Author Archives: Dan Weiner

While most of Yale’s West Campus feature laboratories for scientific research, the complex will soon include a new center that uses technology to study Yale’s collection of cultural objects, such as dinosaur bones and medieval manuscripts. After Peter Baldwin ’78 and Lisbet Rausing donated $25 million last summer to establish the Institute for the Preservation »

According to new research from the Yale School of Management, even health food stores should stock a few indulgences. The study, entitled “Self-Signaling and the Costs and Benefits of Temptation in Consumer Choice,” is the first to find empirical evidence that resisting temptation can provide psychological benefits. The study, which will appear in the February »

“A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” Ten cents is the wrong answer, but don’t feel too bad if that was the answer that came to mind: more than half of more than 3,000 college students selected that »

Helen Caines, an associate professor of physics, was recently named the American Physical Society Woman Physicist of the Month for January. Professor Caines researches relativistic heavy ion collisions, which try to recreate the instant after the Big Bang. Apart from her research, which takes her as far as the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Caines »

The women’s cross country dashed to the best finish its members have ever experienced at regional championships this weekend, while the men matched last year’s performance at the same race. Both men and women battled blustery conditions at their final race of the season at the NCAA Regional Championships. The women secured their highest finish »

A new Yale invention may brighten the lives of those suffering from the “winter blues.” Paul Desan MED ’93, director of the Winter Depression Research Clinic at the Yale School of Medicine, recently submitted an design for a new version of a light box — one of the most popular treatments for Seasonal Affective Disorder »

New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman explained Monday evening why he is a “frustrated optimist” about America’s future. The three-time Pulitzer Prize winner packed roughly 200 listeners into the Whitney Humanities Center auditorium as he discussed the thesis of his recent book written with co-author Michael Mandelbaum, “That Used to Be Us: How »

Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine think they have found a way to predict a recovering alcoholic’s chance of relapsing. Their study, conducted with patients at the Connecticut Mental Health Center, was the first ever to show a correlation between an increased likelihood to fall into relapse and reduced gray matter in regions of »

New York Times best-selling authors David Baldacci, John Grisham and Jodi Picoult paid tribute to the influence that American novelist Mark Twain has had on their writing styles in a panel discussion Wednesday evening. More than 2,000 people gathered in Woolsey Hall at a Yale-hosted benefit for the Mark Twain House & Museum to hear »

Six months after Mandi Schwartz ’11 lost her battle with cancer, Yale is rallying around another community member with the same disease. The Joseph Slifka Center, the home of Jewish life on campus, hosted a bone marrow registry drive Monday on behalf of Rivka Weiser SPH ’08, who was diagnosed six weeks ago with acute »

After more than two years in the Obama administration, Yale political science lecturer Sean Smith has given up spinning policy to teach it. Smith, who left the University in 2007 to join then-Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and ultimately serve as a senior official in the Department of Homeland Security, has returned to Yale — »

The University is prepared to prop up the Yale Station post office in the event that the cash-strapped United States Postal Service closes it — but even Yale could do little to maintain mail service on campus if the USPS shut down entirely. In late July, the postal service released a list of nearly 3,700 »