unarmed Shipping Vessels,” which attracts a lot of Somali pirates.

Diamond to Laura Colella GS, whose play “Liquorland” debuts tonight at a free playwriting festival. Coincidentally, Liquorland is the name of The Herald’s patented new board game. Look for it in hipster coffee shops near you.

Coal to ambitious Rep. Frank Ferri, D-Warwick, who said of making higher education in Rhode Island more affordable, “We needed to hear from everybody in the state.” Everybody? Maybe he’s hoping by the time he’s done listening, Providence’s budget problems will have solved themselves.

Diamond to Erik Ehn, head of the graduate playwriting program, who said he “would love to see Brown become a puppet powerhouse.”

With the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts completed, we see an opening for Building Brown’s next project: the Ruth Simmons Puppet Palace.

Cubic zirconia to Visiting Assistant Professor of History Derek Seidman AM’05 PhD’10, who asked, “What’s a liberal arts education for if not for trying to tackle the burning issues of your day?” That explains Modern Culture and Media’s new firefighting concentration requirement.

Moonstone to Judy Bentkover, an instructor of PHP1680J: “The Race to Inner Space: Conflating Science, Politics and Economics to Promote Brain Health,” the public health seminar co-taught by former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, for saying her students will “identify the future of brain research” and “create useful, usable documents to find a cure for brain disease.” They will also be advising Newt Gingrich on his plans to establish a colony on the moon.

Coal to Undergraduate Council of Students President Ralanda “Optimus Prime” Nelson ’12, for revealing her identity as head of the Autobots when she said, “Now I have ownership over the success of the entire machine.” We didn’t realize UCS was actually made up of robots in disguise.

Coal to the Association of American Medical Colleges for increasing the length of the Medical College Admission Test from five and a half to seven hours. If everyone were forced to take two semesters of organic chemistry, they would agree that pre-meds have enough to deal with as it is.

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“We’re a bit older, so we take some more time to get on stage.”

— President Ruth Simmons on long-time service honorees See employees on page 2.

Clarification An article in Thursday’s Herald (“At midpoint, Nelson ’12 reflects on term,” Feb. 2) stated that Ralanda Nelson ’12, president of the Undergraduate Council of Students, oversaw the implementation of the January Career Laboratory. While Nelson provided feedback to the CareerLAB before and after the event, the project was managed by Andrew Simmons, director of the CareerLAB, with the help of Young Alumni Trustee Lauren Kolodny ’08 and Nancy Neff ’76 P’06 P’14, chair of the Corporation Committee on Campus Life.

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Opinions 11

The Brown Daily Herald Friday, February 3, 2012

In defense of program houses

By Lucas Husted Opinions Columnist Ah, the spring at Brown is finally upon us. If you are an upperclassman, you are probably looking forward to what should be a great time. If you are a freshman, this spring could determine the way the rest of your college experience looks. Soon you must choose where to live your sophomore year. Most students enter the housing lottery with a small group and pray for the best. There is, however, an attractive alternative to keep in mind: program houses and Greek life.

It may seem trivial, but where and with whom you live at Brown determines who you see, what you choose to do and the ways in which you spend your time. In some ways I am making a big deal about nothing. You will likely be happy at Brown no matter where or who you live with. On the other hand, by random chance, Brown’s placement of you in your freshman hallway certainly influenced the decisions you ultimately made, and this is not to be taken lightly.

If you are a freshman reader who thinks that you have found your perfect friend group or thinks that you have it all figured out, take a second and open your eyes. You have been in college for a few months. You have probably only just learned the names of all of the school buildings. More impor-

tantly, you have not met enough people.

This may seem shocking ­— surely you have made many new friends in college and feel constantly surrounded by interesting people. Unfortunately, you are one of 6,000 undergraduates. It is strange then that going into the lottery is such a natural thing to do.

Here is what will likely happen if you choose the housing lottery route. You will have a group of five to ten friends that you feel comfortable with. You may get a decent number and wind up in Graduate Center.

man year alive for a while longer. What do I mean by this? Well, freshman year is about getting your toes wet, meeting many new people and trying new things. Joining a Greek house or program house can give you all of these things because the types of people who join come from self-selective pools of applicants.

Now you may say, “Well I can see how the houses could be fun in theory, but in practice Sigma Chi guys are really big jerks, and Buxton House kids are douches.” If you

If you are a freshman reader who thinks that you have found your perfect friend group or thinks that you have it all figured out, take a second and open your eyes.

You may even get a single! Hurray! You have survived the lottery unscathed. This thinking belies the truth of the matter. You have made a very boring choice. You have come to college, a place where the most fundamental thing you can do is interact with others and learn from your peers, and with your first major decision, you have decided to live in an ugly tower with narrow hallways with a few people you just met.

