A Report on Discoveries and Achievements at the University of California
Volume 4, Number 3, November 1995
The following is a glimpse of some recent achievements by the faculty, students and staff of the University of California.
Top Doctorates . . . 119 UC doctoral programs ranked in the top 20 in a major national evaluation by the National Research Council. Eight UC doctoral programs were rated number one in the country overall. UC Berkeley had the most programs in the top 10 -- 36 out of a possible 37 -- of any campus in the United States. UC San Diego ranked 10th. UCLA had the third-highest number of programs in the top 20.
Washington Bound . . . Business professor Carl Shapiro of UC Berkeley joined the U.S. Department of Justice as deputy assistant attorney general for antitrust. He replaces Berkeley economist Richard Gilbert, who held the post until this summer. Shapiro's appointment brings to nine the number of Berkeley economists who've worked for the Clinton Administration.
Securing Nukes . . . Experts from U.S. and Russian scientific institutes demonstrated an innovative system, designed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, that will help prevent tons of bombgrade plutonium and uranium used in the Russian nuclear energy industry from falling into the wrong hands. The system installed at the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering in Obninsk, Russia could serve as a working prototype for nuclear facilities throughout the world.
Balzan Prize . . . UC Santa Barbara materials scientist Alan J. Heeger won a 1995 Balzan Prize for the science of new nonbiological materials. The prestigious prizes, worth $300,000, are given annually for achievement in the arts, cultural history, and the sciences by the Milanbased international Balzan Foundation. Heeger's prize comes for work with plastics that conduct electricity.
Vintage Year Ahead . . . Business for California's wineries is on the upswing, according to wine economist Bob Smiley of UC Davis. 1996 looks rosy because demand for wine is higher and more consumers are drinking premium wines, which are the fastest-growing portion of the wine market.
Helmut Horton Award . . . UC San Francisco geneticist and hematologist Yuet Wai Kan received the Helmut Horten Research Award, valued at $800,000. One of Europe's largest research prizes, the award is given in recognition of "outstanding performance in the fields of biology and/or medicine which directly promote human health." Kan shared the prize with two other researchers from Harvard University and Oxford University.
Fresh Food for Inner City . . . UCLA joined with the Southland
Farmers' Market Association and Gardena Human Services to launch a new
food program that links Southern California farmers directly with innercity
residents, who for decades have suffered from the lack of accessible and
affordable fresh food. The "Market Basket" subscription service is the
first in the country to connect lowincome urban communities with local
growers through farmers' markets.
Smoke-Filled Cubicles . . . Tobacco smoke in the workplace creates a health risk for nonsmokers that is as great or greater than living with a smoker at home, according to research by public health scientist S. Katherine Hammond of UC Berkeley. Hammond found that in offices that allowed smoking, ambient nicotine levels averaged more than twice as high as in homes with a smoker present.
Deadly Dust . . . Industrial workers who develop silicosis, a chronic lung disease caused by long-term exposure to silica dust, have twice the rate of death from lung cancer when compared to the general U.S. male population, according to researchers at UC Davis. The researchers recommend that private industry and state and federal authorities re-evaluate silica dust workplace standards. About 100,000 U.S. workers have silicosis.
AIDS Prevention Counseling . . . Sociologist Craig Reinarman of UC Santa Cruz will lead a twoyear study of the effectiveness of HIV prevention programs among injection drug users in Santa Cruz County. The study will evaluate the efforts of outreach workers who counsel drug users by discussing safesex information, providing condoms and clean needles and referring them to treatment programs. The results will be applied toward a new model outreach program for small cities.
Follow the Guidelines . . . A study led by Richard Kravitz of UC Davis showed that treatment guidelines developed for coronary bypass surgery and coronary angioplasty accurately predicted who would benefit from the treatments. It was one of the first studies to show that treatment guidelines work. The researchers say using guidelines can help identify when procedures are being both over- and under-prescribed.
