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Guilty verdict in murder of U. California student

Andrew Hoeft-Edenfield was found guilty of second-degree murder Thursday, nearly two years after he fatally stabbed U. California-Berkeley senior Chris Wootton outside of a Southside sorority house.

Hoeft-Edenfield will be sentenced on Thursday, June 10, at 9:30 a.m., and a probation report will be delivered to the court a week prior, on Thursday, June 3.

The verdict marks an end to the eight-week long trial, during which Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Connie Campbell and defense attorney Yolanda Huang argued that their respective clients were not the aggressors during the confrontation.

The prosecution accused Hoeft-Edenfield of first-degree murder for stabbing Wootton with a three-inch blade during a scuffle in the parking lot of the UC Berkeley Chi Omega sorority in the early morning of May 3, 2008. During witness testimony, Campell pointed to Hoeft-Edenfield’s history of anger management problems, calling him “a cold-blooded murderer.”

Huang claimed that Wootton was inclined to fights due to past incidents and that because of drinking before the confrontation, “the real culprit in this case is alcohol.”

Before the reading of the verdict, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Horner asked members of the audience to step outside if they could possibly have an adverse emotional reaction to the verdict.

“The courtroom is not a place for these emotions and feelings to be displayed,” said Horner. “(Stepping outside) would not reflect negatively on you in any way. Rather, it would show self-appraisal and self-awareness.”

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Group prepares for 4,500-mile bicycle ride for a cause

Steely figures on skeletal bicycle frames glide past closed storefronts and sleepy exteriors of on-campus dormitories at U. Texas in the post-dawn stillness. It’s just past 7 on a Saturday morning, but the cyclists are already decked out in full riding gear, sweating, stretching and warming up for the five or so hours ahead of them.

This is just another weekend of training for members of the Sense Corp Texas 4000 for Cancer cycling team, which seeks to raise awareness and funds for cancer research. The real ride begins June 5, when the team’s 56 members set out from Austin, Texas with 4,500-plus miles ahead of them. They’ll cover between 30 and 113 miles per day, depending on the terrain, which alternates from oceanside causeways to grueling mountain climbs.

The riders battle all sorts of conditions, and they don’t stop for rain. The two teams — one heading to Alaska via the West Coast, the other traveling through the Rocky Mountains — will spend some days in 100-degree heat, cross deserts in California and Nevada and encounter sub-zero temperatures in the Yukon Territory.

To make it to their destination on time, they’ll have to cover a pre-determined distance every day. For instance, the team taking the Rocky Mountain route will travel approximately 4,734 miles in 62 days, with eight days of rest interspersed throughout the trip. That’s an average of 76 miles per riding day. Riding from Cedar Park to Anchorage, Alaska, would be the same as completing the entire Tour de France twice — plus an extra couple hundred miles.

The team has no fitness requirements for incoming riders. While some of them could pass as elite-level athletes by the end of the trip, many begin the journey having never run more than a mile in their lives.

“No riding experience necessary,” says David Santino, one of the ride directors and a U. Texas structural engineering graduate student. “Some of [the riders] haven’t been on bikes since training wheels. The majority of us are just your average college student.”

By 7:15 a.m. Saturday, some of the riders began to congregate in the parking lot behind the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Building on Dean Keeton Street. They form small groups, chatting about their weekends as well as the day ahead. There is no social hierarchy. They are nothing less than a family at this point, having spent the better part of the past year and a half together.

“Everyone here has a tie to cancer,” Santino says.

His mother was diagnosed with leukemia in 2008; she has since undergone a bone marrow transplant and is now making a strong recovery.

“We are our own support group in the sense that we all battle with it,” he says. “We all draw strength from each other.”

At 7:50 a.m., the riders gather in a small circle, leaning on one another. The team’s fitness director, John Fitch, goes over the day’s route and offers some motivation.

“Pace yourself. Push yourself,” Fitch says. “We’ve all been through training camp together. We can all do this. Sometimes your muscles have more in them than you know.”

Then they all take turns dedicating the morning’s ride to someone — cancer survivors, those who have fought the disease and lost, their parents, their coaches and one another. It is one of the team’s pre-ride rituals and is as important as the riders’ lightweight Trek bicycles.

