A Report on Discoveries and Achievements at the University of California
Volume 10, Number 4, January 2001

The following is a glimpse of some recent achievements by the faculty, students, and staff of the University of California and the national laboratories managed by the University.
 

In the News

New Research Institutes … Gov. Gray Davis announced that California Institutes for Science and Innovation will be located at UC San Diego, UCLA and UC San Francisco as lead campuses, and that he will seek funding for a fourth institute to be located at UC Berkeley. The centers will focus research in areas that will enhance California's high-tech economy. The California Nanosystems Institute (UCLA) will focus on design and construction of devices and materials with components that measure no more than a billionth of a meter. The California Institute for Telecommunications and Informational Technology (UCSD) will develop new materials and devices to expand the capacities of communications and information infrastructures. The California Institute for Bioengineering, Biotechnology and Quantitative Biomedicine (UCSF) will bring together scientists in biomedical research, engineering and physical sciences. The state's $300-million commitment over four years is matched two-to-one by non-state dollars.

R&D Campus … UC Santa Cruz and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have announced a partnership to create an educational research-and-development campus at the proposed NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley.

Hands-on Science … Thirty-five freshmen at Riverside's Arlington High School are contributing to agricultural genomics research in a partnership with UC Riverside.  Timothy Close, a genetics professor, has the students mapping the genetic structure of wheat and barley, projects funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and National Science Foundation. They will use a DNA sequencer and other scientific equipment in their classroom.

Research on the Brain … The nation's most powerful magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner to be devoted solely to basic research on the brain has been unveiled at UC Berkeley. The new $5 million brain imaging center launches an era of neuroscience research bringing together scientists from many disciplines--physics, chemistry, biology, psychology and computer sciences--to study the living brain with the 14-ton scanner.

Not So Far Away and Long Ago … A galaxy near the Big Dipper is no longer the "most distant object known," report researchers from UC Davis, UC Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, working with colleagues at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  Last year, the scientists estimated that the galaxy, called "Sharon," was approximately 12.5 billion light years from Earth, equivalent to looking back in time to a few hundred million years after the beginning of the universe.  But new data show that Sharon is more likely a mere 10 billion light years away. The title of most distant object now reverts to a quasar more than 12 billion light years away.
 

Health and Nutrition

Low-Fat Risk? … A scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reports that because of certain inherited genetic traits, an extreme low-fat/high carbohydrate diet can, for some individuals, increase the risk of heart disease.  Researcher Ronald Krauss says the diet produced metabolic changes in some individuals that altered their cholesterol profile. An extreme low-fat diet was defined as one in which fat made up less than 25 percent of the total daily calorie intake.

Scapegoat Spider … UC Riverside researcher Richard Vetter has warned physicians not to fall into the trap of blaming the brown recluse spider for mysterious flesh wounds, especially in California. That's because there are no brown recluses in the state. Vetter suggests that physicians consider a wider range of causes for such wounds, including chemical burns, skin cancer, diabetic ulcers and infections from bacteria and fungus.

Too Much Manganese? … A new study from UC Santa Cruz suggests that too much manganese, an essential element required by the body in tiny amounts but toxic at elevated levels, may contribute to the development of Parkinson's disease symptoms in some people. Recent studies have suggested an association between Parkinson's and elevated exposure to manganese; the new study shows that exposure to low levels of manganese does not directly contribute to the disease, but affects a different part of the brain in a way that exacerbates the effects of Parkinson's.

Natural Chemical to Control Coughing … UC Irvine researchers have found that a marijuana-like chemical that occurs naturally in the body may control coughing and various respiratory functions. The finding by Daniele Piomelli and colleagues provides the first insight into the causes of certain types of coughing and eventually may result in new treatments for coughing spells.
 

Developments and Discoveries

Genome Advance … Researchers at the Joint Genome Institute have produced high-quality draft sequences of 15 bacterial genomes. Among the sequenced organisms was Xylella fastidiosa, a pathogen carried by sharpshooter insects that infects grapevines, citrus and almond trees, and oleander bushes (used as median strips on California highways). The institute is a consortium of the Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories, which are managed by UC.

