NATIoN/WORLD
Sarajevo
regroups
sSeibs
loosen gip
Fam Daily Wire Services
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Limited supplies of electricity and
natural gas will be restored to Sarajevo
within two weeks in another step loos-
ening the Serb siege of the city, U.N.
officials said yesterday.
Representatives of the Muslim-led
Bosnian government and Serb rebels
met this week to work out the agree-
ment on power supplies. The utilities
will be restored to levels that pre-
vailed last April, the last time the
Serbs let power and gas flow into the
Bosnian capital, the U.N. officials
explained.
If repairs to damaged pipelines and
wires go as planned, home heating
and cooking gas will begin to be avail-
able here within five days. Electricity
may flow for at least a few hours a day
within two weeks to all parts of the
City, which is divided between
Bosnian government and separatist
Serb sectors.
The restoration ofelectricpoweralso
would mean that water from the Serb-
controlled main reservoir can be
pumped into the city, reducing the need
fordelivery by tank trucks and distribu-
tion by canisters that must be hand-
carried over Sarajevo's hilly terrain.
"Sarajevo is not yet an open city,"
:said John Fawcett, a U.N. reconstruc-
tion official. "But there is a political
The Michigan Daily - Friday, September 22, 1995 - 13
Experts question
reliabili o
maprAP
Samar Duharle (right), 2, and his brother, O, sit and play in the apartment of their family's Sarndevo apartment yesterday.
agreement on gas and electricity."
The announcement came on the heels
of the withdrawal of about 250 Serb
heavy weapons from the hills around
Sarajevo. Few shells have been fired
into the city during the past three weeks,
as the Serbs appeared cowed by NATO
airstrikes on military installations and
bridges.
U.N. officials gave a final break-
down of the weaponry pulled out of a
NATO exclusion zone covering terri-
tory within 12.5 miles ofthe city center.
The list included 55 tanks, with another
10 reported to be out of commission but
still in place; 105 mortars of 82mm and
above; six antiaircraft weapons and 69
artillery pieces.
The total fell below previous esti-
mates of the amount of heavy weaponry
within range of the city - more than
300. The difference has to do with the
calibers of mortar permitted to stay
under an agreement worked out with
the Serbs by Assistant Secretary of State
Richard C. Holbrooke. Mortars under
82mm were allowed, as well as some
antiaircraft guns the Serbs contended
were necessary to protect their areas.
Those weapons can still terrorize ci-
vilians, and NATO and the United Na-
tions have threatened to lash out with
artillery or airstrikes if firing resumes.
"We'll see if we were taken for a ride,"
said U.N. spokesman Chris Gunness.
The Serbs have opened gas and lim-
ited electrical supplies in the parts of
the city under their control as well as
the majority living under the Muslim-
led government.
Gas reaches many individual apart-
ments here through jury-rigged rubber
piping. Winter is a roulette wheel of
accidents, as the odorless gas escapes
into homes whenever pilot lights go out
due to uneven supplies. When the flow
resumes, the gas builds up, someone
lights a flame, and kaboom.
Natural gas arrives in Sarajevo
through a pipeline running from Hun-
gary through Serb-controlled territory;
the gas itself is supplied by Russia.
U.N. officials are trying to negotiate
with Russia to resume the flow, cut off
by Moscow because the suppliers are
owed $100 million in back'payments
for previous winters.
college i
The Daily Northwestern
Four major rankings of undergradu-
ate andgraduateprograms atthenation's
colleges. have been published in the
past two weeks, and education experts
are wary of their relevance.
"I know the rankings are popular, but
I think that's a mistake," said Brendan
Maher, a psychology professor at
Harvard University and co-chairman of
a comprehensive study ranking gradu-
ate programs that was released last week.
"The business of the top 10 is really a
distortion. Why not the top 30 or the top
eight or the top 10 run by left-handed
professors?"
Maher said he is involved in a "one-
man crusade to get people to stop put-
ting a lot of stock in those rankings."
The U.S. News and World Report
survey of the top 25 national universi-
ties gives schools a rank based on a
score out of 100 points. Harvard, the
top-ranked school, scored 100, followed
by Princeton and Yale, tied at 98.8. But
the difference between Nos. 4 and 5,
Stanford and MIT, is only one-tenth of
a point.
William Honan, a New York Times
education reporter, said: "That's a very
fair criticism of the whole process. The
difference between the top 10 is fairly
minuscule and because some of the data
is impressionistic, that makes it even
more of a distortion."
Along with its rankings, U.S. News
printed an explanation of its methodol-
ogy, in which it said, "It is important to
remember that schools separated by
only a few places in the rankings are
extremely close in academic quality."
Terry Russell, executive director of
the Association for Institutional Re-
search, called the rankings "an abstrac-
tion without a use, particularly because
they are based on a relatively small
difference in score."
Northwestern DirectorofAdmissions
Carol Lukenheimer agreed. "People put
too much reliance on whether a school
is eight or 13," she said. "I don't par-
ticularly care for the rankings. You need
to find out whether a school is going to
feel right. It's a shame they're making
a ranking on minute differences be-
tween schools."
Maher said: "These rankings are
reputational. They are accurate indices
of reputation. But is that an accurate
representation of academic merit? One
of the serious drawbacks ofreputations
is that they fade too slowly."