“I want to ride today for a few people,” Texas nursing sophomore Kristen Hattaway says. “For my grandmother first of all … She passed away yesterday morning, but I just want to ride for her because her husband, my grandfather, passed away about 15 years ago from brain cancer, and so she’s been surviving on her own since then. She’s really an amazing lady.”

The riders closest to Hattaway comfort her with a few pats on the back. Everyone is silent for a moment, as if they all know how fortunate they are to be able to ride this morning.

“I think that you guys are a wonderful team, and I’m unbelievably excited for the challenge of this summer,” UT biomedical engineering senior Daniel Walk says. “I know that without you guys, it would be insurmountable, but with y’all, it is so possible. I just want to thank you all for an awesome year and encourage y’all to finish strong. This is the home stretch. Four more weeks, starting today.”

After a few more dedications and the team’s final instructions, the riders mount their expensive wheels and pedal out of the parking lot. Fitch stays behind, watching the individual groups form and depart.

“I’m looking forward to it as an amazing 80-day vacation,” says Fitch, who graduated from UT in the fall with a bachelor’s degree in radio-television-film and business foundations and now works for a commercial insurance company. “The most incredible part is the people who are involved. This thing is so important to them that they perform regardless of their fitness level. I am more proud of them than I am of myself.”

It’s 9 a.m., and riders pass Akins High School on South First Street in clumps. The entire operation functions on the classic buddy system — each person chooses a partner or two with whom they will cover the entire 68.4 miles that day. Later, partners will bunch together with other groups and sometimes form mini-pantheons, columns of riders five- to 10-deep, floating along the narrow country roadways that lead out of town.

Safety and convenience bring the groups together, but they also benefit when traveling in a mini-pantheon because of the principle known as drafting. The riders intermittently rotate their order, pulling the farthest back up to the front to block the wind and keep those behind well-rested.

“The payoff is in the long run, just because you don’t have to deal with the wind all day,” Santino says. “It leads to a much faster ride.”

Luckily, there aren’t many hills on this morning’s route, just gently rolling plains. When the riders reach the southern outskirts of Austin’s suburbs, they open the throttle, ease off the breaks and pick up some speed. It’s here that the cycling also takes on an aesthetic value; with no MP3 players or other distractions to speak of, all the riders have on this Saturday morning are the scenic views of the Hill Country and each other.

They travel through Buda, then turn west and ride out to Driftwood before looping around and heading back toward Buda by a southern route. When they reach Akins again, they make a rest stop, their second of the trip, to refill on peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and fruit.

Then it’s back on the bikes for another 11.25 miles to campus. It’s a long morning, to be sure, but nothing compared to the physical struggles they can expect this summer.

“The cycling is just a means to an end,” Santino says. “Don’t get me wrong. I love cycling, but the main objective is to get the message out.”

Many of the other riders echo Santino’s sentiment. They may be setting out on a journey few can ever hope to experience, but the athletic achievement is still second to the goal of raising cancer awareness. In less than four weeks, they’ll be on the road to Alaska, beginning the world’s longest charity ride. But their sense of accomplishment comes from their belief in one another. And over 4,500 miles and three months, that’s what they’ll have to derive their strength from.

“This is above and beyond what I ever expected from grad school,” Santino says. “I think you could ask any one of us and get the same answer.”

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Report urges graduate funding

Laura Loeb always wanted to be a professor.

A second-year UCLA doctoral student in sociology, Loeb is paying for her six-year degree program mostly through university-allocated stipends and teaching assistant work. Still, she doesn’t know how she is going to pay for her final year when her university support runs out.

“I would probably apply for scholarships, … a loan would be a last-ditch thing,” she said.

Loeb could be one of thousands of students to benefit under a recent recommendation that the U.S. federal government spend as much as $10 billion a year to support graduate education at both the masters and doctoral levels.

In a report released April 29, the Commission on the Future of Graduate Education in the United States argues that graduate students are key in keeping the U.S. competitive internationally and should therefore be supported by the government.

