SoCal Minds

Couples urged to talk deeply about career choices

From UCI

Modern married couples must conduct some deep, detailed career discussions, early and often, if they wish to sustain their relationships, says a researcher in Irvine, who has studied dual-career duos and developed five common scenarios on how partners resolve conflicts between their jobs and lives. Those who failed to talk out their decisions bore the most regret later on as to whether primacy, primarily for income reasons, went to his or her career, whether they took turns in neutral fashion or slightly favoring one partner. If the option presents itself, her study seems to offer a slight surprise: women and men had more lucrative long-term careers if they took the second beneficial move in a relationship, rather than the first. The research also suggests to employers, who, despite their supposed accommodations for them, need to offer even more support do dual-careerists, the expert argues.

Decisions to favor one partner's career path found to carry lifelong implications

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 Irvine, science takes on ancient health practice of tai-chi

From UCI

As they cope with earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, traffic jams, urban sprawl and funky air, it's little wonder that Southern Californians get a little crazy sometimes. But Shin Lin, (shown at left in photo by Steve Zylus, University Communcations) a distinguished scientist in Irvine, has an ancient suggestion for dealing better with that stress: Go with the flow. He actually is studying and developing an adaptation of the Chinese art of tai-chi to accomplish this. He says the meditative martial art has proven it can boost practitioners flexibility and balance, while lowering their blood pressure and cholesterol. He's pioneering efforts to demonstrate further that tai-chi's gentle movements increase blood flow and body energy levels, as measured in heat, light and electricity. The qigong expert and Chen style master -- a biophysicist who is a past chair at Johns Hopkins and a former biological sciences dean in Irvine -- is breaking down tai-chi's 108 stylized forms and teaching them one by one with meditation and breathing techniques as part of what he calls 'science based' tai chi.

Biophysicist, a Chen master and qigong expert, finds measurable benefit in Chinese martial arts

Another view of Iraq, Afghansitan: 1st 'YouTube' wars

From UCI

The U.S. incursions in Iraq and Afghanistan, among their other notable and notorious accomplishments, will be recognized and remembered for a 21st century first, says a researcher in Irvine, who notes these conflicts will go down history as the initial 'YouTube wars.' While American military authorities have sought to carefully monitor and control soldiers' Web 2.0 conduct -- their blogging, texting, online chatting, social media posting and video uploading -- great amounts of information has flown from the field, including the visual and potentially highly persuasive vids popping up online through free services like YouTube, the prof says. Some of it early on was surreptitious or samizdat in nature, posted only after soldiers return home. Now the videos  document operations, advocate for causes, seek to prove the efficacy of violent techniques or mock or belittle the enemy.

What will history make of proliferating online videos from soldiers in combat?

Hello, will E.T. contact us via blast of a Twitter beam?

From UCI

Of all the attributes envisioned for aliens from outer space -- gruesome visages, grotesque anatomies, fantastical powers and lordy knows what else sci-fi mentalities could conjure -- would frugality, intensity and brevity of expression ever have appeared on anyone's top 10 lists? People in the know, extra-terrestriallly speaking, that is, have paid lots of attention to Irvine astrophysicist Gregory Berenson, his twin brother James, a physicist and microwaves expert, and nephew Dominic, a NASA scientist, and their proffered, recent theories about aliens and how our close encounters of the third kind might occur. Think Twitter. Think beacons. Think about how an advanced civilization might seek to conserve precious resources by beaming a contact message to outer space. If far-flung, smarter beings way out there are trying to reach others, they more likely might be tapping out so-called 'Berenson beacons,' short blips of intense energy pulsed in narrow bandwidth for maximal energy efficiency and optimum contact prospect. This also may mean that ambitious projects such as the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence Institute, or SETI, based in NorCal may have its 'ears,' guided by scientific big shots, turned to the wrong places.

Berenson family's theory on frugal, terse, intense alien contact wins expert attention

A $76.8 million day for 'translational science' in SoCal

From USC & UCI

No, that big 76 marching across Southern California wasn't the number of trombones in a big parade or the marquee brand of a petroleum company. It was the millions of dollars granted to two Southern California schools to speed 'bench to bedside' breakthroughs -- and here's hoping our collective health vastly improves due to the federal largess.

The Trojans picked up the big share of the National Institutes of Health support, a $56.8 million, five-year grant to support the school's urban application of 'translational research,' the effort to expedite basic lab science into swift advances in clinical care and applications. The grant will further assist the Trojan schools of medicine, cinematic arts, dentistry, education, engineering, law, pharmacy and social work to work together and with dozens of community organizations, county agencies and several other big health care providers to tackle issues affecting the city's diverse communities.

In Irvine, a similar $20 million, five-year grant -- the sixth largest such award to the campus -- will involve the school's community now and for years ahead in advances in health areas including genetics, diabetes, gerontology, pediatrics, cancer and infectious diseases as well as funding efforts to remove roadblocks to biomedical innovation, advocates say.

In Exposition Park, a $56.8 million grant to boost health in urban, diverse areas

In Irvine, $20 million to aid faster path for advances from lab to clinic to benefit local community

Is massage a key new therapy just after a stroke?

From UCI

So, ay, that's the rub? OK, so maybe it's time to pack a massage therapist into that stroke prevention kit along with a tab or two of aspirin. At least if you're a rodent. Researchers in Irvine have made the startling discovery that for lab rats, at least, stroking or moving a whisker or two of theirs for four minutes or so played a major role in minimizing the harm caused by a major stroke, providing this action occurred in the first two hours after the cerebral obstruction occurs. This stimulation apparently prompts the body to find swift detours around the stroke blockage, researchers say, adding that in humans, the comparable action might be to massage the fingers, lips and face. While this therapy might fly in the face of conventional practice of giving a patient an aspirin or a blood thinner and leaving them still and in a quiet environment, the rats given stimulation, which in humans also might include listening to music besides a massage, showed 'unexpected and spectacular' results from their whisker tickling.

