A Sampling of Clips for October 12^th, 2009

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

Five Teachers at Head of Class in San Diego
San Diego Union-Tribune, Oct. 11 – Five teachers, including one whose classroom is inside Juvenile Hall and another who works at a school on a university campus, were selected Saturday night as the county's teachers of the year. They were given the awards at a high-energy ceremony at the Balboa Theater downtown. At the Preuss School, which educates low-income students from around the county to prepare them for college, Kelly Kovacic, who teaches 11th- and 12th-grade social studies, said she believes teachers have to build “a safe learning environment that allows the student to achieve his or her full academic potential.” More

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Community Rallies to Support Rady
Financial Times (UK), Oct. 12 – As the newest business school in the University of California system, the Rady School of Management at UCSD has good reason to fear the higher education funding cuts sweeping the state.  .At only six years old, Rady has not had time to build an endowment of comparable size to its more mature peers within the UC system. The Haas endowment is worth about $180m and UCLA Anderson's is $88m. While Rady has raised more than $100m from private donors, most has gone into funding capital and operational needs rather than towards its endowment. More 

Wayne's World: When Ballet Met Science:
Britain's Foremost Choreographer Wayne McGregor
Teams Up with US Scientists to Discover the Theory of Creativity
Guardian UK, Oct. 11 -- Of all the creative processes, this is the one I don't get. I can understand, if not necessarily replicate, the way ideas get written down in narrative or poetic form: can fathom with little trouble and much enjoyment the way melody sometimes so successfully. But this: representation through dance. The results are astounding, outstanding, often shocking, often beautiful, sometimes both: but, as for the way they "represent" something: nope. Not a clue. Not a doozie. Crucially, I'm not the only one trying to understand. Around me, in a large, dark hall at the UCSD, a team of scientists is doing the same. Earlier this year, in an unprecedented series of intensive sessions, the cognitive science department of UCSD filmed, recorded, interviewed and analyzed the early creative choreography of dancers from Wayne McGregor's Random Dance group. More

Maurice Sendak Rewrote the Rules with 'Wild Things'
Los Angeles Times, Oct. 11 – An angry boy, talking monsters and a six-page, wordless wild rumpus: When Maurice Sendak sat down to write what would become "Where the Wild Things Are," he didn't quite know what he was getting into. "I didn't have a social conscience that I was doing anything different," Sendak, 81, says from his Connecticut home. Mostly, the Brooklyn-born illustrator, then in his early 30s, was excited to tackle his first full picture book. "It was all my own and in full color. It's hard to imagine now, with everyone doing them. But emancipating children was far from my mind." (Quotes Seth Lerer, dean of Arts and Humanities at UCSD and author of the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning "Children's Literature: A Readers' History From Aesop to Harry Potter”) More

Tresnjak: ‘Proud of Every Single Moment’ at Globe
San Diego Union-Tribune, Oct. 11 -- He can say it now: Running the Old Globe’s Summer Shakespeare Festival drove UCSD theatre professor Darko Tresnjak up the wall. Actually, several walls. It turns out that Tresnjak and other Globe diehards were regulars at climbing gyms around the county during the three-month run of the annual festival, which concluded two weeks ago. It was a way of relieving stress and staying focused over the long stretch of the fest, whose three plays were staged in grueling nightly rotation. “It’s mental; you have to decide which trail you’re going to take,” said Tresnjak of the climbing jaunts. “And then it’s social, because you can’t do it on your own.” More

Consumer Spending at 71 Percent of GDP as Other Sectors Shrink
ABC News, Oct. 11 -- One year after a U.S. economy said to be overly dependent upon consumer spending toppled into crisis, consumption now makes up an even larger share of national output. Personal spending on cars, clothes, food and other items accounts for 71% of gross domestic product, according to the latest Bureau of Economic Analysis data. That's slightly above the level one year ago and well above the long-term average around 65%. "It's somewhat ironic: We keep referring to the less prominent role for consumer spending in this economy. Yet, in the second quarter '09, it rose to a post-World War II record high," says John Lonski, Moody's chief economist. (Quotes James Hamilton professor of economics at UCSD) More

Shark Fin Ban Ends Cruel Slaughter
Guardian UK, Oct. 11 -- A ban on shark finning in UK waters is to be introduced by the government, ministers will announce this week. The practice, which involves slicing fins from sharks at sea and dumping their bodies overboard – often while still alive – has been heavily criticized by campaigners and blamed for pushing many shark species to the brink of extinction. Shark finning was banned by the EU in 2003 but loopholes in the legislation have allowed fishing boats in UK waters to continue finning. It is estimated that hundreds of tonnes of shark fin have been landed since the European "ban" was introduced. (Quotes Julia Baum of UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography) More

Cast of Characters: On the Road to Copenhagen
Huffington Post, Oct. 10 -- This year's Governors Climate Summit was a diverse collection of passionate leaders -- a convergence of private, public and NGOs who hope for a shared future -- who are on the road to Copenhagen -- to collaborate at a subnational level at creating policy and partnerships between activists, tribal leaders, city mayors, state governors, premieres, national agencies, non-governmental organizations and CEO's. These are just of few of the characters on the global stage whom I met - and who shared their stories of their paths on the road to Copenhagen. (Quotes Tony Haymet director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography who attended the Governors Global Climate Summit) More

Events Will Help People of All Ages to Figure Out Mathematics
Irish Times, Oct. 12 -- Do you know your odds of winning the lottery? Do you want to improve your chances? People will have an opportunity to learn how this week during Maths Week Ireland 2009. This annual all-Ireland event, now in its fourth year, helps people of all ages to grasp how an understanding of mathematics is useful for all of us. There are dozens of free public events across the country during the week which runs until Saturday, October 17th. There are shows for primary and secondary students but also for adults including a pub event in Dublin. The week got under way over the weekend with Maths in the Street, which saw volunteer presenters entertaining passersby in Grafton Street, Dublin. The week is timed to coincide with the annual Hamilton Day celebrations on October 16th. William Rowan Hamilton was Irelands most famous mathematician and on that day in 1843 he created quaternions, a new form of algebra. The Royal Irish Academy and The Irish Times organize an annual mathematics lecture on that day and this year the invited speaker is leading US-based mathematician Professor Efim Zelmanov of UCSD. More

Thousands Log Opinion on Obama's Peace Prize
San Diego Union-Tribune, Oct. 9 -- Barack Obama's selection as this year's recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize just nine months into his presidency stunned people in San Diego County and across the globe Friday. The news dominated conversations from statehouses to coffee shops, with prime ministers and factory workers surmising whether the honor would enhance the chief executive's influence or allow competing interests to exert more pressure on him. (Quotes Tim Barnett, a longtime researcher at UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography) More

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