SoCal Minds

Your suit and tie? It's making us very, very nervous ...

From CSUN

For those whose public contacts aren't meant to be excessively authoritarian but still can be stress-inducing for others -- um, think nurses, doctors, dentists, school administrators, HR types -- today's word is casual, according to an investigator in Northridge who sought to test a long-held beliefs about the garb worn by student research assistants. The lore holds that such individuals should be neatly and even formally attired as part of an effort to project a professional atmopshere in experimental settings involving human subjects. But the psychology researcher found a surprising twist: anxious subjects felt more at ease and responded better and more carefully to directions given by informally dressed research aides. The potential takeaway here: Dress still matters and it can affect others. So shuck that white shirt, suit and tie or dark skirt, white blouse and pearls if you don't want to make people nervous and you do want them to relax and follow your directions, easily and readily. Of course, who in Southern California really hangs in rags like that anyway?

Informal attire found to relax anxious subjects, making them more responsive in experiments

From Northridge to Fullerton, a focus on the environment

From USC, UCLA, CSUN & Cal State Fullerton

It will be interesting to see whether the considerable efforts in academia to be foward looking and environmentally conscious will spread into society at large, especially via students as next-generation leaders. So what kinds of green stuff are schools from Northridge to Fullerton taking on:

• In Exposition Park, a Trojan expert has joined with colleagues at Johns Hopkins to push for new policies on greenhouse gas emissions, which, if put in place, they argue, could create as many as 2.5 million jobs and lead to $134 billion in economic activity. The researchers based their findings on an analysis of and projections from existing greenhouse gas regulations in 16 states, which they praised for their transparent, consistent and formal procedures to quantify and measure their actions and policies in keeping with peer reviewable and accepted methods. The experts call for plans to develop greener power sources for heat and power, greater energy efficiency in business, smarter transit and land use, farm and wild area conservation and more recycling and waste energy recovery.

16 state models for a national greenhouse gas policy to create jobs, boost economy

• Legal scholars who are both Bruins and Bears say that local communities must bear down on their thinking and planning about land use if the state ever has any hope to reduce global warming and environmental pollution related to unnecessary travel by energy guzzling cars, trucks, buses and other carbon fuel-burning vehicles. Experts from Berkeley and Westwood, in the latest part of their joint studies on climate change's effects on the economy, argue for new efforts to create sustainable development in California communities through vastly improved land-use planning, most importantly at the local level but with regional cooperation and cost-effective resource-sharing, particularly in the services of professional planners. If state residents increasingy could live nearer to where they work, shop and play, such housing and development could help curb global warming and environmental pollution more effectively than can even major breakthroughs in vehicle and fuel efficiency or other green efforts involving transportation, the legal scholars say.

How sustainable development in state could curb climate change, environmental pollution

• In Northridge, faculty, students and staff have rushed to take part in the vegetable part of a 'carrot-and-stick' kind of plan for healthier living. Really. Advocates say they have recorded swift, significant demand for a program that calls for fresh produce -- vegetables and fruits sufficient, for example, for a week for a family of four -- to be delivered in boxes that can be picked up on campus near the bookstore at scheduled times and for a reasonable fee. The seasonal produce will vary due to growing conditions and farming circumstance. But proponents say the good foods from the Underwood Family Farms will be good for the Matadors consuming it -- far better, say, than a diet of junk or fast foods typically downed by collegians -- while at the same time allowing a community, the university, that is, to support local agriculture. That large box, aimed at a family of four, costs $20 a week, by the way.

How a university community can support local agriculture, and eat healthier, too 

Click here for more information on Underwood Family Farms' community supported ag

• In Fullerton, as the university gets set to rev up a new, greener system that will generate half the power needed on campus, school officials have posted online a roundup of pieces on smarter energy research and applications and sustainable environmental practices. The Titans take note of their experts cooperating with researchers in Anaheim on energy efficiency and with others out in the Mojave to question the construction of heedless renewable energy resources. As for that new campus power system, it will employ high-pressure natural gas, waste heat and water to generate sufficient juice to power 4,000 homes.

