SoCal Minds

In 'Blowout,' scholars find deep scandal in Gulf spill

From UCSB

While the critical caricature holds that scholars dawdle while coporate types zip along, two professors not only have belied the stereotype, they've raced to print with a salvo at the demonstrable malfeasance by oil companies and government regulators that resulted in the calamitous Gulf Oil spill. In their new book, 'Blowout in the Gulf,' the experts in Santa Barbara and Lafayette, La.,  rip British Petroleum and other greedy oil and gas giants for their pell-mell rush to pad their profits at all costs and the lax federal oversight that gave free rein to all manner of poor practices. While much of the scandalous revelations about what led to the BP Gulf Oil spill now has been written about widely, the profs also point out the giant policy passes given to Big Oil by the U.S. government: while most businesses pays an income tax rate around 27%, Big Oil chips in a meager 9%; while BP paid a royalty rate of roughly 40% on its Gulf oil, governments around the globe charge for similar supplies twice as much (Norway -- 75%),  or more (80% plus in Vietnam, Tunisia, Kazakhstan and even Brunei).

New book rips lax regulation, murky energy policies, greedy companies

On 3 campuses, big pushes for advances in nano world

From UCR, UCSB & UCLA

While certain television shows boast how their plots get 'ripped' from the day's headlines, folks in Riverside and Santa Barbara clearly are showing how they're staying at the fore of startling developments in the newest of materials. It was, for example, just days ago that most of the planet got cued in to this new, sheet of cool stuff that's just one carbon atom thick, and, bang, here are Inland Empire researchers saying that graphene -- the material that won two scientists a Nobel Prize in physics -- will play a key role in swifter, more efficient computers. The post tackles more of the technical details of how spinning, dancing electrons combined with graphene may produce the dazzling new computers but suffice to say that the path-breaking work in this area is occuring in the nanoscale.

Can electrons' spin, 21st century graphene material combine in super, new computer?

And that world, coincidentally, is where the National Science Foundation has put up $6 million in a five-year, significantly boosted grant for experts in Santa Barbara to keep struggling with the issue of how nanotechnology affects society. This project, combining engineers and scientists with experts in the social sciences and humanities, calls for research, education and outreach to the wider public on how nanoscience -- controlling matter at the molecular and atomic level -- affects an array of areas including energy, health, water, food and the environment.

In Santa Barbara, a $6 million boost to study on how nanoscience affects society

To those exploring new frontiers in the medical or scientific applications of nanotechnology, the mere microscopic presence of detrius like bacteria or even the most itty-bitty viruses can be deadly to their work. A level of cleanliness that exceeds any ordinary household godliness is a must for researchers fabricating materials at the molecular and atomic levels. So there's good news for such scientists, start-up entrepreneurs and researchers with an $8 million expansion of 9,700 square feet of squeaky sanitary space in Westwood. The 24/7-available cleanroom areas -- open to investigators from universities, industry and the government -- also include pricey high tech tools like an 'electron-beam writer.' Those who wish to perform 'proof of concept' and other  research  in the facilty must undergo approval and training before they can access the facility, supported with the help of Intel, ASML, Micron Technology and International Rectifier. The Bruins note that the cleanspace's proximity will be a boon to experts in their engineering and medical schools.

An $8 million doubling of clean space for nanotechnology research 

Have scholars miscalculated calendar of the Maya?

From UCSB

Check out the daily horoscope, much less the folly of the popular attention paid to turns of the centuries or even cool dates like 10-10-10. What does it show? To humans, measures of time -- as seen in the passing of the sun, moon and stars and calculated and recorded in some kind of calendar -- really matter. It certainly did in the New World to the ancient Maya. And if it matters to modernity, which engages in such sheer nonsense as doomsday predictions based on the musings of lost civilizations, a researcher in Santa Barbara says scholars have it all wrong when it comes to calibrating Maya calendars with their current or Gregorian counterparts. Prof. Gerardo Aldano (shown at right) says they have shown excess exuberance for the 'GMT constant,' a formula developed in the early 20th century, to correlate Mayan and Gregorian dates. He doesn't posit a way to fix the error but says detecting it is a big start because there are so few folks around with the broad, deep expertise in astronomy, archeology and ancient inscriptions to even see what's wrong.

New questions on widely accepted method to correlate Mayan, Gregorian dates 

For young Jews nationwide, Trojans a No. 11 school pick

From USC

It may be time to rethink that Tommy Trojan stereotype, the dated idea of the bronzed, statuesque, Hellenic warrior as the emblem of a goyish student body.  A publication that proudly proclaims it's the 'world's largest circulated Jewish magazine,' has posted its fifth annual back-to-school material, including its finding that Exposition Park has become the 11th most popular choice among private schools for young Jews nationwide, with 12% of the undergrad student body self-defining as members of the faith. By sheer numbers of students, several Southland campuses tally many more Jewish undergrads, though they rank lower among their peer, public institutions as popular choices: the Bruins weigh in at 23, while Northridge and Santa Barbara stand at Nos. 27 and 28, respectively.