Mind’s Eye … In a first-ever demonstration, UCLA School of Medicine and Caltech researchers have shed new light on how the “mind’s eye” works, uncovering evidence that single neurons–individual brain cells–are involved in recalling specific visual images to mind. The study reveals that the same brain cells that fire when a person looks at a photograph of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa are the same neurons that excite when that person is asked to imagine the Mona Lisa.

Tracking Africanized Bees … UC Davis researchers are tracking the progress of Africanized “killer bees” across California using a genetic test developed on campus.  Entomologist Robert Page reports that in his survey, conducted in late summer, Africanized bees were not found in any new locations north of Ventura or Kern counties. Tracking the spread of  Africanized wild bees is important for the beekeeping industry because wild bees can mate with queens from commercial hives, making beekeeping more dangerous and more expensive.
 

The Cutting Edge

A Tie that Binds … UC Santa Barbara researcher Evelyn Hu reports the successful binding of peptides, a biological material, to inorganic semiconducting materials. The research represents a first crucial step towards employing biological systems that already know how to build things on the nanoscale in building very small inorganic structures for human use, atom by atom.

Better Vaccine … UCLA researchers have devised the first vaccine against tuberculosis that is more potent than the current commercially available vaccine, developed nearly a century ago.  The bacterium that causes tuberculosis–Mycobacterium tuberculosis–infects two billion people worldwide and eight million new cases of active tuberculosis develop annually.

No Wrinkles, No Migraine … A treatment used to get rid of facial wrinkles may also help migraine sufferers, UC San Francisco researcher Richard Glogau reports. He says 75 percent of patients in his case study experienced four to six months of migraine relief following injections of Botox (botulinum toxin A derived from bacteria) to muscles of the face and head. Botox, the same bacteria that causes food poisoning, has been used in purified and diluted form to temporarily paralyze the muscles that bring the eyebrows together, eliminating wrinkles there.

Superconductor Milestone … Researchers in the Superconductivity Technology Center of Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a new process for producing high-performance superconducting tape that operates at the temperature of liquid nitrogen.  Superconducting tapes can efficiently carry vast amounts of electrical current with no resistive losses. A single piece of superconducting tape, for instance, can carry 200 times the electrical current of an equivalent copper wire.

Get-Well Cards … Next time you feel under the weather, try playing bridge. UC Berkeley researcher Marian Cleeves Diamond has performed an experiment showing that contract bridge players have increased numbers of immune cells after a game.  If her study is borne out, it would be the first time a specific area of the cortex–in this case, part of the frontal lobe of the brain–has been linked with the immune system.

Cycling in Space … A UC Irvine team may have a new way to help astronauts exercise in space: the bicycle. Ken Baldwin, Vince Caiozzo and Art Kreitenberg, professors at UCI’s College of Medicine, lead a team developing a prototype cycle, which–pending further trials and NASA approval–could be used on the space station.
 

Planet and Environment

Really Dim … The beginning of the Dark Ages may have been literal as well as figurative, the result of a massive volcanic eruption in the Sixth century, reports Los Alamos National Laboratory volcanologist Ken Wohletz.  An eruption in the Indonesian archipelago could have produced a 150-meter-thick cloud layer over the entire Earth, triggering climatic,  agricultural, political and social changes that ushered in the Dark Ages, he reports.

Duck Cleanup … Letting ducks forage on flooded rice fields is an effective way to break down rice straw and is an alternative to burning, UC Davis researchers report.  The birds may bring other benefits to rice farmers by getting rid of insects and weed seeds and reducing the need for herbicides. UC Davis is conducting a larger study across the northern Sacramento Valley to investigate these potential benefits.

