The Week In Brief

A Harvard student was arrested recently for breaking into what he thought was the the Harvard Crimson building. Responding to an alarm in the space next door, which belongs to the English Language Center, police found Vali D. Chandrasekaran '03, an editor of the Harvard Lampoon. Realizing his error, he decided to wait for the police, claiming the prank was merely the product of playful rivalry. Chandrasekaran, whose AP credits placed him out of Harvard's map-reading requirement, has been sentenced to socializing with Crimson staff.

Dartmouth

On Tues., Jan. 16, Dartmouth College Provost Susan Prager announced her resignation. Her tenure, which lasted only two years, would appear to be typical for the college. The college's two previous provosts served one and two years, respectively, before figuring out that the middle of nowhere is not just an expression.

Penn

Last month the Daily Pennsylvanian ran an article about six Penn sorority sisters kissing and lathering shampoo on each other in a shower. The action was taped and later broadcast on the web. Each student was paid $50 for her appearance, but it may not have been worth the money. Their sorority asked them to "deactivate" their member status mainly for breaking explicit group rules by singing a made-up sorority song on the site. They were then asked by their sorority's national chapter to resign for being pictured publicly not wearing the standard black pants and platform shoes.

—Compiled by Lise Clavel from the Harvard Crimson, the Dartmouth Collegian, and the Daily Pennsylvanian

Relieve stress, grow bigger brain

For years doctors have used medication to treat the symptoms of depressed patients. Anti-depressants are staples in the world of pharmaceuticals, and trade names like Prozac are part of everyday vocabulary. But only recently, as a result of the work of researchers like Yale Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology Ronald Duman, have physicians begun to understand how these drugs work to alleviate symptoms of chronic depression.

In a study published in the Fri., Dec. 15 issue of Neuroscience, Duman and his colleagues wrote that the effectiveness of anti-depressants likely stems from their ability to stimulate cell growth in a critical part of the brain. Upon administering anti-depressants to rodents, the group observed an increased number of neurons in the hippocampus.

In humans, the hippocampus is known to affect memory and emotion. Stress, however, kills cells in the hippocampus and thus can alter the brain's ability to regulate mood. Duman's findings indicate that anti-depressants counteract stress-induced damage within the brain and restore a level of natural emotional control to depressed individuals.

According to the study, chemical anti-depressants increase the number of cells in the hippocampus by 20 to 40 percent. Results are observable after two to four weeks of treatment.

Duman's figures remove some of the mystery from an important area in medicine. With a better picture of depression at the molecular level, drug companies can fine-tune their products, and researchers can develop even better methods of treating the over 14 million clinically depressed patients in America.

—Alison Smith

Tweed cuts busiest flights, plans to expand

Beginning Mon., Feb. 4, Tweed airport will reduce the number of flights to and from Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. Specifically, the first and last flight of each day will be cancelled, cutting the daily total from three to one. The decision comes as a surprise to many in the business community who will be inconvenienced by the decreased number of flights.

Currently,U.S. Airways runs the flights in question. Despite the fact that the airline charges 20 to 40 percent more at Tweed than at Bradley, Providence, or White Plains airports, the early morning and late night flights are always filled. Tweed officials attribute the decision to cut flights to a possible merger between United Airlines and U.S. Airways.

At the same time that Tweed cuts down on the number of flights, there is talk of expanding the airport itself. Tweed is considering 1,000-foot extensions to the beginning and end of each runway, as well as a new parking lot. Officials are hoping that as biotech and other industries bring investors to the area in the future, interest in New Haven and the surrounding areas will increase. However, representatives predict that none of these plans for expansion will be implemented until well after all current students have graduated.

—Katie Aldrich

Morgan wins National Humanities Medal

Edmund S. Morgan, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History at Yale, was among one of the 12 recipients of the National Humanities Medal for 2000.

According to the National Endowment for the Humanities web site, the National Humanities Medal, inaugurated in 1997, "honors individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened our citizens' engagement in the humanities, or helped preserve and expand Americans' access to important resources in the humanities."

Other winners of the award this year are authors Barbara Kingsolver and Toni Morrison and composer and preservationist Quincy Jones. Last year's winners included Steven Spielberg and Jim Lehrer. Recipients of the award, selected by President Bill Clinton, LAW '73, attended a ceremony at the White House.

Morgan, an expert on American colonial history, according to the Columbia Encyclopedia, "writes in a way that appeals to the general reading public while maintaining high scholarly standards."

His long list of works includes Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (1988), American Slavery, American Freedom (1975), Birth of the Republic (1956), and The Puritan Dilemma (1958).

Morgan joined the Yale faculty in 1955 and received many honors during his career. In 1965 he became a Sterling Professor, one of Yale's highest distinctions.

Morgan retired in 1986 and has been working as a professional wood-turner for the past decade. In addition to making walnut bowls, he is currently the chair of the board of the Benjamin Franklin Papers and is working on a study of Franklin.

—Alexis Swerdloff

Beinecke appoints new head

As of Thurs., Jan. 11, Beinecke library has a new director: Barbara A. Shailor. A native of New Haven, Shailor has spent the past five years as dean of Douglass College at Rutgers University. She is also a professor of classics there and previously taught at Bucknell University, where she held senior administrative positions. Her major areas of academic interest are Latin manuscript studies, the transmission of classical texts in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and women in classical antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Shailer is no stranger to the Beinecke library. Between 1970 and 1995 she spent many summers and two sabbatical leaves compiling and writing her three-volume Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Beinecke.

Shailor will begin her new job at Beinecke this summer.

—Valerie Work

Heard

"Smack my bitch up."

—Lawrence Manley, Shakespeare: Comedies and Romances

"The scientists caused genital to genital rubbing, but the natives call it hooka-hooka."

—Robert Wyman, Global Problems of Population Growth

"Humans figured out very early how to get drunk—whatever could ferment, they fermented."

—Veronika Grimm Food and Diet in Greco-Roman Antiquity

"Now we live in a great country, so you can be poor and fat. Before you had to be rich to be fat."

—Steve Berry, Intro Micreconomics

Yale Index

1. Number of presidents before George W. Bush, DC '68: 42

2. Number who won the popular vote: 40

3. Number of previous popular losers called "His Fraudulency": 1

4. Number of previous popular losers called "Dubya": 1

5. Year in which Dubya "gave up" drinking: 1986

6. Year of wedding during which Dubya was videotaped trashed: 1992

7. Cost of one bottle of Crisco oil, in dollars: 4

8. Number of times John Ashcroft has annointed himself with Crisco oil before taking office: 3

9. Number of Biblical kings who annointed themselves with oil before taking office: 2

10. Number of dead guys who have beaten John Ashcroft in an election: 1

11. Number of Biblical kings who lost their thrones to dead guys: 0

12. Percent chance of John Ashcroft annointing Dubya with Crisco oil: 0

13. Cost, in dollars, of viewing Dubya's inauguration if John Ashcroft annointed him with oil: 39.95

—Compiled by Nathan Littlefield

Sources: 1,2,3,4) history; 5,6) thesmokinggun.com; 7) sexual frustration; 8) The New York Times; 9,11) the Bible; 10) patheticness of John Ashcroft; 12) repressed sexual tension; 13) Spice Networks

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