A Sampling of Clips for June 24, 2010

* UCSD faculty and staff may obtain a copy of an article by e-mailing the University Communications Office

Too Much, Too Young
Scientific American, July 2010 -- Autistic toddlers tend to have large brains for their age, and researchers have shown a correlation between the degree of excess growth and the severity of autism symptoms. Eric Courchesne, director of the Autism Center of Excellence at UC San Diego, helped to pioneer the overgrowth hypothesis. Now he and his colleague Cynthia Schumann have published data that suggest the excess brain growth starts in the first year of life, if not sooner. More

Defense Experts Want More Explicit Climate Models
The New York Times, June 24 -- Tell us what you don't know. That's the message military and national security experts gathered in San Diego want to send to climate scientists. Military, national security and climate experts met this week at a conference organized by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's new Center for Environment and National Security to discuss what kinds of forecasts will be needed for foreign policy planning. More

Born into Debt
Scientific American, July 2010 -- Earlier work has shown that genetics plays a role in how we handle money. But a recent study was the first to show that a particular gene affects financial behavior outside the lab. Researchers at UC San Diego and the London School of Economics looked at genetic data and questionnaires already collected from more than 2,000 young adults aged 18 to 26 as part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. In particular, they looked at whether these young adults said they had any credit-card debt and what version of the MAOA gene they had. More

Rocked by Waves of Drumrolls
The New York Times, June 22 -- The ducks that frequent Central Park Lake are used to keeping clear of people in rented rowboats lurching about the water. But on Monday afternoon they looked rattled by the strange sights and stranger sounds coming from makeshift platforms floating in the middle of the west side of the lake. (Mentions Steve Schick, who is on the UC San Diego faculty) More

Self-Service: The Delicate Dance of Online Bragging
Wired, June 23 -- Social networking sites have inverted the rules of privacy and etiquette, and no cultural norm is tossed aside more often on the Web than plain old modesty. This raises an existential question: When you celebrate yourself online, are you a willing participant in a brave new social future, or are you just being an ass? Don’t panic; it’s the former — as long as you strike a balance. (Quotes  James Fowler, a political scientist at UC San Diego) More

If You Want to Make a Brain Map, You Have to Slice Up Some Brains
Discover Magazine, June 23 -- Jacopo Annese, Director of the Brain Observatory at UC San Diego and his team are creating open-access, high-resolution, three-dimensional atlases of the human brain. More

Two UC San Diego Researchers Awarded Grants Totaling $2.5 Million
KPBS, June 23 -- Two UC San Diego researchers were awarded grants totaling $2.5 million on Wednesday from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Martin Marsala, a professor of anesthesiology at the UCSD School of Medicine, was awarded $1.3 million to develop methods to prolong the survival of therapeutic stem cells grafted to the central nervous system. UCSD professor of biology Yang Xu, an immunologist, was awarded $1.2 million from the CIRM to explore improving the human immune system's tolerance to grafted tissues derived from human embryonic stem cells. More

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San Jose Business Journal
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La Jolla Light

New Minimally Invasive Hip Surgery
KUSI, June 23 -- Dr. Catherine Robertson, Orthopedic Surgeon at UC San Diego Medical Center talks about a new minimally invasive surgical procedure called hip arthroscopy. More

Artist Michael Trigilio Brings Buddhism, Electric Guitars to Museums
KPBS, June 23 -- Multimedia artist and UC San Diego professor Michael Trigilio has a busy summer ahead. In addition to screening his film "Bodhisattva, Superstar" – an “allegorical documentary” on American Buddhism - as part of MCASD's "Here Not There" exhibit, he’ll be visiting the San Diego Museum of Art’s Summer Salon Series on Thursday, “occupying the upstairs galleries with electric guitars and fuzz drones.” More

Hospitalists Take Charge of Patient Care
KPBS, June 24 -- Twenty years ago, the idea of a doctor caring for people only when they're hospitalized was far-fetched. Today, hospitalists are the fastest growing medical specialty. These doctors who manage much of the care that goes on in hospitals. (Quotes Brian Clay, a hospitalist at UC San Diego Medical Center in Hillcrest) More

Remembering MJ, with a Side of Cheese
San Diego Union-Tribune, June 23 -- There are surely less cheesy ways to honor the memory of Michael Jackson than by attending Friday night’s Who’s Bad: The Ultimate Michael Jackson Tribute Band performance at the San Diego County Fair’s Paddock Stage. (Mentions Kari Francis, 21, an Ojai native who this fall begins her fourth year at UC San Diego as a music composition major. She is a member of Daughters of Triton,  UCSD's only all-female a cappella group, for which she served as music director last year and is co-director this year) More

Quint Gallery Plans a Move
La Jolla Light, June 22 -- The Quint Contemporary Art Gallery will reopen in a larger location this fall with a show of new paintings by artist Kim MacConnel. This will be MacConnel's eighth exhibition with Quint Art and will coincide with an October retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. MacConnel is on the UC San Diego faculty. More

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