Marvin Goldberger, the co-chairman
ofthe graduate program survey, agreed.
"The reputational rankings are very
subjective," he said. "Harvard is apretty
crappy place to be an undergrad.
"I agree the difference between one
and five may not be fantastically sig-
nificant. The distinctions are meaning-
less," Goldberger said.
Goldberger explained that his survey
used rankings so that the results could
be compared to those from the last
survey in 1982. "Most people will real-
ize that they're in the right ballpark. A
proper appreciation for the lack of sig-
nificance would be found among the
readers," he said.
Last week, Money magazine pub-
lished its annual Best College Buys
survey, in which it ranked the top .100
values among 3,000 colleges. The edi-
tor, lillian Kasky, said they rank schools
because college is a major investment.
Unlike U.S. News, Money does not
publish ratings. It uses a regression
analysis that compares schools to every
other school to determine their "place
in line," eliminating the possibility of
ties.
People at the colleges being ranked
question the validity of the studies. As
Ken Wildes, NU vice president for uni-
versity relations, said, "All of these
rankings and ratings are very strange."
Sd Col
r:The Washington Post
WASHINGTON -College students
and their families are in debt more than
ever before. To pay for tuition they are
relying on more loans, bigger loans, and
.borrowing at a rate that far exceeds the
pace in which college costs and personal
income are growing nationally.
Those are the central conclusions of
a report, to be released today, that draws
a stark portrait of how difficult it is
becoming across the nation for many
students and their families to afford
college.
The report documents the explosion
in student borrowing that has occurred
in the past five years, a fact that has
been a key part of debate in Congress
this year over the future of federally
backed student loans. It also details
rising anxiety among middle-income
families who fear that college could
soon be either "out of reach" finan-
cially or have a strangling influence on
their-household income.
liege student debts are soaning
This is a. staggering issue for many
families, andi indications area-ts only
going to get Worse.T
- Ted Freeman
Preskdent, Education Resources Institute
"This is something we all ought to
be very concerned about," said Ted
Freeman, the president the Education
Resources Institute, a Boston-based
nonprofit group. "This is a staggering
issue for many families, and indica-
tions are it's only going to get worse."
An unprecedented number of college
students now rely on loans to help pay
their tuition. About 6.5 million stu-
dents, nearly half of the nation's col-
lege enrollment, have loans and bor-
rowing has reached a record level of
$23.8 billion.
The report shows that since 1990
student borrowing has grown an aver-
age of 22 percent each year - a rate
that is four times greater than the rate at
which personal income has been grow-
ing nationally each year. Since 1990,
college students have borrowed as much
money as they did in the past three
decades combined, the report states.
The extraordinary rise in students using
loans has occurred even as increases in
college tuition, which were steep and
unpredictable at many universities in
the 1980s, have leveled off and become
steadier in recent years.
But under changes that Congress
made several years ago more families
are now eligible for college loans and
can borrow more. That accounts for
some of the surge in student loans, the
report and other higher education spe-
cialists say. But they also contend that
many families now have few other
choices but to take loans because other
forms of university and federal aid,
such as grants or work-study programs,
are not keeping pace with tuition in-
creases.
At George Washington University
here, for example, the student loan vol-
ume has increased by 37 percent in just
the last few years. And as is the case at
many other universities, officials there
say they are worried about whether the
new wave of students and families rely-
ing on loans will have the economic
means to pay them back.
"I think more and more people are
deciding that loans are the only option
that they really have to afford college,"
said Dan Small, the director of George
Washington's student financial assis-
tance office.
According to the report, the growth
in loan debts has been most extensive at
public colleges and among minority
students. Since 1990, the average debt
for undergraduates at public four-year
institutions increased by 13 percent,
and grew by 2 percent for students at
private four-year colleges.
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Researchers find nicotine switch' in brain
WASHINGTON (AP)-- Research-
ers at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical
Center in New York have located the
cellular mechanism in the brain that is
activated by nicotine. The discovery
gives new insight into how the tobacco
chenical exerts such a powerful influ-
ence on the mood, thinking, alertness
and addiction of smokers.
Lorna W. Role, senior author of a
study to be published today in the jour-
nal Science, said nicotine does its work
by speeding up and intensifying the
flow of glutamate, a neurotransmitter
chemical that is a key signal carrier
within the brain.
better molecularunderstanding as to why
nicotine is such a stimulant."
Daniel S. McGehee, first author in
the study, said the discovery is the ini-
tial step toward finding a drug that will
block the addictive effects of nicotine
and help smokers kick the habit.
Using chicken brain cells kept alive
in test tubes, the researchers exposed
neurons to extremely small amounts
of nicotine and then observed the ef-
fects on synaptic transmission, the
sending of signals across nerve con-
nections.
Even aminute amount ofnicotine, he
said, caused a dramatic increase in the
findings are consistent with studies on
thepersonality effects ofnicotine. Those
studies showed that the tobacco chemi-
cal, in some people, can increase alert-
ness, alter mood and sharpen short-
term memory.
McGehee said the nicotine effects
were found in the limbic, a key part of
the brain that includes "a reward sys-
tem" that encourages some behaviorby
stimulating neurotransmitter flow.
"The brain has a natural system that
encourages the individual to reproduce,
to eat, to perform all the basic drives,"
Role said. "These pathways in the brain
encode information that essentially says,
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