A Sampling of Clips for December 11^th, 2009

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

Americans Consume 3,600,000,000,000,000,000,000
Bytes of Information Per Year, Not Counting Work
The New York Times, Dec. 11 -- The average American sucks down 34 gigabytes of data per day, half of that from video games, says the latest update of a study by two researchers at UCSD. That’s enough to fill 7 DVD discs. Every day. After video games (55%), the next highest data volume is TV (35%) and movies (10%). Computer data makes up one quarter of one percent, because most of it is text, which hardly takes up any data at all. More

Similar story in The New York Times

After Climate Talks, Scientists Worry about Enforcement
USA Today, Dec. 11 -- Ray Weiss looks at the chanting protesters, harried delegates and the 20,000 other people gathered here for a global warming summit and wonders: What's the fuss all about? Weiss, a geochemist who studies atmospheric pollution at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, says the numbers at the core of the debate in Copenhagen are flawed. Specifically, he says the cuts that countries including the USA are proposing in greenhouse gas emissions are difficult to measure and highly susceptible to manipulation by government officials and companies. More

Similar story in BBC Radio

New Models for Powerful Flu Fighters from Existing Drugs
U.S. News and World Report, Dec. 9 -- Computer compatibility tests might help flu-fighting drugs find their groove. A pandemic of the H1N1 swine flu virus has health officials worried that the virus could develop resistance to drugs such as Tamiflu used to treat infected people. A new computerized screening method could help find new or already existing drugs that find a flu virus’ weak spot, researchers from UCSD reported December 6 at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology. More

Study Suggests Methods and Timing to Treat Fears
The New York Times, Dec. 9 -- A new study suggests that doctors can take advantage of the brain’s natural updating process — the way it might soften its impression of, say, pit bulls after seeing a playful one — to treat phobias, post-traumatic stress and other anxiety disorders. Therapists already treat these disorders, in part, by exposing patients in a safe environment to the sights, places or memories that they dread, in an effort to create new and more comforting associations. But the study, published Wednesday by the journal Nature, suggests that simple changes in how this therapy is applied — particularly in the timing — could have a large payoff. (Quotes Dr. Martin Paulus, a psychiatrist at UCSD) More

Why Privatizing the University of California Won't Work
Los Angeles Times, Dec. 10 -- University of California President Mark G. Yudof went to Sacramento this week in another valiant effort to convince legislators that they're playing with fire when they shortchange the state's higher-education system.  In the course of his presentation, he gingerly mentioned the P-word. The state university, he told them, is a statewide boon, adding: "We do not want to partially privatize it through raising fees." (Mentions UCSD) More

Rise in Sea Levels Threatens California Ports
Los Angeles Times, Dec. 10 -- Global warming and a resulting rise in sea levels present a direct threat to the world's seaports -- and many of California's harbors are nowhere near ready, state officials say. Sea levels in California are expected to increase 16 inches over the next 40 years, causing flooding and endangering facilities throughout the state, according to a report by the California State Lands Commission. By 2100, the ocean could rise as much as 55 inches, the report said. (Mentions Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD) More

A Lot of Bogus: The Story of Offsets
The Huffington Post, Dec. 10 -- "The Story of Cap-and-Trade," a short animated video from the team who brought us the wildly viral "Story of Stuff," has been generating LA-scale traffic on green blogs in the last week. While some of the criticisms have merit (especially on the realpolitik of getting climate legislation past the fossils in Washington, DC), many are not, and none are sillier than the argument that the video simplifies the issue. (Quotes UCSD political scientist David Victor) More

UN 'off by a Substantial Amount'
BBC Radio, Dec. 10 -- The emission of harmful gases into the atmosphere has been under-estimated, according to one of the world's leading climate research institutions. Scientists at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography in southern California will make their case at the Copenhagen climate summit today. Professor Ray Weiss, a geochemist and an expert on trace gases, reflects on their findings. More

Americans' Information Consumption Soars
San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 9 -- If you've felt bombarded by information in this era of Internet communications, hundreds of TV channels and video games, it's not your imagination. Put another way, it's the equivalent of covering the continental United States and Alaska in a 7-foot-high stack of Dan Brown novels. "We're all on information overload for good reason," said Roger Bohn, the study's lead author and a professor of management at UCSD. More

China: Climate Change or Hot Air?
Business Week, Dec. 9 -- On the wooded hills outside the city of Harbin in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, Chinese developers are building towering wind turbines that will spin day and night to generate clean electricity. The project represents the hope that China, which recently surpassed the U.S. as the world's largest source of greenhouse gases, has truly embraced environmentalism. The planned 29 turbines near Harbin represent something else as well: the widely accepted notion that market forces can be harnessed to aid the fight against climate change. Under the international treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol, Chinese wind-power developers are selling "carbon credits" reflecting their reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. (Quotes David G. Victor, a professor at the School of International Relations & Pacific Studies at UCSD) More

