SoCal Minds

In Pasadena, new findings of a tight, distant astral dance

From Caltech

Let's give it to the contemporary star-gazing set for their special capacity, perhaps tracing a part of their skill to myth-spinning Greeks and Romans, to combine science with art and imagination, scrutinizing the tiniest observable specks of light from far-distant, dying suns and theorizing,as folks are Pasadena are doing, that these tell a tale of giant astral bodies locked in a waltzing gravitational embrace. This amusing metaphor of a dancing galactic trio becomes more amazing since it involves gaseous planets more huge than Jupiter and hundreds of light years away. The researchers say they have found a duo of shuffling trios, that is not one but two systems in which two massive, lumbering exoplanets orbit subgiant stars, with one case involving big heavenly bodies in such a tight, lockstep movement that it has proved to be a stellar surprise.

Lumbering, gaseous exoplanets found in lockstep moves around dying, subgiant star

For SoCal engineers, reports of salary bounty ahead

From Harvey Mudd

With an undergraduate education costing as much as a cool quarter million bucks or so these days, guess it makes a lot of sense for parents and students to pay hefty attention to what all this schooling eventually results in, in terms of pay. So, it's been said before, but a web site focused on some aspects of collegiate economics has underscored it again: If midcareer salary surveys and their results matter, it pays to be an engineer who was educated in California, where the Mudders and the guys and gals in Pasadena score in the No. 1 and No. 4 slots, respectively, with places like Dartmouth, Princeton and Harvard in between em. There also are online rankings for liberal arts schools and their students' later-life pay. Guess studies like these, as well as the annual 'best' ratings by magazines and others, need to be taken with due skepticism, particularly since only those who are faring particulary well with their paychecks are inclined to answer salary surveys and there are other caveats galore about data and rankings. But, go figure, none of that's going to stop the water cooler chatter, is it?

When it comes to midcareer pay, here's Mudd in your eye

Here's the financial low-down on collegiate salary survey from CNN Money

Click here for PayScale's 2010-11 annual college salary report

In Pasadena, leadership on a $122-million solar push

From Caltech

Researchers in the Rose City will lead a five-year, $122-million, multidisciplinary, multi-institution push to develop 'revolutionary' new ways to generate fuels directly from sunlight. Chem prof Nathan Lewis and his colleagues will be joined by top experts at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Stanford and the UCs in Berkeley, Irvine, Santa Barbara and San Diego. This 'hub' hopes to make 'game-changing' findings to move from the lab to real world application as swiftly as possible a clean energy system that emulates plants, combining sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. They will labor to create all the practical, commercial components of this photosynthetic system, including light absorbers, catalysts, molecular linkers and separation membranes. Federal authorities made this sizable grant, they said, because the potential for solar energy systems has existed for too long just in theory and research; for the national security and environmental needs of the nation, especially to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels imported from other countries, the U.S. must develop and put in place the technology for a direct solar fuels industry.

U.S. picks Caltech for California research hub to move direct solar fuels from theory to reality

In Pasadena, a new link between gut bugs and MS

From Caltech

Bacteria in the gut may play a role in multiple sclerosis, the brain, nervous system and muscle debilitating disorder that afflicts as many as half a million Americans, researchers in Pasadena say, based on their follow-up research on quirks in genetically engineered lab mice. Some of the critters developed an autoimmune disorder similar to MS, an illness that lessened when they left their quarters in the Rose City for special, significantly more sterile facilities elsewhere. Scientists theorized that an environmental factor modulated their disease but could not at the time track it down. But working with germ-free strains of lab mice and after isolating various suspect factors, researchers tested the effects of infections of segmented filamentous bacteria. These bugs were known to cause intestinal inflammation and to provoke the release of Th17 immune system helper cells, which earlier had been implicated in the 'inflammatory cascade' linked to MS. Just one dose of the suspect bugs caused reactions, including the release of Th17 cells in the rodents' gut, brain and central nervous system, provoking MS-like symptoms in the once-healthy mice. Researchers say the gut bacteria, immune cells and inflammations do not cause MS directly; they may play a key role in setting up crucial genetic and environmental factors, including diet, other diseases and stress, that lead to MS.

Genetically engineered mice show links among bacteria, inflammation, autoimmune reaction, MS

A higher-ed peoloton offers a look-see at SoCal minds

From Oxy

Phew, it's summer and an ostensible pause in the seasons of anxiety for collegiate aspirants. But some work never ends, and, for some fun-seeking college counselors, a work-vacation offers an opportunity to see up-close what's on SoCal Minds via a rolling, 400-mile tour of regional campuses. The folks over in Eagle Rock are hosting a stop on the bicyclist look-see, a grownups' peloton aimed at getting a personal-professional view of what's new at spots like the Claremont collective, the universities of Redlands and LaVerne, Oxy, Caltech. LMU and USC. So what, in hyper-conscious fashion, should the schools know about what the 19 visiting pros from 13 states have to say about them as they undergo their seventh annual cycling whistle-stop tour of schools? Because this is the age of blogging, the East Coast Gray Lady offers a big forum for the observations of group members...