“Graduate education goes beyond just providing students with advanced knowledge and skills – it also further develops critical thinking skills and produces innovators,” the report stated. “It is the application of knowledge and skills in creative and innovative ways that will help ensure our country’s future economic prosperity, influence social growth, and maintain our leadership position in the global economy.”

Among the report’s recommendations is a doctoral trainee program that, if adopted, would make some doctoral students eligible for up to $80,000 a year for five years towards the completion of their degrees.

A separate program aimed at master’s degree students would allow universities to apply for $500,000 grants to create new master’s degree programs or to revamp old ones to make them more accessible to minority students.

“The more funding that would be available to graduate students, the better,” said Ron Johnson, UCLA financial aid director. “I think, personally, there is no better time than now for this proposal because education is really going to be the lifeline for our nation, the sustaining element that keeps our economy growing.”

According to Loeb, a lack of funding coupled with the other pressures of graduate study could lead to some students dropping out of their programs.

“I don’t think you can be at graduate school with having those sorts of concerns,” she said.

The report recommends that special attention be paid to fields critical to the nation, including technology, engineering, mathematics and the sciences.

Johnson said he believes that students in these fields are vital to the country in a uniquely international way.

“Clearly we need those skills in our country as other emerging nations are providing greater and greater competition for U.S. in terms of technological advances,” Johnson said.

The U.S. needs to remain competitive when it comes to attracting top-level international graduate students, especially as academic opportunities in countries like China and India expand, the report stated.

For example, Sanket Sanghavi said he left his home in India to pursue a master’s degree in computer science at UCLA because he believed the quality of education in India was no match to what he could get in the U.S.

“U.S. standards are very high,” Sanghavi said. “Here the focus is on research, and (in India), the focus is on book knowledge, mostly.”

International doctoral students would have more opportunity to live in and contribute to the U.S. under the report’s proposal to offer new visas to students studying the sciences and technologies. This would make it easier to gain permanent residency in the U.S.

“What I feel is that most (international students) want to settle here … so that would be a really good option,” Sanghavi said.

However, some students may not be able to reach that point. Sanghavi said he has seen international students who had been admitted into doctoral programs drop out after completing their master’s degrees because the fee burden was simply too much.

“The only problem is that the fees here are too high compared to China and India, so more funding to more students would be better,” Sanghavi said.

The report calls for action to be taken as soon as 2011, despite the present economic climate.

“I believe that currently, we are making huge expenditures for our war effort, and I believe this is equally important to our nation and for the future of our nation,” said Johnson. “I believe all things are feasible if we want to get them done.”

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Unrest in Thailand doesn’t faze study abroad students

Reports of political unrest and violent protests might be enough to deter some students from studying abroad in Bangkok, the epicenter of a seemingly relentless struggle for power in Thailand.

But the political turbulence did not faze the 26 U. California students who chose to study abroad at Bangkok’s Thammasat University this quarter.

In fact, for many, it was precisely this volatile political environment that drew them to study in Bangkok in the first place.

“I wanted to come because of the political situation, as I knew history was about to be made in Thailand with the trial of (former Prime Minister) Thaksin Shinawatra,” said Andrew Bhusiririt, a fourth-year sociology student currently studying in Bangkok.

In the last few years, the popularity of the Bangkok program has increased even as the political situation has intensified.

Last spring, only 16 UC students studied at Thammasat University, in contrast to the 26 currently in Bangkok. Thirty-five students are expected for the summer session that begins in June, according to Thanet Makjamroen, Ph.D., the UC Education Abroad Program director in Thailand.

The political protests began in 2006, when the People’s Alliance for Democracy, or “Yellow Shirts”, accused Shinawatra of corruption, ultimately leading to a coup d’etat in 2009.

Following the coup, the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship, or “Red Shirts,” emerged to disrupt the functioning of the current government, according to the UC Education Abroad Program website.

The Red Shirts’ demonstrations have paralyzed Bangkok’s commercial center and forced some shopping malls and hotels to close, devastating Thailand’s most important industry, tourism.

But although the protests have wreaked havoc on Thailand’s economy, their effect on the experience of UC study abroad students has been minimal.