Colon Cancer Screening . . . Inital results of a screening test for colon cancer, developed by UC San Diego physician C. Richard Boland, show that it may be possible to identify family members who carry the gene for increased risk of the disease. Boland also repored that the gene linked to colon cancer plays a significant "quality control" role in cells, which may explain why mutations in the gene allow some forms of cancer to advance rapidly.
Horses and Humans . . . Humans and horses may be falling victim to the same tickborne ailment that mimics Lyme disease, until now believed to have been two separate disease. John Madigan, a professor of equine medicine at UC Davis, compared the genetic makeup of the bacterium that causes the human disease with that found in horses and found that they were 99.8 percent the same. Madigan hopes the discovery will lead to quicker and more accurate diagnosis and treatment in humans. The twin diseases are human granulocytic ehrlichiosis and equine granulocytic ehrlichiosis.
Jump-Starting Lungs . . . A four-year national clinical trial conducted by UC San Diego physician Frank Mannino is examining the effectiveness of a new treatment to accelerate lung development in babies who are at risk for being born prematurely. The study will show whether thyrotropin releasing hormone administered in combination with steroids helps accelerate a baby's lung development and thus reduce the risk of chronic lung disease caused by undeveloped lungs.
Heart of Survival . . . UCLA cardiologist Jon Kobashigawa reported that treating heart transplant patients with a cholesterollowering drug can significantly reduce posttransplant atherosclerosis, the major obstacle to increasing the longterm survival of transplant recipients. His study showed that the drug helped decrease signs of rejection among patients who were followed for one year after their transplant.
Off the Charts . . . Healthy babies may miss the mark on infant
growth charts simply because current charts don't accurately reflect the
growth patterns of breastfed babies, reports UC Davis nutrition
professor Kathryn Dewey. Breastfed babies tend to grow more rapidly
than predicted by growth charts during the first two to three months, then
more slowly compared to formulafed infants. Assuming that the child's growth
is faltering, the mother might unnecessarily be counseled to cease breastfeeding
and switch to formulafeeding. Instead, Dewey suggests that new charts be
developed to represent the growth patterns of breastfed babies.
Nosing Out Food . . . To find food in the vast expanses of seemingly featureless ocean, seabirds may hunt with their noses, according neurobiologist Gabrielle Nevitt of UC Davis. The smell of gaseous emissions from planktonic algae appears to tell some Antarctic birds that food may be lurking under the ocean's surface. The find is surprising, because birds are not generally known for their sense of smell.
Malaria Close-up . . . Parasitologist Cathie Magowan of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory produced some of the first detailed images of the malaria parasite within an intact red blood cell. The images can help scientists see how malaria has eluded attempts at eradication for more than 2,000 years.
Stemming Growth . . . Plant biologists at UC San Diego
demonstrated that flowers are merely modified shoots that require only
a single gene to change what normally would have been stems and leaves
into flowers. The researchers also found that plants altered genetically
to produce flowers instead of shoots generate flowers much earlier in the
plant's life cycle. The results could increase crop yields by decreasing
flowering time and offer plant breeders a new tool for genetically modifying
economically important crops.
Cell Death, Cell Life . . . Life sciences researcher Judy Campisi of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed the first test for identifying individual cells that have reached old age within living organisms. Until now, scientists could only study senescent cells grown in culture. Cell death is related to the the process of aging; in contrast, cancerous cells don't die. The new test allows new avenues of research in both aging and cancer.
The "Club" for Eggs? . . . Biologists at UC Riverside confirmed that mammalian sperm cells contain on their surfaces an enzyme "key" for gaining entry to eggs. The finding may open the door for devising more effective contraceptives based on interfering with the key, thus avoiding fertilizing an egg.
The Shape of Things . . . Computer scientist Robert HechtNielsen of UC San Diego demonstrated how massive quantities of information can be electronically translated into -- and viewed as -- a single unique geometric shape that can be reconverted to voice, text or image. The system offers a new way of handling and understanding the vast quantities of data now available over the information superhighway.
