Maximize your battery life!

28 Feb 2012, Posted by Andrew Luo in News, 1 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

We’ve all experienced it before: it can be incredibly frustrating when our phones run of battery. Although cellphones have become more powerful and user-friendly, one of the biggest downsides is a decrease in battery life. According to a recent article from Yahoo, here are some tips for Duke students to keep their phone energized for the entire of commuting across campuses.

Upgrade your software

Engineers at phone companies are constantly revamping software to optimize their products’ performance. Although some of these updates are geared towards increasing roaming capabilities, others are designed to enhance battery life.

Minimize location-based services

Applications such as Maps and Navigation systems require a lot of energy to run. It can be a useful tool to get directions, but applications that use location services should be turned off when not in use to prevent it from draining away at your battery.

Turn off push notifications

Push notifications are updates are constantly being sent to your phone from your email and other apps. Although it’s very convenient to know exactly what is going on in your Facebook newsfeed, it certainly takes a heavy toll on your battery. You have to option to go to your app settings to disable these push notifications.

 Set your data-fetching intervals

Apps such as E-mail and Facebook are often pre-set to retrieve data at specific times of the day. The more often you fetch for data, the faster your battery will drain. On just about every smartphone, you can manually setting the intervals that your phone retrieves data. As for services that rely on push services, you can also turn the feature “Off” so that data is retrieved based off of your fetch settings. Lastly, if  you happen to have email accounts set on your phone that you don’t use anymore, you should turn them off or delete them from your phone memory.

Adjust your screen brightness

A bright phone display may be easier on the eyes, but it also costs a lot more of your battery life. Set your phone to auto-brightness so that the screen will adjust itself accordingly with the exterior lighting conditions.

Charge your phone regularly

In order to maximize battery life, you should try to fully charge and fully drain your battery at least once a month. Doing so will maintain your battery’s total capacity. However, like all rechargeable batteries, its capacity will dwindle over time and may have to be replaced.

Turn off Wi-Fi when not in use

Since there are so many wireless hotspots available around campus, it might make sense to leave your phone’s Wi-Fi settings on for the entire day. When you’re not using the web, however, you should try to turn it off. You’ll be a lot happier when your phone goes the entire day without needing to be charged.

Hockey assaults, Harvard graduates, painting ripoffs and sexual colleges

26 Feb 2012, Posted by Melissa Dalis in News, Welcome to Academia, 0 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

After two Boston University men’s hockey players were arrested for sexually assaulting female students this season, BU is now forming a team to study the culture of the team, according to AP. BU President Robert Brown wrote a letter to students, employees and trustees saying that the University needs to address these issues and make appropriate changes if necessary.

Tyra Banks received a diploma Feb. 17 from Harvard University’s Executive Education Owner/President Manager Program, according to the Washington Post. The program holds one three-week session per year, for three years, and each year costs $33,000. Banks will still receive alumnus status, even though she didn’t earn her master’s or doctoral degree from the University. Banks told VH1 last year that finance was her most difficult class: “For the first 30 minutes of the class, I’m raising my hand, I’m all into it, ‘cause it’s kind of like theory and just like, the social part of the case,” Banks said. “The last hour it’s all like Einstein and algebraic equations and craziness. And I’m just like, what the [heck] is going on? Please don’t call on me because it won’t be pretty.”

University of California-Berkeley accidentally sold a 22-foot-long carved panel painted by an African American sculpter that was worth more than a million dollars for only $150, according to the New York Times. Although the sell was embarrassing for the University, the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens now has its first major work by an African-American artist.

Although the “hookup culture” is always a hot topic at Duke, Duke did not make the list of the “10 Most Sexually Liberated Colleges” by CollegeMagazine.com. University of Texas-Austin topped the list, followed by Arizona State University, University of California Santa Barbara, Florida State University, University of Florida, Penn State University, University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

Soundoff: Tenting

26 Feb 2012, Posted by Minshu Deng in News, 0 Comments

Thanh Ha Nguyen/The Chronicle

Now that white tenting is well underway, The Chronicle’s Minshu Deng headed over to K-ville to see what’s on the minds of tenters—how they’re passing the time during tenting shifts, how K-ville seems to be changing (or not changing), and so on.

“It’s one of the last things that I feel that every Duke student can do. Without any social restrictions—you can be a fratstar, a Prattstar, anyone.”

-Andrew Hall, first-year

“I missed out on it freshman year.  And I live in Craven, so the walk’s not too bad.”

-Tori Scott, sophomore

“I love the sense of community and camaraderie in Kville—it’s like a microcosm of the Duke community.”

-Denzell Faison, sophomore

“It’s kind of stressful, but it’s a lot of fun hanging out with your friends all the time. It’s like having a sleepover every night.”

-Cameron Agraz, sophomore

“Usually you know people in other tents, so you can go socialize with them, or sometimes I’ll watch a TV show.”

-Alex Schaffer, junior

“My friends came over to keep me company. We ordered food and watched a movie.”

-Jina Kim, junior

“K-ville usually has activities going on, like s’mores. [My tent has] had sing-alongs; someone usually brings a guitar…there’s always food involved—it’s a necessity.”

-Moh Ismail, junior

“K-vills a lot quieter this year; there’s a lot less drinking. I remember freshman year, there was always a beer pong game going on, or just drinking, no matter what time of day. Where’s the beer pong?”

-Benny Maimon, senior

“It seems like the same K-ville as always. It’s still cold as hell. Drinking always helps.”

-Joe LaBarbara, junior

“K-ville seems like less of a community this year, or at least it had a really late start. I’m usually passing the time on the internet, so long as my computer’s alive.”

-Aaron Choi, senior

“If there wasn’t wi-fi here, it would be a lot more boring…if I tent next year I’ll either blue or white tent, but definitely not black. I had to drop a class because tenting took up so much time.”

-Ray Wang, first-year

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.