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FEATURES/3 SPORTS/6

WISE CRUISING ALONG

Women’s tennis starts NCAAs
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The Stanford Daily

CARDINAL TODAY

An Independent Publication
TUESDAY www.stanforddaily.com Volume 239
May 17, 2011 Issue 64

Study provides food for thought

Psychological conditions may be an effect of digestive disorders
By JENNY THAI
STAFF WRITER
A paper published in PLoS One
last week by researchers from the
School of Medicine reveals that
short-term digestive problems early
in life may increase one’s risk for de-
pression and other psychological
problems. Standing counter to pre-
viously held medical assumptions,
the new findings suggest that human
psychological conditions may be the
consequence — not the cause — of
gastrointestinal disorders.
Medicine professor Pankaj Pas-
richa, chief of gastroenterology and
hepatology, spearheaded the study.
In collaboration with research asso-
ciate Liansheng Liu and other col-
leagues at Stanford, UC-San Fran-
cisco and the University of Kansas,
Pasricha began tracing the psycho-
logical symptoms of gastrointestinal
disorders such as irritable bowel
syndrome and functional dyspepsia.
“A characteristic feature of dis-
orders such as irritable bowel syn-
drome or functional dyspepsia is
their association with psychological
problems such as anxiety or depres-
sion,” Pasricha wrote in an email to
The Daily. “The current thinking
generally is that the latter cause or
exacerbate gastrointestinal symp-
toms.
“We sought an alternative expla-
nation, namely that gastrointestinal
problems cause depression and anx-
iety.Thus, both long-lasting pain and
psychological problems can result
from a single cause,gastric irritation,
if it occurs in vulnerable individu-
als.”
According to Pasricha, the gut
has its own nervous system — one
that is connected to the brain by
nerves such as the vagus nerve but
operates “relatively independently.”
It is this complex communication
system that is responsible for
changes in the gut getting sent di-
rectly to the brain.
Using developmental models of
gastrointestinal illness, products of
more than a decade’s worth of con-
struction, Pasricha and his col-
leagues unearthed the time connec-
tion between age and intestinal vul-
nerability. The long-term impact of
the digestive irritation is largely de-
pendent on not only the genetic
makeup of the patient but also its
early onset during development,
when the internal organs are espe-
cially sensitive.
“As an example, we have pro-
duced a model of irritable bowel
syndrome in adult rats that results
from neonatal irritation of the
colon as well,” Pasricha said.
“So there is something vulner-
able in the nervous system
during this period of life that
renders the animal suscepti-
ble to other insults and causes
long-lasting changes.”
In this particular study, re-
searchers followed a procedure in
which they subjected 10-day-old
Sprague-Dawley rats to mild gastric ANASTASIA YEE/The Stanford Daily
irritation via oral doses of 0.1-per-
cent idoacetamide, an alkylating open field and light-dark box tests
agent. Such treatment resulted in were used to assess anxiety behav-
temporary inflammation as well as a iors.
brief period of hypersensitivity after The results were striking. The
the inflammation healed. rats that experienced early gastric
Some eight to 10 weeks later, the problems were much more likely
rats were tested with sucrose prefer- than the control rats to exhibit de-
ence. Forced swimming tests were pressed and anxious behaviors.
used to examine depression-like be-
havior. Elevated plus maze (EPM), Please see STUDY, page 5

SPEAKERS & EVENTS

Stanford Luau livens up White Plaza
Scholar weighs
pros and cons
of Googlization
Vaidhyanathan says users make
Google “smarter with every click”
By TYLER BROWN
DESK EDITOR

