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Prof. Terry Karl speaks Tuesday. (JUSTIN LAM\The Stanford Daily)

In Terry Karl’s human rights investigations, “student involvement has always been critical.”

That was Karl’s message at a forum Tuesday to showcase her work with a team of Stanford students in the ongoing investigations of the 1989 “Jesuit massacre” in El Salvador.

Karl, a professor of Latin American studies and political science, recently returned from Madrid, where she presented evidence against former Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani Bukard and 14 former military officers. The case is being tried in front of the Spanish National Court under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

The former officials may be found guilty of crimes against humanity and state terrorism for their roles in the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her young daughter. The atrocity took place during El Salvador’s violent 12-year civil war, which pitted right-wing government death squads against leftist guerillas. The war caused the deaths of over 75,000 civilians, according to the Web site of the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), one of the international human rights associations heavily involved in the case.

A 1993 amnesty law still in effect in El Salvador protects war-time participants from prosecution for human rights abuses within the country, and although Karl’s stated ideal case would put justice “as close to the crimes as possible” — on El Salvadoran soil — political hesitancy arises from the fact that “the people being charged actually have real power today.”

Alexie Dunaway ’11, one of the student researchers who has been busily sorting through piles of documents in pursuit of evidence for the case, traveled to El Salvador last November for the 20th anniversary of the atrocity. There he met the sister of one of the murdered priests, visited the site of the massacre, which has since been transformed into a rose garden, and was hugged and applauded by El Salvadoran villagers in one of the towns where he was delivering flood relief aid. The trip “really lent a sense of reality to everything I had been doing over the last three months,” Dunaway said.

Another student researcher, Mason Flink ’10, has incorporated his experience into a creative senior thesis project that includes both theatrical and social science components. He is writing a screenplay based on U.S. involvement in the cover-up of the murders, and believes that “justice is such a complex thing that there is no way to tackle it except from an interdisciplinary perspective.”

The team also includes Nadia Mufti ‘11, who used her graphic design skills to organize and present the evidence, as well as Fabiola Puerta ’07, who translated documents and constructed appendices to be used at the trial.

Karl stressed on Tuesday the importance of students’ commitment to the project. The forum opened with an introduction to the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law’s new Program on Human Rights, which is now offering human rights fellowships to undergraduates.

Undergraduate senators last night acted on the advice of the ASSU financial manager to prevent rapid losses to the funds that protect student groups when students request special fees refunds.

According to a refund review presented at last night’s meeting, the projected increase in student refund requests for special fees funding could cause a premature exhaustion of the undergraduate “buffer fund” intended to buoy student groups hit hard by students’ decisions to withdraw financial support from various groups.

To date, the buffer has provided unequivocal financial stability to student groups recovering financially from the aftershock of special fees refund request rates. Going forward, the fund will continue do so, but now with more stringent regulations.

Beginning this quarter, the buffer fund will guarantee special fees funding for student groups up to 10 percent after refunds. Any deviation above this will require a dollar-for-dollar reduction in the group’s overall budget by the amount of the refunds demanded by students in the first three weeks of the quarter.

Although the measure was added to the joint bylaws during a reform of special fees policy in 2004, its implementation is unprecedented — until now.

“There is a rule in the joint bylaws that essentially orders me to take the refund buffer and match it up against the refund rate,” said ASSU Financial Manager Matt McLaughlin. “This rule has never been implemented because there’s never been a need to.”

Looking at trends over the past five years, McLaughlin has projected that by the end of fiscal year 2010, $90,000 will be returned to students in refund requests, while the buffer fund only ensures up to $50,000.

According to the provision, losses in special fees funding over 10 percent as a result of rising refund rates will be collected from each student group’s reserve first and then by budget line item.

Since special fees policy reform several years ago, students have been requesting special fees refunds at a lower rate than the actual refund buffer, which has bolstered the fund since its creation. But based on McLaughlin’s projections of significant increases in the demand for student refunds, the buffer fund could be in trouble if adequate action is not taken to save it.

Without the buffer fund, McLaughlin argued that student group budgets would be “raided very quickly.” He expressed concern for the future protection of special fees funding to student groups if the buffer fund becomes depleted.

“Funding on student life would come to an absolute standstill, and there would be no extra bucket of cash to honor any refunds through the system without delving right into the funds,” he said.

McLaughlin pointed out that he was unaware of the provision until now, but, because of it, is convinced that the buffer fund can be salvaged. Failure to follow through on such a provision would cut short a fund intended to provide rescue support for groups hit hard by refund requests, he suggested.