Exposition Park a popular place for Jewish students, magazine says

Click here for 'Reform Judaism' magazine's back-to-school stuff

Click here to see magazine's school lists and rankings

They're a-twitter about what video, LCD displays disclose

From UCSB

It's far from 'Live at the Met' or PBS' 'Great Performances.' But some apparently sexy, male brown-headed cowbirds have gotten their figurative moment in the musical spotlight -- on video and on big-screen LCD monitors, to boot -- in some performances that researchers in Santa Barbara say have provided new insights into the courting life of avian songsters. Back in the day, the scientists had been stuck with eyeball observation of songbirds reactions, especially employing just audio recordings or maybe trying to persuade the finicky cowbirds that, yes, those flickering projections on ordinary TVs then available were all aok. With new videos recorded on webcams (as shown in a school photo at left) and the LCD monitors that refresh frequently and in a fashion that appears to be undetectable to the feathered friends, the scientists report that they have detected -- gasp -- that male cowbirds sing a different tune for dudes than chicks they're a courtin'. The bird's, um, twittering will cause some dipping and flapping by rivals, whereas, be still, my dear, that lady bird freezes in response to let big boy know she is, um, receptive to his advances. As always, what's the point of the avian observation -- the birds, researchers say, may provide a clue to the cultural evolution of human animals, especially in learning and language study.

New technology offers new insight into how birds communicate via song

Here's a scary micro tale of invading, flukey aliens

From UCSB

Yikes, call out Sigourney Weaver's muscularly rippled, relentlessly strong Ellen Ripley character, please: In Santa Barbara, researchers say they have discovered the presence of some scary, body-nabbing parasitic aliens, albeit of microbiological nature. The hosts in this case, of course, aren't humans involved in a far-off galactic voyage but rather California horn snails. These insects get invaded by 'warrior worms,' critters that are but a few millimeters in size and with giant mouths. The worms display fanatical social organization and create teeming colonies that can equal a quarter of the body weight of the small snails, which, among other things, get castrated for their kind hosting. Actually, the worms or flukes may be more akin to characters from the more contemporary Star Trek episode -- they're more like the Borg, in that they are not, as the Aliens were, mothers, daughters and sisters; the worms are clones. Aside from providing gross reading with a huge eeeew factor, what's the point of all this? Among the worms', um, talents or attributes, is how well they can muster attacks on others of their specie who try to invade their host; this killing capacity may be key to battling human blood infections involving flukes that afflict an estimated 200 million people worldwide.

Photos: Weaver, l, from 20th Century Fox classic, Alice Krige, l, Star Trek 'Borg queen,' and trematode flatworm, r, with clone offspring

Pity the poor California horn snail but can its misery help humans? 

New advances in fighting cancer, disease at celluar levels

From Caltech, UCSB & UCR

While global combat rarely produces very pleasant results, as readers in this space well know, there's an increasingly successful war going on at a totally different level as researcher go cellular and molecular to battle diseases like cancer. And in Pasadena, Santa Barbara and Riverside, scientists are reporting key advances in their work with tiny, tiny, tiny seeming aspects of cells and their lives but with big potential.

In the Rose City, for example, researchers have worked with cells from an aggressive form of brain tumor (glioblastoma), and those from a form of bone tumor (Ewing's sarcoma) and from prostate carcinoma. They're deploying RNA molecules that target these specific cancer cells, enter them and then change shape, disrupting the cancer's internal processes and killing them. They say this narrowly focused attack on only cancer cells could provide better treatment without debilitating side-effects associated with traditional, broader chemotherapies.

In Santa Barbara, scientists also are mounting molecular attacks against cancer and other illnesses by constructing complex nanoparticles, polyhedrons of varied geometric shape that self assemble into new shapes but are all designed to bind to different parts of human RNA and attack disease; the researchers say their approach employs only natural compounds, and, thus, prospectively will be greener and safer.

Other of their colleagues in Santa Barbara, meantime, are scrutinizing a roundworm protein that binds cells together and causes them to work with each other in communities; by better understanding the 'Fer' protein, the researchers also hope to learn why some cells are not bound by it and go off on their own and continue to multiply -- a crucial, growth and spreading process associated, for example, with cancer.

And, as long as the day's topic is developments in cellular research, there's also news from Riverside that a biochemist has figured out why crucial cells involved in important research die when they are cultivated on a singular basis. His work may prove significant to those who need to grow human pluripotent stem cells, the amazing, transformational tissues that are under major study for their potential role in new treatments for spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's disease, burns, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and other ailments.

In Pasadena, aggressive cancers targeted with killer molecules

In Santa Barbara, building nanoparticles from natural compounds to attack disease

Why might a celluar 'glue' of a roundworm offer a key to fighting cancer?

