SoCal Minds

Can dental sleuthing on 'meth mouth' help curb a drug epidemic?

From UCLA

With all the other havoc it wreaks on its users and society, one of the more discernible and disgusting aspects of methamphetamine addiction concerns how it corrodes its junkies' teeth and dental health. And while 'meth mouth' might not seem to be the most pressing medical or legal issue associated with the estimated $23.4 billion in damages linked to this nasty, dangerous street drug, researchers in Westwood have just received a $1.86 federal grant to investigate and study what it does to oral health. Why? Well, after years of a caregiver scrum as to who might be best positioned to detect who has tried meth, as an estimated 10 million Americans have, and who might be heavy users, as an estimated 1.4 million Americans are, authorities think that dentists could be first-finders and -responders in a novel way to try to curb this epidemic form of drug abuse.  

$1.86 million grant will let Bruins probe oral health, meth use, abuse

A global outlook, with powerful possibilities, video, water

From Harvey Mudd, USC & LMU

Besides exposing them to big-time academics, serious scholarship and abundant sunshine, schools across the region have gone deep on steeping their students in global ideas, issues and concerns. And what results for young folks and their profs can be nothing less than nifty as separate, recent instances show:

• In Claremont, sophomore Alice Conant has synthesized a whole lot of different ideas and practices and hit on what many say is a potentially electrifying idea: She and her mentor, Harvey Rubin, a professor of medicine and computer science at Penn, have taken note of the ubiquity of cell phones globally, but especially in the Third World and even in some desperately backwards parts of the planet. Well, for the cells to work, they need antennas scattered across the landscape, each such tower connected, of course, to modern, dependable power supplies. So why not, the student has asked with a chorus of scholarly 'hallelujahs' behind, tap some of that cell tower electrical power for other life-saving uses. Like? Powering a few refrigerators that then could store vaccines against deadly diseases that otherwise would ravage undeveloped areas. Or maybe a little shared wattage could drive pumps and wells so potable water supplies would be available. Proponents say this plan, which is undergoing some testing this summer in Philadelphia, could prove to be a huge boon to the 3 million people who die annually around the world after drinking bad water or the 2 million who succumb to vaccine-preventable diseases.

Could cell phone juice zap disease, provide fresh water to world's needy?

Click here for blog post on how tapping cell tower power could provide vaccines, water

• In Exposition Park, some media savvy alums hope to make 10-10-10 not just a mantra but a globally memorable moment. They have built up connections and a campaign across the planet to get volunteers to work together to shoot videos that capture human lives as they exist this fall, and, by sharing them online, to contribute to greater global understanding and cooperation. The one day on earth project, its Trojan film-making proponents say, recognizes that video has become a universal means of communication and a kind of literacy that can build communities.

Get ready to record videos to make 10-10-10 a memorable date

• In Westchester, a grateful mechanical engineering prof from a small village in Bangladesh learned about a problem in his homeland that shocked him into action. Seems thousands in his native country suddenly were seeing drastic changes in the pigmentation of their skin. And they were dying. In fact, he found out, tens of millions of poor, thirsty folks imperiled their health and lives with a simple act that he had come to take for granted after he moved to this country, earned his advanced degrees and joined the faculty: drinking water. Officials in Bangladesh in the 1970s, it turns out, had sought to get people to stop consuming surface supplies, sipping from disease-ridden sources such as ponds. So they dug wells in tubes, tapping underground aquifers, which, for a time, provided sanitary, seemingly safe water. Only problem was that the tube wells were contaminated with poisonous arsenic. And now the wells provide the chief supply to tens of millions. The prof has won grants, set up a pilot program to purify supplies, helped spread the word and he has helped directly those poisoned and needing medical aid.

Prof seeks to aid homeland with dire drinking supplies laced with arsenic

Battle Bears: a big i-Hit with paw tracks back to Valencia

 From CalArts

They're kinda adorable, hugable and disarming, what with their pastel colors and warm and fuzzy lines. But for gamers captivated by the capacities of the array of Apple i-Technology (iPhones, iPads, iTunes) and the company's apps, well, those cute little bears represent something else: a booming franchise. That's because their sweet appearance aside, these are Battle Bears and they are part of what now are three, raucous, shoot 'em up, downloadable games. They are a pastime that preoccupies Apple fanatics sufficiently that various elements of the Battle Bears have exceeded 2 million Apple downloads and have put an experimental animation alum from Valencia in the gaming fast track. He's Benjamin Vu, (shown at right and above) who with his brother, Hua, has formed SkyVu Pictures, with operations in, wait, wait, Omaha, Singapore and Vietnam. Brother Ben credits his Southern California time with letting him work with Henry Selick on 'Moongirl,' as well as the Oscar-winning 'Coraline,' plus, he says, he wrote 'Battle Bears,' a sci-fi adventure that is now in development. 

Hit game on Apple technology traces a track through time in experimental animation study

Click here for more information on 'Battle Bears'

What do Americans want from great outdoors in 21st Century?