College counselors cycling 400 miles in tour of area campuses 

Click here for NYT 'Choice' blog, with dispatches from biking counselors

In Claremont, Pasadena possible pride on a fiscal note

From Harvey Mudd

It was a buzzword of the MBA crowd, a term of pride for the Wall Streeters in their go-go heyday. So here it is popping back up in a different setting and potentially exciting some schools, parents and alums, perhaps. ROI. There we said it. 'Return on investment.' If that fiscal measurement rings the chimes as an academic achievement, well, then, the folks in Pasadena and Claremont have an accolade to wear proudly. The whole concept turns on schools' costs, what grads will disclose as to what they really make and whether long projections of earnings accurately reflect reality. But based on data that an outfit called PayScale crunched, MIT grads get the best ROI, a calculated 12.6% return that could total a cool $1.9 million over 30 years; Caltech comes in close behind at 12.6%, too, but $1.64 million. The Mudders followed after Harvard, with the West Coasters racking up a 12.5% ROI and a $1.62 million return. As befitting an economic analysis of scholarly ROI, the Wall Street Journal succinctly says that if the measure matters most, be an in-state student attending a public school (9.8% average annualized ROI) or go to a private school (9.1%) but think hard about being an out-of-state student at a public school (8.4%). Data was amassed from 1.4 million graduates of 852 public and private institutions.

Caltech, Harvey Mudd score high on ranking by return on investment

How the WSJ breaks down the ROI info

Click here for the fuller PayScale ROI list

Insight into how women's immune systems react to pregnancy

From Caltech

How is it that women's bodies, acutely tuned as all humans are to guard against internal intruders, allow babies to grow inside them? Researchers in Pasadena have turned their attention to a long unsolved question with new answers that may prove valuable for the health of pregnant moms, finding that they generate a special type of immune cell in response to fetal proteins. These 'T regulatory cells' both protect moms and the unborn, allowing most pregnancies to go on without women's immune systems attacking and rejecting the fetus, researchers found in mice studies. They next hope to extend their work to humans, research that could advance the treatment and care of conditions such as preclampsia, a condition in which expectant mom's blood pressure rises and other dangerous symptoms occur.

'Pregnancy tolerance' tied, at last, to immune cells that protect mom, prevent rejection of fetus

Going deep in a quest for a key but elusive speck

 From Caltech

The search for the Holy Grail of the physics world has sent researchers from Pasadena 230 stories underground in Minnesota in a quest that has dark matter geeks hopeful that they're on the brink of finding wimps. No, not the weak and skinny kind that get beat up on some campuses. Since the1930s, when the institute’s Fritz Zwicky first proposed the existence of dark matter, physicists worldwide have labored to identify the composition of the mass that is believed to account for almost a quarter of the universe. This hunt has come down now for some to seeking a sighting of the ever elusive wimp or weakly interacting massive particle, a cosmic speck that eludes normal detection because it so rarely interacts with regular matter. In hopes of eliminating confusing rays that might offer false positives that wimps have hit a atomic nucleus just so, a team of international researchers plunged their specially designed detector, 30 hockey puck-sized germanium crystals, deep in an old iron mine in the far frozen North. And guess what? They recorded two wimps 'events'. Or not. With a 23% chance the events were background noise, the scientists will need to keep happy hunting, though their work is creating great buzz and hope in the physics world.

Photo: Caltech pysics prof Sunil Golwala is part of global team hunting for proof of dark matter / Bill Youngblood

Buzz builds as findings in mine hint physicists near capture of 'wimps,' proof of 'dark matter'

How a Texas gullywasher sprung geological surprises

From Caltech

It's eight-years-old, 1.3 miles or so long and 22 feet deep, not anywhere near close to the magisterial grandeur of the Grand Canyon. But a new gully in Central Texas has scientists in Pasadena saying oh, golly, because they figure the giant fissure was created in just three days by gushing waters from heavy rains and the inundation of a local dam. And further, though the whole process of flooding and erosion lasted weeks longer, the carving of the Canyon Lake gorge has given modern researchers new views of processes that in primordial fashion may have shaped not only our planet but also places like Mars. Most geological studies see chasms in the earth shaped over eons, as likely occurred with the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. But huge flows, as occurred in Texas in 2002, can scar the surface with surprising depth and speed, especially when megafloods shove aside huge boulders and carry vast volumes of suspended sediments.

New insights into formation of canyons from 2002 floods that carved mile-long, 22-foot deep scar

For star-gazers, a new frontier in dealing with data, IT

From Caltech

For all those, um, seasoned folks out there who have seen their professions and professionals just swamped by new technological developments that have transformed their day-to-day business lives, here's a different twist: This phenomenon, Luddite friends, also is affecting the star-gazing few, witness a global gathering in Pasadena this week of experts in the growing field of astroInformatics. Sure, for most of us, who are awe-struck and go ga-ga just over the glorious images that flood back from high-tech wonders like the Hubble space craft, who knew the extent that computers and information technology have raced along and dragged along, perhaps even inundated, telescope-gazing scientists. How will they, and especially their next generation, deal with massive amounts of data to see and understand exactly what it might say about exploration of the far reaches of the galaxy? How will they preserve the increasingly digital and giant amounts of materials they are amassing now for future study? For those who can't dash over to the Rose City for the high thinking on these and other topics, this conference is kinda cool because it is designed for online consumption.

In Pasadena, a global gathering of experts on 'astroinformatics' with loads of online info