A spotlight on campus energy awareness, saving and sustainability

A spotlight for those who build bridges, push boundaries

From CSUN & CSULA

In a time of budget slashing, program closings and seemingly curtailed opportunities for young folks seeking advanced education, here's a small cheer for two different boundary-pushing efforts:

• In Northridge, a smart push is under way to hook up a corps of world-class stem cell scientists in Westwood with energetic, capable and ambitious undergrads at the Valley campus known for turning out teachers, in hopes of getting more than a few of them into new careers in research. A $1.6 million grant from the state body that funds stem cell research will let 10 aspirants from the Valley campus pursue projects, study and training in this cutting-edge field with premier Bruin scientists, preparing the chosen few young folks, advocates hope, so they're ready to go on to graduate school or to top jobs as highly skilled and sought after technicians in research labs. 

Program builds stem-cell study 'bridge' between Northridge, Westwood 

• In East L.A., it took awhile. But the longtime, trail-blazing educational career of a longtime Los Angeles educator and college alum recently and finally got its own bit of recognition. There's a newly named middle school on the Los Angeles Unified School District's Belmont campus that gives a nod to Salvador B. Castro, who not only taught in the system for more than four decades but also played a key role in crucial protests against it in the Sixties. Castro was honored by President Clinton and featured in a 2006 James Edward Olmos film for his part as a teacher supporting youngsters in the 1968 'Chicano blowouts,' a student protest and walk-out that helped bring public attention and some reform to the dire inequities in LAUSD and the rotten schools that were serving Latino communities in East LA.

In East L.A., a small recognition for pioneering efforts of longtime educator, alum

Here's how the Times' Hector Tobar tells the tale

Life-changing summer underway for science-, tech-talented teens

From CSULB, CSUN, Cal State Fullerton & Caltech

Send up a celebratory rocket or two this weekend to take note of programs across the Southland to keep this nation at the fore of science, technology and the changing 21st Century, all through some forward-thinking investment in a crucial commodity of American society: our smart and diverse kids. The programs go by some different names: in Northridge, one effort is called MARC U*GRAD or MARC U-STAR. In Long Beach, it's an effort aimed at 'Engineering Girls.' In Fullerton, advocates call it TEST: UP. And in Pasadena, it's known as YESS. These programs vary in their exact content and focus; they all are getting funding support. They aim to give teens a memorable summer, learning and working in science, technical and technological fields where some groups are traditionally underrepresented and good folks hope to ease these disparities.

Does red ink make teachers too harsh in grading?

From CSUN

Teacher, teacher, the researchers do declare: Put down that red grading pen or pencil and take up a blue marker because doing so may markedly benefit students. The experts took short, simple essays and gave them to different groups to grade -- some marking the papers with red-ink pens, the others armed with blue pens. When the red pens came out, presto, the grades went down, a comparative scrutiny showed. This occurred even though in half the instances, the essays were prepared so they actually contained no spelling or grammar errors; they still got harsher marks from the red-ink crowd. Why? After adjusting for various factors and taking in different theories, the researchers suggested that academics associate red ink with a custom of bleeding papers, finding fault and failure; put a red pen in their hands and they think they're supposed to be aggressive and negative.

Graders in a test find greater fault, give lower marks with red rather than blue pens in hand

How parental income carries lifelong effect on kids

From UCI & the Cal States

As politicians and policy-makers slash and burn social programs in their effort to stanch the flow of government red-ink, especially in Sacramento, an education professor in Irvine has some noteworthy research they might consider. He has examined the deep, sweeping data from a study that has followed more than 9,000 U.S. families and individuals for more than four decades. And, with colleagues, the researcher asked what would happen to kids younger than 5 if their parents got more annual income but nothing else changed in the picture -- mom and dad don't get more education, they don't alter their parenting practices, the family structure remains the same and genetic factors don't shift a whit. Well, look down the road and those youngsters show higher incomes and less use of food stamps (social programs) when they become adults, the researchers found, arguing for the importance of governmental efforts, if necessary, to supplement the incomes of families with youngsters to break a long cycle of potential poverty.