Fur Seals Disappearance … Two UC Santa Cruz researchers are probing the mystery of why Northern fur seals disappeared from the Central California coast. The creatures are perhaps best known for their fur, prized by hunters in the 1800s, but their disappearance apparently occurred long before the advent of the fur trade. Researchers Diane Gifford-Gonzalez and Paul Koch have ruled out bears, coyotes and other carnivores. More likely, they believe, would be human overpredation or climate change–or a combination of the two.

Antarctica Salt Clues … UC San Diego chemists have discovered that the mysteriously high salt concentrations in exposed soils of Antarctica’s Dry Valleys are due in large part to biological sulfur emissions in the oceans surrounding the continent. The scientists discovered an unmistakable chemical signature in soil samples from this Mars-like region that suggested atmospheric deposition of sulfates from sulfur-emitting marine algae is a significant contributor to salt concentrations in the region.

Big Rig Laboratory … UC Riverside researchers have constructed a rolling emissions laboratory inside a 53-foot trailer to accurately measure emissions from heavy-duty, diesel-powered trucks under real-world driving conditions.  The scientists expect to begin collecting data from trucks towing the emissions lab in early 2001. The results will help assess the impacts of diesel engines on the environment and, ultimately, lead to improved air quality.

Rice Paddies Affect Climate … Research by UC Irvine Chancellor Ralph Cicerone and colleagues has determined that the world’s rice paddies emit a small but significant amount of methyl halide gases, which contribute to climate change and depletion of the ozone layer.  The comprehensive study, looking at U.S. and Japanese rice fields, points to soil content and field management as keys to understanding emissions.

Plant Communication … UC Davis scientists report they have uncovered the strongest evidence to date that plants in the wild communicate with one another. Researcher Richard Karban says that literally sensing danger in the air, some wild plants appear to boost their defenses against marauding insects when they receive a warning chemical signal from a damaged neighbor plant.

Mercury Danger … Significant amounts of toxic mercury are leaching into a creek that flows past the site of the New Idria mercury mine near Pinnacles National Monument (San Benito County), UC Santa Cruz researchers report. New Idria had one of the longest periods of operation (from 1854 to 1972) and was the second largest mercury producer in North America. Inoperative mercury mines are a major source of mercury pollution in bodies of water such as San Francisco Bay that consistently exceed water quality standards for the toxic element, says UCSC’s Russell Flegal.
 

Insights on Society

Rooted Americans … We Americans see ourselves as a nation of strangers on the move, gazing back mistily to a time when we stayed put in one community and knew our neighbors. But this image is almost exactly opposite the truth, reports UC Berkeley sociologist Claude Fischer.  The U.S. population is actually more rooted geographically than it was in the 1950s or even in the 19th century, he says. The only exception are service workers–maids, guards, waiters and janitors–who experience more residential mobility than their counterparts 50 years ago.

Internet Use … UCLA researchers report that two-thirds of Americans have access to online technology and use it extensively without sacrificing their personal and social lives–but users and non-users alike continue to have concerns about their online privacy. The report, from the World Internet Project of the Center for Communication Policy, also found that adults are generally satisfied with their children’s Internet use, but believe children continue to encounter inappropriate material online.

Saving Lives … An estimated 33,300 heart-disease deaths were prevented during the first nine years of the voter-approved anti-smoking program in California, according to a report by UC San Francisco researchers. It’s the first time that scientists have attributed savings in lives to a tobacco control program. The researchers estimate that 8,300 excess deaths from heart disease can be attributed to budget cuts and changes made to focus the program primarily on youth–steps which they say weakened the effort in the mid-1990s.

What’s Delicious? … Imagine filling your buffet plate with fried spiders and rattlesnake. No? Welcome to the world of food preferences, where what is considered delicious–and disgusting–is more a matter of culture than most people think. UC Santa Cruz sociologist Dane Archer says while Westerners cringe at the thought of eating dog meat, Hindus feel the same way about cows. Archer says he tackled food prejudice as a way to address themes of cultural differences and misunderstandings that emerged in his work on communication.