Siva Vaidhyanathan,professor of media studies

The Stanford Luau, which took center stage in White Plaza on Saturday, May 14, treated students to Polynesian songs, dances and food. The
luau was titled “Ho’omoe Wai Kahi Ke Kao’o,” which translates to “Live in Harmony with Other People and the World Around You.”
NEWS BRIEFS
Gastric bypass promotes
heart health in teens
By THE DAILY NEWS STAFF
Gastric bypass surgery for obese teens
may be even more effective at reducing the
risk of cardiovascular disease than it is for
adults who undergo the same procedure,
according to a recent study from the School
of Medicine led by bariatric surgeon John
Morton.
The study involved 99 adult patients and
33 adolescents who underwent gastric by-
pass at Stanford between 2004 and 2010.
The adults in this group were, on average,
44.4 years old and had a body mass index
(BMI) of 52.3, while the adolescents were,
on average, 17 years old and had a BMI of
52.7. BMIs more than 25 are considered
obese; these patients were described as “se-
verely overweight.”
Although both groups lost approximately
the same amount of weight after their sur-
gery, the teenage patients had a greater im-
provement in several biochemical markers
thought to be predictive of heart problems.
Some of the markers the researchers tracked
include cholesterol levels,diabetes status and
blood pressure. The teenage group showed
higher levels of “good” cholesterol and
sharper drops in fasting glucose — slower
drops are an indicator of diabetes.
By some counts, one in three adults and
one in five adolescents are considered obese.
Such excess weight can lead to conditions in-
cluding high blood pressure, diabetes, heart
disease and shortened life span. Surgery is
often the last resort for these obese patients.
— Ivy Nguyen
at the University of Virginia, spoke about the ben-
efits and dangers of Google on Monday — a topic
especially close to home, given that the Internet
giant’s founders are Stanford computer science
alums.
“My book is about us our willingness, our ease,
our enthusiasm for folding Google into our lives,”
said Vaidhyanathan, who authored “The
Googlization of Everything.”
Many people find it hard to get directions to a
restaurant without relying on Google, he said. In-
deed, between 60 and 70 percent of the Web
searches in the United States go through the com-
Courtesy of Kalei Cablay pany’s search engine and people constantly adopt
the software it produces from “Google Labs.”
“How did this happen?”he asked.“Google’s 12
years old now — its voice is just starting to
change.”
Refund patterns by quarter “What I thought we lacked when I started re-
searching this book was an account of the nature
of the transaction,” he said. “What do we give
Special Fees Refunds
Google? What does Google give us?”
One of Google’s largest public services, he ar-
gued, is scanning books in a partnership with the
1132
959 957 University of Michigan’s library and has since ex-
886 panded to more than 60 institutions.
788
$115,94 “When that plan was announced, it struck me
$99,776 559
$82,355 $79,604
as pretty audacious . . . I thought,‘This may not be
$56,245 the way we want to proceed here.’ Google was un-
$51,958
likely to pay attention to privacy or quality of scans
429
like librarians would,” he said.
284 248 379 322 356 He pondered why universities want to contract
with the company “to act as a custodian for hun-
Spring 2009 Fall 2009 Winter 2010 Spring 2010 Fall 2010 Spring 2011 dreds of years of knowledge” and spoke about the
fascinating role that Google’s “don’t be evil”
motto plays in business and technology.
Full Refund Requests Total Requests Amount Refunded
“It’s part of the lore,” he said. “It’s part of the
story you get.”
ANASTASIA YEE/The Stanford Daily
“I maintain to this day it is that sin that matters
Recent data on special fees refunds yield interesting trends. The number of students asking when we deal with Google,” he added.
for a refund in spring quarter is generally higher than in fall quarter, as more students be- “There’s this weird assumption that good actually
come aware of the ability to get money back and the mechanism to do so. The total dol- rose out of brilliance.This story to me was fairly in-
lar amount refunded hit its lowest level in the last three years this spring, with requests for
a full $111 refund and the average dollar amount for refunds both decreasing sharply. Please see GOOGLE, page 2
RESEARCH
Stanford develops tiny, energy-efficient lasers
By THE DAILY NEWS STAFF ficient than their predecessors. More specifically, cold temperatures — 150 Kelvin and below.
Vuckovic is developing a photonic-crystal laser, Vuckovic and her team are nonetheless opti-
Sometimes less is more.Stanford researchers, which functions at low thresholds and does not mistic about future progress.Their goal is to come
led by associate professor of electrical engineer- consume much energy. up with a laser that can work at room tempera-
ing Jelena Vuckovic, have demonstrated this fact This development proves, for the first time, ture without sacrificing energy efficiency.
in developing tiny semiconductor lasers that use the feasibility of an electrically pumped laser that The Stanford Graduate Fellowships, the In-
less energy than ever before. is both easy to create and energy efficient. terconnect Focus Center and the Air Force Of-
The electrical data interconnections that are However,the newly introduced laser needs to fice of Scientific Research are funding these re-
found in today’s computers take up lots of ener- address a number of concerns before it can go search efforts.
gy. Now,Vuckovic and her team have pioneered into widespread use.Chief among these concerns
a new generation of lasers that are much more ef- is the fact that the laser only works at relatively — An Le Nguyen