I could insert some humorous metaphor here to further explain my logic, but I believe the point is self-evident.

On the other hand, program houses are a fun way to keep the spirit of fresh-

believe these disparaging remarks, then you do yourself no favors. Program houses are nothing like what they seem. While there may be individuals in the houses that stand out as intolerable, these same people may likely be your neighbors if you get stuck as an independent in Wriston Quadrangle. You should not allow this assumption to form the basis of all of your judgments about a house. Go to some open houses or rush events and see for yourself. After all, we go to the same school and, for the most part, share the same core values.

If you are judging these houses based on your own experience at the large cam-

pus-wide parties they throw, your logic is further biased. Program houses throw those parties to attract potential applicants, but your average class-F party, as they are called, is filled with freshmen. Essentially, they are high school dance parties with alcohol, and they are heavily monitored and regulated by the University. They in no way represent the typical atmosphere of the house and in no way embody the feel of life there.

At a program house, you get to live in a lively place that collects funds and appropriates them to maximize everyone’s enjoyment. You get to forge bonds that last a lifetime that are strengthened by close proximity, and you can still do everything that you would have done living with your other friends.

Living amongst a bunch of crazy kids who are all smart and open to new experiences is fun, and it is the stereotypical point of college. Furthermore, it is an attractive alternative to the housing lottery at the very least. If you do not feel 100 percent comfortable with your housing group, then give a program house a try. At no other time in life will you be able to walk down the hall to a friend’s room and hang out whenever you want. Don’t end that after one year by moving into the Grad Center prison. I will conclude by putting in a personal plug: Join Buxton, even if you are American like me.

Lucas Husted ’13 is an American in Buxton, and you can, too! He can be reached at Lucas_Husted@brown.edu.

Before fixing the world, let’s fix the world’s housing

By Camille Spencer-Salmon Opinions Columnist We college students, occupying a subsidized ground between someday-working adults and dependents, tend to engage in community service work. For my part, I spent some time exploring Providence this break before going back to classes as a part of Winter Break Projects, a program run by the Swearer Center for Public Service.

There is much more complexity to poverty in the city than I would have imagined sitting on top of College Hill.

Food assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Women, Infants and Children program are getting more expensive as the number of people eligible to participate grows. Undocumented aliens aren’t eligible for nutrition programs while their kids have the right to attend school, a damaging mixed message that allows families to stay while denying them an opportunity to feed themselves. Kids in lead-infected housing — especially cheaper public housing — suffer permanent neurological damage as a result of exposure to the harmful metal, driving up dropout rates. Moreover, poor nutrition, which these kids are more likely to deal with, exacerbates the effects of lead poisoning. The landscape looks like a slew of separate causes to fight for, but they are all incredibly interconnected.

And while it’s tempting to include in this column a cry to “get off the Hill and learn about the world, which is full of wrongs for us to right!” I won’t. I’d like to raise awareness about lead poisoning in particular, a problem that cannot be easily advertised on a poster because of the lack of obvious symptoms. Furthermore, it cannot be treated with a vaccine.

But it could be eliminated if the city enforced the existing legislation that regulates paint and building materials.

Providence kids enter school suffering disproportionate levels of poisoning

dren’s Hospital HELP Lead Safe Center as well as nonprofits like the Childhood Lead Action Project are working to raise awareness about the issue, it is a low priority concern to most organizations. Although in recent decades the nation as a whole has moved away from using leadbased paint, there hasn’t been much of an effort to remove lead paint from homes, even in public housing.

Instead, Rhode Island has focused much more on screening for lead poisoning in children under age six than actually treating the causes of the problem

Kids in lead-infected housing — especially cheaper public housing — suffer permanent neurological damage as a result of exposure to the harmful metal.

compared with kids in other cities due to greater exposure to lead-based paint and lead in housing fixtures. Poor kids are the most affected, suffering from symptoms like lower IQ, more learning and behavioral disorders like Attention Deficit Disorder, stunted growth and dental issues.

While there are strategies for preventing lead poisoning in at-risk children, and resources like the Hasbro Chil-

in the first place. According to the Department of Health website, if a child is found to be “significantly lead poisoned,” the family is offered medical care, case management and a home inspection to identify hazards. While this is good, matters are further complicated in neighborhoods such as Olneyville, which has one of the highest proportions of lead-poisoned children under the age of six in the

city, at 14 percent. According to the Olneyville Neighborhood Association, the undocumented families that live there report facing threats of eviction from their landowners if they complain about lead hazards. So, poisoning rates stay up.