“The most obvious disruption has been a big increase in traffic. Bangkok already has more traffic than L.A. – it doesn’t need any help,” said Emily Pichler, a third-year psychology student.

Though the students have to avoid certain shopping areas, there are plenty of other places to shop and other things to do, she added.

Last April, during the Thai New Year holiday, marked the only time the anti-government Red Shirt protesters migrated near the university campus where UC students were residing.

During this time, however, many of the UC students were traveling in northern Thailand, and managed to avoid the bloody demonstrations during which about 20 protesters were killed.

Since then, although there have been continuous protests, sometimes with shootings and grenade explosions, the protests have taken place in clearly defined locations which can be easily avoided by students, Makjamroen said.

“There are news of grenades going off and civilians and soldiers getting shot, but that only happened in the areas where the Red Shirts are concentrated, so my friends and I knew to stay away from those places,” said Haisun Chu, a fifth-year marine biology student.

“The most I have seen was Red Shirts driving by on their motorcycles on their way to the protests,” she said.

Additionally, while protests have caused serious transport and commercial disruptions, the violence has not been directed towards foreigners, according to a statement from the UC Education Abroad Program.

But if there are protests, Makjamroen said he is committed to keeping the UC students safe.

Because tourism is such a huge part of the Thai economy, protestors don’t want foreigners to get hurt, said Caitlin O’Donnell, a third-year psychology student who studied in Thailand during the fall. But if there are protests, Makjamroen is committed to keeping the UC students safe, according to the students.

“We’re given updates almost immediately whenever there is a large protest or any acts of violence,” said Sam Quintanar, a fourth-year UC Berkeley political science student. “In case anything particularly dangerous has happened, we are warned via text message and expected to immediately contact (Makjamroen) to let him know where we are.”

While the prospect of occasionally violent protests was initially a shock for a number of the students, it has since become routine, and the protests are now greeted with interest, rather than fear.

According to Makjamroen, “Students feel safe, I feel safe, everyone feels safe. In Bangkok right now, everything goes on as usual.”

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Evolving journalism to an online environment

Award-winning New York Times journalist Andrew Revkin  tied the media’s long-term stability with its ability to adapt to new forms of communication, and he used his own presentation at U. Oregon Wednesday evening to prove it.

“If we’re not thinking outside of the box of words and pictures, we’re missing some unique opportunities,” Revkin said during the journalism school’s annual Johnston lecture.

Revkin, who writes the environmentally focused blog Dot Earth on nytimes.com, gave the lecture Wednesday evening, discussing the necessity of journalism’s evolution, along with how journalism and environmental science interact.

Revkin started his presentation with two pictures beside each other. One was of the world with all of the water taken and put into a sphere above where New York City lies. The other was of all the gases in the atmosphere at sea-level air pressure displayed in a similar fashion.

“I’m starting out with an image that has nothing to do with journalism,” Revkin said. “This image, to me, is a fundamentally different understanding of the finite nature of the planet.”

Revkin’s use of diverse media went further than just using a slideshow. Revkin’s presentation involved multiple YouTube videos and also included a couple humorous interruptions from his Skype program.

Oregon senior Eric Diep appreciated Revkin’s methodology behind using differing forms of media to convey messages.

“When you’re trying to communicate climate issues, don’t think about just using the conventional tools, use a goofy video,” Diep said. “It’s still conveying the same information, but it’s in a humorous way. I thought that was a good device.”

Revkin spent part of the presentation relating the evolution of new media back to the past, comparing the consumption of news to the consumption of food.

“The 20th century norm of journalism was a black and white one. We were, as a nation, dining on comfort food,” Revkin said. “We were all eating mac and cheese.”

Revkin completed his analogy by calling the 21st century media a buffet, based on its wide array of choices.

“The blogosphere, the Internet is a fundamentally different thing than Cronkite,” he added.

UO senior journalism major Ashley Pennington found herself fixated by Revkin’s analogy for the evolution of media.

“It was a really good way of him showing and not telling when he was talking about Walter Cronkite and the macaroni and cheese analogy, and I could just imagine,” Pennington said. “It just gave me a great visual and you could imagine being in the 1950s.”