From Oxy

He's a guy who's better known for his fast feet roaming up and down an indoor basketball court or for his sharp maneuvering through Washington's corridors of power. But President Obama's alma mater has taken up his challenge to let the public give him and his administration an earful about what Americans want to see accomplished in the 21st Century in the areas of conservation, recreation and the Great Outdoors. Thursday is the deadline to sign up for a scheduled July 8 forum in which administration officials will listen and take in ideas on these topics from such varied interested parties potentially as tribal leaders, farmers, ranchers, sportsmen, foresters, business people, educators and representatives of parks, recreation and conservation groups, as well as state and local governments. Similar sessions will be put on in venues across the country, with the president saying they will help set the outdoors, conservation and recreation agenda through the century. 

RSVP deadline nears for forum to tell Obama administration views on conservation, recreation

Click here to learn more about 'America's Great Outdoors Initiative'

Teaching hospitals urged to communicate more on last choices

From RAND & UCLA

Because desperately ill patients often don't get a choice about where they will spend their last days, it's good to know that, according to researchers in Santa Monica, teaching hospitals provide high-quality medical care to those at the end of their lives. Terminal patients, especially seniors, received appropriate care 70% of the time when measured against benchmarks -- a better performance than recorded in other studies of treatment of the ailing old. But better communications also need to be put in place between care-givers and patients' families as to expectations about treatment goals, the researchers found after analyzing almost 500 cases of critically ill folks hospitalized in the big, aggressive treating Bruin hospital on the Westside. Caregivers in Westwood already have taken steps to address concerns raised by the research on end-of-life patients, particularly in getting doctors and patient families to talk early and often about sustaining measures such as dialysis, ventilators and defibrillators and when they should be shut off so the old and critically ill can be allowed to die. Americans' reluctance to tackle the tough talk about the last days of loved ones, of course, dominated moments of the national debate on health care and health insurance reform; 10% to 12% of all health care costs nationally and a quarter of Medicare's expenditures go to patients in the last year of their lives.

Care-givers urged to consult more with patients' familes on end-of-life treatments, expecations

• And by the way, for those who didn't get enough of the topic during a year's national debates, two policy experts will tackle the recently enacted health care and health insurance reform, asking whether it is a 'government takeover' or 'corporate welfare.' The free session, for which space is limited and reservations are required, will be at 7 Wednesday night on the Westside.

A dissection on whether health care reform is 'government takeover' or 'corporate welfare' 

Something's funky with air above Gulf spill, Eurasia

From UCI & Cal State LA

Should anything less be expected of investigators from Southern California, an air pollution capital of the planet, that they're at the fore in finding matters amiss in the air from the Gulf to Eurasia?

• In Irvine, researchers say they're continuing to analyze samples extracted from the atmosphere above the BP oil spill in the Gulf and the preliminary findings aren't good: They say they have detected record levels of harmful chemicals -- and these are not particulates or materials related to oil burn-offs conducted to try to clean up the spreading mess. Instead, the researchers, who are struggling to find funding for their work and are cadging samples with the aid of fishermen and some helpful bureaucrats, say they are concerned about atmospheric gases, alkyl nitrates, methane, and hexane and butane compounds they have identified that could be from oil rising to the surface, the dispersant used to break it up or other unknown sources. While the official line is the gases still have not exceeded regulators' thresholds, there is skepticism and worry about this air problem adding the myriad spill woes.  

Record levels of harmful chemicals detected in atmosphere over Gulf spill

• In East L.A., meantime, a researcher has raised noteworthy questions on scientific theories about a key greenhouse gas after observing its actions above Eurasia via historic and recent satellite data. Conventional wisdom has it that water vapor in the atmosphere acts as a greenhouse gas and can play a significant role in climate change, influencing sunlight reflection, cloud cover, temperature and precipitation, among other factors. But water vapor, at least according to accumulated data, does not work exactly as theories say it should, decreasing in hot, dry, subtropical areas of Eurasia, even as temperatures increase. This suggests, the expert says, that hot dry regions will experience more severe drought and higher temperatures in global warming.

A challenge to conventional theories on actions of water vapor, a key greenhouse gas

Generous donors shower millions on area institutions

From the Huntington, Harvey Mudd & Cal Poly Pomona

The lights don't go on for free at the intellectual institutions across the region, so students, researchers and members of the general public have cause to celebrate that donors have shown such generosity in recent days with the folks in San Marino, of course, capturing the big headline of the moment.

 That's because they have reported that their six-year fund-raising campaign, which had a goal of $175 million, has all but ended and brought in an unexpected $240 million  with gifts still getting tallied and the official close of the books on Wednesday. Outreach to new, varied and different donors -- the Chinese American community, for example -- boosted giving, as did the receipt not just of cash, pledges and an increase in the institutional endowment but also significant, sizable collections and valuable displayable items.