Index Features/3 • Opinions/4 • Sports/6 • Classifieds/7 Recycle Me

2 ! Tuesday, May 17, 2011
American graffiti
Saturday’s shooting in the Lagunita parking lot sparked a graffiti response
by an unknown person outside of Tresidder Memorial Union. Another graf-
fiti response can be found in the area near the west side of Meyer Library.
GOOGLE
Continued from front page
complete,” he said. “What was miss-
ing from this story was the fact that,
for instance, Sergey Brin and Larry
Page worked on a grant from the Na-
tional Science Foundation to devel-
op what became PageRank.”
Thus, the public helped fund the
project that eventually became
Google, and it now contributes the
data critical to the company’s suc-
cess.
“We do a tremendous amount of
interaction with Google that con-
stantly improves Google,” Vaid-
hyanathan said.
No other search engine company
can truly compete, because there are
none that are as well equipped. And
no other company boasts “the
sunken infrastructure” that Google
has, he observed.
“The question is, ‘How are we
making Google smarter?’” he
added. “And we’re making Google
smarter with every click.”
But computer clicks don’t make
up the entire picture.
“There is no such thing as a neu-
tral algorithm,”Vaidhyanathan said.
“Human beings do make deci-
sions at Google,” he said. “Human
beings make decisions what the algo-
rithm cares about. It’s not just the
computers.”
Indeed, Google shows different
search results depending on location
and “learns”the preferences of users
who have Google accounts.
“What this does is, of course, nar-
row our field of vision,because we’re
outsourcing our decision making to
Google exponentially,which is much
better for shopping but much worse
for learning,” he said.
Constructive improvements
The Applied Physics and Ginzton Laboratory building on Via Ortega and Via
Pueblo was demolished over the course of the last few weeks to clear space
for the final installment to the Science and Engineering Quad (SEQ).
The Stanford Daily
ZACK HOBERG/The Stanford Daily
A problem universities, libraries
and public schools face, he argued, is
a “public failure.” Without the gov-
ernment providing all the necessary
resources for these institutions,
Google can force change when it
takes over the work that the public
sector isn’t necessarily doing.
“Really what we see here is
Google on the Web as a largely
benevolent Caesar,” he said.
“Google is essentially the sover-
eign of the Web,” he added.“Google
is ruling the Web for us.”
“We’re not far enough into histo-
ry,”said community member Hazem
Nassar, who referred to Vaid-
hyanathan’s comparison of Google
to Caesar.
“This is all very recent, and the
rate of change is very fast,” Nassar
said. “Google came out, and now
they’re afraid of Facebook.I’d like to
hear more of what he has to say
about open source, especially mak-
ing libraries more accessible.”
Contact Tyler Brown at tbbrown
@stanford.edu.
Correction
In Monday’s article “Yearly re-
fund rate sees little change,” The
Daily incorrectly reported that the
officers of special-fees groups cur-
rently have the right to a list of the
SUID numbers of individuals who
refunded their group. In fact, this
policy was overturned.
It was also incorrectly reported
that,under a proposed bill to reform
the refund process, students could
file a case with Judicial Affairs if
VSOs released their names to the
public. In fact, the bill only states
that students can file a case with the
“appropriate judicial body.”
TYLER BROWN/The Stanford Daily
The Stanford Daily
FEATURES
Guatemala’s Wise‘Doctor Pablo’
Pediatrics professor Paul Wise has spent the past 40 summers volunteering,training
and researching in the Guatemalan highlands
By ZAHRA TAJI
I
n San Juan El Mirador, a traditional
town in the highlands of Guatemala
2,500 miles from Stanford, pediatrics
professor Paul Wise is working to trans-
form the local medical scene.
“Doctor Pablo,” as the locals affectionately
call him, has been traveling to Guatemala for
40 years now, ever since he was a teenager. He
has met with doctors,policymakers and clinics
from the area in an attempt to bring the tiny
Guatemalan town up to Western medical
standards. Last summer, local health promot-
ers honored him with a ceremony.
Wise first visited Guatemala the summer
after his freshman year at Cornell University.
He had been interested in marine biology —
specifically sharks — but was thinking about
pursuing something that would have more of
an immediate impact on the world. He headed
to Guatemala to get a glimpse of the “real
world.”
He got his wish. The hospital ward Wise
was assigned to was full of severely malnour-
Tuesday, May 17, 2011 ! 3
ished children, with two to three children for
every one bed. Initially, Wise was angry with
the parents for letting their children become
so sick. But when Sunday came and the local
parents were allowed to visit their children,
Wise saw that the problem was neither neglect
nor lack of love. It had to do with the overar-
ching medical care system.
That was 1970.
Wise, who is now a pediatrics professor at
the Stanford School of Medicine and senior
fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for In-
ternational Studies (FSI), has since returned
to Guatemala each summer to provide med-
ical care, train local health promoters, conduct
research and talk to various organizations and
agencies.
Please see WISE, page 5
All photos courtesy of Paul Wise
Professor Paul Wise, known to the locals as
“Doctor Pablo,” provides medical care for
underserved communities in Guatemala
every summer.
4 ! Tuesday, May 17, 2011
OPINIONS
I H AVE T WO H EADS
The Parent Trap
I
’m going to begin this column
with a confession. Since coming
to Stanford, I think that only a
handful of days have gone by in
which I haven’t talked to some
member of my family. Okay, so from
my standpoint that wasn’t a confes-
sion. It was more of a declaration of
fact. Simply put, my family is impor-
tant to me — yet I’ve traveled
through my time at Stanford ob-
serving a range of complex attitudes
that college students can have to-
ward their families, particularly par-
ents or parental units.
College is a time of renegotiating
our relationships with our parents.
To restate some old bildungsroman-
esque truths, it is a time of pursuing
independence, of discovering one’s
identity away from home and also
of establishing our position as
adults even with the people with
whom we can sometimes feel most
like children.We all, I think, can feel
a divide between our home selves
and our school selves, between what
we were and what we are becoming,
and between what different groups
of people perceive us to be. Our re-
lationships with family, perhaps like
nothing else, can bring this problem
into sharper relief.
To return to the point: while at
Stanford, I’ve noticed that my peers
demonstrate two general viewpoints
when talking about their parents.
Some people,like me,freely admit to
keeping in constant touch, some-
times to the point of excusing them-
selves from conversations to make
phone calls home. Others shrug and
shift their eyes as if to say, “Parents?
Oh, I forgot, I haven’t talked to mine
in about two weeks.” Likewise, when
I travel home and attend so-called