Revkin has blogged for the Times for two years, but had been an environmental reporter for the newspaper since 1995. Before that, he served as senior editor of Discover magazine. He stepped down from the Times’ print edition to become the senior fellow for environmental understanding at Pace University’s Academy for Applied Environmental Studies.

Revkin ended his presentation by commenting broadly on what is in store for the future of journalism.

“We’re at a very special point in time in our history,” Revkin said.

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Effort to get legalization measure on Oregon ballot grows

The campaign aiming to tax and regulate marijuana through the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act (OCTA) is circulating petitions to get the measure on the ballot for November’s general election.

By creating a committee to oversee the taxation and regulation of marijuana, OCTA would effectively decriminalize the cultivation, possession and personal use of marijuana in Oregon. The measure would be the first law of its kind in the nation.

However, OCTA advocate Matt Switzer said cannabis regulation is a nascent movement, with Californians set to vote on the legalization of cannabis in November and Washington and Oregon cannabis legalization advocates in a similar predicament: scrambling to pool enough signatures to give the proposals life on election day.

OCTA supporters admit they have a long way to go before the measure can be brought to the ballot for a vote.

“The proposed initiative needs 100,000 signatures by July before it can be placed on the November ballot,” Switzer said. “We have less than 5,000 signatures.”

OCTA supporters reference an alliance they have with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition to fortify their case against the current criminalization of cannabis.

LEAP Executive Director Jack Cole, a 26-year New Jersey state police officer, said the injustice perpetuated by the current marijuana law has him fighting in California to assure the passage of cannabis legalization.

“When you prohibit any drug, you create an underground market for that drug, and that attracts criminal activity,” Cole said. “Marijuana — it’s just a weed; it has zero value until we say it’s illegal, then the price artificially inflates, becomes so obscenely high, that up until about a year ago when the economy took a turn, marijuana was worth more, ounce for ounce, than gold.”

Cole said movements toward taxing and regulating cannabis were fighting for ballot measures in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Nevada, California, Washington and Oregon.

The changes proposed by OCTA would not interfere with current medical marijuana laws defined by the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act. Switzer said the proposal, which would be ballot measure 73 if enough signatures are gathered come July, does not yet face any organized opposition, but opposition will probably develop if the proposal gains traction in the state.

“There will most likely be some backlash from those agencies who will likely see a decrease in revenue, along with marijuana farmers who may see the exorbitant price they charge decrease as the black market no longer will have a monopoly on the plant,” Switzer said.

Cole predicted opposition would stem from law enforcement agencies, who he said receive 20 percent of their current budget from state revenue provided for the war on drugs.

Switzer said the challenge precluding the revolutionary changes proposed by OCTA is not only opposition from without, but hesitation from within.

“Stoners are chronically bad at engaging with the political process, and many have reservations signing their names and addresses endorsing the legalization of a substance the government has for years lied about,” he said. “We are trying to stress that this is a civil rights issue and that American citizens should not be imprisoned because of harmless beliefs and actions simply because someone saw they could make money from persecuting a large portion of the country.”

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Column: Possible implications of Britain’s 2010 election

For the first time in almost seventy years, neither of the two main parties, Labour and Conservative, won a parliamentary majority in the British elections held a week ago.

That’s important because the majority determines the executive branch, namely the prime minister and cabinet.

Largely, this failure to garner a majority by either party was due to a very dissatisfied electorate. The British people were upset about the economy, huge budget deficits and lackluster leadership.

A minority party, the Liberal Democrats – led by charismatic leader Nick Clegg – was able to capitalize on public frustration. They won enough votes to force a main party to make concessions and form a coalition government.

Tthe Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats announced an agreement Wednesday to form a coalition. In the announcement, Conservative leader David Cameron said, “It will be an administration united behind three key principles: freedom, fairness and responsibility.”

So what does this mean for the upcoming November mid-term elections in the U.S.?

Public anger about the economy and federal budget deficits will likely have a significant effect upon the elections. As seen in Britain, those issues helped galvanize an electorate and caused a three percent increase in voter turnout. It ‘s hard to say, though, who that favors here. It should favor the Republicans since they are generally seen as a party that supports smaller government and is pro-business.