Besides reeling in major donors, the institution also recently received a smaller, fishy present from Disneyland in Anaheim: 250 koi, valuable creatures that needed to be relocated and saved from a hotel pond.

In Claremont, meantime, the Mudders are saying many thanks for a $1 million donation to their Global Clinic program from some grateful, late parents who appreciated how their son put in practice all he learned while helping and working with others from spots in Central and South America, Asia and Europe.

And lastly, in Pomona, the business administration and hospitality management folks are appreciating the $2 million pledged by a prominent alum , who said he felt the need to give back to his onetime school not only for the education he received but also because it was the place where he met his wife.

2 different ways to delve into oddities of human behavior

From USC & UCLA

Consider how confounding can be the conduct of friends, colleagues and spouses and then it's little wonder that researchers across the area busily are seeking to apply all manner of science, technology and technique to better understand and anticipate human behavior. Their work might alter everything from the way machines interact with us to how advertisers and marketers help companies both move us as consumers and to reach into our pockets.

• In Exposition Park, there's some intriguing cooperative behavioral research under way between the theater and engineering schools that could be dubbed 'When Hal met Stella,' or how Konstantin Stanislavski, Stella Adler and other stage legends helped machines anticipate how idiosyncratic people act. In a decidedly odd but explicable bit of work, some advanced theater students have donned skin-tight Spandex suits (as shown in photo at right) arrayed with computer-linked sensors that capture their motions and gestures as they go through acting exercises, a stage 'grammar' that a series of legendary teachers ran actors like Marlon Brando through. The unpredictable responses to dictated settings not only get carefully recorded and scrutinized, they ultimately will, researchers hope, advance technology so machines could do things like better help autistic kids, sharpen recognition of human speech and action and even dissect our humor.

A theatrical approach to engineering smarter machines

• In Westwood, neuroscientists have taken a different look with brain studies to learn more about how and why folks slather themselves with a crucial Southern California summer essential: sunscreen. Weird? No just creative. They showed that, by employing brain scans of folks listening to public service advertisements pushing the health and safety benefits of the product, they could predict, better than the subjects themselves could, whether individuals would put on sunscreen during a one-week period. Researchers derived their predictive data from scans of the brain's medial prefrontal cortex, located in front, between the eyebrows. They could conclude for about three-quarters of the subjects whether they increased their use of sunscreen beyond what they said they would do. Their study, they say, is the first in their field to predict behavior change and could be key to not only advertisers and marketers but also anyone involved in effective, persuasive communications, including doctors and teachers. 

Neuroscientists find a gooey way to predict effect of sunscreen PSAs

A snapshot of photojournalism's global finest

From the Annenberg Space for Photography

For practitioners and admirers of the craft, this is a noteworthy annual moment for photojournalism, as the 67th Pictures of the Year program has put on not only its honors and awards but also a major exhibition of the winners' work in Century City. Honorees tackled the tender and comic (such as a winning locker room coach) to tough, tough topics, from the ravages of AIDS in South Africa to the environmental crisis caused by the dwindling and even death of the Colorado River. Shooters from around the globe won accolades with Barbara Davidson of the Los Angeles Times among those lauded. Of course for those who can't cut through that notoriously funky Westside traffic to see in person the amazing, winning, exhibited works in the terrific Annenberg space, there are online galleries that convey still a year full of drama, trauma, joy and tragedy that only truly gifted photographers can deliver.

Photo: Joshua A. Bickel's honored photo of Bob Burchard, Columbia College basketball coach, as he advised his upstart team to just 'keep riding the wave' of winning their way through a tournament / Columbia Missourian, POY

In Century City, 67th 'Pictures of the Year' exhibit on display

For gays, lesbians in Calif., Hong Kong, findings of bias woes

From UCLA

While California employers have made a generally equal space for gays and lesbians in the workplace -- in a sharp, welcome contrast to state voters who have rejected rights moves such as same sex marriages -- orientation-based inequities persist in company-sponsored benefits like health care, public health research shows. Bruin analysis of data from a health survey conducted in 2001, 2003 and 2005 found that gay employees are only 42% as likely as married heterosexual men to get coverage for their partners and other dependents; just 28% of lesbian workers can cover their dependents through company-sponsored plans. Researchers say their study, based on the biennial and wide-ranging California Health Interview Survey, is the first to identify the disparities, which were greater than previous estimates. This data was gathered before the state put in effect its 2005 insurance equality act, which, with a federal patient protection measure, may ease some of the coverage bias. Still, the authors say that federal tax laws and marriage equality moves will be more key. And, meantime, researchers associated with the Williams Institute have issued a study arguing that Hong Kong needs an anti-bias law to protect its gay and lesbian workers; one-third of them said they had experienced orientation-based job bias within the last five years and the problem was greatest for a vulnerable group -- younger, less educated workers, who already struggle in the job market.

In California, scrunity of health survey shows disparities in partner, dependent coverage for gays

A call for anti-bias protections for Hong Kong's gays, lesbians