A Sampling of Clips for
May 17th, 2007
* UCSD faculty and staff may obtain a copy of an article by e-mailing the University Communications Office
Pursuing Power -- and Trying to Keep It
The Wall Street Journal, May 17 -- In "China: Fragile Superpower" Susan Shirk, director of UCSD's Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, and a professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, argues that China's Communist leaders are a lot more insecure than they let on. Ms. Shirk, a former deputy assistant secretary of state (1997-2000) responsible for U.S. relations with China, says that Chinese leaders are haunted by a sense of impending doom. And with good reason: The wounds of Tiananmen Square have never fully healed. More
Asian Dust Plumes Bonding with U.S. Storms
MSNBC, May 16 -- Jeff Stith of the National Center for Atmospheric Research communicated with reporters via Web chat from a research jet flying 40,000 feet above the ocean as part of a mission to track dust and pollution particles blown from Asia to the United States. Stith and his ground-based colleague, V. Ramanathan of UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, aimed to study the interaction between the pollution and dust with high-altitude clouds bearing ice crystals. More
Similar story in
Christian Science Monitor
Taser Jolt Won't Hurt
Hearts of Healthy People
Reuters, May 17 -- A shock from a Taser doesn't have any short-term adverse effects on healthy people, once its immobilizing effects wear off, a new study shows. "It's a limited study. It's a piece of the puzzle," said Dr. Gary Vilke of the UCSD Medical Center, the study's lead author. More
Sistani's Back
Foreign Policy, May 16 -- I asked Babak Rahimi, a UCSD scholar and expert on Iraqi Shiite politics formerly with the United States Institute of Peace, to comment on this week's news that Iraq's powerful Shiite party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, had dropped the world "revolution" from its name and apparently ditched Iran's Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei in favor of Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. More
Cal Profs Lag on Required Ethics Course
San Jose Mercury News, May 17 -- All 160,000 University of California employees were told last year to complete the online course after the institution was stung by newspaper accounts of a series of administrative missteps. Most managers, deans and other administrators statewide completed the training by January. (Quotes Henry Powell, a UCSD neuroscience professor who leads the campus Academic Senate)
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Stem Cell Institute Bonds Can Be Issued
San Diego Union-Tribune, May 17 -- The state Supreme Court yesterday delivered a final, fatal blow to the legal challenges that have prevented California from issuing bonds to fund stem cell research since 2005. The state's high court declined to review a lower court ruling that upheld the constitutionality of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, created when 59 percent of voters approved a $3 billion ballot measure in November 2004. (Quotes Larry Goldstein, an embryonic stem cell researcher at UCSD)
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Preserving our Digital Heritage
San Diego Union-Tribune, Opinion, May 17 -- An estimated 44 percent of Web sites that existed in 1998 vanished without a trace within just one year. The average life span of a Web site is only 44 to 75 days. The gadgets that inform our lives – cell phones, computers, iPods, DVDs, memory cards – are filled with digital content. Yet the lifetime of these media is discouragingly short. (Co-authored by Francine Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UCSD. She holds the High Performance Computing Endowed Chair at UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering) More
The No. 1 Salesman for Sanity
San Diego Union-Tribune, May 17 – Al Gore is coming to town next week to tie up some loose ends on global warming. The occasion will mark a happy linkage of science and politics. UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a center of learning with unchallenged claim to leadership in exposing a threat to all humankind, honors a man who – more than any other – has made the scientists' cause winnable. More
Exhibit Tests You on Climate Change
San Diego Union-Tribune, May 17 -- 'Challenge” is the key word in a new global warming display opening Saturday at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Birch Aquarium. Scripps scientists are challenging the public – and themselves.
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Similar story in
La Jolla Light