A Report on Discoveries and Achievements at the University of California
Volume 6, Number 4, January 1998
The following is a glimpse of some recent achievements by the faculty,students and staff of the University of California
CAUSE Awards . . . Two UC campuses won CAUSE Awards for Best Practices in Higher Education Information Resources. CAUSE (the Association for Managing and Using Information Resources in Higher Education) recognizes achievement in information resources management. The Best Practices in Professional Development Award was given to UC Berkeley for its CAL PACT (CAL People and Computer Training) program, which provides core computer courses and specialized training for employees. UC Irvine won the Best Practices in Applications for replacing a laborious parking permit process with a streamlined program called BYPASS (Buy Your Permit Automatically Sans Standing-in-line).
U.N. Prize . . . Yong-Chuan "Bill" Chen, a mathematics researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory, won one of five science prizes from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Chen was awarded UNESCO's Javed Husain Prize for Young Scientists and given $10,000 for his research into combinatorial mathematics, a study of complex systems in terms of their elementary parts, and its application to computer science, physics and biology.
A Chemical Landmark . . . The world’s largest scientific organization, the American Chemical Society, designated UC Berkeley’s Gilman Hall a National Historic Chemical Landmark. The designation recognizes the contributions to chemical research and teaching made by faculty and students in Gilman Hall. The building provided research and teaching facilities for physical, inorganic and nuclear chemistry and housed several Nobel Prize winners.
An Undesirable Legacy . . . UC Davis professor of medicine Lynn Wiley and her colleagues at Davis and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory found a striking hereditary legacy of radiation exposure. Their results confirm what the Japanese have been saying for years: that the effects of radiation can be passed down through generations. Using laboratory mice, the study also showed that radiation damaged several genes as opposed to specific ones.
Blocking Cancer . . . Researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center have found a way to block the spread of breast and prostate cancer by using cells that occur naturally in humans. Pathologist Sanford Barsky and his colleagues found in lab tests that myoepithelial cells, which line ducts in the human body, block the spread of cancer cells by confining the cancer cells in the ducts for long periods of time. Cancer almost always begins in the ducts, Barsky says. Ultimately, researchers hope to enhance the blocking abilities of these cells to treat cancer patients.
Schizophrenia Gene Identified . . . UC Irvine researchers have identified a gene believed to be responsible for increasing the risk of schizophrenia, a psychiatric disorder that afflicts 60 million people worldwide. The gene also may enhance risk for manic-depressive illness, which affects up to 100 million people worldwide. George Chandy and Jay Gargus, professors of physiology, biophysics and genetics, and George Gutman, professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, say the findings may help identify those at risk of these diseases as well as better treatment.
Food Allergy Relief . . . A solution to food allergies may have been found by scientists at UC's Berkeley, San Francisco and Davis campuses. Researchers discovered a way to lower the allergenicity of milk. The technique uses a naturally occurring product called thioredoxin to make proteins, such as those found in wheat and milk, more digestible and less allergenic. Thioredoxin changes the shape of proteins in problem foods so they lose much of their ability to trigger allergies and are easier to digest.
No More Injections . . . Millions of diabetics could be freed of daily insulin injections by using an insulin-delivery process that occurs automatically when food is eaten. In studies with diabetic rats, UC San Francisco researchers, led by Michael S. German, retooled certain cells within digestive glands to produce and deliver insulin into the bloodstream and normalize blood sugar levels. The non-surgical procedure could lead to treatment of other chronic diseases, including hemophilia, obesity and cancer.
Alaskan Prohibition . . . A review of hospital records in the isolated town of Barrow, Alaska, which banned and made legal the sale of alcohol four times in 33 months, found that alcohol-related outpatient visits declined by 78 percent with prohibition. The research was conducted by UC Riverside sociologist Robert Nash Parker. While the study does not advocate national prohibition, it does indicate regulating alcohol availability is an effective public health intervention.
An Arthritic Gene . . . Researchers at UC San Diego, led by professor of medicine Gary S. Firestein, discovered the first gene defects associated with rheumatoid arthritis. Mutant p53 genes were found in tissue taken from the joints of patients with severe, chronic rheumatoid arthritis who were undergoing joint replacement surgery. Earlier studies showed that the cells lining the joints had undergone some mutation, appearing more like tumor cells. The mutated genes continue to cause damage to cartilage and bone, even after patients are treated for the inflammation.
