SoCal Minds

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

Campuses take on Haiti relief, volcanoes, mercy

From UCSB, Pomona & Loyola Marymount

Across the region, campuses have taken on disaster release, the calamitous potential power of nature and a quality that may be far too strained in public life:

• In Santa Barbara, the UC system's response to the disastrous Haitian earthquake and its nightmarish, unending aftermath will be headquartered at the Center for Black Studies Research, which says that it is, after expertise in big metropolitan enclaves in Miami and Boston, one of the premier sites with scholarly knowledge about Haiti. Concerned parties from throughout the UC system conducted a system on this campus in the spring and set up a reconstruction organization and plans to work with academic counterparts, as well as government, nonprofit and community groups in Haiti to provide the university's top-flight expertise in key areas such as agriculture, arts and culture, education, economics, education, engineering and architecture.

In Santa Barbara, a headquarters for UC system's Haiti reconstruction efforts

Click here for more info on UC Haiti relief

• In Pomona, there's talk about the timely release of a scholarly tome that takes on mountains that blow up beneath us. Richard Hazlett, a geology and environmental analsis prof, got out his new text, 'Volcanoes: Global Perspectives,' just in time for huge swaths of the planet to be plunged into an air travel mess caused by the eruption of that wickedly named Icelandic volcano. For Hazlett, whose childhood fascination was piqued by tales of Vesuvius and Pompeii, an initial experience with a summer volcanic eruption in Hawaii since has been followed with eyewitness volcanology scholarship in Galanggung for a grey volcano, Kilauea for a red one and sightings in Japan, the Pacific Northwest, Aleutians, Italy, Kamchatka, Iceland and mainland Alaska. His book also discusses legendary explosions in Krakatoa and Santorini. The prof says he's not a thrill-seeker and concedes that to scrutinize the awe-inspiring power of volcano means taking risks.

From Pomona, a timely glimpse into global awe of volcanoes, eruptions

• In Westchester, a prof and his academic partner in Iowa have decided to delve into the fascinating question about a key happening at a crucial intersection of religion, philosophy and politics. When resources get scarce, the public's scared and policy making gets particularly rough in areas such as punishment for juveniles, amnesty for immigrants, reparation for much harmed people such as slaves or truth telling and reconciliation after large scale chaos and killing in a society, must the quality of mercy be strained, the profs ask? Besides considering this topic in classes they conduct, they're hard at work on a book, tentatively titled, 'The Death of Mercy,' which examines its role in public life.

In Westchester, seeing role for mercy at the intersection of politics, religion and philosophy

A micro focus on productivity, output of economists

From Chapman

Guess they just can't help themselves. The guys and gals who track everyone else's hours, energy and productivity, in macro and micro terms, also keep wonk-ish, detailed tabs on themselves, and, by at least one key measure, the folks in Orange may be said to be doing well in output, at least.  Forget the fetish that some have for baseball, golf, football or basketball stats. The economists in Orange County note that they're No. 9 on an academic publishing list, the RePEc, or Research Papers in Economics compiled by the University of Connectictut. Those figures track, publication, citations and working papers in experimental economics. The chart leaders at mid-year include the Friedman clan in the South Side of Chicago, folks in Zurich and Cambridge (England and Massachusetts), as well as guys and gals at UCSD (No. 6), UCSB (10), USC (16), Caltech (41) and UCLA (71). Vernon L. Smith, who lists affilations with the Agyros school, George Mason and the Cato Institute, ranks No. 4 on the individual economists' rankings, on which Gary Charness of UCSB is No. 8.

In Orange, a busy, notable period for economic publishing, work, citation

Click here for all the 'inside baseball' on economists' stats

How schools rank in 'Teach for America' placement

From UCSB

Boy, the world turns around and surprising stuff pops to the top for interest and prestige for today's collegians, as the current popularity of the Teach for America program attests. Do schools  boast about how many of their students go off to the Peace Corps? Do they tout their roles in AmeriCorps VISTA? Yes, sure, there are praises to be sung for the volunteer program that aims to take accomplished, promising young scholars from top institutions and to train and place them as teachers for a fixed term in poor, tough schools in hopes of improving the nation's educational efforts. A super tight economy has combined with the idealism and altruism of the young, however, to make this national public service program highly competitive, with 46,000 applicants from 630 colleges and universities chasing after 4,500 slots. Among the big institutions whose grads are showing particular success in nailing down these much coveted slots: UCLA (49), USC (44) and UCSB (31). Among small schools, Claremont McKenna (9) pops up on the list.

In Santa Barbara, a sense of pride about Teach for American participation

Here's the official word on which schools contribute most students to program

Click here to see the program's official ranking for number of chosen teachers by school size

Big catches found in fishy thinking on anglers' actions

From UCSB

When conventional or even expert wisdom clashes with fact-based reality, which comes out on top? That's an issue when the topic concerns some fishy thinking about the behavior of commercial fishermen, who, according to one widely accepted theory, had decided to hunt their catch descending down the ocean food chain, decimating big fish, then going downward to progressively smaller fry. The problem? This isn't totally so, research in Santa Barbara has found, and the theory also relied on an assumption that those large species had top market value than littler ones. As common sense might dictate, a big motivating factor for which species fishermen chase goes to the price they can get for their catch; shrimp and abalone may show low on the ocean food chain but they command high prices, especially when adding the comparative effort to capture them versus the biggest fish swimming deep seas. Re-thinking how high-revenue catches affect predator patterns (commercial anglers' actions) could help, experts say, make fisheries more sustainable.