It is necessary to do more. We should work to remove this dangerous condition that continues to needlessly affect communities in this city. Kids under age six are more likely to be poisoned because of their tendency to put contaminated objects in their mouths, which leads to permanent damage in their developing brains. Despite the Center for Disease Control’s current setting of the “safe threshold” for blood lead levels being 10 micrograms per deciliter, evidence suggests that there is no safe dosage of lead, and symptoms can emerge at any level of exposure.”

Meanwhile, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, 25 percent of American children are still at a risk of lead poisoning. We as students in a community and also as future members of other communities should take part in raising awareness about this clearly solvable issue that could help so many of those stifled by structural inequality.

Providence’s economy is suffering, yes. But ignoring something so obviously preventable and allowing it to affect a whole population of local families is not acceptable.

Camille Spencer-Salmon ’14 also supports general world-saving attempts.

She can be reached at Camille_Spencer-Salmon@brown.edu.

Daily Herald Science Friday the Brown

Friday, February 3, 2012

Grad unveils dinosaur wings Melanoma study

raises red flag

By Kate Nussenbaum Senior Staff Writer

As an undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley, Ryan Carney, a PhD candidate, was the lead singer and songwriter for his own punk rock band, said Kevin Padian, Carney’s undergraduate thesis advisor and professor of integrative biology at Berkeley. As a Brown graduate student, Carney has not left his rock days behind. Now he applies his creativity to a different kind of rock — the rock that contains fossils of the archaeopteryx, a 150-million-year-old winged dinosaur that has fascinated Carney ever since he watched a TV program about it as a young boy.

This year, Carney joined the ranks of scientists responsible for demystifying the animal when he discovered that the dinosaur’s wing feathers were black in color and contained structures identical to those of birds. His work was published in the January issue of the journal Nature Communications.

Though he studied integrative biology and studio art as an undergraduate, Carney did not pursue paleontology immediately out of college. Instead, he received two master’s degrees at Yale — one in business and one in public health — while doing research on the side.

Carney said it was there that his friend Jakob Vinther, who would eventually become the study’s second author, found that squid fossils from deposits in Germany contained melanin, the pigment responsible for the coloring of most organisms.

The discovery that melanin is fossilized “opened up this whole new scientific method for reconstructing the color of ancient organisms,” Carney said. He decided to apply that method to the fossils of the creature in which he had never lost interest — the archaeopteryx.

By Phoebe Draper Senior Staff Writer

Courtesy of Museum für Naturkunde Berlin

A grad student used a field emission gun to observe fossil details.

In 2010, right before Carney arrived at the University, he contacted National Geographic and traveled to Germany to examine two archaeopteryx fossils unearthed in the mid-19th century — one fossil of the entire animal known as the Berlin specimen and one of just a single feather. While there, Carney tried two different scans, hoping to see fossilized melanosomes, organelles containing melanin. But the scanners weren’t powerful enough.

The third time proved the charm.

Carney returned to Germany, this time equipped with a powerful field emission gun. And this time, his team was able to see the fine details of melanosome structure.

Carney said the scan allowed his team to compare the melanosomes in the feather to those of modern birds, the last living members of the dinosaur family. “They were identical in morphology, shape, the alignment, the angles,” he said.

“Even down to the microscopic level, completely identical.”

Carney’s use of technology is “very exciting,” Padian said. “As

technology gets better, we’re able to return to the same hunting grounds to ask questions with more sophistications.”

The melanosome’s presence also indicates with 95 percent certainty that the feathers were black. The chemical structure of the black color indicates an increase of the strength, mobility and thickness of the feather, all of which would have helped the feather to resist fracture while the animal’s wing was flapping through the air, Carney said.

Still, the presence of these melanosomes does not mean the archaeopteryx flew, Carney said, adding that this finding has been misinterpreted in the media.

“This isn’t proof that the archaeopteryx flew,” he said. “It’s proof that its feathers were strengthened, but you can’t say that it therefore was a flyer.”

Likewise, it is still unclear whether the archaeopteryx should be considered the first bird. “It’s been very hotly debated within continued on page 6

Dermatologists have long promoted the ABCDs of melanoma detection­ — A for asymmetry, B for border irregularity, C for color variation and D for diameter larger than six millimeters. But a recent study on nodular melanoma — an aggressive subtype of the skin cancer — forced Martin Weinstock, professor of dermatology and epidemiology, to suggest a few more letters for the alphabet.

The EFG — elevated, firm, growing ­— criteria were developed by Weinstock to describe the unique features of nodular melanoma, which is difficult to catch early. The study was published in print in the Archives of Dermatology this January.

Weinstock and his associates spent months sifting through the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program, a database managed by the National Cancer Institute. They analyzed 111,478 invasive melanoma cases that occurred between 1978 and 2007. They grouped each case by subtype and compared the incidence, survival and ultimate fatality rates of each subtype.