Biohazard Detectives . . . A research group at Los Alamos National Laboratory applied the genetic research method called Polymerase Chain Reaction to identify disease producing organisms called pathogens in medical samples. The lab's ability to accurately and quickly identify variations in samples of an organism will greatly aid a response to outbreaks of pathogens, whether natural or induced. Precise identification of strains is also important for the development of vaccines.
Pocket Laboratories . . . A portable, hand-held device, capable of detecting a wide range of medically important chemical reactions via a silicon chip, has been created by a team of researchers from UC San Diego and the Scripps Research Institute. The biosensor changes colors to signal the presence of specific molecules after a fluid sample is taken from a patient. The sensor will immediately detect molecules from conditions programmed into it.
Sickle Cell Breakthrough . . . Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have genetically engineered mice that mimic the symptoms of human sickle cell disease which afflicts up to 100,000 babies worldwide. The research is significant because a lack of animal models that accurately reproduce the disease's symptoms has hampered efforts to find an effective treatment. The research was performed by Chris Paszty and Edward Rubin of the Lab's Life Sciences Division.
A First With Helium . . . In a novel experiment, two UC Irvine scientists made liquid helium perform like water on a duck’s back, beading up and forming droplets instead of spreading across the surface. Physics professors Peter Taborek and James Rutledge performed the experiment by placing liquid helium on an alkali metal called cesium, to date the only known surface that repels liquid helium. The discovery promises new insight into liquid-surface interactions, which in turn could lead to improved liquid-based consumer products from glues and paints to dyes and cleaners.
Glowing Cells . . . UC Davis scientists have devised a new fluorescent yellow-orange marker that can be used with recently developed green and blue markers to watch the movements of important features within living cells, such as the effects of new drug treatments. Biochemist J. Clark Lagarias built the new marker with student John Murphy from a plant light receptor and a pigment from red algae. The yellow-orange label is brighter than the blue-green marker and its color is less likely to be confused with a cell’s inherent fluorescence, which makes it visible at greater depths within living tissue.
Getting WINGs . . . Most of today’s Internet users are tied to workstations and unable to get online on-the-go. Even wireless modems require users to hook up to the Internet via an established service provider. But UC Santa Cruz’s J. J. Garcia-Luna, an associate professor of computer engineering, and his research team developed innovative tools known as WINGs, Wireless Internet Gateways, that allow users to create their own mobile networks. The portable devices are ideal for emergency situations such as earthquakes or floods.
Cellular Mysteries . . . Researchers at UC Irvine have moved closer to understanding the mysteries of human cell development through a technique called laser micropipette. This technique pioneered by Michael Berns, director of the Beckman Laser Institute, allows researchers to observe, millisecond by millisecond, activities of cells and to measure the progress of chemical reactions in cells. This work could shed light on how proteins and enzymes work, how diseases arise and how medications affect them.
Safer planes . . . A powerful laser, developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is being adapted to help produce safer airplanes, more durable hip implants and other improved products. The glass laser will be used to treat metal to increase its strength and reduce corrosion. The Livermore laser is more effective because it has 600 watts of average power and is capable of firing 10 pulses per second, compared with the best commercial lasers that fire one pulse every two seconds.
Gamma Ray Glow . . . A huge cloud of high-energy gamma rays forms a halo extending into outer space from the Milky Way, a phenomenon that cannot be accounted for by known celestial bodies, according to UC Riverside astrophysicist Dave Dixon and his colleagues. The scientists offered several possible reasons for this strange phenomenon, including that it could be evidence of "dark matter," the missing mass of the universe that scientists have not been able to observe directly.
Genesis Mission . . . UC San Diego chemists will measure and analyze the oxygen content of winds flowing from the Sun as part of a $216 million international space mission scheduled for launch in 2001. By measuring the Sun's oxygen composition, scientists hope to learn more about how the solar system was formed. This project, led by Mark Thiemans, is the highest priority measurement objective of the Genesis mission, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
A New Star . . . Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have identified what may be the most luminous star known, a celestial mammoth that releases up to 10 million times the power of the Sun. The image was taken by UCLA astronomer Don F. Figer and reveals a bright nebula, or galaxy of stars, created by some of the most massive stellar eruptions yet seen. The nebula is so big (four light years in diameter) that it would span the distance from our Sun to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our solar system.
