A Sampling of Clips for July 7, 2011

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

As Budgets Are Trimmed, Time in Class Is Shortened
New York Times, July 6 -- After several years of state and local budget cuts, thousands of school districts across the nation are gutting summer-school programs, cramming classes into four-day weeks or lopping days off the school year, even though virtually everyone involved in education agrees that American students need more instruction time. Bucking a nationwide trend, The Preuss School, a charter in San Diego, has lengthened its school day to seven hours from six. More

New Southwest Factories to Make Advanced
Solar Panels, but will They Transform Sun Power?
New York Times, July 6 -- A large solar panel sits atop a 22-foot tower at UC San Diego, tilted toward the sun on a late spring morning. It appears similar to others in this beach city, but some say it will revolutionize the solar business. The panel at the school makes two to three times as much electricity as a similar-sized conventional solar, said Soitec, the France-based manufacturer. Lenses on the surface focus sunlight onto solar cells while a tracking system shifts the panel every 10 seconds to always face the sun. More

Plume of Hot Rock Blamed for Colliding Continents
MSNBC, July 6 -- A giant plume of hot rock emerging from near the Earth's core may have sent India veering rapidly toward a collision with Eurasia while slowing Africa's drift northward soon after the end of the dinosaur age, scientists now find. (Quotes Steven Cande, a marine geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.) More

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Thanks to Talking Apes and Birds, the
Idea of Human Uniqueness is Under Attack
Cosmos Magazine, July 6 -- The debate about the evolution of language is, quite simply, a debate about what makes us human. Our ability to compute abstract laws and logic -- the basis of language and grammar -- allows for complex mathematical, artistic and linguistic ability, which is the common denominator for all human achievement. If this computational capacity for language is unique, then our species' self-serving intuition is satisfied: we are, after all, 'special'. But if the basic structure of our syntax is found in other species, we become a little less remarkable. (Refers to a study by Timothy Gentner, a neuroscientist at UC San Diego.) More

Automated Facial Expression Technology
KQED-PBS (San Francisco), July 7 -- With funding from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Homeland Security Administration, teams at Carnegie Mellon University and UC San Diego are developing automated facial expressions recognition technology. This technology would enable a machine to pick up on brief flashes of emotion. More

Change on Campus at SDSU, UCSD
San Diego Union-Tribune, July 6 – (Editorial) First President Stephen Weber lights out for Maine after 15 stellar years guiding San Diego State University to a higher national profile. And now UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox has announced that next June she, too, will be saying goodbye to the rigors of leadership, though she plans to return to the chemistry classroom and the lab. Yes, these two public universities were designed with different missions, but they’ve grown closer under Weber and Fox. They share research grants, library resources, a supercomputer and, as one observer told us, “hundreds of spouses.” They are, in a sense, married. President Elliot Hirshman has moved into Weber’s office on Montezuma Mesa. A year from now, he’ll be greeting his new La Jolla counterpart. UC San Diego once sought a star to replace Chancellor Robert Dynes and, in Fox, they got one. More

UCSD is Looking for a New Leader
XETV News Channel 6, July 6 -- Chancellor Marye Anne Fox announced her resignation yesterday, to be effective in June next year. Fox has served as chancellor for the past seven years. Fox is UCSD's seventh chancellor. More

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House Budget Panel Wants to Cut Oceans Agency by $103 Million
Science Insider, July 6 -- The draft of the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee's 2012 budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calls for a $103 million cut below current spending of $4.59 billion. The panel's figure is a billion dollars below the amount requested by the Obama Administration. (Quotes Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.) More

The AIDS Epidemic: 30 Years & Counting
KPBS (San Diego), July 6 -- Thirty years ago, five previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles came down with an unusual type of pneumonia. This was the beginning of the AIDS pandemic that has killed nearly 30 million people worldwide. UC San Diego’s Owen Clinic opened its doors in Hillcrest in 1982, just as AIDS was beginning to rear its head. It started as a gay men’s health center operated by volunteers. More

Pushing Western Medicine With Fear In India
The Post-Chronicle, July 7 -- If you sleep less than six hours a night, you're increasing your risk of developing or dying from heart disease by 48 percent. At least, that's what U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant Abbott would have 1.2 billion people in India believe. But doctors say the grim message, which appeared in a newspaper ad in India earlier this year, is baseless. (Quotes Daniel F. Kripke, a psychiatrist at UC San Diego.) More

Gray, Gloom Give Way to Gorgeous July
The Patch (Hermosa Beach), July 6 -- May gray. June gloom. Nearly all Southern California coastal residents have heard the names used for overcast conditions leading into summer. Research from UC San Diego’s California Nevada Applications Program and the California Climate Change Center (CCCC) further explains the formation of marine layer clouds. More

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