M O N D A Y NOVEMBER 17, 2003
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXXXVIII, No. 115
An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891
www.browndailyherald.com
Researchers discover link between Alzheimer’s, herpes BY MONIQUE MENESES
Memory loss and a sexually transmitted disease might have more in common than scientists previously thought, according to researchers at Brown and the Marine Biological Laboratory. Scientists were studying the movement of the herpes virus within a neuron when they realized there might be a link between Alzheimer’s disease and the virus. There is no cure for either disease. Herpes and Alzheimer’s are linked by amyloid precursor proteins. Researchers found that APPs, which kill nerve cells in the brain of a person who has Alzheimer’s, are also used to transport the herpes virus through nerve terminals in the body, according to Elaine Bearer, senior research assistant and associate professor of medical science. “This was a real discovery,” Bearer said. “It wasn’t like we had an over-arching hypothesis that herpes causes Alzheimer’s. We had no idea.” Bearer said amyloid plaques, caused by APPs, are consistently present in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s and are part of what leads to the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. Prasanna Satpute GS and Joseph DeGiorgis, a Brown alum, discovered the link while studying viral transport. According to Satpute, the herpes virus starts with an infection on the lip and then enters a nerve terminal. Once it enters a neuron, the infection travels to the cell body where it can either replicate itself or remain latent. A virus that replicates is able to cause a cold sore as a side effect. While studying viral movement in and out of the cell, Satpute was interested in looking at the cellular factors interacting with the virus, assisting its movement from the cell body to the lip, she said. Satpute and DeGiorgis performed the experiments for the study on a long extension of a squid’s nerve cell. By tracking the movement of the virus with fluorescent fluid, the scientists were able to observe how APPs behave. With approximately 80 percent of Americans infected with a latent form of the herpes virus, according to Bearer, the effects of the newly discovered link could be far reaching. But Bearer said further studies see HERPES, page 4
Gabriella Doob / Herald
Slam poet Shailja Patel opened South Asian Identity Week Saturday night with a performance and speech in Starr Auditorium. South Asian identity is a “tide,” she said, that “ebbs and flows throughout our lives.”
Slam poet likens South Asian identity to a “tide” in convocation BY ALEXANDRA BARSK
A crowded Starr Auditorium gave a standing ovation to slam poet Shailja Patel Sunday night after a performance in which she described identity as a free-flowing social construction. Patel, born in South Asia and raised in Kenya, opened South Asian Identity Week with a speech that aimed to “crack open, like a bottle of champagne, the notion of face and mirror in South Asian identity,” she said. People are vessels for their history, culture, ethnicity and other identifying forces, she said. “When we take all these things, which are implicit to our being, and we combine them with our unique individuality, what we come up with is our sense of self, which is the face,” she said. The mirror refers to “how we conduct ourselves into the world and how that is reflected back at us,” Patel said. She defined the concept of mirror as “everything that determines how we are perceived, how we are defined.” Patel addressed the struggle caused by being perceived as reflecting either too much or too little South Asian identity. She said that in reality “we experience our South Asian identity not as a solid construction, but more as a tide. It ebbs and it flows throughout our lives.” It is more constructive to view identity as being in a state of flux, allowing people to resist pressure from external definitions, she said. Once people have entered that state, she said, “we need to give ourselves permission to release the tremendous
locked energy in our communities that’s held in all the things that we’re silent about.” Patel encouraged students to access the silenced voices within themselves and their communities and to create a safe space where those voices can be expressed. She emphasized the importance of breaking the silence which, she said, “blocks our capacity to absorb, our capacity to connect.” Taha Mohamedali ’03.5 said Patel reminded the audience to speak out about issues it is passionate about and work for change even if silence is more comfortable. Patel presented identity as a reflection of the size of one’s humanity and the size of one’s web of connections with others. She said this definition, particularly when applied to South Asians, “liberates us from the trap of identity as connected solely to cultural activities and social groups.” Patel cited three areas where seeing identity as part of a larger connection has “a crucial impact.” She encouraged South Asians in America to protest the post-Sept. 11, 2001, deportation of Muslims from the United States. She asked the crowd to put pressure on oppressive regimes in South Asia in a way people living in those countries cannot and to attack the “Bush administration’s drive towards global domination, using war as a strategy to open markets.” Patel underscored her point with a poem relating the story of an Afghan woman whose husband and six children were killed by U.S. air strikes. Her other poems
Sarah Doyle Center hosts RISD alum’s bold and expressive “Skins and Mounts” arts & culture, page 3
Andrew K. Stein ’06 lays down eight laws of dating him, including tube tops not allowed column, page 11
BY MERYL ROTHSTEIN
Three Brown professors’ research projects have been deemed “smarmy” by a conservative advocacy group in a list it gave to Congress in October. The Traditional Values Coalition composed a list of roughly 190 academic studies, almost entirely on HIV/AIDS, sexual behavior and other related topics, that it claims may be a waste of taxpayers’ money. A member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee gave National Institutes of Health officials the TVC list without authorization, Ken Johnson, the committee’s spokesman, told The Chronicle of Higher Education. The NIH is currently reviewing the studies on the list and no funds have yet been pulled, The Chronicle reported. The committee is not looking into the specific studies but is reviewing the NIH’s system of awarding grants, Johnson told The Chronicle. Representative Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., called the list “scientific McCarthyism,” The Chronicle reportsee NIH, page 4
see SLAM, page 4
I N S I D E M O N D AY, N O V E M B E R 1 7 , 2 0 0 3 Posner ’05 becomes finalist in “Your Big Break” contest to record own track arts & culture, page 3
Conservative group red-flags three NIHfunded studies as waste of money
TO D AY ’ S F O R E C A S T M. soccer celebrates seventh Ivy League title in past decade with Dartmouth win sports, page 12
Major win for football against the Big Green brings team to possible third in league sports, page 12
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