Deadly Gene . . . A team of UCLA medical researchers unlocked
the mystery of how the HIV virus stops immune cells from replicating --
through the action of a gene within the virus called Vpr. When immune cells
can't replicate, the immune system is depleted and eventually destroyed.
The discovery may lead the way to reversal of the Vpr gene's deadly action.
One-Two Punch . . . A massive worldwide extinction 250 million years ago was probably caused by a series of huge volcanic eruptions in Sibera, according to earth scientists Paul Renne and Mark Richards of UC Berkeley. They say that gases from the eruptions first caused rapid cooling by blocking sunlight, then raised temperatures for several hundred thousand years in a greenhouse effect. The combination was enough to wipe out more than 75 percent of all life on earth.
Shaky Platforms? . . . The California State Lands Commission
and the U.S. Minerals Management Service asked seismologists from Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory to evaluate the seismic hazards to offshore
oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel. Most of the platforms date
back to the 1960s and 70s, when seismic codes were less stringent than
they are today, and no one knows how the platforms would be affected in
a big quake.
Kids, Stress and Illness . . . A study by UC San Francisco behavioral scientist W. Thomas Boyce showed that children who are sensitive to stress get sick more often than their peers. It's the first study to identify children who are vulnerable to stress-related illness.
Future Aggression . . . Psychologist Neil Malamuth of
UCLA led a study that accurately identified men who would later
become sexually agressive toward women, based on a questionaire answered
more than a decade earlier. The study identifies two broad clusters of
risk characteristics that together predict future aggression: a pattern
of controlling, dominating and being hostile to women, plus a pattern of
impersonal sex. The two clusters by themselves don't add up to aggression,
which the researchers define as forcing or coercing a woman into having
sex when she doesn't want to.
It's Elementary . . . UC Santa Cruz is helping coordinate a fiveyear project designed to improve science education for K6 bilingual students. The project, known as Language Acquisition in Science Education in Rural Schools, is funded by a $4.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation. More than 50 elementary schools in seven Central California school districts will participate.
Public Health Leadership . . . The UCLA School of Public
Health received a five year, $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention to conduct the Public Health Leadership
Institute, which offers intensive instruction to key health officials from
state, regional and local agencies. The institute is a cooperative program
of UCLA, the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, the San Diego State University
School of Public Health and the Western Consortium for Public Health.
Packard Fellowships . . . Three UC researchers received prestigious fellowships from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation of Los Altos, Calif. They were chemist Martin HeadGordon of UC Berkeley, biochemist Didier Stainier of UC San Francisco and molecular biologist Charles Wilson of UC Santa Cruz. The fellowships, worth $100,000 a year for five years, recognize scientists in the first three years of their faculty careers who show unusual creative abilities and exceptional promise. Twenty fellowships are awarded nationally each year.
China Bound . . . Three faculty members at UC Santa Cruz received a $150,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to support a collaboration with Chinese scholars to study women in the labor force in China from 1949 to the present. Professor of history Gail Hershatter, professor of women's studies Emily Honig and assistant professor of anthropology Lisa Rofel will travel to China to study local archives, gather oral histories and consult with their Chinese counterparts. The grant also supports residencies at UCSC for seven Chinese scholars involved in the collaboration.
Primary Care Award . . . The Primary Health Care Nurse Practitioner Program at the UC San Francisco School of Nursing received a national award of excellence for achievement in primary care education from the Pew Health Professions Commission. The program has graduated the largest number of primary care nurse practitioner/nurse midwives in the country.
Civil Honor . . . Richard J. Seymour, a research engineer and senior lecturer at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography was named a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The designation is considered one of the highest professional recognitions civil engineers can receive from their peers.
Lord Award . . . Gregory Benford, a professor physics
at UC Irvine, was one of three 1995 recipients of the $2,500 Lord
Foundation Award for achievement in the sciences from the Lord Foundation
in Pittsburgh, Penn. He was recognized for his work in plasma turbulence
and astrophysics.
Compiled by Communications Services, Office of the President, steve.tokar@ucop.edu