A Sampling of Clips for June 2^nd, 2008

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

Mr. Rogers' Memory Lives On in Scholarships
FOX News, June 1 -- Three college students, including Ronald McCants of UCSD, are part of a series of "wonderful young people" who've been recognized by the 4-year-old scholarship program named TV show host Fred Rogers. They each receive a $10,000 scholarship. Their media projects and studies focus on such issues as children's literacy and health. More
 
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In-Flight Surveillance Could Foil Terrorists in the Sky
ABC News, May 31 -- CCTV cameras are bringing more and more public places under surveillance – and passenger aircraft could be next. A prototype European system uses multiple cameras and "Big Brother" software to try and automatically detect terrorists or other dangers caused by passengers. (Quotes UCSD researcher Mohan Trivedi) More

China’s Silver Lining
Atlantic Monthly, June 2008 -- In coal-and-cement towns in China, people and buildings are colored black by the coal dust swirling around them, and coated gray and white by the cement dust that leaks from the kilns and clinker coolers and pours from the exhaust stacks. (Mentions research by UCSD scientist Richard Carson) More

From the Ruins, Chinese Begin to Rebuild Lives
USA Today, June 2 -- China is already trying to look ahead after the magnitude-7.9 earthquake. Reconstruction has started, even as the communist government attempts to feed and shelter about 5 million people left homeless by the massive disaster. (Quotes UCSD political scientist Susan Shirk) More

The Reflection Reflex
The Wall Street Journal, May 31 -- The history of science is often narrated as a series of crisp, dramatic advances, but the view from the inside is very different. Actual scientific research is closer to trench warfare than Blitzkrieg triumph; progress is usually slow and incremental, and the results are often muddy, only hardening into firm advances after years of further work. (Mentions V.S. Ramachandran, a neuroscientist at UCSD) More

Norms and Deviations: Who’s to Say?
The New York Times, June 1 -- A letter published in the May 26 issue of Time magazine protests the inclusion, in Time’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people, of two researchers allied with the organization Cure Autism Now (a name that speaks for itself). (Quotes UCSD professor Tom Humphries) More

Oil-Price Supernova Spurs Search for Alternatives
Reuters, June 2 -- A surge in the price of crude is threatening global growth for the first time in decades and spurring a desperate surge in interest in energy alternatives and new technology to keep conventional oil flowing. (Quotes UCSD economist James Hamilton) More

Coming to an Airport Near You? Spray-on Security
Scientific American, May 30 -- Researchers at UCSD have designed a new spray-on explosive detector sensitive enough to detect even miniscule amounts of nitrogen-containing explosives, according to a report this week in Royal Society of Chemistry's Journal of Materials Chemistry. More

What Does It Mean to Be Human?
Wired News, June 1 -- What does it mean to be human? And can science illuminate the answers? A star-studded panel of scientists, including UCSD philosophy professor Patricia Churchland, gathered to discuss those heady themes last night at the World Science Festival in New York City. More

Rep. Laura Richardson's Foreclosure Continues a Pattern of Financial Straits
Los Angeles Times, May 31 -- When news surfaced that Rep. Laura Richardson had lost her home through foreclosure, the Long Beach Democrat blamed the problem on her year-long rocket-ship rise from city councilwoman to Assembly member to congresswoman and the crumbling real estate market. (Quotes UCSD political scientist Gary Jacobson) More

Utah's Water Forecast: Thirsty Times are A-Brewin'
Salt Lake Tribune, May 31 -- Like many of their Western neighbors, Utahns have been promised imaginary water. There is no way all the "paper rights" on file with the state can be converted to "wet water." There is not even a requirement to tell the state when water rights sell or transfer, a routine matter with other properties, such as homes or cars. (Mentions research by scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD) More

Crossing Cultural Seas
San Diego Union-Tribune, Opinion, June 1 -- If you think teaching in U.S. public schools is challenging, imagine this: lecturing an audience of Navy sailors and navigators on an aircraft carrier – in a briefing room reverberating with the disruptive blasts from the busy flight deck above. Add to the racket of jet engines your audience's exhaustion from long deployments and 12-hour workdays. (Written by Richard Feinberg teaches international relations at UCSD) More

Artistic Changes
San Diego Union-Tribune,
June 1 – Andrea Singer, an art instructor at San Diego City College and UCSD's Sixth College, has long taught her students that art is not just for art's sake. Rather, it can be created for the purpose of social change. More

Proposed Transit-Fare Hikes Irk Commuters, Panelists
San Diego Union-Tribune, May 31 – There was plenty of frustration to go around during a San Diego Association of Governments hearing on bus and train fare increases yesterday. (Mentions UCSD) More

Basses Loaded
San Diego Union-Tribune, June 1 – Three bassists are walking down the street. No, really. The three – UCSD professor Mark Dresser, and Kristin Korb and Rob Thorsen – will perform tonight at the all-ages Dizzy's downtown. More

Dr. Surprise
North County Times, June 1 -- If it wasn't for Coach Darcy Ahner's persistence, UCSD student Whitney Johnson wouldn't have finished her career as the 2008 NCAA Division II National Field Athlete of the Year, as voted by the USA Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. The reason Johnson nearly passed on a college athletic career is her ambition to become an emergency-room surgeon. At first, she feared there wasn't enough time in the day for med school studies and sports. More

Scripps Receives $20 Million to Speed the Pace of Research
San Diego Business Journal, June 1 -- A highly competitive National Institutes of Health grant designed to accelerate the pace of moving basic science from the laboratory to the patient will give the Scripps Translational Science Institute access to $20 million over five years. Other participants of the translational institute include J. Craig Venter Institute and UCSD’s San Diego Supercomputer Center. More