In order to secure some additional impact cushioning for the expected backlash of student refund requests, which could dip into special fees funding for student groups, the ASSU already tacks on an additional 10 percent to the total special fees sum billed to each student. However, in some cases, this 10 percent has not been enough.

“The question is,” he said, “am I ringing the alarm bell too loud with this projection, or am I ringing it too softly?”

To date for winter quarter, there have already been 250 more refund requests than last quarter.

McLaughlin’s most recent data also suggests that certain special fees groups are being hit upward of 12 percent due to special fees refund requests — only 10 percent of which will be covered by the buffer fund. On average, each group could owe $900 a year to account for refund rates, with some student groups, such as Stanford Concert Network (SCN) and the KZSU radio station, in the upper bounds of this sum.

“We’re swallowing some hard pills,” said Senator Zack Warma ’11, also columns editor for The Daily, adding that enforcing the measure is a “responsible step.”

Still, McLaughlin’s implementation of the measure does not cap the ballooning costs of special fees, which have increased from $90 a quarter three years ago, to $119 a quarter for the current fiscal year.

Ryan Peacock, financial officer for the Graduate Student Council, has said the body will hold office hours to give advice to groups on how to combat refund rates.

“If people don’t want to give their money to [special fees groups] we shouldn’t be bankrupting the ASSU because of that,” Peacock said, adding that student groups need to leverage better public relations with the student body to guarantee funding and reduce refund requests.

In terms of future measures to prevent the damage of refunds rates to student groups’ budgets, Senator Alex Katz ‘12 offered the possibility of a constitutional amendment that would hold voters accountable to fund groups that they approve through the special fees ballot.

“If someone can vote in favor of that group, then they need to be held accountable for that vote,” Katz said.

In a feedback questionnaire that garnered 40 responses from financial officers for student groups, the Senate appropriations committee yielded an average numerical approval rating of 2.91 on a scale of one to five, which Senate Chair Varun Sivaram ’11 said might suggest “some measure of dissatisfaction.”

Dissatisfied groups may be reacting to the significantly lower funding rate, which has decreased from approximately 70 percent in previous years to 30 percent so far this year. However, the constructive criticism will be used to improve the funding process, which continues to be challenging through the economic downturn.

The 2011 BMW 135i promises to become a little bit sportier. The athletic sports coupe will receive a heart transplant, as the current 3.0 liter twin-turbo straight six will leave the engine compartment, being replaced by the fresh twin-scroll turbocharged 3.0 liter straight six, the N55, in BMW language.

The change isn’t that radical, as both engines develop 300 HP and 300 lb-ft of torque. However, the N55 reaches it’s peak torque 100 rpm earlier and, more important, BMW promises … (read more)

As the number of high school graduates rose to a record high at the end of the decade, Ivy League colleges were reporting record-low acceptance rates, leading many to believe that the college admissions process was becoming more competitive than ever.

However, a recent paper by Stanford economics Prof. Caroline Hoxby, director of the Economics of Education Program for the National Bureau of Economic Research, pushes against this theory. Hoxby argues that most U.S. colleges are not more selective now than they were 50 years ago and that at least five percent of colleges have become substantially less selective.

In “The Changing Selectivity of American Colleges,” Hoxby calls this misconception — the perceived increase in competition — a consequence of people extrapolating from the experiences and acceptance rates of a small number of colleges, particularly schools in the Ivy League, Stanford, Duke and a handful of elite liberal arts colleges.

“These colleges have experienced rising selectivity, but their experience turns out to be the exception rather than the rule,” she wrote, adding that only the “top 10 percent of colleges are substantially more selective now than they were in 1962.”

Hoxby indicates that the selectivity of most colleges has been trending downward consistently since about 1950, explaining that although competition has increased for schools like Harvard and Stanford, it is now easier for students to get into a state college.

“A student now needs weaker preparation, lower test scores, etc., to be admitted to most colleges in the U.S.,” she wrote in an e-mail to The Daily.

“If you are the average student, you certainly should not be worrying about college admissions standards rising,” she said. “It is really only students who are at or above the 90th percentile in aptitude and achievement who should think about college selectivity rising.”

Hoxby believes, however, that the overall decrease in college selectivity has not been caused by falling demand for a college education. Rather, the supply of “college places” has risen faster. According to her research, the number of high school graduates has grown by 131 percent while the number of college spots has risen by 297 percent.

“There are many more students demanding a college education today than in the past, both because there are more people in the U.S. now and because college education is now more necessary for attaining a middle-class lifestyle,” she said.

