SoCal Minds

All-e, all-e outs in free-o: the cyber version

Hmm, is it just because this week was the 40th anniversary of the start of the Internet? Or is it because some kind of nasty virus has swamped the laptop, forcing this post to be written on the bulky and more uncomfortable desktop? At any rate, this will be a day of light posting, heading into the weekend. A great one to all...

For engineers, a different kind of Halloween fling

From Cal State Fullerton

Look, they're engineers and whatever is their idea of fun, well, so be it. On Saturday morning, the technical minded types will take over an area near the Titan Stadium and proceed to fling dozens of gourds via an array of contraptions as part of the annual, Halloween Pumpkin Launch, in hopes of winning the Pumpkin Trophy and prizes. There's other silliness planned, suitable for kids and families.

A Saturday morning of seasonal silliness for engineers with pumpkins

Seeing Native Americans' view of desert lands

From UCR

It may be dirt, rocks and soil to lots of people but to the Native Americans who live there, the desert has cultural, historic and spiritual significance -- all of which will be discussed at a conference starting this [fri] evening in Palm Springs. The free, public program at UCR's Palm Desert Graduate Center will include panels on the desert and a sense of place, its past, as well as efforts to share and conserve it.

Cultural, historic and spiritual significance of land to be topic at weekend conference

$100 million in state stem cell grants in SoCal

From UCLA, USC, UCSB

California officials took another step to carry out the will of the state's residents by doling out millions of dollars more to stem cell researchers to translate theoretical developments as swiftly as possible into real treatments for a range of diseases. In Westwood, the Bruins received $49.2 million in stem cell study grants, with two in the $19.9 million range for work on HIV infection and on cancer stem cells linked to brain, ovarian and colorectal cancers; another $9 million plus will go for work on sickle cell disease. Bruin researchers will split a $20 million grant with Stanford for research on strokes and stem cells. In Exhibition Park, Trojan scientists received a $16 million stem cell grant for research on macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss and blindness among the elderly; UCSB will receive an additional $2.5 million stem cell grant to aid in the macular degeneration research. Meantime, the City of Hope received $32.5 million in stem cell grants for research in targeting and killing tumors and for studies on HIV-AIDS, with USC. Cedars-Sinai received a $5 million stem cell grant for research on repairing damaged heart tissue. The Southern California grants were part of $250 million handed out by the state under Prop. 71, which created the state stem cell agency and empowered it to give out $3 billion for research.

Click here to see full list of state grants, including $20 million to Bruins, Cardinal

The NYT report on stem cell grants

$49.2 million to Bruins for research on HIV, cancer stem cells, sickle cell disease

$16 million to Trojans for stem cell research on macular degeneration

$32.5 million to City of Hope for stem cell research on tumors, HIV-AIDS 

Rotten driver? Your genes may share some blame

From UCI

All those crazy, mad motorists on Southern California's roads freeways may have a new excuse for their god-awful driving: It's in their genes. Sort of. Researchers say they have found that a third or Americans have a gene variant that caused some 30 test subjects to fare 20% worse than others without it on a driving test, which was repeated a few days later with the same results. The gene variant limits the availability of a protein called Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor, which keeps brain cells healthy and assists in communications among brain cells, thus supporting memory. Neuroscientists were investigating the factor's role in stroke patients, who, if they have the gene variant, recover less well than do those without it. By the way, there is not a commercially available test for the gene variant.

Gene variant found to affect key brain protein with links to driving performance

What's crucial for small business in health reform?

From Cal State Fullerton

With all the red-hot debate going on in Washington about what Americans want from Congress and the Obama Administration on health care and health insurance reform, a researcher in Southern California has broken that topic down from a small business point of view and has some answers about what's crucial to hundreds of folks he has surveyed while studying the topic. He created a hot list of 13 issues and services; he interviewed more than 360 small business employers (those with 100 or fewer workers) and talked with a separate pool of 500 employees of small businesses. For small business employers what mattered most? Their maximum out-of-pocket costs and the company's annual health care cost deduction -- in other words, what does the coverage cost? For employees at small businesses, two things topped their concerns list: the cost of their monthly premiums and the cost of their co-payments.

Small businesses focused on cost of providing health coverage to employees

Recall this -- a new website on aging, cognition

From USC

Quick, add the bookmark before that failing memory causes forgetfulness: there's a new website with information on age-related cognitive disorders -- that is older folks' problems with memory, understanding and other mental functions. The website is aimed at patients and families, health care professionals and academic researchers. It tackles, in particular, Alzheimer's disease as well as other age-related afflictions of memory and thinking.

Memory center launches new information web site

Click here for new site of Memory, Aging, Alzheimer's centers

In Riverside, founding dean picked for med school

From UCR

With the hopes of admitting its first class of medical students in 2012, the university took another step toward its goal of creating its own medical school by hiring its founding dean. He's Dr. G. Richard Olds and he now is the chair of medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. An internationally recognized authority on tropical diseases, he will take up his new duties, which include the title of vice chancellor of health affairs, in February, 2010. He'll be paid at least $525,000, less the haircut that all UC folks are taking as part of a system-wide furlough-salary reduction plan. He can earn $100,000 more by meeting goals for getting the new school up and running. Plus, he's getting a travel and moving expenses, as well as temporary housing. Further, he'll get a relocation allowance of 25% of his salary, as well as participation in UC's home loan program. His compensation will be covered initially, the university says, by private money raised to create the medical school. That institution will build on the 35-year-old biomedical sciences program, under which students complete the first two years of medical school instruction in Riverside before transferring to Westwood to earn their medical degrees at UCLA. The new medical school in Riverside would be the first in the UC system in four decades.

Tropical diseases authority named founding dean of planned Inland Empire med school

Stem cells: a new way to study fatal brain disease

From UCI

Huntington's, a debilitating and deadly disease that afflicts 30,000 Americans, is the target of new stem cell research aimed at helping scientists better understand how a DNA mutation that causes this malady makes brain cells sicken and die. With the stem cells, they can examine neurons with the mutation, leading to treatments and more knowledge about what genetic factors lead to the onset of the disease earlier in some patients than in others. Most of those with Huntington's show symptoms in midlife and they decline painfully and slowly. Medicine can do little for them now. Further, children whose parents are afflicted live with the knowledge that they have a 50% chance of suffering the disease themselves.

Hope in research to treat Huntington's, a debilitating, deadly affliction

High-paid nonprofit execs, full State of State coverage, appointments at think tank ...

SoCal Minds hears via email:

After reading a post about a UCLA report on how nonprofits are faring in the current economic crisis, the folks at the Center for Public Accountability pointed out their web publication of their research on a half-dozen publicly funded nonprofits where the top exec gets paid more than $300,000 annually. The center is a project of the 80,000 city, county and other employees who are members of the Service Employees International Union 721.

Top execs at 6 publicly funded nonprofits paid more than $300,000, group says 

The folks at the Milken Institute kindly point out that they now have full coverage of their Oct. 20 State of the State Conference available online with videos of all sessions, panel summaries and photos. That program brought a bevy of business leaders, politicians, policy-makers and experts together to consider this year's theme, which is the state's road to recovery.

Click here to see full coverage of Milken Institute's 'State of the State' conference

At RAND, two folks get new gigs, the organization reports: economist James Dertouzos has been appointed director of the Santa Monica think tank's Institute for Civil Justice, which aims to make the nation's civil justice system more equitable and efficient; and Michael Greenberg, ascends from his associate spot to become the head of the Center for Corporate Ethics and Governance, a program within the civil justice institute.

Economist tapped to head RAND Institute for Civil Justice