In Riverside, insights into what kills valued stem cells used in key new research

Confucius say: Charlie Chan's still The Man for scholar

From UCSB

He was raised in a small town in southeastern China and earned his B.A. at Peking University. But a chance encounter with two tomes on sale at an estate sale forever altered the life and scholarship of Yunte Huang, a Ph.D., onetime Harvard teacher and now an author whose latest book has gotten huge attention from the likes of the New Yorker, the New York Times and Time Magazine. That's because Huang (shown at right in Miriam Berkley photo) has sought to untangle the cultural and historical plate of intellectual spaghetti that ties Chang Apana, a legendary Cantonese police officer who earned fame in Hawaii, 1920s pulp writer Earl Derr Biggers, Hollywood and a series of Silver Screen actors, including Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, and Roland Winters. Getting this plot yet? Confucius say must have been hiding head under big down pillows to have missed so many words about 'Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with History.' What's behind the nation's love-hate relationship with famed fictional clue-smith Charlie Chan, the protagonist of almost four dozen big-screen flicks? Among the other results of this obsession, Huang notes, is how it led him to become an American.

In Santa Barbara, a successful case of chasing down saga of Silver Screen detective

Why do we pay less to those who do 'intimate labor?'

From UCSB

Since a key endeavor of scholarship and publication ought to be provoking thought and conversation, here's today's noggin' scratcher from Eileen Boris, a researcher in Santa Barbara (shown at right in Rod Rolle photo). The chair of the feminist studies program pokes at an economic sore spot, asking fascinating questions about labor, intimacy and finance. When it comes to cash and labors of love, she argues with a Trojan co-author, all sense of equity disappears. To wit: Most people consider a mother's time caring for her family to be indispensable and priceless in value; if someone else, however, gets hired to perform similar care-giving tasks. their services are valued at bupkis and get paid for accordingly. The researchers examine similar instances of payment to those who get close to us and find that greater intimacy, as another truism about familiarity and contempt holds, results in lesser rather than greater economic returns. Go figure.

Labors of love found to fare poorly when it comes to cold cash consideration

New thoughts on generosity, abundance and recovery

From UCR, UCSB, & the Milken Institute

It's a late summer Monday and a perfect time for big concept discussions on generosity, abundance, recovery and fairness. Here's the drill:

In Riverside, scholars say they will employ a $150,000 grant to learn whether generosity can be contagious and whether the undertaking acts of kindness can inspire and motivate others to Good Samaritan behavior, especially toward others they never may even know. They hope to probe whether it is true that it is better to give than receive. They'll base their work on a Japanese company with 300 employees and a device that tracks individuals' movements and social interactions. They theorize that acts of kindness toward others create greater happiness for us, with demonstrable benefits to us as well as to society at large. An initiative on the 'Science of Generosity' at Notre Dame will underwrite the two-year scrunity of the ripple effects of being nice.

$150,000 grant will help determine whether generosity can be contagious

In Santa Barbara, the university reports that federal and state agencies, corporations and nonprofit organizations provided an unprecedented $222 million in the 2009-2010 fiscal year to support a myriad of research projects at the school. That's a 28% increase over the previous year in external support for the institution's studies and it shatters any previous year's such sums, the school says. The feds, particularly through the Obama Administration, provided the biggest boost in research aid, particularly backing work in the fields of energy, the environment and computer sciences. A $15.7 million U.S. grant was the year's biggest and created the Center for Energy-Efficient Materials, furthering its key labors in photovoltaics, thermo-electrics and solid-state lighting. Even the usually shut-out humanities saw grant money pop up, with $350,000 going to an archive of English broadside ballads.

In Santa Barbara, a record-setting bounty of support for research

In Beverly Hills, there's a pleasant projection out of the usually cautious and not always sunny economists at the institute, who see 'tangible' signs of a turnaround and perhaps even a recovery under way. While reports last week of a stalling and only faintly growing economy turned hearts cold on Wall Street and in many corporate boardrooms, the institute's director of economic research sees real GDP growth of 3.5% this year, 3.7% in 2011 and 3.8% in 2012, with the nation adding 1.8 million jobs this year, 3.1 million in 2011,  and 2.6 million in 2012. The forecast doesn't call for any boost from housing construction, which is estimated to stay in the dumps this year and next, though residential fixed investments are seen to rise 26% in 2011 and 25.7% in 2012. The institute's somewhat sunny economic forecasts came out last week just before the feds issued their first crack at figuring GDP for the April-June quarter, a 2.4% growth that has caused many to fret because there are no immediate, apparent bolsters for the flagging economy that number signifies.

Despite enfeebled quarterly showing, a positive forecast for GDP growth

Click here to obtain full institute report on economic outlook

Click here for a PowerPoint deck on economic predictions