Species' price, not place on food chain, found to drive pursuit by commercial fishermen

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

Fracas with publisher a sign of grim university finances

From UCLA

With the Bruins alone facing a $200 million budget shortfall and figuring how to handle a financial crisis, guess it's unsurprising that things have gotten tense and even more disputatious in the academic world these days. As evidence, just consider the now public tussle between the UCs and a major scholarly publisher of august science magazines, the Nature Publishing Group. UC faculty and administrators assert that the publisher, whose best known title is 'Nature,' has sought a 400% hike in the cost of the schools' online subscriptions, meaning a $1 million cost systemwide; the Californians also note their robust role with this publishing group as authors and peer-review participants and how that adds to the journals' bottom line. Nature, of course, disputes the UC information and the positions that folks from the school have taken, including some movements for the grave step of dropping Nature and the other journals and boycotting participation with them. (Kudos, by the way, to the Bruin publicists for including links to the views of the other side in their online coverage of this fracas.)The UC folks note, in light of the state budget crisis, that they have successfully negotiated with other publishers and reduced costs by $1 million; they also have slashed their print and online subscriptions of 'Scientific American' in an earlier budget tiff with the Nature publishing group over costs.

Bruins, UC system in budget battle with publisher of 'Nature'

Tiny impostor's Eskimo whoppers tell a tale of U.S. history

From UCSB

She was an oddball in her own real world, a dwarf who would be shunned in her native society. But she possessed energy, an inventive and acquisitive mind -- and a giant talent for lying, lying, lying. The fables and fabulous life that Olof Krarer (shown in photo at right) concocted for herself, however, tells more about life in early 20th Century America than it does about the legendary impostor who fobbed herself on gullible audiences as an Eskimo lady. Inga Dóra Björnsdóttir, an anthropologist and now author, retells Krarer's tale to recapture this country's onetime excitement about its future and potential, especially as these were imagined and carried out with exploration and expansionism, and how personalities of the day, including presidential aspirant William Jennings Bryant and polar explorer Robert E. Peary, played their parts in the Eskimo farce. Krarer, in reality, was from Iceland, though she claimed to be a Greelander and she explained her diminutive size was common for Eskimo people. She trekked across the U.S., talking to tens of thousands and telling utterly fabricated tales of her supposed Eskimo expertise. She became a much sought entertainer and storyteller, though her hoax was exposed after her death. Even then, why was there not greater disgrace or shame about the ignorance that allowed her to flourish so?

In Santa Barbara, a new center on race, ethnic studies

From UCSB & Keck Graduate Institute

Hmmmm. Color us fascinated by the UC system's decision to grant the wonderful folks up in Santa Barbara a $1.73 million grant out of the president's office to establish a systemwide center on racial studies, an effort, as described, to develop a network of scholars to advance the study, consideration and teaching of race and ethnicity as it affects the nation and especially California. The center, which will run its own web site and will be guaranteed five years of funding, will take a thematic approach, with the first topic that starts on July 1 to be 'The Nation and Its Peoples: Citizens, Denizens and Migrants.' Well, OK, while taking absolutely no shots at the superb scholarship in beautiful Santa Barbara, it's an interesting moment to put a race and ethnic studies emphasis in the pastoral, ex-urban spot even as the folks in Westwood, for example, are marking the 40th anniversary of their pioneering ethnic studies programs, which are rooted in some of the nation's, largest most diverse and influential racial and ethnic communities. Meantime, the folks in Claremont are taking their own interesting academic step, offering a one-year certificate program to assist asipiring medical students enhance their skills before applying to med school. The school says its special approach combining science and business, with a unique emphasis on drug studies, will give students a leg up in the furious competition to get into med school.

A scholarly push to network, organize thematic UC studies on race, ethnicity

Neuroscientist offers different view on Alzheimer's care

From UCSB

While millions of families struggle with the terrible consequences of loved ones' debilitation with Alzheimer's disease, they may be making something of a mistake by turning only to traditional medicine for help and responses, says a neuroscience researcher in Santa Barbara. Dr. Kenneth Kosik, who also is a physician, has co-authored a new book in which he argues that modern medicine has no real, good cure or care for the elderly epidemic of Alzeheimer's and that families will find little help in the existing medical system. Instead, he envisions centers, such as one he has helped launch, that would provide a one-stop site for pallative care, expertise and reliable regimens of diet, exercise and other measures that aid the elderly with Alzheimer's and their care-fraught families. With no drugs, surgery or medical means to address the brain disorder with any real effect, he does offer steps, based on proven, existing research, that adults can take to try to avert or reduce the effects of Alzheimer's. He suggests, for example, that people: eat better and exercise more; reduce their stress; and keep up both their brain work and social lives. Such steps will, among other things, help curb high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes and the tendency toward that disease -- all of these, which are, of course, known risk-factors for increased incidence of Alzheimer's.

Familes urged not to rely only on medical system for help with debilitated seniors