This Week in Irony: The ever-elusive Loyo truck

25 Feb 2012, Posted by Hong Zhu in News, 0 Comments

Jisoo Yoon/The Chronicle

Recently, a friend exposed me to the glory that is the Duke Dining Food Trucks Calendar. The page and Local Yogurt’s twitter, @loyoonthego, are now both permanently open on my iPhone. In addition to making me an even more avid patron of Loyo, the calendar has made me realize just how often the green Loyo truck graces our campus with its presence.

It seems that the Loyo truck occupies a niche in the world of Duke dining, something akin to that of the neighborhood ice cream truck. As a kid, having the ice cream truck come to my neighborhood ranked among my greatest desires. On the few occasions that it did, it meant that ice cream was something you had to have; after all, who knew when the elusive truck would be by again? The novelty was never lost, and the demand always there. I think of Loyo as having a very similar appeal.

I sense that I’m not alone in this mentality, judging on how excited people seem to be whenever “the Loyo truck is here!” This may be partly because the truck only opened this past August and just started accepting food points in October.

Rational considerations aside, it still seems that a large part of Loyo’s draw is the common misperception that it comes infrequently (or at least less often than it actually does). In my mind, the Loyo truck is the double rainbow of campus food—a rare, special sighting. The calendar, however, tells a different story: in actuality, the truck comes every day of the week except for Monday.

Maybe we tend to think the truck comes less frequently than it does because it varies in time and location. Even still, it’s ironic that we often think of the Loyo truck as special when it comes six days a week, usually for several hours each time. Although, to be fair, Loyo is also just amazingly delicious.

Size doesn’t matter.

22 Feb 2012, Posted by Nandini Srinivasan in News, 0 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

….at least not when it comes to classes.

Last December, the Bureau of Economic Research published “Getting Beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence from New York City.” This report, written by two Harvard professors, analyzes the effectiveness of 35 charter schools across the New York metropolitan area in an attempt to discover what makes them great.

For years, experts have believed that the smaller the class size, the higher chance a student had at succeeding. Contrary to popular belief, however, the researchers found that class size made little difference in comparison to some other factors.

40 years of qualitative studies have shown that there are five critical factors—frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instruction time and high expectations.

What does this mean for colleges across the country that advertise small teacher to student ratios? In fall 2010, Duke reported an 8:1 student to teacher ratio—smaller than our Writing20 classes—and that 71 percent of the classes enroll fewer than 20 students. ECON51, EGR53, PSY11 and CHEM31 are just a few of the 6 percent of our classes that have more than 50 students. Although it is almost impossible to fail Writing20, large lecture classes are generally associated with failed tests and poorer grades. But according to the recently published article, not knowing covalent bonds, MATLAB or supply and demand curves has nothing to do with the class size.

Does this mean that our freshman writing courses are just easy?

Not necessarily, said Cathy Davidson, a professor of English as well as Interdisciplinary Studies in the Franklin Humanities Center.

“I actually do not understand [the] conclusion, and I’ve read the report a number of times,” she said. “Small class size, of course, wouldn’t be the only factor [for success]. Rather, small class size allows the best teachers the flexibility to accomplish what the report itself says are the most  ”effective” policies. These goals simply cannot be achieved by one teacher with too many students and basic issues such as behavior management added into the teaching mix.”

Professor Davidson’s conclusion seems natural and there appears to be a strong connection between small class size and the five critical factors that the report detailed. With hundreds of students, it is just not feasible for a teacher to provide frequent feedback or to increase the instruction time. However, with a class of only a dozen, the professor can personalize expectations and truly get to know the students.

This does not mean that the large lecture classes are doomed for failure. To combat the number of students, the majority of these classes provide recitation sections to answer student questions. Therefore, no one has any excuse to not score that A.

Pop Culture Grid: Gaylord vs. Townsend

22 Feb 2012, Posted by Annie Wang in News, 0 Comments

A capella groups at Duke are akin to rock stars. Everyone knows them, everyone loves them and everyone wants to know more about them. For that reason, The Chronicle’s Annie Wang asked Speak of the Devil’s Ryan Gaylord and Deja Blue’s Willa Townsend a bit about themselves. 