A key insight into breaking the cycle of poverty

And speaking of funding arguments, the Cal State system, like its powerful siblings in the UC network, has been lobbying furiously to try to stem the budgetary bloodletting now under way in public higher education in California. Part of the latest campaign aims to show the economic impact of the various CSU campuses, and, finally, there are detailed, online break-outs on the hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs that can be linked to each of the institutions.

Click here for online look at Cal States' economic impact

Kudos for more graduates, more engineers

From CSULB & CSUN

Oh, sure, certain academic institutions thrive by taking exceedingly bright youngsters from affluent, great families who have excelled at superb public and private schools and taken advantage of the myriad opportunities presented to them. Nothing wrong with that. But here's kudos, official recognition and proof for the workings of the continuing California dream of educational access to all who have the moxie to scratch through lesser circumstance to first earn a high school degree, then to struggle on to pursue and receive that university diploma that puts them on to a higher path in life. The folks in Long Beach garner academic attention for their successful push to boost their students' graduation rates as a priority, even as the crowd in Northridge have something to crow about in the increasing number of engineers their institution is producing.

In Long Beach, praise for successful push to increase graduation rates

In Northridge, engineering program termed fastest growing in nation

$8.4 million grant for special, special ed teachers

From CSUN

Uncle Sam, via the vehicle of the federal stimulus funding, has sent a shower of lucre raining down on some students who aspire to a special kind of teaching. The Education Department has awared $8.4 million over five years to the folks in Northridge -- who have one of the state's largest colleges of education -- so they can find, encourage, educate, graduate and credential 150 special education teachers who come from diverse language and cultural backgrounds and are prepared to work in schools with dire needs for educators with their training and abilities. As part of this deal, which also involves cooperation with the Los Angeles Unified School District, the university will monitor and track this group of well-trained special ed teachers to see how they fare and what they accomplish with their disabled students.

Stimulus aid aims to help LAUSD with more diverse special ed teachers

To life: of vitamins, video games, signs, history

From UCI, CSUN & USC

With all the mishigoss that can accompany life in this metropolis, who doesn't struggle to keep together mind and body. But how and what seems to work best? If a regimen of multivitamins has been the fortifier of choice, how much sense does that make? Or maybe the commercials for specialized brain- and memory-boosting video games for seniors sound appealing? How well do those work? OK, or perhaps it's just time for a history quiz: How is the legendary Hollywood sign linked with the Eiffel Tower, Howard Hughes and Ginger Rogers? Or do any of those names ring any bells at all?

Lessons learned in killer quakes in Chile, Haiti

From Caltech & CSUN

On a Pasadena campus laden with Nobel Laureates and world-class scientists, they still manage, especially locally, to be sort of academic rock stars, dominating at turns not only print news and the broadcast airwaves but also commanding almost reverential attention to their findings and prognostications. So, here's a chance to get a full, free, public fill from a pack of those well-known earthquake experts as they offer the latest about what they know of their field and especially how it has been affected by observations from giant, killer temblors in Haiti and Chile. The session will be Tuesday night at 8 and no tickets nor reservations are required for the talk, moderated by Dr. Lucy Jones (shown at right), and taking on, too, the issue of how space technology is bettering seismology, geophysics and other earth sciences. Meantime, the folks in Northridge have put up a feature on some of their deep ocean delving to gain more knowledge about shifts in tectonic plates, including how volcanoes affect these quake-causing geological elements.

Seismology session will size up science's latest on temblors, space

In Northridge, a focus on deep sea study of tectonics, volcanoes