Pollution and Cancer . . . UC Berkeley's Bruce N. Ames, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, says there is no good evidence linking cancer to pollution. Instead, his research found the most important causes of cancer is smoking, poor diet, hormones and chronic infections. Though there may be many excellent reasons for cleaning up pollution of our air, water and soil, Ames' research claims prevention of cancer is not one of them.
Climate Change . . . Reducing the risks of climate change need not entail harming the economy. In fact, environmentally sound pollution prevention policies can have economic benefits, according to Stephen DeCanio, an economist at UC Santa Barbara. DeCanio’s research found the risks inherent in climate change argue strongly for pursuing pollution reductions now rather than waiting for disasters caused by unchecked greenhouse-gas emissions.
Don’t Cry for Argentina . . . Bucking the scholarly trend of viewing Argentina’s democratic future with pessimism, research by David Pion-Berlin, a UC Riverside political scientist, concludes that most soldiers and politicians now play by the rules of the game in a country once notorious for its disregard for democratic conventions. According to his research, Argentina has built strong governmental institutions and convinced the military that it is in its own best interest to play by the rules.
Treating Alcoholism . . . For decades therapists and counselors have sought the most effective methods for treating alcoholism with the belief that an individual patients’ characteristics should guide the therapeutic method. Now, a UC Santa Barbara study on alcoholics and their partners has concluded that this is indeed the most productive approach for therapy. Psychotherapist Larry E. Beutler was the principal investigator.
Affirmative Action Study . . . State funding for the investigation of gender-based and racial discrimination in California has declined while the number of complaints has skyrocketed, according to a UCLA study on the statewide impact of affirmative action programs since the early 1980s. As funding declined, there has been a drop in the number of cases settled by the California Fair Employment Practices Commission. Researchers found that people are increasingly turning to the courts for relief. Paul Ong, UCLA professor of urban planning and social welfare, directed the study’s national team of scholars.
Look Here . . . A UC Irvine study on facial expression found only half of the Japanese students shown photos of Americans could correctly identify such basic emotions as anger, fear and contempt. UCI's Siu Wa Tang, chair of psychiatry and human behavior, concluded a growing global business climate makes it important for different cultures to correctly identify such expressions.
Seniority Rules . . . The concept of social organization based on differences in sex and the feminist assumption that the subordination of women is a worldwide phenomenon do not apply to at least one pre-colonial African culture. This shows that Western ideas about gender are not universal, as many theorists suppose. Oyeronke Oyewumi of UC Santa Barbara’s Black Studies Department examined Yoruban culture in Southwestern Nigeria and concluded that seniority rather than gender has traditionally determined social hierarchy and rules.
Alcohol Awareness . . . In an effort to increase student alcohol awareness and related health and safety issues, UC San Diego has been awarded a $190,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The funds will be used to support a campaign to gather student feedback about alcohol use and promote alcohol awareness facts and issues. Part of the program’s goal is to help divert students from buying alcohol in nearby Tijuana, Mexico, where the legal drinking age is 18.
Preventing Violence . . . UC Riverside sociologist Edgar Butler is the principal investigator on a violence prevention initiative and research program funded by a $100,000 grant from the California Wellness Foundation. The project is surveying more than 150 violence prevention programs to evaluate their outcomes and make recommendations for cost-efficient strategies and programs.
Presidential Prize . . . With twin goals of furthering her research in mathematics and pushing out the frontiers of education for inner-city children, Katherine Okikiolu of UC San Diego, has received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. The assistant professor of mathematics will receive $500,000 over five years under the program. The Presidential Award is the highest honor the U.S. government bestows upon scientists and engineers early in their careers.
Outstanding Student . . UCLA senior Sophia Mei-ling Chang, who is majoring in sociology and urban policy, is among the winners of Glamour magazine’s 40th annual Top 10 College Women Competition. Chang was cited for her work as a volunteer tutor and mentor for children, including those who are homeless, and her commitment to serve public education as a teacher and policy-maker.
Compiled by Communications Services, Office of the President, Larissa.Branin@ucop.edu