Author Archives: Makda Asrat

Twenty years after his first visit to the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, India’s foremost environmental historian is back at Yale. The author of more than 20 books, environmental historian Ramachandra Guha has spent parts of the intervening two decades at Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley. But it was at Yale »

Climate expert Joseph Romm said Wednesday during a talk titled “Hell and High Water: Global Warming — The Science, the Solutions and the Politics” that 10 more years of inaction regarding global warming will result in the irreversible loss of Greenland. Romm spoke to an audience of approximately 30 people in the student lounge of »

With nothing but cardboard, three rolls of duct tape and a utility knife, students participating in the Yale Engineering Design Team’s competition last weekend were able to fashion two-passenger boats capable of staying afloat for up to 42 seconds. The boat-building competition, the fall counterpart to spring semester’s Junk Yale Wars, is one of a »

Though Yale President Richard Levin, who has publicly pushed for greater engagement with China, gave Chinese President Hu Jintao a warm reception before his Friday speech, faculty and students at Yale have continued to criticize the developing country’s record on human rights and what it means for the global community. One of the concerns most »

It is typically accepted that Tolstoy, Van Gogh, and Nietzsche were all brilliant thinkers, but their other common link is less well known: They all suffered from some form of mental illness. A diverse panel of speakers addressed the connection between creative genius and psychopathology Wednesday night at a discussion sponsored by Mind Matters, an »

If humans are trying to get a good perception of the world around them, Yale cognitive psychologists say, they shouldn’t trust their eyes. Researchers working in cognitive psychology at the University are currently focusing on how the brain interprets visual information. Psychology professor Brian Scholl, who runs the Perception and Cognition Laboratory, said that vision-related »

Six years after Yale turned down the opportunity to purchase the Gospel of Judas, and more than 30 years after the gospel’s discovery by a group of Egyptian farmers, the manuscript has sparked renewed national debate. The University decided not to purchase the document because it was believed to be on the market illegally, Yale »

Soon, a new innovation developed at Yale will make its way onto silver screens and even computer screens across the country. Professors in the math and computer science departments have developed a new memory technology system that Pixar Animation Studios utilized during the production of their upcoming film “Cars,” which is scheduled to debut on »

Film director Dean Parisot — whose works include “Home Fries,” “Galaxy Quest” and last year’s “Fun With Dick and Jane” — told a Silliman College audience Saturday that no one in Hollywood wants to hire Robert Downey, Jr. At a Silliman Master’s Tea this weekend, Parisot spoke to a crowd of approximately 25 students about »

Though Yale has traditionally been esteemed for its programs in the liberal arts, Provost Andrew Hamilton said the Science, Technology and Research Scholars Program, or STARS, which convened for its annual ceremony Wednesday night, continues to be “one of the jewels in Yale’s undergraduate education.” Graduating seniors in the STARS II program presented the results »

Women may be pleased to hear that reports from Maine claim to show what many say they have long known to be true — boys are not as smart as girls. An article published in Maine’s Portland Press Herald last Sunday, which included comments from Yale Child Study Center researcher Walter Gilliam, cited figures to »

Yale University and the William J. Clinton Foundation have launched an official partnership with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health after several months of assessing the needs of the country’s health management infrastructure. Ethiopian Minister of Health Dr. Tedros Adhanom approached the Clinton Foundation last year requesting help in improving the management of his country’s public »