Tag Archive: Science

  1. Office of Sustainability releases 2011 progress report

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    Yale is currently on track to meet the goals outlined in its 2010-2013 Sustainability Strategic Plan, according to an annual progress report released Monday by the Office of Sustainability.

    The report tracks progress made during the 2011 fiscal year, which ended on June 30, 2011. (Click here to read the report in full.) The University has made improvements in areas such as waste management and energy use, according to the report. But further developments are needed to achieve 100 percent Green certification among campus laboratories, as the University still needs to reduce use of single-occupancy vehicles and cut down on paper consumption.

    Julie Newman, director of the Office of Sustainability, said implementing new measures and collecting data to track progress is the result of “an ongoing engagement” of partnership and negotiation among various Yale departments, including Facilities, Transportation and Dining. The Office is currently collecting data for the 2012 fiscal year’s progress report.

  2. TEDxYale releases trailer featuring red body suits

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    Remember when your dad taught you Morse code? Yeah, neither do we. But Yale’s TEDx program has used the dots and dashes to promote their event on February 4.

    In a video sent to Yale students today, five red body-suited individuals move and bounce their bodies to a pulsing soundtrack, with interspersed images of soldiers sending morse code messages. The morse code on the red bodies spells out “TEDx Yale.”

    The Yale video, produced by Emmy Pickett ’12, was even tweeted by Chris Anderson, who has received international acclaim as the curator of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design). He calls the video’s creativity “pretty special.”

    According to reports, red body-suited individuals were spotted in multiple classes today, including Anthony Smith’s “Introductory Macroeconomics” and Jo Handelsman’s “Genes and Environment.”

    The x in Yale’s TEDx program signifies that it’s one of many independently sponsored TED programs across the world. Yale’s TEDx program had its introductory event last semester with Juan Enriquez, the founding director of Harvard Business School’s Life Sciences Project.

  3. Yale scientist suggests “G-spot” isn’t real

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    Yale urologist Amichai Kilchevsky published a study in the Jan. 12 issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine suggesting that the fabled “G-spot,” the erogenous zone inside the vagina purported to provide intense pleasure during intercourse, does not exist.

    To find evidence of the G-spot, Kilchevsky ran a search of published work between 1950 and 2011 using keywords like G-spot, Gräfenberg spot, female orgasm, female erogenous zone and others that are less safe for work.

    “Objective measures have failed to provide strong and consistent evidence for the existence of an anatomical site that could be related to the famed G-spot,” Kilchevsky wrote.

    Such objective measures, the study notes, have included everything from “digital stimulation” to MRI scans over the past decade. Kilchevsky notes that “modern investigative techniques” may provide more evidence in the future. The study claims the majority of women believe in the G-spot, which Kilchevsky said is thanks to a myth perpetuated by the porn industry and the public media.

    “My view is that the G-spot is really just the extension of the clitoris on the inside of the vagina, analogous to the base of the male penis,” Kilchevsky said in the report.

  4. Yale researchers find evidence of lost tortoise

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    Six feet long, 900 pounds and back from the dead?

    A giant tortoise species studied by Darwin and thought to be extinct for 150 years may still be alive, according to Yale researchers. The researchers analyzed the blood samples of over 1600 Galapagos turtles living on Isabela Island and found evidence than that over 40 ‘extinct’ C. elephantopus turtles may still be living. They theorize that whalers and pirate ships brought the turtles from their initial home on Floreana to Isabela in the nineteenth century.

    “To our knowledge, this is the first report of the rediscovery of a species by way of tracking the genetic footprints left in the genomes of its offspring,” study co-author Ryan Garrick said in a written statement.

    The researchers hope to establish a breeding program and restore the species when they return to the Galapagos later this year.

    To quote a twenty-first century classic, “Dude”.

  5. Physics Department establishes Dufault Fund

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    The Yale Physics Department has established the Michele Dufault Summer Research Fellowship and Conference Fund in honor of Michele Dufault ’11, a physics and astronomy major who died last April in an accident in Sterling Chemistry Laboratory.

    Created to recognize Dufault’s “tremendous contributions to Yale’s undergraduate science community,” the initiative will fund opportunities for young women to pursue science, including a summer fellowship for a female Yale student and conferences that promote female representation in the physical sciences, according to the American Physical Society website. The Fund hopes to raise $100,000 to endow its efforts in perpetuity but will create an expendable fund to support its activities if it does not realize that goal.

    Those interested in contributing to the Fund can write a check payable to Yale University and mail it to the Physics Department, or visit the Yale Development Office website.