“grown-up” gatherings, the perspec-
tives I encounter among the parents
there follow the same mold. Families
either appear well connected and
well informed about each other’s
lives or they sigh and say, “Little
Jimmy’s fallen off the face of the
earth since he went off to school. I
just trust him to be safe.”
Total connection or total discon-
nection: these are the extremes that
bound our rediscovered relation-
ships with our parents, and it seems
healthy to settle into a spot some-
where in between. This can be chal-
lenging, seeing as our society also
circulates dual perceptions over
what can characterize modern par-
ent-child interactions. First of all, we
have all heard about the growing
trend of micromanaging parents, or
members of the baby boomer gener-
ation-slash-economic elite who ex-
cessively invest in their children’s
success to the extent of rendering
said children incapable of making
their own decisions. On the other
hand, we have also all encountered
assumptions of youthful independ-
ence through dismemberment —
namely, that young people, after
their stormy adolescent years, will
naturally proceed to sever the last
frayed ties of their filial relation-
ships when they head off to college.
According to this viewpoint, college
begins a turbo leap into the adult di-
mension or represents the casting-
off point when the ship sails for the
western horizon: whichever analogy
you prefer, the bottom line is “Bye-
bye, mom and dad, I’m on my way.”
I’ll be blunt: I believe that nei-
ther approach demonstrates what a
Rachel
Kolb
Total connection or total
disconnection:these are
the extremes that
bound our rediscovered
relationships with our
parents.
strong parent-child bond should be,
even though I have seen both in ac-
tion at Stanford. As college stu-
dents, we should be neither para-
lyzed by our parents’ overinvest-
ment in our lives nor so shortsight-
ed that we fail to realize the benefits
of sustaining a closer interactive re-
lationship. Now, from a cynical
point of view those benefits are sim-
ply material: for many of us, after
all, it is our parents who foot our tu-
ition bill. Yet it is also our parents
who have, in large part, worked to
provide us with the opportunities
that we have. I think most Stanford
students I have met realize this, but
in the flurry of campus life, it can be
easy to forget the larger context of
our family structure and of why
those relationships matter.
During a recent conversation I
had with my mother, the topic of
parent-child relationships came up.
We began discussing the metaphys-
ical concept that parents feel no
“us-them” barrier with their chil-
dren, and that children are similarly
heedless of parental boundaries. In
other words, among family, “What’s
yours is mine.” This struck me as a
central tenet of the parental-rela-
tions dilemma that college students
can face. Many of us might have
gone about our younger lives feel-
ing no barrier between our parents
and ourselves, in terms of resources
or shared language or finance or
even personal space. Now we find
ourselves pressed to establish clear
boundaries about our lives and the
future directions that we would like
to take. When these boundaries in-
volve family members, we are not
always sure of where to draw the
line.
While at Stanford, like the rest of
my peers, I have had to strike my
own balance about how to involve
my family in my life while also pur-
suing my own independence. Call it
an adjustment period. Call it self-
reinvention or realignment. I just
feel fortunate that, even though the
content and the context of our con-
versations might have changed
since I left home, the dialogue has
not stopped.
Rachel wants to know which of the
two “Parent Trap” movies you pre-
ferred. Contact her at rkolb@stan-
ford.edu.
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Space Kimchi
T
wo years ago, a friend and I
made a documentary for a
film class about multiracial
students and their experiences at
Stanford. One, who was half Chi-
nese, mentioned in her interview
how she had never felt attracted to
the Asian-American community at
Stanford, saying,“I feel like at times
they do become very stereotyped,
just to be very honest.They become
about getting boba, or about eating
Asian food, or about other things
like that, which to me are cultural
elements, but that’s not what it’s re-
ally about.”
As someone who thinks that
food is an incredibly important part
of our lives, I’ve always found this
statement really interesting. Cer-
tainly, food isn’t all there is to a cul-
The Stanford Daily
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F RESHLY B AKED
Tim
Moon
ture, but isn’t it at least a part of it?
Are things like music, art and histo-
ry really more what a culture is
“about” than cuisine?
There’s a quote floating around
out there that goes, “What is patri-
otism but the love of the food one
ate as a child?” Now, I don’t know
that the love of the food you eat as a
child is the equivalent of patriotism,
but food is certainly an important
part of a cultural identity. Take, for
instance, the country of my parents,
South Korea. If I asked you to name
a Korean food, kimchi would surely
be one of the first to come to mind,
and not without reason; Koreans
are crazy about kimchi. During the
Vietnam War, canned kimchi was
delivered to Korean soldiers after
South Korea’s president wrote a let-
ter to President Johnson saying that
the soldiers were miserable without
kimchi, and the prime minister, de-
livering the letter, told Johnson that
when abroad, he missed kimchi
more than his wife. In 2008, Yi So-
Yeon, the first South Korean in
space, brought along a specially en-
gineered space-friendly version
that South Korean scientists spent
years of research and millions of
dollars to develop. And last year,
South Korea was hit with the Great
Cabbage Shortage of 2010, leading
to a spike in the prices of Napa cab-
bage, a key ingredient of kimchi,
and forcing the government to sus-
pend import duties on cabbages in
an attempt to cope with the situa-
tion. Koreans and kimchi might be a
bit of an extreme example, but in
cases like this, food is more than just
what people like to eat, it’s an im-
portant element of identity, of na-
tional pride.
Cultural groups at Stanford pro-
vide both opportunities for students
of a particular culture or students
interested in that culture to meet
and interact as well as opportunities
The Stanford Daily
Incorporated 1973
Tonight’s Desk Editors
An Le Nguyen
News Editor
Jacob Jaffe
Sports Editor
Stephanie Sara Chong
Features Editor
Zack Hoberg
Photo Editor
Stephanie Weber
Copy Editor
to share that culture with the
greater Stanford community. How
well they do at providing these op-
portunities is up for debate and
varies from group to group, but for
the most part, I would contest the
characterization of these groups as
being “about getting boba or about
eating Asian food,” as most groups
seem to make an effort to also ex-
plore those elements of culture that
it is “really about.” At least, that’s
what it seems like based on all the
emails I get.
See, I can’t remember the last
time that I went to a cultural event
that didn’t involve food. As a bona
fide “twinkie,” so to speak, I’ve
never been particularly attracted to