Preuss School Named Top Charter School
San Diego News Network, Dec. 10 -- The Preuss School at UCSD was ranked ninth among the top 10 charter schools in the country by U.S. News & World Report, it was announced Thursday. The Preuss School was also ranked 32nd among all high schools in the country in the magazine’s annual “America’s Best High Schools” edition, according to UCSD. The Preuss School, which has 746 students, is a charter middle and high school that focuses on college preparatory education for low-income students. More

Similar story in Fox 5

Information Consumption Studied
San Diego Union-Tribune, Dec. 10 -- Routine activities like watching television, surfing the Internet and playing video games has led Americans to consume an average of 34 gigabytes of information daily, enough to fill up a sizable chunk of a hard drive on most computers. The numbers are from a UCSD study released yesterday that measured the amount of information consumed by Americans last year. The study, “How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers,” estimates that the country as a whole consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information last year. More

A Sapphire Energy Co-Founder Sees
Solutions in Algae for Drugs as Well as Biofuels
San Diego Union-Tribune, Dec. 2 -- The potential of algae as a clean energy source has been generating a lot of entrepreneurial excitement in San Diego. At last count, 10 local companies are busy working on technologies focused on transforming ordinary pond scum into “green crude” one day capable of powering aircraft, trucks, automobiles, and even utility plants—and easing the world’s energy problems. It is a bold vision—but one that may be selling algae short. That thought occurred to me after I had a chat with Stephen Mayfield, a leading expert on the genetics of algae who recently moved his lab from the Scripps Research Institute to UCSD. More

Where Stimulus $ is Going: a Local Example
San Diego Union-Tribune, Dec. 10 -- UCSD: Despite pouring millions of dollars into programs to further the democratization of Africa, donors remain uninformed about one of the most important facets of politics on the continent: Why do Africans vote they way they do? Most observers of African elections view the process as a mere ethnic headcount: all citizens vote for their own ethnic group regardless of the performance of the incumbent government and without reference to the issues of the day. Yet there is scant evidence to support this view. In the vast majority of African countries a single ethnic group cannot achieve a majority of the votes. More

Student Experiences Life among San Diego's Homeless
KGTV, Dec. 2 -- A UCSD student's misconception of homeless citizens and a desire to learn from them pushed her to experience for herself life on the streets of downtown San Diego. For UCSD student and sorority member Shanelle Sherlin, it was an idea sparked by curiosity and fear. "I usually am one of those people that will just walk by and not pay any attention to homeless people," said Sherlin. "I had the same preconceived notions that they are just all alcoholics." More

Gompers Takes a Bow
San Diego Reader, Dec. 9 -- "I remember my first encounter with a student here. I was wearing a suit, and a student comes up to me at lunch with a crowbar in his hand. Tapping it against his leg, he said, ‘Why are you wearing a suit? It is just going to get ripped when you break up a fight.’ That was my very first contact with a Gompers student.” (Mentions UCSD’s partnership with Gompers) More

Trade Deficit Shrinks by 7.6%
San Diego Union-Tribune, Dec. 11 -- Thanks in part to the weakness of the dollar and low demand for foreign oil, the U.S. trade deficit plunged by 7.6 percent in October to $32.9 billion, as a surge in exports overwhelmed a slight uptick in imports, the Commerce Department said yesterday. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, who was in San Diego to address the National Conference of State Legislatures, cited the shift in trade as evidence that the Obama administration’s increasingly tough words about trade are beginning to have an effect. (Mentions Peter Cowhey, the dean of the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UCSD) More

SD Program Praised For Sending Kids To College
KGTV, Dec. 10 -- An afterschool program in San Diego was in the national spotlight Thursday as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited Reality Changers in City Heights, 10News reported. Reality Changers was started by former substitute teacher UCSD alumnus Chris Yanov in 2001. He had $300 in his pocket and knew four students from an inner city neighborhood that had a desire to get to college. More

Discriminating Bees
Del Mar Times, Dec. 10 -- Honeybees can discriminate between food at different temperatures, an ability that may assist them in locating the warm, sugar-rich nectar or high-protein pollen. The work builds on a previous UCSD study showing that bumblebees returning to nests with higher-quality pollen were warmer than bees that collected pollen with less protein. Training bees to stick out their tongues in return for a sugary reward when the team touched a warm surface to a bee's antenna, the researchers found that bees could learn to identify warmth with food. Next, they tested whether the bees could learn to associate temperature differences with a food reward and discovered that this was also the case. More

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