A Sampling of Clips for October 20^th, 2009

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

Interview with Psychologist Gail Heyman on Why parents Lie and How Much
CNN, Oct. 19 -- Psychologist Gail Heyman of UCSD recently spoke to CNN about her researcher on why parents lie and how much. Video here. Transcript here.

How Tongues Taste the Carbonation in a Fizzy Beverage
The New York Times, Oct. 19 -- Aside from the natural and artificial flavors and sweeteners, soda and other fizzy beverages have a distinct carbonated taste. It is difficult to describe, but you know it is there when tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide go crazy all over your tongue. Scientists once thought that all the bubble popping, in fact, is what accounted for the tingly taste of carbonation. But that idea was disproved by studies in which carbonated beverages consumed in a pressurized environment, in which no bubbles formed, produced the same taste. So the mystery of carbonation remained, until now. In a paper in Science, researchers report that carbonation is tasted on the tongue by the same receptors that detect sourness. Jayaram Chandrashekar of UCSD, Charles S. Zuker, formerly of UCSD now at Columbia, and colleagues used mice in their studies, implanting electrodes in a nerve leading from taste receptor cells in the tongue. More

Melodies Disguised in Whirlwinds of Dissonance and Rhythmic Complexity
The New York Times, Oct. 18 -- Suddenly, it seems, New York has gone Xenakis-mad. For decades, the rhythmically complex, harmonically acerbic works of this Greek-French composer, who died in 2001, turned up only sporadically on new-music programs. You could attend concerts regularly for years without running into his music at all. But now Xenakis programs are a hot ticket. The Xenakis program that opened this season’s Composer Portraits series at the Miller Theater on Saturday evening, for example, drew a full house. The six works that the percussionist and conductor UCSD’s Steven Schick and the International Contemporary Ensemble played on Saturday were written from 1975 to 1997 and offer a glimpse of Xenakis’s late period, when the vast, dense sonorities of his earlier orchestral scores often gave way to greater refinement and focus. More

Energy Firms Find No Unity on Climate Bill
The New York Times, Oct. 18 -- As the Senate prepares to tackle global warming, the nation’s energy producers, once united, are battling one another over policy decisions worth hundreds of billions of dollars in coming decades. Producers of natural gas are battling their erstwhile allies, the oil companies. Electrical utilities are fighting among themselves over the use of coal versus wind power or other renewable energy. Coal companies are battling natural gas firms over which should be used to produce electricity. And the renewable power industry is elbowing for advantage against all of them. (Quotes David G. Victor, an energy expert at UCSD) More

Drilling 130,000 Years of Ice in Greenland
may Unlock Secrets of Climate History
Yahoo India, Oct. 20 -- An international group of scientists is all set to drill down through 130,000 years of accumulated ice in Greenland to unlock the secrets of climate history from what geologists call the Eemian period. That was the last time the average global temperature was significantly warmer than it is today, and tiny bubbles trapped in the ice preserve key planetary conditions from that time period. Scientists from 14 nations would be participating in the North Greenland Eemian Ice drilling project, or NEEM. (Quotes Jeff Severinghaus of UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography) More

Gas Prices Skyrocket as Refiners Cut Back
Herald Tribune, Oct. 20 -- Despite persistently low demand, prices for gasoline have spiked over the past week along with crude oil, threatening one of the very few points of relief for the recession-stricken U.S. consumer: Cheap gas. Prices have risen for six straight days and the national price is now well above $2.50 per gallon for the first time in weeks. (Mentions James Hamilton, an economist at UCSD) More

Similar story in ABC 7

UCSD Students Question Proposed Fee
San Diego Union-Tribune, Oct. 20 -- Student leaders at UCSD are concerned about a proposed fee that is being framed as eco-friendly but would also pave the way for a parking garage. Campus officials want to place a referendum before students — perhaps by spring — asking them to approve a fee to pay for transit services on campus, including the school's shuttle bus system. The fee would start at $20 per quarter. More

UCSD Celebrates Chamber
Music Season in New Hall
San Diego Business Journal, Oct. 20 -- The music department at UCSD opened its chamber music second season on Oct. 5 in the new Conrad Prebys Concert Hall. The series is made possible by a contribution of $260,000 from the Sam B. Ersan Chamber Music Fund, which helps support programs at the department. Ersan, founder and CEO of Spectrum Detention Services, is a supporter of classical music in San Diego. More

Art: Five 'Voices' in a Song of Diversity
Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 18 -- 'New American Voices" is the kind of exhibition we have come to expect from the Fabric Workshop and Museum, in that it features a relatively few large, sometimes complex, works. Three of the five featured artists represent minorities - two are American Indian and one is Latino - and consequently offer a less-familiar cultural bias. Geography also enhances diversity. The three minority artists - Tommy Joseph, UCSD visual arts professor Rubén Ortiz-Torres, and Marie Watt - live on the West Coast. Bill Smith lives in a suburb of St. Louis, while Robert Chambers comes from Miami. So with just five artists, the exhibition embodies a broad range of viewpoints and media. More

MCASD Zeroes in on ‘Here’ (aka San Diego)
San Diego Union-Tribune, Oct. 18 -- The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego has announced that it will do its largest exhibition of local artists in a quarter-century. The show, “Here Not There,” will be on view from June 6 through Sept. 9, 2010, in La Jolla. (Mentions UCSD visual arts professor Ernest Silva) More

A Conversation with
Composer Roger Reynolds
La Jolla Light, Oct. 14 -- Roger Reynolds: I was born and raised in what used to be called "The Motor City," Detroit, literally "discovering" music only when I was 14. I immediately began studying piano, but later succumbed to advice directing me toward engineering studies at the University of Michigan. In 1969, when I took up a position at the then fledgling department of music at UCSD. More

Pat Launer on San Diego Theater:
‘Desire,’ ‘Woolf’ Critic Covers "Long Story Short," "Fires in Heaven" and More
San Diego News Network, Oct. 14 -- “Fires in Heaven,” a world premiere by local scholar/dramatist Marianne McDonald, professor at UCSD’s department of theatre and dance, resident playwright at The Theatre, Inc. More

* Subscribe with In the News and receive our clips automatically