2013 has been an exciting year for the Yale Scientific. As our year-in-review spread on page 12 of this issue can attest, every corner of Yale’s campus has been stirring with scientific discoveries, from advancements in drug therapy to astronomical imaging, to Nobel Prize-winning studies on cell machinery. In the tradition of our publication, each of our issues this year featured an overarching theme. In March, we wrote about “Limits and Breakthroughs” in science, followed by “The Human Population Explosion” in April and “Frontiers of Exploration” in November. For our final issue, this year’s masthead has gathered one last set of articles under a theme that we hope will bring all the rest of this year’s news into perspective: “Interfaces of Investigation.”
Welcome to Issue 87.1 of the Yale Scientific. In this issue, we will look into the growing intersections between once-disparate fields of science, from joint innovations in biology and pharmacology under the biotechnology industry (page 20) to the fusion of psychology and computer science in the analysis of social networks (page 27). Both at Yale and beyond, researchers from many different fields are now collaborating to bridge the gaps between different sets of knowledge and build ever more interfaces for new discovery.
This past year at the Yale Scientific, we have seen the power of collaboration in the production of our own magazine as well. Our editorial, business, production, and outreach sectors have worked together to further improvements made in previous years, and to start some exciting initiatives of our own. Our editorial team has expanded the exclusive online articles section begun last year to include new types of articles, such as Q&A-style interviews. Our business team has streamlined the advertising process by creating a media kit and branching out to new businesses in New Haven. Our production team has diversified our magazine’s use of media by expanding the number of artists featured in each issue and filming our first ever issue-launch video. Lastly, our outreach team Synapse has perhaps been the most innovative of all, collaborating with TEDxYale, Splash at Yale, and Yale College Admissions, to host a conference for high school students. At the first annual “Resonance” conference, students explored science through interactive classes and heard from several scientific speakers and student groups at Yale. It has only been through the collaboration of our entire masthead — and in the case of Resonance, collaboration with other student groups — that any of these improvements have been possible.
That being said, credit for our magazine’s content should not go solely to the members of our masthead. Every issue is a collaborative effort of approximately 35 other Yale undergraduate contributors. And our magazine’s legacy of more than 100 years would not exist without the continued support of our readers. At the closing of this final letter from the editor, I would like to say thank you. Thank you to each of our hardworking masthead members. Thank you to every writer and artist who has made a contribution this year, whether single or multiple, small or large. Most of all, thank you to all of our readers and subscribers for your interest, readership, and continued support of the nation’s oldest college science publication.
Jessica Hahne
Editor-in-Chief