However, many are dissatisfied with both parties right now, since it seems neither have solutions to the growing problems the federal government is currently facing. So it likely depends on what happens with the Tea Party movement which was borne out of all the current frustration with the federal government.

Will it become its own political party? Will its supporters vote Republican or even vote Libertarian? From early results, it seems the movement has changed the landscape of the Republican Party within some states.

Currently, Senator Bob Bennett, R-Utah, has served three terms, and already lost in a bid for a fourth term in the Republican primary. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a moderate Republican, left the Republican primary for Senate to run as an independent. He was deemed not conservative enough by many Republicans.

“The reason Crist lost the GOP nomination was because he supported the Obama stimulus, then denied he supported it – and lost a lot of his following because of this,” said Sean Hannity, conservative talk show host.

So it seems, from early indicators, most in the Tea Party movement believe it is better to work within an existing party and not form a third party. They have created change by throwing out those not ideologically pure enough for them.

However, if a third party can produce a charismatic leader, much like Nick Clegg in Britain or Ross Perot in the 1990s, there is no reason to believe it couldn’t have a measure of success at the national level. If it can happen in a country like Great Britain, it can certainly happen in the United States, despite the different political and voting systems.

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Column: Getting rid of finals

Finally, after waiting since … well, since midterms, when the semester stress kicked in and stayed in, summer is here. I said goodbye to my friends, packed my stuff and schlepped it back home. It’s currently all over my floor, waiting to be unpacked.

It might take me a while — I haven’t caught up on sleep yet, for one thing. A couple of days ago, I slept for 11 hours and was still tired when I woke up.

On nights when I only got seven or eight hours, I could barely pull myself out of bed.

I obviously haven’t recovered from barely sleeping during finals week.

I’m not alone in hating finals.

In fact, as we try to recover from hand cramps and caffeine addictions in that period between leaving campus and starting jobs (and waiting for those final grades), I’d put money on every single student cursing professors for putting us through exam hell.

And really, what is the point of finals?

I could trot out the old “we don’t want to take them and they don’t want to grade them” line, but I do understand the need to give us a big grade as the culmination of our semester of learning.

I just think there are better ways to do it than exams.

Final projects usually aren’t fun (especially when you have to work in a group), but they can be a much better indication of what we learned over the semester.

Exams aren’t about how much we learned; they’re about how much we can cram into our heads in the 48 hours before a test.

Final projects, on the other hand, force us to apply our knowledge and to practice what we learned. Class on magazines? Students should have to create their own, from concept to articles. Class on Gothic architecture? Students should have to design their own Gothic structure to fit the structural and decorative elements of the place and time they choose.

But me scribbling down on a blue book during a two-hour exam that the Spartan general Lysander defeated the Athenian general Conon at Aegospotami in 405 B.C. and effectively ended the Peloponnesian War doesn’t prove I learned that from a lecture. It just proves I memorized a list of names and dates.

I’m not advocating that professors should just end a semester with a final lecture or even do away with tests completely.

But if something is going to be worth 40 percent of our grade (or more), then it should involve an application of our knowledge rather than a test of who’s good at memorization and who isn’t.

Not only that, but by the time we reach exam week, we’re burnt out. We’ve already turned in papers in almost every class and group projects in the rest. We’re exhausted from the intense workload, and the nice weather is calling our names. And we still have another week to go, filled with tests — because we have to study for a huge test in every class, not just one.

It’s pretty unlikely that the last couple of exams get the time and attention they require.

So let’s just do away with final exams altogether.

Give a last test, which requires a third of the work, and have a paper or a project or a debate instead — something that allows us to apply all that information we painstakingly learned (or memorized) during the semester.

Practice makes perfect, but cramming is just memorizing information we’ll forget by the time grades come out.

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Harvard U. shooting suspect pleads not guilty to murder charges

Jason Aquino, 23, one of the three men implicated in the May 2009 shooting at Harvard U.’s Kirkland House, pled not guilty to charges of murder, armed robbery, and intimidation of a juror and was held without bail Tuesday.