the Asian-American community
here either, and flyers advertising
culture nights and Asian-American
speakers talking about Asian-
American issues just haven’t
piqued my interest. But if a flyer
promises a delicious respite from
normal dining hall food? I’m there.
And a lot of people seem to feel
this way, as the food events I’ve
been to are generally well attended.
Maybe this was the source of my in-
terviewee’s discontent with cultural
groups, that the food events can be
superficial in that they attract peo-
ple who might not be particularly
interested in that culture and are
only there for the dumplings.
And maybe that’s true. Maybe
most of these people will eat their
plate of mandu that they think are
gyoza and leave, but maybe some
will ask why it’s called mandu and
learn a little something.And even if
they don’t, they’ve still been ex-
posed to a little piece of that culture,
just the same as if they’d seen a
dance or heard a pop song. Food is
just as important a part of culture as
anything else, and by holding events
where people can be exposed to the
food of a culture (speaking of
which, many kudos to Stanford
Dining for last week’s Spring Faire),
cultural groups can reach a greater
audience.
After saying the word “kimchi” so
many times, Tim is really craving
some.Tell him where to get the best at
timmoon@stanford.edu.
The Stanford Daily
Honda speeds through political issues
Congressman Mike Honda delivered a special talk to members of the Stan-
ford community on Monday evening in the Oak West Room. Honda, who
currently represents California's 15th congressional district, spoke about
Asian Americans in politics and the current political environment.
WISE
Continued from page 3
“You have to get out and go to
these places,” Wise said. “You can’t
do justice work in Guatemala sitting
in Palo Alto.”
Jake Rosenberg, a student purs-
ing a joint MD/PhD at the Stanford
School of Medicine, accompanied
Wise on one of his trips last summer.
Rosenberg said that Wise’s work al-
ways emphasized caring for each pa-
tient with individualized attention.
“Wise very much encouraged
that you treat a patient in
Guatemala with the same standards
you would treat your mother [or as]
you would treat a patient at Stan-
ford Hospital,” Rosenberg said.
Wise earned his bachelor’s de-
gree in Latin American studies and
his medical degree from Cornell
University, as well as a master’s of
public health from the Harvard
School of Public Health. After
spending the first 23 years of his ac-
ademic life at Harvard Medical
School, Harvard School of Public
Health and Boston University
School of Medicine, Wise came to
Stanford in 2004.
“I was here maybe three weeks
and I was asked to do an informal
brown bag lunch seminar [to talk
about my research],” Wise said, re-
calling his first month at Stanford.
“It was over the summer, and I did-
n’t expect many people to attend.”
But to Wise’s surprise, there
were two Nobel Prize winners
among the attendees.
“This would have never hap-
pened at Harvard,” he continued.
“It struck me that this is such an in-
timate university . . . The intimacy
and the ability to craft intensely
across disciplinary kinds of work is
very special here.”
In fact, Wise’s interest lies in in-
terdisciplinary discourse, and he
works “right smack in the middle of
the interaction” between technolo-
gy and social justice.
STUDY
Continued from front page
These behaviors manifested them-
selves in decreased consumption of
sugar water, less active swimming in
warm water and a tendency to stay
in the dark areas during the maze
test.
The treated rats also exhibited
higher than normal levels of the
stress hormones corticosterone and
corticotrophin as well as an in-
creased resting level of corti-
cotrophin-releasing factor (CRF), a
hormone linked with depression in
humans and other animals.
According to Pasricha, the treat-
ment interferes with the develop-
ment of the central nervous system.
The signaling from the gut to the
brain permanently changes its func-
tion to induce anxiety and depres-
sion in the animals.
Moreover, blocking the rats’
sense of perception with the addi-
tion of a drug did not cause any sig-
nificant change in their behavior.
This indicates that the treated rats
were not responding to any current
pain. However, inhibiting the re-
lease of CRF dramatically reduced
depression- and anxiety-like behav-
ior, even in the rats that had initially
experienced gastric irritation.
Having found the causal link in
the vagus nerve between the gut
and the nervous system, Pasricha is
now investigating the specific mech-
anisms that govern this phenome-
non.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011 ! 5
ZACK HOBERG/The Stanford Daily
“A theme that has run through
my life and continues to be the core
of my academic work is the relation-
ship between technical innovation
and questions of social justice,”
Wise said.
Gesturing to the Clark Center as
a meeting place of technology, de-
sign and innovation, he emphasized
the importance of respecting tech-
nological change while at the same
time recognizing that technological
innovation raises profound ques-
tions of justice.
“You can be an intensive care
doctor, or a neonatologist, or a sur-
geon, and that is extremely relevant
to the kinds of justice questions that
take place in rural Guatemala, the
Eastern Congo or in Burma,” Wise
said.“These are not disconnected.”
Wise’s work in Guatemala is not
only about providing physical care
for the patients, but also the less tan-
gible, yet much-needed, follow-up
care. He described that part of a
health promoter’s role is not just to
translate the language, but also to
translate the culture. He added that
sometimes, the patients who need
care have no obvious disease or
symptoms — their problems are
nothing like those that you could
understand as a physician working
solely in Palo Alto.
For this reason,Wise is not only a
physician during his visits to
Guatemala, but also a research fig-
ure who trains local people to work
on and deal with their uniquely
local situations.
“I strongly believe that we have a
role to play and can make a differ-
ence, even freshmen undergraduate
students,” Wise said. “I’ve been to a
lot of very ‘complicated’ environ-
ments, war-torn areas, and what I
don’t want students to ever feel is
immobilized . . . particularly those
getting into technical career paths
[like] medicine or biodesign.”
“[They] have to recognize that
the work they do is directly relevant
to questions of justice,” he added.
Contact Zahra Taji at ztaji@stan-
ford.edu.
“We are now exploring the mol-
ecules that are involved in signaling
between the gut and the brain and
the role of nerves such as the vagus
that may be mediating these
changes,” Pasricha said. “There are
lots of questions to be asked, and we
hope that this research will open up
some new perspectives on depres-
sion and anxiety and the relation-
ship to gastrointestinal disorders.
There has been a lot of speculation
linking autism to gastrointestinal
disease.”
Research regarding the link be-
tween the nervous and gastroin-
testinal systems has opened up new
realms of possibilities for novel
treatments and approaches. Electri-
cal modulation of the vagus nerve, a
