A Sampling of Clips for August 1, 2011

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

Skeptic's Small Cloud Study Renews Climate Rancor
ABC News, July 30 -- A study on how much heat in Earth's atmosphere is caused by cloud cover has heated up the climate change blogosphere even as it is dismissed by many scientists. Several mainstream climate scientists call the study's conclusions off-base and overstated. Climate change skeptics, most of whom are not scientists, are touting the study, saying it blasts gaping holes in global warming theory and shows that future warming will be less than feared. The study in the journal Remote Sensing questions the accuracy of climate computer models and got attention when a lawyer for the conservative Heartland Institute wrote an opinion piece on it. (Quotes Richard Somerville, a scientist at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography) More

A Drug for Down Syndrome
The New York Times Magazine, July 31 -- In 1995, the birth of his first and only child changed the course of Dr. Alberto Costa’s life. The baby was diagnosed with Down Syndrome. Eleven years later, using mice with the equivalent of Down syndrome, Costa published one of the first studies ever to show that a drug could normalize the growth and survival of new brain cells in the hippocampus, a structure deep within the brain that is essential for memory and spatial navigation. In people with Down syndrome, the slower pace of neuron growth in the hippocampus is suspected to play a key role in cognitive deficits. (Quotes Dr. William C. Mobley, chairman of neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego) More

Scientists Scour Globe to Map Microbe Gene
SignOnSanDiego.com, Aug. 1 -- Microbes are everywhere. The human gut is host to about 100 trillion bacterial cells, about 10 times the number of human cells in the entire body. A quart of seawater contains about 1 billion bacteria cells from 400,000 different species. Yet we know almost nothing about most of the microbes. Now, a global network of scientists, including some in San Diego County, is trying to catalog the genetic maps of the 5 million species of bacteria that occupy every corner of the planet. The ambitious effort, known as the Earth Microbiome Project, promises to revolutionize microbiology just as the field was permanently altered by the creation of the microscope, the development of cell culturing techniques and the discovery of pasturization. The process undertaken by the project even has a name: metagenomics. “It truly is the new science of the 21st Century,” said John Wooley, a professor of bioinformatics and computational biology at the University of California San Diego. (Discusses research by Eric Allen, an assistant professor at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.) More

Researchers Target Link Between Obesity and Breast Cancer Risk
PhysOrg.com, Aug. 1 -- A team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center will be participating in a cooperative agreement initiative, funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, with four other major cancer centers. The Transdisciplinary Research on Energetics and Cancer initiative is a five-year, $45 million program that expands the effort to understand the relationship between energetics (energy under transformation) and cancer. Ruth Patterson, a professor in the UCSD Department of Family and Preventive Medicine and program leader of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at Moores Cancer Center, will lead UCSD researchers in a study of insulin resistance and inflammation underlying the association of energy balance and breast cancer. More

People Tend to Mirror Mannerisms of Those They Like
Deaccon Herald, Aug 1 --In popular culture, mirroring is frequently used as a strategy, for flirting or having a successful date, for closing a sale or facing a job interview. But new research suggests that sometimes the smarter thing to do is to refrain from mirroring, the journal Psychological Science reports. Piotr Winkielman and Liam Kavanagh, psychologists at the University of California, San Diego, noted that in real-life situations others observe mirroring between two people, according to a California statement. "Mimicry is a crucial part of social intelligence," said Winkielman, professor of psychology. "But it is not enough to simply know how to mimic." More

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Forbes (blog)
The Times of India

Researchers Turn Kinect Game into a 3D Scanner
PhysOrg.com -- University of California, San Diego students preparing for a future archaeological dig to Jordan will likely pack a Microsoft Kinect, but it won’t be used for post-dig, all-night gaming marathons. Instead, the students will use a modified version of the peripheral Xbox 360 device in the field to take high-quality, low-cost 3D scans of dig sites. More

Genetics May Determine Length of Eating Disorder
PsychCentral, July 31 -- Many individuals who suffer from an eating disorder, such as anorexia nervosa, seem to suffer a lifetime sentence with the illness.  They remain severely underweight and are at risk of dying from malnutrition. Although no treatment has been found, a new study by scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Scripps Translational Science Institute, reveals that genetic variations may be a factor in whether or not the disorder becomes a chronic issue. More

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