A Sampling of Clips for November 3^rd, 2009

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

How to Keep Planes From Colliding With Lasers
Wired, Nov. 3 -- Beaming high-powered lasers into the sky allows scientists to study changing weather patterns, pollution in the Earth’s atmosphere and even gravity on the Moon. But if one of those helpful lasers happens to cross paths with an airplane, it can temporarily blind or distract the pilot and potentially cause a crash. The current method to avoid plane-laser collisions is decidedly low-tech: Federal Aviation Administration regulations require anyone who’s sending a laser up into the atmosphere to employ multiple human observers, called "spotters," to watch for planes flying within 25 degrees of the laser beam. Now, researchers have created a radio-tracking device that can perform the same task as a pair of eyes, without the potential for human error. "The two-spotter system is a problem because spotters can forget to set their alarm clocks, they can get sick, they can get confused about the schedule, and then suddenly you don’t have two spotters anymore and you can’t operate your program," said physicist Tom Murphy of UCSD who is co-leading the radio detection project. More

Cutting Back on Diabetes
Irish Times, Nov. 3 -- Weight-loss surgery has the side effect of improving type 2 diabetes. Now doctors are discovering why. It was discovered by accident more than a decade ago that weight-loss surgery often led to a dramatic improvement in the control of type 2 diabetes, often before patients left the hospital. Today, evidence of the connection is so solid that some doctors say surgery should be considered as a treatment for diabetes, regardless of a person’s weight. "We thought diabetes was an incurable, progressive disease," says Dr Walter J Pories, a professor of surgery at East Carolina University and a leading researcher on weight-loss surgery. "It . . . is a major cause of amputations, renal failure and blindness. This operation takes about an hour, and two days in hospital, and these people go off their diabetes medication. It’s unbelievable." (Quotes Dr Santiago Horgan, director of the Center for the Treatment of Obesity at UCSD. More

Breezy Does It Again
North County Times, Nov. 2 -- Don't let the slight frame and sunny, surfer girl disposition fool you. Bre Schofield is a linebacker in a singlet and shorts. "I don't make options," said Schofield, a redshirt sophomore and the No. 1 runner on the girls cross country team at UCSD. "I make a choice and I commit to it. And if it's a challenge, then it's even more of a commitment to me." That philosophy was put to the supreme test when Schofield, a graduate of Carlsbad High, prepared to set off in the NCAA Division II cross country championships in Slippery Rock, Pa., last November. More

Scripps Center Scientist Honored for Ocean Studies
San Diego Union-Tribune, Nov. 3 -- Professor Jeremy Jackson at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla has won the Paleontological Society Medal, the highest honor given to paleontologists. Jackson, a scientist who studies coral reefs, has used his knowledge of historical marine ecology to increase understanding of the complex range of ills that oceans face today. He directs the Scripps Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at UCSD." Jeremy Jackson has - by his own publications and by his facilitation on a very large scale of other paleontologists' work - made an enormous contribution to paleontological research," said society's medal citation. The international organization was founded in 1908. More

Questions Over Special Tax Imperil Basic Neighborhood Services
Voice of San Diego, Oct. 28 -- For more than two years, maintenance services like sidewalk sweeping, tree trimming, and graffiti removal in Golden Hill have been funded by special taxes collected from property owners within the neighborhood's maintenance assessment district. A tentative ruling from a San Diego County Superior Court judge in a lawsuit challenging how the district spends those special taxes could put a stop to that. The final ruling, expected as early as this week, has district administrators on edge as they await the decision and what it will mean for the neighborhood's ability to fund day-to-day maintenance services that the city, facing a severe and widening budget deficit, has demonstrated itself unable to provide. (Quotes Vladimir Kogan, a UCSD doctoral student with an expertise in special assessment financing) More

Whitworth Art Gallery Announces Exhibition of Artist's Wallpapers
Art Daily, Nov. 3 -- The Whitworth Art Gallery will present the first ever major UK exhibition of artists’ wallpapers. Including work by Damien Hirst, Thomas Demand, UCSD visual arts professor Anya Gallaccio, David Shrigley, Michael Craig-Martin, Angus Fairhurst, Rosemarie Trockel, Martin Boyce, Robert Gober, Francesco Simeti, Niki de St. Phalle and Abigail Lane, this is a seminal show of rare works, allowing theviewer to re-evaluate the role of wallpaper in contemporary art. The Walls Are Talking, curated by Christine Woods and Gill Saunders, features more than 30 international artists and traces the development of their interest in wallpaper, demonstrating how they have played on wallpaper’s domestic and decorative associations to throw into sharp relief their shocking or subversive messages, appropriation of historic motifs, and political or cultural observations. More

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