method patented by Cyberonics,
has been approved by the Food and
Drug Administration to treat stimu-
lation for several years.
Pasricha alluded to other scien-
tists who have proposed theories on
this linkage.
“Others have espoused theories
around this connection. Pierre Pal-
lardy, the French alternative thera-
pist, is certain that the roots of de-
pression lie in the stomach,” Pas-
richa said.“In his 2007 book ‘Gut In-
stinct:What Your Stomach Is Trying
to Tell You,’ he outlines his belief in
the power of the stomach to cause
or cure a wide range of physical and
mental ailments. Whether our re-
search validates this or not is open
to question, but [it] certainly gives
food for thought.”
Contact Jenny Thai at jthai1@stan-
ford.edu.
6 ! Tuesday, May 17, 2011
SPORTS
TOURNEY ROMPS
No. 1 Cardinal sweeps past UIC, Pepperdine
By WILL SEATON
STAFF WRITER
The 2011 NCAA Champi-
onships began brilliantly for the de-
fending national champion Stan-
ford women’s tennis team, which
recorded two shutouts to make it to
the second weekend of the tourna-
ment. The Cardinal overwhelmed
Freshman Nicole Gibbs volleys during one of her two singles wins on the weekend. Gibbs helped lead the No.
1 Stanford women’s tennis team to shutout wins over Illinois-Chicago and Pepperdine in the NCAA Tournament.
SPORTS BRIEFS
Women’s golf heads to Texas
for NCAAs
The Stanford women’s golf
team, fresh off a seventh-place fin-
ish at the Central Regional, will
travel to Bryan, Texas, for the
NCAA Championships this week.
After finishing fifth at the Pac-10
Championships, the Cardinal shot
908 at the Central Regional in
South Bend, Ind., 18 strokes behind
champion UCLA. This was one
stroke ahead of Wake Forest for
seventh place and five ahead of
Duke for the final NCAA spot.
Sophomore Sally Watson led the
Cardinal at eight-over for the tour-
nament, followed by senior Rebec-
ca Durham, freshman Marissa Mar,
sophomore Kristina Wong and jun-
ior Lila Barton.
Texas A&M is hosting the na-
tional championship at its Tradi-
tions Club. The favorites are No. 1
USC, No. 2 UCLA and No. 3 Alaba-
ma, who won the West, Central and
East Regionals, respectively. No. 4
Purdue is the defending champion
after beating USC by one stroke
last year.
The first round at the par-72
course will begin Wednesday at 6
a.m., and the remaining three
rounds will begin at 6 a.m. on Thurs-
day, Friday and Saturday.
— Jacob Jaffe
WOMEN’S TENNIS
PEPPERDINE 0 appearance in the NCAA Tourna-
STANFORD 4 year with 24 wins, including an 8-0
5/15, Taube Family Tennis Center
University of Illinois-Chicago on
Saturday before defeating No. 27
Pepperdine on Sunday.
This year marks the 30th consec-
Stanford Daily File Photo
Sophomore Kristina Wong and the Stanford
women’s golf team placed seventh in the Central
Regional in South Bend, Ind. This earned the Car-
dinal a spot in this week’s NCAA Championships.
utive season Stanford has made an two of its top players, sophomore
Stacey Tan and freshman Kristie
ment.Stanford is undefeated on the Ahn. Both were resting minor in-
juries.
record in Pac-10 play. For doubles, Ahn’s partner,
The result against Illinois Chica- freshman Nicole Gibbs, paired up
go on Saturday was typical of the with junior Veronica Li. In singles,
Cardinal’s performance all season, senior Jennifer Yen replaced Tan at
but the players that achieved it the sixth spot. Gibbs and Li proved
were not. Stanford played without a dominating duo, recording an 8-0
win at the second spot. Stanford
won the doubles point when senior
Hilary Barte and sophomore Mal-
lory Burdette recorded an 8-1 win
at the top spot.
“[Burdette] played probably the
best doubles I’ve ever seen her play
with me,” Barte said.
Head coach Lele Forood talked
about what in Burdette’s play has
made her better recently.
“She’s hitting touch shots and
tough volleys,” Forood said. “She’s
hitting better overheads, and her
game is coming together. She’s
doing more things well on the dou-
bles court. She’s becoming an even
more versatile doubles player.”
No. 18 Nicole Gibbs lost just one
game on the way to a 6-0, 6-1 victo-
ry over Ilinca Cristescu. Second off
the court was senior Carolyn
McVeigh, defeating Jana Knoppe
6-2, 6-1. The clincher came at the
top spot thanks to Barte. Ranked
third in the nation, Barte received a
fight from her opponent, Mariya
Kovaleva. Barte won just one game
in the first set, but responded by
winning 12 games in a row for a 1-6,
6-0, 6-0 victory.
“I don’t know what was happen-
ing [in singles],” Barte said. “I was
kind of low energy, and my concen-
tration was all over the place.After
I lost the first set, she kind of settled
down, and I just got into my grove.
It was my first match in a while. It
was nice to play three sets though,
as weird as that sounds. It was nice
to have a mental performance like
that.”
Sunday’s fight against Pepper-
dine proved to be a tougher con-
test, but Stanford had Tan back in
the lineup to help out. Tan, pairing
up with McVeigh, won her doubles
match 8-5 on court three. For the
second day in a row, Barte and Bur-
dette played well at the top spot to
win 8-5 and clinch the doubles
point.
Li won Stanford’s next point
when she walked off the court at
the fifth spot with a 6-1, 6-1 victory
over Megan Moore. Barte earned
her team-leading fourth point of
the weekend with a 6-2, 6-1 victory
against Arianna Colffer to put the
Cardinal one point away from the
second weekend. The win came
when Gibbs, recording her second
singles victory on the weekend, de-
feated Ale Granillo 6-2, 6-3.
“The thing with Nicole is that
she’s become kind of automatic this
year,” Forood said. “She just went
out and did what she does, which is
dominate her opponents. She really
SIMON WARBY/The Stanford Daily gets after it,gets on top of her oppo-
Please see WTENNIS, page 8
FAN FORUM
SAM SVOBODA ‘11
ENJOY CARD SPORTS
WHILE YOU CAN
S
o here I am again,writing a sports column for The
Daily, roughly three and a half years after my last
sports column ran.When I was first asked to write
this Fan Forum, I’ll admit I was hesitant. But I fig-
ured I couldn’t let my final quarter at Stanford be
the only quarter that I didn’t contribute anything to The
Daily’s sports section, right?
The sports editor (incidentally, my first “protege” at
The Daily, from our days covering the 2008 women’s soc-
cer team) suggested writing about my experience with the
hurling team here, which I helped found during my fresh-
man year four years ago. While this would certainly be a
new topic to most readers, I recently wrote a piece on the
hurling team for Stanford’s new “Champions”website.I’m
sure a lot of Daily readers have not read that piece, but I
thought I could do something more worthwhile than sim-
ply rewriting something I already wrote.And I didn’t want
this final column to be all about me. (Funny, given that
we’re already two paragraphs in and it is entirely about me
so far. Just bear with me.)
My next thought was to write about the time I dominat-
ed Beatles Rock Band with Toby Gerhart, since I seem to
tell everyone that story anyway — and who doesn’t love
reading about Toby? But as life altering as that story would
have been to readers, I decided against it. I also decided
against writing about how my Chicago Bulls’ NBA Playoff