Aquino is now the third man to face murder charges for the death of Cambridge resident Justin Cosby, 21, who was shot in the basement of the Kirkland annex on May 18, 2009, according to the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office.

Jabrai Jordan Copney, 20, and Blayn Jiggetts, 19—who, like Aquino, are from New York City—have also been charged in Cosby’s murder.

Aquino had previously been arraigned on charges of murder before prosecutors dropped the murder charges in Sept. 2009 in part due to the investigation’s developments and witness statements.

According to the release, Copney, Jiggetts, and Aquino met with Cosby in Kirkland with the intent of robbing Cosby. Multiple gunshots were fired during the meeting, and Cosby was fatally wounded.

Brittany J. Smith, a former Lowell House resident and Copney’s girlfriend at the time, is also facing charges relating to the incident. On March 16, she pled not guilty to accessory and firearms charges.

Smith, 22, allegedly gave her Harvard ID card—which provides electronic swipe access—to the three New York men. She did not receive her diploma last May.

A second Harvard student Chanequa N. Campbell was linked to the shooting, but she has denied any involvement and has not been charged to date. Campbell was barred from graduation last May.

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Study probes lizard natural selection

Wrapping entire islands in netting and tracking lizards’ stamina by running them on miniature treadmills may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but these techniques were recently used by two Dartmouth researchers in a recent study. By artifically controlling the numbers of predators on various islands in the Bahamas, Dartmouth post-graduate researcher Robert Cox and biology professor Ryan Calsbeek found that competition between Caribbean anole lizards, rather than the presence or absence of predators, drives their natural selection, the researchers said.

Cox and Calsbeek’s findings were published online by Nature on May 9. The team tested the stamina of 480 male lizards before placing them different islands, Cox said in the interview.

“Our current view of selection in the wild is based almost entirely on correlations,” Calsbeek and Cox said in the study. “Here, we simultaneously manipulate predation and competition to disentangle the causal agents of natural selection using an experimental framework in the wild.”

The researchers concluded that “competition was more important than predation in driving natural selection on these islands,” Calsbeek said in the interview.

Lizards with larger bodies, longer limbs and higher stamina than their competitors survived, while those with less favorable traits died, according to the study.

“The important thing that we’re interested in is not who lives and who dies, but the particular traits that determine who lives and who dies,” Cox said.

While more lizards died when predators were present, the selection of lizards that died was random, Cox said in the interview.

In order to test the lizards’ stamina, each lizard ran to exhaustion on a miniature treadmill, he said.

“If you keep your hand behind them to keep them moving, and they will run until they physiologically can’t run anymore,” Cox said.

After the lizards stopped running, the researchers turned them on their backs — if they could not roll themselves over, then they were thoroughly exhausted, Cox said.

“It’s a convenient way of measuring the point at which they’re completely exhausted,” Cox said.

The lizards regained energy after 10 minutes, and the testing process was not inhumane, he added.

After each lizard was tested, it was identified and marked, according to the study.

The lizards were then divided into groups of 80 and placed onto six different islands with three levels of predation – no predators, birds and snakes, and birds only, according to Cox. Two islands were dedicated to each level of predation.

Islands designed to lack predators were entirely wrapped in a plastic no-tangle bird netting, while the islands where birds were allowed to prey were wrapped in the same amount of netting around the perimeters but were left open on top, Cox said. The islands that contained birds and snakes were wrapped the same way as the island that only had winged predators, but the researchers introduced predatory snakes to these islands, Cox said.

Because the snakes were native to the region, introducing them to the experimental islands did not harm the islands’ ecosystems, he said.

“It’s not that the snakes are not native to the small islands — they actually are native. It’s usually that there aren’t any snakes on there because they’ll eat all the lizards and then [the snakes] are out of luck,” Cox said.

Natural disasters such as hurricanes often exterminate the snakes and lizards that are native to the islands, he added.

“There’s no real large-scale ecological consequence to this,” Cox said.

Calsbeek and Cox spent three years studying these lizards, but the preliminary research and experimental design for this project took 10 years to complete, Cox said.

The researchers are currently in the Bahamas working on a new study concerning natural selection in juvenile lizards that have not yet reached sexual maturity, Calsbeek said.

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