SoCal Minds

Too Many White, Male Video Game Characters?

From USC

They started with a blank screen and the chance to create whole new worlds. But video game makers' characters, as seen in the top 150 games in a year across nine platforms and weighted by their popularity, end up no better than television in depicting the diversity of American society, researchers say. They say that white, adult males are over-represented; women, children, the elderly, Latinos and Native Americans are under-represented. Asians are over-represented, which may not be a surprise considering the big  roles taken in video games by Japanese developers and players, as well as the big influence of anime. African American characters appear in the games in the same proportion as their real life U.S. numbers. But their gaming presence puts them heavily in sports or stereotyped roles. Latinos and women are heavy gamers, despite their limited depiction as characters. Researchers say that seeing more characters like them would break down stereotypes, as well as encourage women, Latinos, blacks and Native Americans to consider becoming not only game developers but also more involved in science, technology, math and engineering. Blog commentators aren't buying the study.

For Minorities, an Exclusion in Video Game Characters

Click Here for Blog by an Author of Gamer Study and to See Comments

Glimmers of Hope for Global Fisheries

From UCSB

In five of 10 major ecosystems around the globe, efforts to curb over-fishing have produced some short-term pain but they're also showing longer term success and gain, researchers say after two years of study by an international team. The 19 co-authors, among the world's top experts on marine fisheries and ecosystems, found new hope for rebuilding some troubled fisheries. They saw positive signs that the rate of fishing had declined in several spots, allowing stocks to replenish; this was true in highly managed, wealthier regions in the U.S., Iceland and New Zealand but also in surprising developing world spots like Kenya, where restrictions on certain types of fishing gear have helped already. Investigators also are trying to see which steps are most beneficial to replenishing fisheries, though they caution that practices successful in one area can be transplanted.

Threatened Fisheries Showing Positive Signs

'Big Read' Salutes Poet Robinson Jeffers This Fall

From Occidental College

He was an ardent early environmentalist and a preeminent literary light of his day. He also was distinctly associated with a particular place -- the West Coast. Now Robinson Jeffers, a prominent pacifist, anti-imperialist and one of three poets ever to make the cover of Time magazine, will be remembered anew and honored this fall as part of the Big Read, a national program that aims to restore reading as a central part of American culture and to reinstill the power of literature to change lives. His alma mater has won support from a national humanities grant to put on programs about Jeffers with 20 local schools and organizations, including Friends of the LA River and the Historical Society of Southern California.

Photo: Robinson Jeffers in 1933 / Edward Weston, Oxy Jeffers Collection

Arts Programs to Honor Famed Poet and Oxy Alum

Click Here to Learn More About Robison Jeffers

Link Found in Student Spirituality, Social Justice

From Cal State Fullerton

College students may attend formal church services less but their senses of ethics and spirituality increase in their undergraduate years and that further has a positive effect on their notions of social justice, researchers say, based on their early analysis of data from a survey of more than 14,000 young people on 136 college and university campuses nationwide. They were questioned twice, as freshmen and as juniors. Their changing perceptions of ethics, spirituality and social justice are key not only for a school of social work but also for society as a whole, said the researchers. They're trying to understand how spirituality may affect students' perceptions of and relations to those with whom social workers most often deal; they want to know more about students' religious affiliations and how they affect those perceptions and relations. They have further analysis ahead of them before the publish and present their full work.

For Students, How Are Religion, Social Justice Linked?

Species' Swims Found to Churn Global Seas

From Caltech   

All the ocean's creatures great and especially small may have a larger than believed churning effect on the seas, helping in a big way to distribute heat, nutrients and gasses in the water, researchers say. They reexamined a theory posited by the grandson of famed evolution theorist Charles Darwin, an argument that water-borne species, especially the teeming microscopic critters like krill and copepods, drag flows of water with and around them when they swim about. With theoretical models, calculations and underwater observation, they believe, conservatively, that the creatures' motion creates as much as a trillion watts of energy -- which would be equal to the force of wind or tide. This work, by engineers, may prove key to revamping models of global water circulation; those models, in turn, play a vital role in scientists' views on global warming.

