A Sampling of Clips for
April 20, 2006
* UCSD faculty and staff may obtain a copy of an article by e-mailing the University Communications Office
Largest U.S. Mumps
Outbreak in Almost 20 Years
KFMB, April 19 -- For baby boomers, getting the mumps was often part of growing up. But since the vaccine was developed in 1967, the illness has become quite rare. That's until a new outbreak of the disease broke out in the Midwest. And now, a case of mumps may have surfaced in San Diego. (Quotes Dr. Bret Pickering, medical director of the UCSD Pediatric Clinic.) More
New Program to Develop Trade Skills
Gulf Daily News (Bahrain), April 20 -- Bahraini entrepreneurs are getting help in building their business skills from a centre supported by developed countries and local institutions. The Centre for Entrepreneurial Excellence in Bahrain (CEEB) has just launched a joint program with the Beyster Institute at UCSD’s Rady School of Management. More
Brain Training Can Change Autistic Behavior
New Scientist, April 22 – Neurofeedback practice may be able to alleviate some of the symptoms of autism, according to a pilot study on eight children with the disorder. The technique involves hooking people up to electrodes and getting them to try and control their brain waves. In people with autism, the "mu" wave is thought to be dysfunctional. Since this wave is associated with "mirror neurons" -- the brain cells that underpin empathy and understanding of others -- Jaime Pineda, a cognitive scientist at UCSD, wondered if controlling it through neurofeedback could exercise faulty mirror neurons and improve their function. More
The Fluorescent Toolbox
for Assessing Protein Location and Function
Science, April 14 -- Advances in molecular biology, organic chemistry, and materials science have recently created several new classes of fluorescent probes for imaging in cell biology. (Article by Ben N. Giepmans, Stephen R. Adams, Mark H. Ellisman, Roger Y. Tsien of UCSD) More
Look Who’s Home in Suburbia
Raleigh News & Observer (N.C.), April 20 -- This just in from the nation's ivory towers: Suburbia is not such a bland place after all. "There has traditionally been a stereotype about suburbia, simply that it's boring, that suburbs represent a white, middle-class kind of 'Leave it to Beaver' environment," said Princeton University history professor Kevin Kruse, a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate who recently co-edited "The New Suburban History." "I instinctively knew that wasn't true." (Quotes Becky Nicolaides, a UCSD historian who is co-editing an upcoming book, "The Suburban Reader.") More
San Diego Drowns In Own Hubris
San Diego Reader, April 20 -- Flexing its muscles, working in secret, and stifling dissent, San Diego in the early to mid-1990s tried to assert water independence. It got hosed. The San Diego County Water Authority wound up paying 50 percent more for water than it had been paying earlier. So writes Steve Erie, UCSD political scientist, in his new book, “Beyond Chinatown: The Metropolitan Water District, Growth, and the Environment in Southern California.” It is being published this month by Stanford University Press. Why the title? Erie is setting up a straw man and knocking it down. More
Concerns over Closure
Plan at UCSD Medical Center
KFMB, April 19 -- There is concern Wednesday morning over a proposal to close a majority of the UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest. A town hall meeting was held in Chula Vista Tuesday night so people could discuss the future of San Diego healthcare. The plan was unveiled last year. It calls for the relocation of 505 beds from the Hillcrest facility to Thornton Hospital in La Jolla. More
Volunteer’s Work
Wins Him Good Apple Award
San Diego Union-Tribune, April 20 -- It was barely 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and Jon Bain was out in the park cutting hundreds of orange slices, bagels and bananas for cyclists in the Ride 4 Aids fundraiser. A bad knee kept Bain from riding, but not from being there with other volunteers to help raise money for the AIDS Research Institute at UCSD and Being Alive San Diego, a nonprofit serving those affected by HIV. More
UCSD, Scripps Hatch
Cross-Disciplinary Work
San Diego Daily Transcript, April 19 -- By UCSD standards, the launch of the country's only effort to create MRI images of fish followed a fairly typical sequence of events. Lawrence Frank, professor of radiology at the UCSD School of Medicine, had decided to attend a lecture being given by Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Dr. Jeffrey Graham and his student Diego Bernal, specialists in, among other things, shark biology. Bernal was interested in muscle mechanics in sharks and described in the lecture his efforts to view that muscle by painstakingly freezing a specimen then cutting it into cross sections. The lecture got Frank to thinking. More
UC Admits 5,000 More
For Fall than Last Year, Up 10%
San Diego Union-Tribune, April 20 -- If you applied for admission to the University of California this year, your odds of getting in were higher than past years. More than 78 percent of freshman applicants were admitted for fall 2006, representing 55,242 students. That's about 5,000 more students than last year, a 10 percent increase, driven in large part by growing numbers of students meeting UC's admission requirements. (Mentions UCSD.) More
National Humanities Center
Names Fellows for 2006-07
TMC Net, April 19 -- The National Humanities Center has announced the appointment of 39 Fellows for the academic year 2006-07. Representing history, literature, philosophy, and other humanistic fields of study, these scholars will come to the Center from the faculties of 31 colleges and universities across the United States. (UCSD’s Jann C. Pasler, musicology, is among those honored.) More
UCSD, UC Irvine Get UK Grant
SocalTech.Com, April 20 -- UCSD and UCI have received a grant from the UK Department of Trade and Industry, as part of SETsquared, a UK-based business accelerator program. The grant is part of a program to seed collaboration between technology clusters in the US and the UK, and funds research projects in areas such as life sciences, new materials, stem cells, and tissue engineering. More