series against Miami is good vs. evil, because 1) it would be
Please see FAN FORUM, page 7
The Stanford Daily
Wyndam
Makowsky
Between the lines
Men’s lax
is viable
addition
I
t was posed nearly as a light-
hearted,throw-in question.Dur-
ing a conference call earlier this
month to discuss the Pac-12’s
new media deal,a reporter asked
Director of Athletics Bob Bowlsby
whether the (vast) influx of new money
would lead Stanford to consider
adding a 36th varsity sports team. His
response suggested greater openness
to the idea than one might expect —
despite struggles with finances over the
past few years, he wasn’t entirely
against the idea.If anything,it sounded
like something he’d at least like to ex-
plore.
“We’d have to think about it to
think about what we might add. No
plans for expansion, but it’s not out of
the question.We’re more than meeting
our gender equity requirements. We’d
be open-minded about it,”he said.
The third sentence about “gender
equity”is code for “Stanford is meeting
its Title IX obligations.” So if Bowlsby
and co.get serious about adding anoth-
er team, allow me to propose a candi-
date:men’s lacrosse.
It is not the most obvious choice.
The sport is largely concentrated on
the East Coast,and there is no Division
I lacrosse team west of Colorado. Ele-
vating the sport to varsity status would
be a risk,but it’s one that should be con-
sidered.
While Stanford has a club team —
and a very good one,at that — lacrosse
is one of the few sports the Athletic De-
partment sponsors that has a women’s
squad but lacks a male counterpart.
This works in the men’s favor; for ex-
ample,the playing field is already taken
care of — despite slightly different
field dimensions for the men’s and
women’s game, Cagan Stadium is an
entirely appropriate venue for the
men’s team to use. Beyond that,
though, the success of the women’s
team — which just wrapped up its best
year to date — gives a rubric for the
men to follow. For example, with few
exceptions, the squad is made up al-
most entirely of players from Mary-
land, New Jersey, Virginia and other
eastern states. The recruiting focus is
appropriately national, and one future
consequence of the new media deal
that Bowlsby was most excited by was
the chance to continue to spread the
Stanford brand across the country.
With lacrosse, it’d be a symbiotic rela-
tionship.
And indeed,the talent pools are in-
creasing at dramatic rates.The number
of high schoolers playing the sport has
doubled in the past 10 years,according
to the National Federation of State
High School Associations.While this is
still an East Coast phenomenon,it is no
longer exclusive to that region — par-
ticipation has risen dramatically on the
West Coast, too. Appropriately, more
universities are adding lacrosse pro-
grams.
But not on the Pacific Coast. At
least not yet. While the women can
compete in the Mountain Pacific
Sports Federation with other Pac-10
schools like Cal and Oregon, the men
would not have a western conference
they could join.The Air Force Acade-
my and the University of Denver —
the westernmost Division I programs
— compete in the Eastern College
Athletic Conference with schools as
far east as Loyola in Maryland. It’s a
costly expenditure.
That said, the status quo may not
last long. Stanford would not be the
only western school exploring the op-
tion of adding men’s lacrosse, as USC
told LaxMagazine.com that it is con-
sidering adding the sport, too. A few
more universities would be needed for
a West Coast-based conference,but the
roots and developing interests are
there. As lacrosse continues to estab-
lish a foothold in youth leagues across
the West, it is only a matter of time be-
fore varsity teams at the collegiate level
begin to pop up,too.
Therein lies perhaps the most com-
pelling argument for Stanford, which
sees itself as a trendsetter in a number
of fields. Lacrosse’s growth is difficult
to ignore,so why not jump ahead of the
pack? The University’s clout as both
the top athletic and academic school in
Division I is tremendous,and by creat-
ing a hub for lacrosse on the West
Coast, Bowlsby and other administra-
tors would be making a statement that
says, “We think this sport is for real,
come join us as we further cement its
place in collegiate athletics.” Recruits
Please see MAKOWSKY, page 8
The Stanford Daily
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FAN FORUM
Continued from page 6
rather tough to relate to Stanford
and 2) it’s obvious.I even considered
writing a football column simply to
try to get Ted Miller to link to my ar-
ticle on the ESPN Pac-12 Blog, but
those wouldn’t exactly be the no-
blest of journalistic intentions.
Finally, a topic came to me on
Sunday night, through a combina-
tion of factors. I read back through
last week’s Fan Forum, in which
Miles Bennett-Smith encouraged
people to take notice of the under-
appreciated men’s volleyball team.
And earlier in the day, the Stanford
women’s water polo team won the
national championship, reminding
me of my freshman year at The
Daily (that was the first team I was a
beat writer for).
Given that I was writing a col-
umn, I also thought back to my
freshman year column-writing,and I
realized that my first ever column
here was similar to Miles’, just on a
broader scale — it was encouraging
people to take advantage of their
opportunity to watch so many
world-class teams on the Farm. As
my younger self put it, “You won’t
have the chance to see so many great
teams for so little cost ever again.”
I look back on this article with
mixed emotions. On one hand, I’m
grateful that I got to see so many
great teams, athletes and games
Tuesday, May 17, 2011 ! 7
G E T NOTICED B Y
THOUSANDS.
(650) 721-5803
www.stanforddaily.
com/classifieds
through my time here. But I also
know I could have heeded my own
advice much more thoroughly.
There are still teams here that I
haven’t seen compete even once,
and while I’ve definitely been busy
through my four years here, I cer-
tainly could have spent a little more
time supporting our teams.
So,after much rambling,I want to
use my farewell (slash comeback?)
column to give the same advice in
my senior spring as I did in my fresh-
man fall: take the opportunity to
check out all the incredible teams
and student athletes we have here.
Go support your athlete friends, but
also go watch Cardinal teams you
might not know anyone on. Follow
the “big” sports like football, but
also give the lesser-known sports a
chance. Heck, go watch the club
sports teams as well — honestly, we
can use all the fans we can get.
This all might seem obvious, but I
guess I’m living proof that it’s not all
that easy to follow up on.In the end,I
guess my advice on Stanford sports is
the same advice I would give as a sen-
ior about Stanford as a whole:take all
the opportunities you can to enjoy
and appreciate it, because it goes in-
credibly quickly. Now if you’ll excuse
me, I’m going to go back to pretend-
ing I’m not graduating in 26 days.
Sam Svoboda is not only a lesser
Rock Band player than his editor,but
his hypothetical friendship with Toby
Gerhart isn’t nearly as well devel-
oped. Boast about your real athlete
buddies at ssvoboda@stanford.edu.
8 ! Tuesday, May 17, 2011 The Stanford Daily