'Unexpected and spectacular' results found from tweaking lab rats' whiskers after a stroke

In Irvine, a quest to figure why seas can make us sick

From UCI

It may not garner them the academic accolades that other studies might. And as meal time fare, it has an unusually high eeeeew factor. Still, researchers in Irvine say that their proximity to some of the world's most prime, famous and infamous beaches and waters on the planet make them perfectly happy to extend their expertise on highly popular local topic: Just why do the oceans sometimes make us all sicker than dogs? The answers, increasingly well known but sometimes more difficult to detect at their source, zero in, of course, on water-borne pollutants and infectious agents, especially nasty bacteria. Scientists charting low water quality due to pollution or sewage spills and reports of ocean-related illnesses found an unsurprising 96% correlation between the two, with incidences of each moving in lock-step choreography of occurrence with the other. Surfers have become all too familiar with respiratory, skin and gastrointestinal afflictions linked to their swimming in waters polluted by post-storm sewage runoff. Sometimes, though, the scientists also need to play sleuth to figure exactly what's fouling local waters, how and why, as occurred in the process to discover that corroded sewer lines in Avalon were linked to illnesses by ocean enthusiasts all around Catalina.

Scientists accept eeew factor to understand ocean-borne infections, pollutants 

For Latinos, 2 attacks on HIV-AIDS, Type-2 diabetes

From CSULB & UCI

There's some good health news for Latinos and other people of color, particularly those who are poorer, possibly heavier and maybe less informed than they need to be about two health scourges of their communities: HIV-AIDS and diabetes.

• In Long Beach, researchers plan to employ a $500,000 federal grant to pilot a program aimed at educating young Latinas with 'Hablando Clara' ('Straight Talk) about their lives, health and sexual health and the risks of HIV-AIDS. Advocates note that Latinas make up 16% of all new, recorded HIV infections -- four times the rate of white women; while Latinos made up 15% of the U.S. population in 2006, they were 19% of those diagnosed with AIDS and 18% of those newly found to be infected with the virus. Working in English and Spanish, the Long Beach experts will reach out to 630 Latinas, 450 teens and 180 adults in their pilot, which will work with 25 families to offer HIV-AIDS prevention measures, as well as sexual and reproductive health information targeted at Latinos, Latinas and especially the young.

Pilot program aims to curb HIV-AIDS among young Latinas, Latinos

• In Irvine, experts report favorable results from their push to lower obesity and other risk factors for Type 2 diabetes among poorer minority students in Long Beach, as part of a nationwide effort that emphasized for kids healthier cafeteria food choices, more intense physical activity and robust in-school health education. The three-year national study, which included teens in five Long Beach middle schools, tracked youngsters in participating and control groups for two years. While both groups, in interesting fashion, showed improvements, those who undertook the diet, exercise and education regimen, by study's end were in better shape. The overweight or obese sixth-graders, re-tested as eighth-graders, had a 21% lower rate of obesity; students who went through the program also showed lower average fasting insulin rates and smaller average waist sizes.  

3 keys to cutting poorer, minority kids' diabetes Type-2 rises: diet, exercise, education

As ocean pollution woes grow, campuses respond

From UCI & UCSB

 Even as the world focuses on the calamitous fouling of the environment by the BP oil spill in the Gulf and some folks in Santa Barbara aid in clean-up attempts, researchers in Irvine remind that Americans' ordinary, daily conduct with another petroleum-based product is helping to create a major pollution problem by dumping tons of plastics and other slow to destruct detrius into the deep seas. Researchers can first find these too casually discarded objects -- including bottle caps, popped balloons, cigarette lighters (which can choke birds that mistake them for small fish), Barbie doll legs, a toothbrush, a hotel room card key, tennis balls, and even a Furby -- along spots like Southern California shores before they get washed out to sea. There, the offal has accumulated into five giant gyres, garbage- and plastic-filled ocean dead zones that represent the most visible but hardly the only pollution of the planet's waters. They're also profoundly imperiled, reseachers say, by the decay of plastics -- which do not fully disintergrate or break down -- into tiny pellets that pose their own major risks to marine life and the eco-system, including the release of certain worrisome chemicals into the water and potentially into the food chain. Possible answers: recyclying, recycling, recycling, researchers say. 

Photo: Prof. William Cooper and a student scrutinize beach-found plastics, other trash / Daniel A. Anderson, university communications

A call to action to curb fouling of seas with really harmful plastics, other trash

In Santa Barbara, folks are talking about how university research and product development is playing its role in a slice of the Gulf spill cleanup, in particular the deployment of the potent 'Groovy Drum Skimmer.' The device, which has been tested and found to be 300% more effective than previous devices of its kind, floats along and pulls up oil and other pollutants from the water's surface using rubber, with a triangular-grooved pattern on its surface and attached to a rolling drum. Victoria Broje, a onetime grad student, developed the device via interdisciplinary studies she praises and school officials say the process that eventually led to its becoming a commercial product exemplifies the value of university research and systems. School officials assisted Broje with patents, other complex paperwork and in finding the company that brought the skimmer to market. 

University research praised for aiding 'Groovy Drum Skimmer,' a device for spill cleanup