Monday, April 1, 2019

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SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2019

VOLUME CLIII, ISSUE 40

Bears take four wins at NCAA Tournament 26th-seeded Ian Butterbrodt ’19 makes surprising run through bracket

Wow Air strands spring breakers Budget airline cancels all flights indefinitely, affected students struggle to return to campus

By RYAN HANDEL SENIOR STAFF WRITER

After a strong conference tournament run, the wrestling team looked to parlay their momentum into the NCAA Wrestling Tournament in Pittsburgh March 21-23. National tournament veterans Jon Viruet ’19 (165 lbs) and CJ LaFragola ’19 (184 lbs) fell victim to the tough competition, with each wrestler dropping their first two matches in the doubleelimination event. But Christian LaBrie ’19 (157 lbs) and Ian Butterbrodt ’19 (285 lbs), both making their first NCAA Wrestling Tournament appearances, each picked up victories. Butterbrodt, who entered the tournament seeded 26th of the 33 wrestlers in his weight class, made a surprise run through the bracket, finishing one win away from a top eight placement and All-American status. Though Butterbrodt stole the show with multiple upset victories, other Brown wrestlers had their tournaments defined by crucial losses. LaBrie, Viruet

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By COLLEEN CRONIN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

COURTESY OF BROWN ATHLETICS

Butterbrodt (left) was the 26th seed of the 33 wrestlers in his weight class, but came within one match of attaining All-American status. and LaFragola all ended their collegiate off quickly, taking down Butterbrodt and wrestling careers in matches decided by earning over a minute of riding time. three or fewer points. But Butterbrodt kicked into second gear, Butterbrodt’s tournament started escaping and taking down Thomas beout like his teammates’, as he fell in fore tilting the Panther for four nearfall the first round to University of Wis- points. Butterbrodt continued to build consin’s Trent Hillger. But the Bruno upon his lead, pulling off the upset via heavyweight caught fire in the consola- a 15-7 major decision. tion rounds. Against Jeramy Sweany of “(Butterbrodt) wrestled amazing,” Cornell, Butterbrodt jumped out to a said Head Coach Todd Beckerman. “To commanding 9-0 lead and cruised to come out in the morning and wrestle a 12-7 win. Next, Butterbrodt took on the number eight seed from Pitt, who’s 8th-seeded Demetrius Thomas of the really talented, he stuck to his game plan University of Pittsburgh. Thomas started » See WRESTLING, page 4

When Hans Lei ’21 and Hyun Choi ’21 woke up Thursday morning in Iceland, they had plans to spend their last days of spring break seeing glaciers and ice caves before heading back to Providence the following Saturday. Traveling with six other University students, Lei and Choi expected the tail end of the trip to be smooth sailing despite fickle Icelandic weather. But their hopes of a restful end to the week-long break were shattered when another student in the group browsed online and found an article about Wow Air, the carrier that was supposed to bring them home. On Thursday morning, the Icelandic airline known for its low-budget fares from the United States to Europe canceled all flights indefinitely, according to a travel alert posted to

its website. The quick shutdown left many ticket holders surprised and in limbo. Thousands of passengers, including Lei, Choi and other University students, were left stranded abroad. Flying out of Boston to Reykjavik and other European vacation destinations, Wow Air had been a popular travel option for students planning vacations on a budget. With no notification from the airline and no immediate refund, Lei and Choi found out via news coverage that they had to find a new flight, and they needed to find it fast. Two members of the group who are not U.S. citizens were traveling to Iceland on visas that expired five hours after their original flight was supposed to depart. If they could not find a flight back to the United States before the expiration, the students would technically be in Iceland illegally, something no one in the group wanted to risk. As the students refreshed Google Flights and Icelandair’s website, they eventually found one Icelandair flight » See AIRLINE, page 6

U. suspends Researchers link snowline migration to icemelt in Greenland Study required automated terminal analysis of 3,000 images, pictures of master’s in differentiating snow from those of ice history By JOSHUA BRICKER

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Department may revive program in future with extra year, stronger thematic focus By KAMRAN KING SENIOR STAFF WRITER

The University will no longer offer terminal master’s degrees in history beginning in the 2019-20 school year. The decision came after the University compared its single-year program with longer, thematically-focused options at peer institutions and determined its degree program was not robust enough. The suspension of the terminal master’s program, which offered a one-year program to individuals not previously enrolled at the University, leaves most outside applicants unable to obtain a Brown master’s in history. Outside applicants can still earn a transitional master’s through the University’s PhD program, » See HISTORY, page 2

INSIDE

A University study found that the location of the boundary between snow-covered ice and bare ice is the leading factor determining icemelt in Greenland, which is the largest contributor to global sea level rise. A team of University researchers mapped the migration of Greenland’s snowline and its effect on the island’s icemelt using thousands of images from NASA’s Terra satellite. In a paper published this month, their results show how Greenland’s icemelt is primarily caused by snowline migration, a phenomenon that has been historically underrepresented in the literature. A snowline, in this context, is the physical boundary between bright snow and dark ice. The snow on an ice sheet acts as a protective covering due to its reflective capacity and is characterized as having “high albedo,” said Jonathan Ryan, the paper’s lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. Snow reflects 70-80 percent of the solar

YILAN GAO / HERALD

energy that hits its surface. Ice only reflects 20-50 percent of this energy, leaving it more vulnerable to melt. “As you progress through the summer season, the sun rises to higher angles and so you actually melt some snow … (exposing) bare glacial ice,” Ryan said.

“Unbelievably, no one had looked at snowlines of Greenland before. There has been a great deal of attention paid to other properties that darken the ice sheets’ surface — like dust, algae (and) meltwater pools. They have received a lot of study and a lot of media attention.

This study shows, for the first time, that the humble snowline actually controls icemelt five times more than all of those other processes combined,” explained Visiting Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences Laurence Smith, the paper’s co-author. The team’s research, which required analyzing roughly 3,000 images, was made possible using an automated approach. “It’s impossible for a person to go in and classify every pixel,” Ryan said. The researchers used a classification algorithm to track how Greenland’s snowline migrated in images taken over the past decade. They trained the algorithm to recognize images of snow against images of bare ice. Ryan’s research specialty is understanding how Greenland’s ice sheet is melting and how it might respond to future climate change. He explained how he came about this project, in part, by spending time on Greenland’s ice sheet. “We saw in person how dark the ice is, how light the snow is and how fast the snowline migrates.” Despite the fact that he was inspired by his time on the ice sheet, Ryan estimates that he spent 95 percent of his time working on this project from his desk. “This is actually one of the first projects where it has been almost completely done » See ICEMELT, page 6

WEATHER

MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2019

NEWS University admits 2,551 students to class of 2023 with record-low overall acceptance rate

SPORTS Men’s tennis beats Yale, women’s lacrosse beats Fresno State, track and field compete at Raleigh

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