What they found was a statistical red flag, signaling nodular melanoma’s disproportionately large fatality rate.

Though nodular melanoma accounted for only 14 percent of total melanoma cases, it was the cause of 37 percent of ultimately fatal melanomas. While only one in 19 cases of the common melanoma is ultimately fatal, one in five cases of nodular melanoma ends in death.

“It’s nice to be able to analyze the data and get definitive numbers,” said Michael Xiong MD’14, who

worked closely with Weinstock on the study.

Nodular melanoma accounts for a large proportion of deaths because it is difficult to detect early. The melanoma initially grows deep into the skin instead of spreading laterally across the skin’s surface. If the melanoma remains undetected, it is more likely to metastasize, spreading to other areas of the body.

“Catching it early and surgically removing it early is critically important to surviving the melanoma,” Weinstock said. “We need to pay more attention to catching the nodular melanomas early.”

Nodular melanomas resemble blisters and are most often found on the sun-exposed head and neck.

Males over the age of 50 are most susceptible, according to the study.

Nodular melanoma rates of incidence, survival and fatality remain grudgingly static. In analyzing longterm trends, Weinstock’s team found nodular melanoma rates have not budged for 30 years. These stagnant rates “underscore the importance of making progress against nodular melanoma,” the authors wrote.

“Public health efforts should include a focus on (nodular melanoma) for maximum reduction of melanoma mortality.”

The study has been met with positive response from other professionals in the field.

“This study confirmed what a lot of dermatologists suspected,” said Keri Chaney, instructor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School.

The study’s authors recognized that their statistics were subject to variability due to remaining controversy about whether nodular melanoma is a distinct subtype. continued on page 6

Saliva-scanning device could replace blood tests for diabetics

By Kate DeSIMONE Contributing Writer

Instead of unpleasantly pricking their fingers, diabetics may one day simply spit onto a sensor in order to keep their glucose levels in check, thanks to technology being developed by Brown researchers.

The team of faculty, graduate students and undergraduates reported its findings in a paper published online Dec. 26 in the journal Nano Letters.

Though they have not yet made a prototype, the team has a provisional patent and is seeking a way to develop their idea into an actual product, said Domenico Pacifici, assistant professor of engineering and an author of the paper. “The technology is there, it’s just a question of design,” he said.

“We were dreaming, what if you could do it on an iPhone?” Pacifici said. In theory, the team’s experimental setup could be scaled down into a single chip that could then be implanted onto a smartphone. A user could put a small saliva sample on

the chip and immediately know his or her glucose levels. “That would be a cool app,” he said.

Fingerprints instead of pricks

The underlying concept behind the team’s idea is the interaction of electromagnetic waves on the surface of a silver film. Devices that measure these wave interference patterns are called interferometers, and the team built thousands of them into sensors. Each interferometer, only micrometers long, consists of a slit and two shallow grooves etched onto the silver surface.

When light strikes the film, the wave patterns on the surface create a specific “fingerprint” depending on how the grooves and slits are arranged, said Tayhas Palmore, professor of engineering and an author of the paper. A liquid on top of the film changes how the waves interfere, and thus shifts the fingerprint. The size of the shift can be directly correlated to the glucose concentration of the liquid.

This technique is “really trying to push the boundaries of what we know,” said Pacifici. When he introduced the idea to the graduate students in his lab, they were skeptical.

“I think they thought I was kind of crazy,” he said. But to see his idea become a reality, he said, is “the best thing ever.”

Alec Roelke ’12 and Vihang Mehta ’12 have been working with Pacifici for over a year and are the two undergraduate authors of the paper. Roelke carried out the computer simulations that predicted the wave patterns, while Mehta collected experimental data from the interferometers the team manufactured themselves. When the researchers looked at the predicted and observed fingerprints side by side, the patterns matched up surprisingly well, Mehta said. “It was a point of big success.”

Jing Feng GS and Vince Siu GS, the first authors of the paper, designed and built micro-channels to carry glucose solution through a chip containing thousands of inter-

Domenici Pacifici

Each plasmonic interferometer – thousands of them per square millimeter – consists of a slit flanked by two grooves etched in a silver metal film. The schematic shows glucose molecules “dancing” on the sensor surface illuminated by light with different colors. Changes in light intensity transmitted through the slit of each plasmonic interferometer yield information about the concentration of glucose molecules in solution.

ferometers. The chip can measure extremely small changes in glucose concentrations and requires only 20 femtoliters of fluid­. To put that in perspective, one milliliter contains

1 trillion femtoliters.

A sweet possibility

continued on page 6