Big New Estimates on How Even Tiniest Creatures Help Churn World's Oceans

Is Cool Still OK to Say? Check the Slang Dictionary

From UCLA

It celebrates its 6th Edition and its 20th anniversary and there'll be tons of older folks quoting it, frequently and no doubt awkwardly. So to try to keep up with the way the young speak, there's now the latest, 160-page version of "UCLA Slang," which will prove a valuable, surprisingly serious lexicographic and educational tool. Students research and put together the dictionary of vernacular, listening to peers and learning along the way valuable lessons about linguistics and scholarly approaches to a constantly evolving tongue like English. Since there's nothing worse than someone old trying to be hip, save, perhaps for a writer giving away the pop in another's work, click on the link below to sample the newest entries in the dictionary.....

Here's Where There's the Fun Slang Terms...

 

On the Trail to Learn Why Nomads Pick a Nation

From Pepperdine

He cherished the distant hospitality, dined often on horse, became fluent in four languages and traversed some of the planet's most barren, vast and storied plains ,all to begin to understand why and how a legendary nomadic people call a place home. The Kazakhs long have roamed the steppes of Central Asia, famed horse people whose lives have been shaped by a harsh, forbidding geography. Recent events have impinged on their timeless existence, forcing them to figure whether they would spend most of their time in the post-Soviet nation of Kazakhstan, or, for the many who had moved away for four or five generations to Mongolia, whether to stay there. Some returned to their national homeland; others came back, then returned to Mongolia. What determined where the Kazakhs finally would land?

He Trekked, Tracked Kazakhs to Learn Which Nation They Would Pick

In Westwood, a Nix on Naughty 'Undie Run'

From UCLA

O ye conoisseurs of pulchritude and collegiate concupiscence, tis a sad day: The university says it won't allow the thrice yearly Undie Run, citing concerns about student safety, violent and criminal incidents and the unsavory presence of too many outsiders in a rite that's supposed to release youthful anxiety at exam time. Not to mention that security, cleanup, repair and other costs related to the event had risen. The next run would have occurred in December. In Westwood, the run is said to have started in 2002 and grew to the point where as many as 8,000 to 10,000 kids clad only in skivvies dashed about in fun. Still, the most recent June run, with a changed route and a smaller crowd, was marred by fights, many medical calls, vandalism and a robbery. Campuses nationwide host similar rituals.

Photo: Participants from a cool season Undie Run

'Undie Run' Gets Zipped; Officials Cite Safety Concerns

Schools Given Top Praise for Financial Aid

From Claremont McKenna College, Caltech and Pomona

With the costs of undergraduate study skyrocketing, it's good to hear that select institutions do a noteworthy job with financial aid and other key aspects of collegiate life. The Princeton Review says it surveyed 122,000 students and scrutinized 623 institutions for its annual guide to the best 371 colleges. The review singles out Claremont McKenna and Caltech for its 13-member financial aid honor roll, while praising Pomona as the tops for "best classroom experinece." Pomona also get praise for its financial aid.

Claremont McKenna Cited for Its Financial Aid

Caltech on 'Financial Aid Honor Roll'

Pomona Rates at Top for 'Classroom Experience'

In Hawaii, Scholars Begin to Weigh Bush Term

From Loyola Marymount

While former Vice President Dick Cheney has stepped forward in Washington to take up a vigorous public defense of the last administration, President George W. Bush has remained mostly on the sidelines in Texas, reportedly hard at work on a book on decision-making that may provide more insight into his two terms in the nation's top job. Another part of the battle over the Bush Administration's historic legacy is being waged in different spots -- in far locales such as the University of Hawaii. There the argument will not be over the birth certificate of native son Barack Obama but what academics think of his predecessor. "Evaluating the Bush Presidency," a three-day conference at UH-Hilo (where resides a noted presidential scholar), will be keynoted by Michael Genovese, Loyola leadership guru, political scientist and expert on the presidency. The final event program also shows professors from Chapman University(two) and Occidental College participating. The conference aims to examine the last administration's handling of war powers, terrorism, civil liberties, the nation's economy, environmental and foreign policy and media relations. Genovese has told an interviewer that scholars should not dismiss the Bush presidency out of hand because of its dismal public popularity at its end. Instead, he says it should be taken seriously, especially because it left the nation profoundly changed -- and its full impact is still being felt and measured.

SoCal Scholars Join Conference to Evaluate Bush Presidency 

UH Final Program for Bush Conference