A Sampling of Clips for January 2^nd, 2009

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

Laser Experiment
Aimed at Saving Farm Water
New York Times, Dec. 31 -- Seventy-six years after the invention of the modern sprinkler helped revolutionize farming, lasers may revolutionize it again. Jan Kleissl and a handful of his students at UCSD think technology using laser beams might lead to a better way to conserve the millions of gallons of water sprayed each year on thirsty crops. He and his team are using a large aperture scintillometer to study how much water crops lose to evaporation and the peak times that water disappears.
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Similar story in:
San Francisco Chronicle
Business Week

Your Healthiest Year Ever!
USA Today, Jan. 2 -- Early indicators are that the coming year will be one of the most challenging in a generation. Even more troubling, many events seem beyond our influence. When you feel control over your life slipping, that's the time to focus on things you can influence. The place to start: ourselves, particularly our health. (Mentions UCSD) More

MIT Uses Nanotech to Deliver
Drugs for Fighting Cancer, AIDS
New York Times, Dec. 30 -- Researchers at MIT are using nanoparticles and infrared light as part of a project to develop a more accurate method of delivering multiple drugs to patients fighting diseases such as cancer and AIDS. (Mentions UCSD) More

Study Points to Way of
Stopping Lung Cancer Spread
Reuters, Dec. 31 -- Lung cancer cells produce a compound that helps the tumor spread to other parts of the body, a finding that could lead to a new way to prevent this dangerous development, researchers reported on Wednesday. They said a protein called versican hijacks elements of the immune system, generating inflammation that can spur the growth and spread of lung cancer.
Michael Karin of UCSD, and colleagues made the findings in experiments with mice, but said the protein is found in low levels in some normal human lung cells and other tissues. More

Similar story in:
Forbes.com

Bling Makes Your Brain Sing
US News and World Report, Dec. 24 -- A sports car, a diamond ring, ice cream -- some things may make the human brain "pop." So finds new research showing that neural vision systems get turned on by expensive or "rewarding" objects, even before people realize they're excited. When you know that an object has been rewarding in the past, "your brain is representing them differently," said John Serences, a professor of psychology at UCSD. "That may mean that you're seeing things that are of high value more clearly or sharply." More

Similar story in:
Washington Post 
Forbes.com
London Daily Telegraph

Best Hospitals
US News and World Report, Jan. 2 -- The U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals rankings cover 170 hospitals in 16 adult specialties. 50 children's hospitals are covered, using a new and enhanced methodology, in general pediatrics and 6 pediatric specialties. The unranked hospitals in this specialty are listed in alphabetical order after the ranked hospitals. (Mentions UCSD Medical Center) More

Economy Looms as China, US Celebrate Relations
Forbes, Dec. 30 -- China and the United States should be kicking off 2009 with a celebration of three decades' hard work building one of the world's most crucial diplomatic relationships. Instead the superpower and the rising power are fighting their way through an economic crisis that may be the biggest strain yet on the web of ties they have created. (Quotes UCSD political scientist Susan Shirk) More

Gastric Bypass May Help Obese Teens
ABC News, Dec. 29 -- Teenager Amanda Munson has struggled with her weight all her life. It's a problem that runs in her family. At age 16, her 5-foot-2 frame had ballooned to 311 pounds.
"I really couldn't go anywhere," says Munson. "I wouldn't fit into the seats at movie theatres. I couldn't go running because it just hurt so bad and my heart would speed up too much." (Quotes diabetes expert Dr. Steven Edelman a professor of medicine at UCSD) More

Obama Bucks Southern Trend in Cabinet Picks
ABC News,Dec. 27 -- With about a third of the US population, the American South has established itself as an economic and political juggernaut.
Barack Obama has bucked the trend of recent presidents by selecting the majority of his cabinet members from states outside the South, including Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, left, and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., right.
But it's not gone without notice here that President-elect Obama is the first president in a generation to look beyond Dixie to build his White House brain trust. (Quotes Gary Jacobson, a political science professor at UCSD) More

First ‘Minerva’ Grants Awarded
Inside Higher Ed, Dec. 29 --  The first “Minerva” grants have been announced — and they are going to respected scholars at leading universities for a range of topics that could inform U.S. military and diplomatic thinking. The grants also don’t appear likely to end controversy over the program, although the change coming next month in the White House may lessen some concerns. (Mentions UCSD political scientist Susan Shirk) More

Heart Health for the Holidays
Reuters, Dec. 24 -- Cold weather and some holiday-related behaviors can exacerbate existing heart conditions, and deaths from heart disease hit their peak every December and January, with spikes on Christmas Day and New Year's Day, according to a UCSD study. More

San Diego: College Town
San Diego Magazine, January -- The vision of a college student sitting in a library, reading a book under the glow of a desk lamp, is as vintage today as a Norman Rockwell painting. Young scholars are more likely to be found in the campus coffee shop, stationed in front of a laptop while texting messages on a cell phone. Advances in technology are among the many trends impacting the landscape of higher education. (Mentions UCSD) More

Spam, Spam, Spam
Financial Times(UK), Dec. 26 -- Few people are genuinely interested in “male enhancement”. The group that might actually buy such a product in response to an unsolicited e-mail is even smaller. So why on earth is there so much spam?
The reason is that spammers have to deluge inboxes to get a hit. Researchers at the International Computer Science Institute at Berkeley and UCSD took control of a small part of a spamming network this year. In 26 days they sent 348m e-mails, producing 11,000 visits to a fake pharmaceuticals site but just 28 “conversions”, or attempted purchases, worth about $100 each. For those hawking pills, that suggests revenues of about $3.5m a year. More

50 People to Watch in 2009
San Diego Magazine, January – Scientists and singers. Doctors and lawyers. Politicians and . . . pitchers. Our list of watchables this year includes restaurateurs and artistic auteurs. We’ve selected two guys named Grier and two gals named Kim—none related. But see if you can relate to our choices for local notables worth keeping an eye on. (Includes Daniel Eaton, a Harvard-trained attorney who chairs the UCSD Board of Overseer and Roger Tsien, chemistry professor at UCSD) More

Football Yes, Libraries No
San Diego Reader, Dec. 23 – The pride and presence of a professional football team is far more important than 30 libraries.” Intelligent people laughed when former pro-football-team owner Art Modell made the comment. Now San Diego, painfully broke, is the butt of the joke. It is discussing closing libraries while its establishment lobbies for subsidies for a team owned by a billionaire who is in much better financial shape than the City. (Quotes Steve Erie, professor of political science at UCSD) More

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