Yale Bulletin and Calendar

March 31, 2006|Volume 34, Number 24

In the News
X

"Medical care in the U.S. is an equal opportunity abuser. The poorer you are, the less care you get. Once you're into the system, the quality levels off. The worse care is equally distributed across all classes, races and income groups."

-- Lowell S. Levin, professor emeritus of public health and lecturer in public health, "Once in Treatment, All Races Get So-So Health Care," New Haven Register, March 16, 2006.

"[Writing is] like sculpting. How do you choose the words? How do you put them together in the ways you want? It can drive you nuts."

-- Seymour Sarason, professor emeritus of psychology, "Longtime Yale Psychologist Self-Publishes A Novel," Hartford Courant, March 20, 2006.

"It's really a critical moment. The old guard of black political leaders are trying to pass the torch and they're developing a very solid base within their own families and then spreading outward. ... We really have to give citizens and voters more credit. Just because you get in the door because of family attachment, there's no guarantee you'll stay."

-- Khalilah Brown-Dean, assistant professor of political science and of African American studies, "Black Politicians' Legacies Inspire Sons' Ambitions -- Name Recognition Helps Civil Rights Scions," The Star-Ledger (NJ), March 13, 2006.

"There are as many ways to cut down on calories as there are foods out there. My advice is to use nutritional common sense -- maximize fruits and vegetables, limit the amount of processed foods and keep portion sizes reasonable."

-- Marlene Schwartz, research scientist and lecturer in psychology, "Ten Diets that Work," Forbes, March 8, 2006. <

''There is often a feeling that if something is morally wrong it must be legally wrong and that clever arguments can bring those two things into alignment."

-- Peter H. Schuck, the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor of Law, "Supreme Court Smackdown!" The New York Times, March 12, 2006.

"[Participants in a study of low-fat diets who reported that they were eating 1,400-1,500 calories daily] should have lost loads of weight. Yet the women in the test group only lost three or four pounds. The control group actually gained about a pound. A scale is a scale. It won't lie. That screams out to me that the dietary records were inaccurate."

-- Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, chair of the Department of Psychology, and professor of epidemiology and public health, "Food News Blues," Newsweek, March 13, 2006.

"Sooner or later, whether it's [the 'bird flu' virus] H5N1 or another strain, a pandemic is inevitable -- like an earthquake in California."

-- Durland Fish, professor of epidemiology and public health and senior research scientist at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, "Infected Planet; Modern Human Plagues Like Bird Flu Aren't the Result of Mysterious Forces. Whether We Mean To or Not, We Bring Them on Ourselves," AlterNet (CA), March 21, 2006.

"Once you get chicken pox, for the rest of your life you'll carry it in a latent form, the chicken pox virus. And every once in awhile it blossoms out in adults, and causes this very unpleasant disease called shingles; a lot of pain, a lot of disabilities. It's a very bad disease. It's now believed, or at least it's believed by some people, that exposure to children with natural disease would keep boosting the immune response of adults, and decrease the risk for shingles breaking out. And so that may be a downside, that maybe now that we're immunizing everybody, adults will not be exposed to children with the disease, and therefore are at greater risk for shingles."

-- Dr. Sydney Spiesel, associate clinical professor of pediatrics and clinical professor of nursing, "Slate's Medical Examiner: Chicken Pox Vaccine Risks," "Day to Day," National Public Radio, March 20, 2006.

"[Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism] is not curable; however, there are certainly things we can do to help these children and that's mostly a matter of education and strategies that allow them to negotiate through interactions, and it helps. But, although Asperger's Syndrome is a disability, children [with the condition] are really quite charming and interesting people, and I think people need to know that about kids with various kinds of disabilities ..."

-- Rhea Paul, lecturer at the Child Study Center, "Understanding Asperger's Syndrome," "Morning Edition," National Public Radio, March 17, 2006.

"I appreciate that Israel's intent [in building 'The Wall' in the West Bank] is not to keep Palestinians 'in' so much as to keep suicide bombers 'out.' But in the minds of many Palestinians, [Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon never adequately acknowledged the humiliation felt by a 60-year-old Arab whose family has harvested the Holy Land for generations when she has to show her identity card to an 18-year-old Ethiopian immigrant in an Israeli Army uniform who's been in the country for eight months. In that context, fences and walls come off as cruelly gratuitous."

-- Irshad Manji, fellow in International Security Studies, in her article, "How I Learned to Love the Wall," The New York Times, March 18, 2006.

"People with heart attacks feel 'silly' going to the emergency department. Women go later. They think it's silly or that the symptoms will go away. ... If you're in the right age group and have the right symptoms, go to the emergency department."

-- Dr. Basmah Safdar, assistant professor of emergency surgery, "Doctors Say Syndrome Produces Same Symptoms as an Attack," New Haven Register, March 19, 2006.

''The psychotic state [of schizophrenia] is a crisis, an emergency; people do irrational things, dangerous things, and the initial treatment has to be with what works best -- medication -- along with an attempt to get them into a talking relationship.''

-- Dr. Thomas McGlashan, professor of psychiatry, "Revisiting Schizophrenia: Are Drugs Always Needed?" The New York Times, March 21, 2006.