Welfare Reform … Welfare reform has opened the door to innovation and is transforming a rule-bound bureaucracy into something much more flexible, according to a report by researchers at the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare. It’s the first glimpse into how county social-services agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area implemented the1996 federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.  Researcher Michael Austin said the state’s welfare changes, which followed the federal act, empowered counties to reform the system, which they did.
 

Looking to the Future

Gloomy Forecast … The nation’s longest economic expansion is coming to an end and California’s seemingly invincible high-tech economy is vulnerable, reports the UCLA Anderson Business Forecast in its quarterly economic outlook. Forecast director Edward Leamer projects a 60 percent chance that the Bush/Clinton expansion will end in 2001, brought on by the collapse of the stock market and the dot-com bankruptcy cycle.  However, the greater stability of the nation’s economy since 1982 will most likely make the downturn short and shallow.

A Small World … UC Santa Barbara scientists and colleagues in Japan and Korea have created materials on the nano scale and viewed them in three dimensions, an achievement that could help to solve macro-level problems of technology and the environment. The highly structured, porous glass has potential applications for lasers, optical fibers, coatings for computer chips, packaging to protect and enhance desired biological processes, and various highly sensitive detectors, including sensors for finding biotoxins in the environment.

Canned Fusion? … Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory are investigating a way to create fusion energy in a cylinder roughly the size of a soda can.  “Magnetized Target Fusion” research shows the potential for producing smaller fusion energy sources at a cost that is far less than current approaches.

Another Genome First … UC Davis researcher Anne Britt is part of the international team that has performed the first complete genome sequence for a flowering plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. The completed genome sequence may open up ways to study human diseases using plants.  Britt reports Arabidopsis has a similar distribution of repair genes to humans and might turn out to be a very good model for the study of DNA repair in mammals.

Wireless Network…The National Science Foundation has awarded a $2.3 million research grant to UC San Diego to create a high performance wireless research and education network in Southern California. The demonstration project is expected to fill an important gap in many fields of scientific research that need high speed network access from hard-to-reach sites and to serve education needs in remote, underserved communities.
 

Kudos

Purnell Honored … Valerie Purnell, a member of UC’s Office of State Governmental Relations, has been selected as the recipient of the Marvin D. “Swede” Johnson Service Award by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. She has been with the office since 1994.

Humanism Award … The Association of American Medical Colleges has honored Richard P. Usatine of UCLA with the second annual Humanism in Medical Education award. Usatine, assistant dean of student affairs and associate professor of family medicine at the UCLA School of Medicine, is known for bringing quality health care to underserved communities.

Eradicating Polio … Jon Andrus, UC San Francisco associate adjunct professor of epidemiology and biostatistics in the Institute for Global Health, has been awarded the U.S. Public Health Service Distinguished Service Medal for his leadership and technical contributions from 1993 to the present in eradicating polio in Southeast Asia.  Andrus was responsible for coordinating polio eradication in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Korea, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.
 

Investing in Education

Gift to Children … The founder of Kinko’s, Paul Orfalea, and his wife, Natalie, have made a $2 million gift to the UC Santa Barbara Children’s Center, to be named the Orfalea Family Children’s Center. It will provide an endowment that will enable the center to limit tuition, provide additional scholarships for low-income parents and offer additional parenting classes.

School Named … The UC Irvine School of the Arts has been named the Claire Trevor School of the Arts in honor of the late Academy Award- and Emmy Award-winning actress. The naming is in recognition of Trevor’s accomplishments during her 79-year career in stage, film, radio and television and of contributions to the school in her honor. Trevor and the Bren family have contributed $7.5 million to the school to date. The gift will establish three endowed professorships, support UCI’s ArtsBridge program and provide discretionary funds.

Mission Bay Support … Deborah and Halsey Minor have pledged $1 million to support development of UC San Francisco’s Mission Bay campus. Mrs. Minor serves as a member of the UCSF Foundation and is on the Foundation Relations Committee.
 
 
 

Compiled by University Affairs. For more information, call (510) 987-9200 or look under “News & Facts” on the UC Office of the President Home Page:  www.ucop.edu