Hoxby reasons that when supply grows faster than demand, selectivity is going to decrease.

In addition to supply-and-demand economics, she attributes the decrease in selectivity to a second phenomenon: “re-sorting.” She explains that students used to attend a local college regardless of their abilities or the school’s characteristics; now, however, students’ choices are driven less by proximity and more by a college’s resources and student body.

“Clearly, if high-aptitude students were now more determined to attend selective colleges and less concerned about attending local colleges…the initially more-selective colleges would become more selective and initially less-selective colleges would become less selective,” she said.

In its recent early admission cycle, Stanford’s 13.5 percent admit rate for early action applicants from the Class of 2014 actually represented an increase in the number of students accepted from the previous year, when the University accepted 12.8 percent of early applicants — a seeming exception to Hoxby’s theory.

However, Hoxby maintains that these numbers are “meaningless” in explaining trends in selectivity.

“If students who applied to Stanford early have better scores and grades than in previous years, the admissions office should have accepted a higher share of them,” she said. “The fact that more were accepted says nothing about selectivity. You have to look at an absolute standard of selectivity (scores, grades, other qualifications). You cannot look at acceptance ratios and expect to get the answer right.”

While staying out of the warm California sun is still the best way to prevent skin cancer, a new study authored by a Stanford researcher has found that a common arthritis drug similar to aspirin can prevent some of the damage caused by the disease.

According to a study by dermatology Prof. Jean Tang published in Cancer Prevention Research last week, the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) celecoxib, also known by its trade name, Celebrex, has been shown to reduce the occurrence of basal cell carcinoma (BCC) in mice and humans. Tang’s study, conducted during her time at UC-San Francisco from 2001 to 2004, involved 60 patients with Gorlin syndrome, a genetic disorder that makes affected individuals particularly prone to developing the most common type of skin cancer in the U.S., BCC.

Half the patients were given a 200-mg celecoxib pill twice a day, the same dose prescribed to treat arthritis and the other half received a placebo. The celecoxib group saw a 50 percent reduction in their tumor count and these results persisted one year after treatment stopped.

“It seemed like some of the tumors didn’t grow as big, or some of the tumors shrank significantly,” Tang said.

BCCs present as a new bump or growth and arise from the top layer of the skin. These tumors commonly occur on the face and neck, areas that undergo frequent sun exposure. Caucasians and those in sunny areas like California are particularly susceptible to developing BCCs: one in five Caucasians living in California will develop a BCC in their lifetime, according to Tang.

Celecoxib works to prevent or slow cancer growth by inhibiting the enzyme cyclooxygenase, which causes tissue inflammation and is one of the many mechanisms behind BCC tumor development. Previous studies have also shown that celecoxib can reduce the incidence of cancers associated with chronic inflammation, such as colon cancer and squamous cell carcinoma (another type of skin cancer) in groups genetically predisposed to these diseases.

Well over one million cases of BCC are diagnosed annually in the U.S., said dermatology Prof. Susan Swetter, who was not involved in the study.  While BCCs are not associated with a tendency to spread to other organs or cause cancer mortality and can be cured by surgical removal, this and other treatments can cause significant disfigurement and discomfort, she added. Recovery time is also an issue, as is cost.

“The economic cost of treating non-melanoma skin cancer is enormous, with an annual estimated cost of $2.5 billion in the U.S.,” Swetter said.

While celecoxib has been FDA approved and spent over a decade on the market, Tang warns against applying the results of this study to people who only have a few BCCs, since this study only tested celecoxib’s effects on Gorlin syndrome patients, who have hundreds of BCCs.

“A lot of people might ask me, ‘Gosh, the majority of BCC tumors occur in healthy patients who are non-Gorlins — would this drug work for patients with one or two BCC tumors?’” Tang said. “We don’t know that because we didn’t test that group.”

Celecoxib has also been associated with various side effects ranging from stomach ulcers to increased risk of cardiovascular disease. The increase in the occurrence of cardiovascular disease in patients taking these drugs prompted a 2003 recall of Vioxx and Bextra, NSAID drugs that are chemically similar to celecoxib. Tang had a study halted in the midst of the recall, though her patients only reported mild stomach upset.

“A lot of that work has been frozen due to [this type of drug’s] effects on cardiovascular disease,” Tang said. “Here, we show another cancer that can be reduced again with celecoxib and we’re hoping that there’s a renewed interest in this class of molecules.”

Tang also plans to study the possibility of administering celecoxib topically, by rubbing it onto skin, to reduce the risk of cardiovascular toxicity that occurs when the drug is taken orally.

