Author Archives: Marcus Moretti

Yalies want you to help fight rare genetic diseases. The Rare Genomics Instituteaims to give children with rare, or “orphan,” genetic diseases access to the funds and expertise needed to sequence their genomes, which can help them get a diagnosis and treatment. The project uses social media to find donors for patients whose diseases receive »

Part of the chemical machinery behind the obesity epidemic has been exposed. A team of Yale researchers discovered one mechanism responsible for fat cells’ efficient storage and use of food energy. In its Oct. 5 paper in the journal “Cell Biology,” the team identified the process by which the chemical choline allows fat cells to »

On Aug. 14, 1971, police in Palo Alto, Calif., arrested 10 undergraduates who were guilty of no crimes. The students were being handcuffed as part of their roles as prisoners in the now-famous Stanford prison experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo GRD ’59. The conditions of the experiment, which occurred 40 years ago at Stanford University, »

Skyscrapers are taking over the world. A new study, co-authored by Yale urban environment professor Karen C. Seto, predicts a major global expansion of urban land over the next two decades. The study, which was published in the Aug. 18 issue of the journal PLosOne, projects that by 2030, cities will gain an amount of »

Sixty-five million years ago, a giant asteroid collided with Earth. But were dinosaurs around when it hit? A team of Yale scientists led by Tyler Lyson GRD ’12 and Stephen Chester GRD ’12 discovered a fossil last year that provides evidences for the well-known hypothesis that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. They found the »

There is once again a spot of Yale blue in this year’s pool of Goldwater winners. Dakota McCoy ’13, a biology major, and Durga Thakral ’12, a molecular biophysics and biochemistry major, were among the 275 winners of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship announced last month. Math major Laure Flapan ’12 received an honorable mention. »

Through strength in numbers, America can fight disease, Howard Koh ’73 MED ’77 said at a talk at Yale-New Haven Hospital on Wednesday. Koh, the assistant secretary for health, gave the 2011 Herbert Goldenring Memorial Lecture in the Fitkin Amphitheater on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. In front of »

A new hookup site for Yalies is strictly business. CoderHeap, a startup that connects business innovators with Web developers, was made available to students at Yale and Villanova last Wednesday. Over 80 Yalies have signed up to use the service, which is in its alpha — or initial testing — phase. Businesses seeking to improve »

Drug use and eating may be connected in more ways than munchies. Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity released a study Monday that finds that the same brain activity signifies both compulsive eating and drug addiction. The study, led by clinical psychology doctoral student Ashley Gearhardt GRD ’12, showed that food addiction is »

Elementary school arts and crafts would not be the same had it not been for the eating habits of dinosaurs. Andrew Leslie, a postdoctoral paleobotanist at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, has linked the hardness of present-day pinecones with the mass arrival of tall, herbivorous dinosaurs in the early-middle Jurassic period. The »

Amy Chua may have a point with regard to her parenting philosophy, according to veteran science columnist John Tierney ’75. Tierney, who has written for the New York Times since 1990, spoke at a Calhoun College Master’s Tea Wednesday afternoon about willpower and self-discipline, the subject of his forthcoming book. In front of an audience »

Yale chemists are working to prevent cancer. Assistant chemistry professor Seth Herzon and his team of researchers have synthesized a molecule which has led to the discovery of new agents that could be used to prevent the recurrence of ovarian cancer. The molecule, called lomaiviticin aglycon, has been known for a decade, but scientists have »