LACROSSE FALLS TO GATORS MAKOWSKY

Continued from page 6

who would not have otherwise had a

western option would suddenly be
presented with one, and, between the
success of the women’s team and in-
stallation of a men’s squad, Stanford
could very well become the face of
lacrosse on the West Coast.
Ultimately, the cost of transporta-
tion in the early years of the men’s
team may be prohibitive for a sport
that isn’t likely to earn Stanford much
money overall. But the monetary
angle could be worked out via a nor-
mative perspective — if the Universi-
ty is truly seen as an innovator in West
Coast lacrosse,there are likely ways to
profit from it.That’s the vital consider-
ation, and given the explosion of
lacrosse nationwide and Stanford’s
chance to place a stake in a large part
of that market, the decision to add a
varsity men’s program would be pre-
scient.

True story: Wyndam Makowsky has

never watched a lacrosse game start-to-
finish in his entire life. Surprised?
Email him at makowsky@stanford.
edu.

WTENNIS
Continued from page 6

nents early and gets the win. She

usually gets off the court as one of
the first few matches, if not the first.
She’s doing an outstanding job of
going out and dominating her posi-
tion.”
Stanford is back in action Friday
at 6 p.m. against Northwestern in
the round of 16.

Contact Will Seaton at wseaton@

stanford.edu.

IAN GARCIA-DOTY/The Stanford Daily

Freshman midfielder Anna Kim and the Stanford women’s lacrosse team saw their season end with a 13-11 loss to No. 4 Florida in the first round of
the NCAA Tournament. The No. 7 Cardinal finishes up the best season in program history with 16 wins and a second trip to the NCAA Tournament.