Swetter said that Tang’s research is taking place within an emerging field.

“The field of cancer chemoprevention, i.e. preventing cancer at the outset in at-risk individuals, is still relatively young,” Swetter said. “Studies such as Dr. Tang’s do a great deal to advance our knowledge.”

Three players from the Stanford women’s soccer team have received call-ups for the CONCACAF Women’s Under-20 Championships, which will take place in Guatemala later this month. Sophomore midfielder Teresa Noyola and freshmen defenders Alina Garciamendez and Rachel Quon will all be participating in the tournament, which will serve to determine North and Central America’s entrants in the U-20 Women’s World Cup.

Noyola and Quon will be representing the heavily favored US team after strong seasons for the national runner-up Cardinal. Noyola contributed six goals and three assists despite being in and out of the lineup with injury, and Quon had an incredible debut season at right fullback, being named not only to the Pac-10 All-Freshman team, but the Pac-10 All-Conference first team as well.

Garciamendez, Quon’s classmate, will be playing for the Mexican team. The centerback was also named to the conference All-Freshman team, and was a Pac-10 second team selection. She has already represented the full Mexican national team, receiving her first caps last month.

The CONCACAF Championships will run from Jan. 19-30, and the U-20 World Cup, which the top three CONCACAF teams will qualify for, will take place in Germany from July 13-Aug. 1.

Whoever produced this video of the Mercedes SLS AMG should go into action film production, if they aren’t already. The SLS AMG finds itself in a stunt of looping the inside of a tunnel at high speed through the down force generated (thanks to a whole lot of computer graphics but I’ll believe it’s capable anyway). My favourite part, though, is at the end, when the stationary car suddenly flips its Gullwing doors open. Lovely.

Former Stanford law professor and two-time California congressman Tom Campbell is reportedly dropping out of the California governor’s race to run for the U.S. Senate.

Campbell previously represented California’s 12th district — which includes Stanford — and, later, its 15th district. Campbell is a Republican.

According to a supporter e-mail obtained by The San Jose Mercury News, Campell is set to announce a “new venture” Thursday, confirmed by campaign sources to be a run against Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer.

The departure of Campbell from the governor’s race leaves former eBay executive Meg Whitman and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner to contest the GOP gubernatorial primary.

The Republican Senate primary features former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and state assembly member Chuck DeVore.

Campbell has run twice for the U.S. Senate unsuccessfully.

I was browsing through my Digg Friend’s recent submissions when I found this little gem! It is a Microsoft commercial for Office 2010, but in movie trailer format!

For you power Office users, some of the new features in office 2010 are, built-in screen capture,  background removal tool for images, protected mode, new smart art templates, author permissions, more options, new printer control panel, Jumplists in Outlook, and a snazzy new splash screen just to name a few.

*Spoiler Alert* Best part of the clip? Clippy dies! Check it out:

Bad news folks, a defense contractor just revealed that they have successfully tested an unmanned vertical take-off and landing drone. This is getting just a little too close to the hunter-killers seen in the Terminator movies.

All joking aside, the defense contractor Urban Aeronautics has been working on the AirMule. Intended to ferry supplies and rescue wounded soldiers, the AirMule project finally managed to complete a hovering flight.

[via Make]

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Renault has already announced plans to debut a new compact car in India and, according to the officials involved in the matter, the French manufacturer will make use of Nissan’s global platform for this particular goal. Renault Asia Africa Management Committee Executive Vice-President Katsumi Nakamura said that the company is currently studying several options, including the Sandero and Twingo but none of them fits the right profile for an Indian model.

"We have a partnership… (read more)

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., today announced two high-density memory solutions for mobile devices. The new storage solutions – a 64-gigabyte (GB) moviNAND^TM memory device and a 32GB micro secure digital (microSD) memory card – satisfy mobile handset designers’ requirements for advanced compact high-density memory.

“Samsung’s high-density memory solutions bring the storage capacity levels of computing systems to small, mobile devices,” said Dong-Soo Jun, executive vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Electronics.

He added, “The 64GB embedded memory, moviNAND, and the 32GB microSD card each greatly expand the data storage density of mobile devices, meeting customers’ memory requirements and ushering in a new era of mobile and IT device capacity growth.”

The memory solutions are based on Samsung’s advanced 32 gigabit (Gb) NAND flash. The 64GB moviNAND, which measures 1.4mm in height, consists of 16 30nm-class 32Gb MLC NAND chips and a controller. The 17-die stack was achieved by using 30-micron thick chips and advanced package technology. With the new 64GB solution, Samsung’s proprietary embedded memory, moviNAND, is now available in 64GB, 32GB, 16GB, 8GB and 4GB densities.

