A Sampling of Clips for August 14^th, 2008

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

Going Green Registers With Colleges
USA Today, Aug. 14 -- Students arriving on campus this month are seeing green — and not just from the money they're spending on tuition. Freshmen at UCSD's Sixth College will move into renovated dorms that are equipped with solar thermal heating, and new carpet and furniture made from recycled material, says Mark Cunningham, the school's executive director of housing, dining and hospitality. More

Flesh-Eating Bacteria: Scientists Identify the Perpetrator
Los Angeles Times, Aug. 14 -- Experiments at the UCSD School of Medicine and the Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego have found that Strep survives and spreads in the body by disabling a key immune defense molecule. The study is published today in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. More

Similar story on
KPBS

Feeling the Colbert ‘Bump’
The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 14 -- Democrats hesitant to appear on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” may want to check out a new report by the American Political Science Association that says Democrats who appear on the show see a 40% bump in contributions in the 30 days following their appearances. James H. Fowler, a political scientist at UCSD, wrote the report entitled, “The Colbert Bump in Campaign Donations: More Truthful than Truthy.” More

Similar story in
USA Today
Forbes
Marketplace, Public Radio International
The Hill
UPI

A Touch of Generosity
The Economist, Aug. 14 -- Vera Morhenn of UCSD and her colleagues, examined whether munificence towards strangers could be manipulated through touch. In their experiment, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, they split 96 male and female graduate students into three groups. The first and second received a professional massage but the third did not. Then the first and third group took part in a “trust game” More

State Agency Allots $13 Million for Local Stem Cell Researchers
San Diego Union-Tribune, Aug 13 -- Six San Diego scientists will receive more than $15 million in funding from the state stem cell institute, to support projects ranging from the development of a therapy to halt acute leukemias to research into therapies to prevent premature birth and birth defects. Five grants were awarded to UCSD researchers and one to a scientist from San Diego State University. More

Similar story on
10News
San Diego Business Journal

UCSD Undergrad Designs Cheap High-Quality Images for 3-D Video Games
Chronicle of Higher Education, Aug. 13 -- An alumnus of UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering presented yesterday a technique to create “on the fly” cheap, lightweight and undistorted background images for 3-D video games that he designed while he was still a computer science undergraduate student. More

World's Oceans Declining Rapidly
KPBS, Aug. 13 -- A Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientist says mass extinctions are likely unless we change how we treat the oceans. Professor Jeremy Jackson says major changes are needed now to slow down or reverse what he calls a potential catastrophe. Jackson says overfishing is one of the major threats. Another is the overuse of fertilizer that runs into the ocean creating dead zones. More

La Costa Canyon Grad Hot on Climate Change
North County Times, Aug. 13 -- To better understand climate change and learn how to get local communities involved, Encinitas resident Rebecca Chan and 23 other students from across Canada and California gathered this week for a four-day conference held on the campus of UCSD. More

Scripps Oceanography Testing Pollution During Olympics
The San Diego Daily Transcript, Aug. 13 -- Olympic organizers and Chinese officials insist the thick plumes surrounding Beijing for much of the 2008 Olympic games are fog rather than smog, but the city’s history of pollution is extensive enough that China agreed to scale back on some industry during the games. Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography are studying the impact of the shut-down. More

* Subscribe with In the News and receive our clips automatically