"With two-career families, people have less and less time. There's a huge consumer demand for convenience."

-- Bruce Judson, senior faculty fellow at the School of Management, on the increasing number of in-home service providers, "C'mon to My House; Busy People Create Burgeoning Market for Take-It-To-You Services," The Press-Enterprise (CA), March 16, 2006.

"You can't be 100 percent prepared for a pandemic. This is what makes personal preparation increasingly important. Ask yourself who will take care of the kids and the pets and how you can tell if your house is safe. This is not to scare people. What are your preparedness plans? It's time to say to people, 'You've really got to start looking at this.'"

-- Dr. Louise-Marie Dembry, associate professor of internal medicine (infectious diseases), lecturer in pharmacology and associate professor of epidemiology and public health, "Practicing Good Hygiene Could Slow Spread of Virus," New Haven Register, March 19, 2006.

"[W]hat most patients really care about is whether they are going to survive. For every 20 heart attack patients admitted to a bottom-rated hospital rather than to a top-rated hospital, there is one additional death."

-- Dr. Harlan M. Krumholz, the Harold J. Hines Jr. Professor of Internal Medicine and of Epidemiology and Public Health, "Heart Attack and Heart Failure Survival Better in Top Hospitals," CNN, March 21, 2006.

''Civil defense agencies were building fallout shelters all over the country during the 1950s and stocking them with supplies of food and water and whatnot. Most of those have been dismantled; the crackers got moldy a very long time ago. It's kind of unusual to find one fully intact -- one that is rediscovered, almost in an archaeological sense.''

-- John Lewis Gaddis, the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History, on the recent discovery of a Cold War-era stockpile of survival supplies, "Inside the Brooklyn Bridge, a Whiff of the Cold War," The New York Times, March 21, 2006.

"There are likable, lovable sides to ADHD. [People with the disorder are often] spontaneous, funny as hell and bring a fresh view on things to a relationship."

-- Thomas Brown, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry, on attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD] -- which, he adds, also has its exasperating qualities, "I Said, 'Honey, Are You Listening to Me?'; When a Partner Has ADHD, Relationship Can Lose Focus," Washington Post, March 21, 2006.

"[T]he demand to cover is not just something that's specific to gay people, but it's something that all civil rights groups confront. And in fact, it's something that all Americans confront. So here I'm thinking about, as you say, the African-American woman who is told that she can't wear cornrows or dreadlocks to work, or the Latina who is told that she can't speak Spanish in her English-only workplace. I'm thinking also about women who are told to quote, unquote, 'play like men at work.' And so what we really see here is that all of these groups, even though they are ostensibly protected under American civil rights laws, have yet to be protected against covering demands as such."

-- Kenji Yoshino, professor of law and deputy dean of the Law School, on his new book "Covering: The Hidden Assault On Our Civil Rights," "'Covering': Examining the Effects of Assimilation," "News & Notes with Ed Gordon," National Public Radio, March 21, 2006.

"The way [architect Frank Lloyd Wright organized the Price Tower in Oklahoma City], mixing office and residential use, is exactly what every leading planner and designer is talking about now. ... The way he did it was so ingenious geometrically and spatially that it raised the bar of anything being produced even today."

-- Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the School of Architecture and the J.M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture, on the focus of the school's exhibit "Prarie Skyscraper," "Yale Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright's Only Skyscraper, Rising in an Oklahoma Prairie Town," New Haven Register, March 18, 2006.

"Attention isn't something that's very interesting to me. It seems to use a lot of time that could be spent on something else. Ronald Reagan had a plaque on his desk which read, 'There's no limit to what you accomplish, as long as you don't care who gets the credit.'"

-- Charles Hill, lecturer in international affairs and distinguished fellow in International Security Studies, on being the topic of the book "The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost" by Yale student Molly Worthen, "The Professor Who Was 'God' ... Once; A Yale Grad Writes Her Hero's Biography," Hartford Courant, March 20, 2006.

"To be in Big Pharma [i.e., a big pharmaceutical company] was interesting. It's like a different culture. It's like a different country."

-- Agnes Vignery, associate professor of orthopaedics, "Bringing Profs to Pfizer Wins Honor For Scientist," Hartford Courant, March 19, 2006.

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

Study: Too much or too little sleep raises diabetes risk

Juniors to continue science studies as Goldwater Scholar

Scientists learn being a 'lefty' aids survival -- if you're a snail

International journalists describe their fight for justice

Getting a little snippy

Steven Smith to serve a third term as Branford College master

HHMI funds new program to train students involved in . . .

New OCR programs allow for the scientific sharing . . .

Library acquires archive of photographer Robert Giard

Events to explore legacy of Hiroshima, nuclear proliferation

Impact of political leadership to be examined in conference

Yale Opera productions span the globe and the centuries

Not planning too far ahead is one of the keys to career success . . .

MEDICAL SCHOOL NEWS

Conference will focus on 'Women, Power and HIV/AIDS'

Researchers make strides on vaccine . . .

Study: Foods and vitamins rich in antioxidants do not lower . . .

Elders' stereotypes predict hearing decline, says study

Cholesterol-lowering drugs shown to reduce mortality during stroke

Report recommends going extra mile for heart attack care