The 32GB microSD card, developed this month, stacks eight 32Gb NAND components and a card controller. The industry’s highest capacity, production-ready microSD card is enabled by the use of Samsung’s advanced 30-nm class 32Gb NAND flash memory technology. Previously, the highest density microSD card in production had a 16GB capacity and was based on 40nm-class 16Gb NAND. The new 32GB card is 1mm-thick. The portion of the card that is inserted into a handset measures just 0.7 mm in height.

Samsung’s new 64GB moviNAND has been in mass production from December 2009, while the 32GB microSD is now being sampled with OEMs, with mass production expected next month.

Comment: It has been extremely long in coming, and while our phones have had theoretical 32 GB capacity for years 16 GB has been the practical limit.  Here’s looking forward to finally carrying my whole music collection with me.

Via Phonescoop.com

The third special edition to be launched in the last year for Kia’s Soul model will enter dealerships with a price tag of $18,195 and some unique, yet not so impressive features.

When we first heard the name of the special edition, Shadow Dragon, we kinda hoped to see something very special that would make us jump from our seats. Instead, Kia used this rather cool name to portray a model which adds only a new color scheme, leather-trimmed seating or keyless remote entry…
… (read more)

Fernando Alonso, Felipe Massa and Giancarlo Fisichella spent the entire day yesterday making the best of their ski opportunities in the Madonna di Campoglio ski resort in northern Italy. Being the first time they met under the red colors of Ferrari, the three have been the main attraction for all photographers present at the 20th edition of the Wrooom event.

With their boss Stefano Domenicali still to arrive to the resort in northern Italy – he is scheduled to make his appearance … (read more)

Luke Timmerman wrote:

Gilead Sciences spent $365 million to get a toehold in Seattle back in 2006, and so far, it has zero U.S. product sales to show for it. That’s made investors antsy, but it hasn’t deterred the world’s second-most valuable biotech company from continuing to bet big on Seattle as part of its plan to diversify away from its heavy reliance on HIV medications.

That was one of the interesting points I took home last Friday from Bruce Montgomery, the senior vice president and site leader for Gilead Sciences in Seattle. He made his comments during a talk at the Technology Alliance’s Science and Technology Discovery Series.

Foster City, CA-based Gilead (NASDAQ: GILD) has made a $50 million investment in a new 100,000 square-foot lab and office building along Eastlake Avenue in Seattle, Montgomery said. The local branch, which now counts 150 employees, hopes to move in to the new digs by February 26. The company is hoping that the new surroundings, with sweeping views of Lake Union, will inspire the local team to invent big new drugs. That’s because Gilead got about 90 percent of its $5.3 billion in 2008 revenue from antiviral treatments, mainly for HIV. While the HIV franchise has made Gilead a success, the company has spent several years trying to diversify with treatments for serious lung diseases and cardiovascular conditions.

The Seattle team is supposed to create big new treatments for lung diseases like cystic fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. But as of yet, the local team hasn’t delivered a blockbuster product. The heat is definitely on to start producing, at least in the eyes of Wall Street. Gilead stock dropped 15 percent in 2009, while the Amex Biotech Index composed of its large company peers climbed 45 percent.

Bruce Montgomery

“After a long and successful track record of product development, geographic expansion, and acquisitions, Gilead has recently fallen victim to slowing growth and execution missteps,” said Michael King, an analyst with Merriman Curhan Ford, in a note to clients Dec. 30. “Gilead Sciences has long been admired as a paradigm of drug discovery and development, as well as business execution. Having grown to a $45 billion market cap today on the basis of its HIV franchise, the company has recently experienced slowing growth as this franchise matures. In addition, the company has gotten little benefit from its $4 billion worth of acquisitions.”

Montgomery is hoping to give his bosses some good news to satisfy Wall Street next month. The company is seeking FDA approval for aztreonam lysine (Cayston), an inhalable antibiotic that was shot down by the agency back in September 2008. This time, Gilead is hoping it has satisified …Next Page »

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GT Academy Time Trial has been downloaded by over one million players, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) announced yesterday. The competition runs across 15 European countries, as well as Australia and New Zealand, trying to find a real-world racing driver. The overall winner of the competition will get behind a real Nissan 370Z race car to compete for a full season in the European GT4 Cup.

The Time Trial stage of GT Academy offers gamers a preview of the new Gran Turismo… (read more)