A Sampling of Clips for July 19, 2011

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

Solar Panels Provide Cool Extra Benefit
United Press International, July 18 -- Solar panels on the roofs of houses and office buildings can do more than produce electricity, researchers say -- they can reduce cooling and heating costs.
A professor of environmental engineering at UC San Diego says he found using thermal imaging that a building's ceiling could be five degrees Fahrenheit cooler during the day under solar panels that under an exposed roof. (Quotes Jan Kleissl, professor of environmental engineering.) More

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Why Does Time Fly?
Scientific American, July 19 -- Everybody knows that the passage of time is not constant. Moments of terror or elation can stretch a clock tick to what seems like a life time. Yet we do not know how the brain “constructs” the experience of subjective time. (Article by Dr. Martin P. Paulus, psychiatrist at UC San Diego and the Veterans Affairs Health Care System San Diego.) More

Exploring the Uncanny Valley of How Brains React to Humanoids
Wired, July 19 -- We've all found ourselves in the uncanny valley before. It's that uneasy feeling you get when viewing a realistic humanoid or CGI person that's so close to looking human that it seems almost spooky. The actual "valley" refers to a precipitous drop in "likeability" as onscreen characters and humanoid robots step too far towards being human-like. As in, we enjoy Pixar's Wall-E and Nintendo's Mario, but we get the heeby-jeebies from the ultra-realistic faces of The Polar Express or the upcoming Tintin movie. An international team of researchers, led by Ayse Pinar Saygin of UC San Diego, wanted to find out if the sensation was actually caused by something deep within our brains. More

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NASA: Space Station's Best Days are Still Ahead
Vermont Public Radio, July 18 -- Imagine you own a small factory, and you learn that your main supplier is going out of business. What do you do? You put on a brave face for employees and investors and scramble to find alternatives. That's pretty much where managers of the International Space Station find themselves. [But] NASA spent the past decade building the station so it can fulfill its role as a unique laboratory for cutting-edge research. The space shuttle program may be wrapping up, but the station is just getting going. (Quotes Declan McCole, a gastroenterologist at UC San Diego.) More

Garbage Patch Study Finds Plastic in Pacific Ocean Fish
KPBS, July 18 -- (Interview with Jim Leichter, Associate Professor of Biological Oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.) On a recent expedition to the North Pacific Ocean UC San Diego researchers discovered plastic in nearly 10% of the fish they found. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is to blame. More

Marine Scientists Focus on Forage Fish
San Diego Union-Tribune, July 17 -- After decades of struggling to keep iconic species such as salmon and whales from going extinct, marine scientists are now focusing on sardines, squid, and other forage fish that form the biological linchpin of the California Current. It’s part of a sea change toward managing ecosystems rather than individual stocks as pressure grows on small prey, which are targeted by commercial fishermen for aquaculture feed, bait, and other products. The concept of ecosystem management has lots of scientific support, including a statement issued in April by more than two dozen researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and other academic centers in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. More

West Coast Erosion: A Glimpse of Warming?
Orange County Register, July 18 -- The entire U.S. West Coast took a dramatic beating from the El Nino episode that ended last year, a new study reveals, as powerful waves gouged away chunks of shoreline at far higher levels than previously measured. Researchers from USGS, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the University of California, Santa Cruz and Oregon State University, among others, supplied enough data for the 13-year period to profile the coast from San Diego to Seattle. They found that winter wave energy was 20 percent larger on average for the period, shoreline erosion 36 percent larger. More

$4 million Grant to Monitor No-Fishing Areas
San Diego Union-Tribune, July 18 -- A critical component of the revamped marine protected areas in Southern California is in place thanks to a $4 million research project funded by the state's Ocean Protection Council. The grant will pay for baseline monitoring of the no-take zones and will tap scientists from several universities and institutes, including Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. More

No Culprit Singled Out for Strange Weather
San Luis Obispo Tribune, July 16 -- Much of the state has been cooler than usual this summer. Many parts of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta even saw drizzle Wednesday morning as a mild storm pushed clouds over the region. Is this climate change? Recent studies led by Michael Dettinger, an atmospheric scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, provide plenty to ponder. More

Hat Day at Del Mar Draws Budding Engineers
San Diego Union Tribune, July 18 -- Saura Naderi, a 2007 graduate in engineering physics from UC San Diego,  is on a mission to get young girls interested in engineering. She’s not afraid to wear a funny hat to make it happen. Or, in this case, not afraid to help 20 girls design their own funny hats to wear Wednesday to Opening Day at the Del Mar horse races. The girls, ages 7 to 16, are from the Mountain View area of San Diego. “It’s all about exposing them to engineering, making it accessible,” she said. The girls met twice a week for five weeks working in a laboratory at UC San Diego. More

UCSD’s Bazzo Honored by Physicians’ Group
La Jolla Light, July 18 -- David Bazzo, MD, who teaches family medicine and sports medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, recently received the California Academy of Family Physicians 2011 Educator of the Year award. More

Grunion Run Season in IB, Southern California Nears End
Imperial Beach Patch, July 18 -- This weekend had one of the last full moons of the 2011 grunion spawning season, when the small fish beach themselves by the thousands to lay and fertilize their eggs on beaches throughout southern California and Baja California, between April and August. (Mentions Boyd Walker of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.) More

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