A Sampling of Clips for 
July 14, 2006

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

Shooting the Moon
San Diego Union-Tribune, July 13 - On July 21, 1969,
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin propped an array of reflectors in the lunar soil – one of several science experiments they deployed a day after becoming the first humans to set foot on the moon. Today, 37 years later, scientists at UCSD are firing lasers at the same reflectors. Equipped with 21st-century technology and new techniques, they plan to measure the distance between the Earth and moon down to an astounding 1 millimeter – the width of a paper clip. More

Refuting Denialists: An Inconvenient Truth
San Diego Union-Tribune, July 12 - Al Gore's film and book, “An Inconvenient Truth,” do fine jobs of summarizing the science behind climate change. For San Diegans, it's a fascinating bit of history that Gore first learned about this issue as a Harvard student in the 1960s. His teacher was our own Roger Revelle. Before moving to Harvard, Revelle had been director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a founder of UCSD. More

Drug Helps Prevent Breast Cancer—
But Has Tradeoffs
Advocate.com, July 14 - A trial of Eli Lilly’s osteoporosis drug Evista found that patients given the treatment had a reduced incidence of bone fractures and breast cancer but were more likely to suffer fatal strokes and blood clots. But after giving either the drug or a placebo to the women for an average of 5.5 years, the research team led by Elizabeth Barrett-Connor of UCSD found that the medicine had no effect on the incidence of heart attacks, heart failure, or death from heart-related causes. Results of the trial appear in this week's New England Journal of Medicine. More