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

Q & A with Professor Rytas J. Vilgalys

19 Feb 2012, Posted by Annie Wang in News, 0 Comments

Special to The Chronicle

Duke is known for its renowned faculty and the work they do in their respective niches of academia. One such professor, Rytas J. Vilgalys, recently had a fungus named after him for his contribution to the science world. The Chronicle’s Annie Wang asked him about his achievement. 

The Chronicle: Congratulations on getting a fungus named after you! How and when did you first find this species?

Rytas J Vilgalys: We were on a collecting trip in central Mexico with a team of fungus experts investigating biodiversity of truffle species. This is part of our NSF-sponsored research with my colleague Gregory Bonito who is a former student (now a postdoc) in my lab. The new lichen species was growing in moist soil along one of the trails near the town of Tlaxcala. We didn’t know it was a new species then, but later learned this when a visiting grad student (Jessie Uehling) came to work with one of my postdocs (Matt Smith). They sequenced DNA from my specimen and realized it was a new species of lichen fungus. Lichens are fungi that grow symbiotically with algae, so this led Jessie to collaborate with Brendan Hodkinson (grad student in Francois Lutzoni’s lab that studies lichenized fungi). They didn’t even tell me about their discovery until after their paper was accepted for publication. Those finks!

TC: What is the significance of this discovery?

RJV: As species discovery goes, it is probably not that dramatic. Of the estimated 1.5 million species of fungi in the world, less than 5% have been formally described by taxonomists. One novel aspect of their study was that this particular genus of lichen mushroom (Lepidostroma) was only recently discovered from Europe, and these were the first collections from the new world. These lichens are pretty small fungi, however, and so it is likely that they are often overlooked in favor of ‘larger more charismatic’ mushrooms.

TC: How did you first become interested in studying fungi?

RJV: When I was young, my Lithuanian grandmother used to take us out in the forest to look for edible mushrooms.  Most Lithuanians are fond of edible fungi, so I guess mycology, the study of fungi, is in my blood.  Later in college, I become interested in evolutionary biology of fungi, and was able to land a faculty position where I could work full time on mushrooms. Today there are about a dozen laboratories studying fungal genetics at Duke, and Duke is one of the world’s leading universities for mycology.

TC: What is one myth about fungi that you would like to correct?

RJV: There are many myths and lots of bad press about fungi, all of it underserved.  For example, of the 10,000 plus species of fungi that produce mushrooms, only a handful is edible, but even fewer are actually poisonous. Most people don’t realize all of the beneficial roles played by fungi in the environment.

TC: What is the most fascinating fieldwork you have done?  

RJV: I’ve had many great opportunities to collect fungi in many parts of the world, most notably in New Zealand, Australia, and Papua New Guinea.

TC: One of your research interests is molecular evolution in fungi. Can you give a quick explanation as to what that entails?

RJV: Our lab is very active in the field of fungal molecular systematics- using DNA sequences to infer the evolutionary history (phylogeny) of fungi. Our lab was one of several teams that contributed to the recent NSF project to determine the phylogeny for the Kingdom Fungi; another Duke lab group that participated is Dr. Francois Lutzoni’s lab, which studies lichenized fungi.

TC: Any advice to an aspiring biologist?

RJV: Fungi are everywhere around us and every biology student needs to know some fungal biology!

Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol

19 Feb 2012, Posted by Ashley Mooney in News, 1 Comments

Special to The Chronicle

Your drinks may be making you gain more weight than you think …

Drinking one beer each night adds 1,000 calories a week, resulting in a net gain of 15 pounds every year, according to the Middle Tennessee State University Health Promotion website.

To prevent yourself from facing this fate, check out the calorie counts for some popular drinks.

Beer nutritional value according to the Livestrong website, per 12oz. serving:

• Bud Light: 110 calories
• Budweiser: 145 calories
• Busch Light: 95 calories
• Coors Light: 104 calories
• MillerCoors Miller Genuine Draft: 143 calories
• Pabst Blue Ribbon: 153 calories

Wine, per 4 oz. serving: 100 calories

• Dessert wine: 225 calories

Liquor (per 1 oz. serving)

• 80 proof gin, rum, vodka or whiskey: 50 calories
• 100 proof gin, rum, vodka or whiskey: 60 cal
• Schnapps: 100 calories