A Report on Discoveries and Achievements at the University of California
Volume 5, Number 3, November 1996
The following is a glimpse of some recent achievements by the faculty, students and staff of the University of California
Teaching and Research . . . College and university faculty in the United States spend less time on research than they used to — but their research is just as productive, according to a study led by higher education researcher Linda Sax of UCLA. In 1995, 44 percent of faculty polled spent five or more hours per week on research, versus 52 percent in 1989; 75 percent of the 1995 respondents said their interests lean more toward teaching than research. But the percentage of faculty publishing journal articles has remained constant over the years, and more faculty are publishing book chapters. Sax says the results indicate that, contrary to popular belief, a strong emphasis on teaching doesn't lead to less research.
Getting an Incomplete . . . Only about 40 percent of college students earn their bachelor's degrees in four years, according to a study led by UCLA education professor Alexander Astin. The rate is 7 percent less than 20 years ago. When college is extended to six years, the completion rate rises to almost 45 percent. Completion rates overall are lowest for African Americans and Native Americans, which Astin says is cause for concern, since these groups are under represented among entering college freshmen.
Dual Degrees . . . The UC Irvine College of Medicine launched
a program that will enable medical students to earn MBAs while becoming
MDs. Dean of medicine Thomas Cesario said the program was created in response
to the managed care revolution, which has caused a tremendous need for
administrators who also understand medicine.
Keeping Weight Off . . . Two years after losing weight, 90 percent of the participants in a UC San Francisco weight-loss program run by pediatrician Laurel Mellin have kept off their excess weight, and gone on to make more progress in weight reduction, exercise, reducing blood pressure and fighting depression. The UCSF program, called "The Solution," focuses on learning new behavioral coping skills and improving body image rather than on diets, fasts, exercises or weight-loss drugs.
Vintage Chocolate? . . . Red wine contains compounds called phenolics that are thought to decrease the risk of coronary heart disease by preventing fat from clogging arteries. Wine chemist Andrew Waterhouse of UC Davis found that a 1.5-ounce piece of milk chocolate contains about the same level of phenolics as a 5-ounce glass of red wine. But Waterhouse cautions that it remains to be seen if chocolate phenolics actually have a protective effect.
Heart Treatments . . . UC San Diego Medical Center is participating in a major national clinical trial to evaluate the use of beta-blockers in treating congestive heart failure, the leading cause of hospitalization among older Americans. The trial will test whether the beta-blocker bucindolol can improve heart function and quality of life, and reduce death rates in people with heart failure. One third of the study participants will be women . . . UC San Francisco heart specialists Leslie Saxon and Scot Merrick became the first doctors to use a new type of pacemaker designed to combat congestive heart failure. The new pacemaker is designed to bolster the pumping power of the heart's ventricles, which are weakened during the disease.
Healing Charge . . . The difference in electrical charge between the inside and outside of the skin may play a big role in wound healing, according to cell biologist Richard Nuccitelli and dermatologist Rivkah Isseroff of UC Davis. The researchers found that the rate at which "rebuilder" cells congregate around a wound is determined by the difference in the charge, as is the route by which the cells reach the wound. Since older people and diabetics often experience slow wound healing, understanding electricity's role in the process may reveal new treatment options.
Seeing Nerves . . . A research team led by neurosurgeon Aaron Filler of UCLA showed that a new imaging technique called magnetic resonance neurography, which allows doctors to view nerves in the body, has a number of potential benefits for patients. The new technology can reduce the number of exploratory surgeries done to evaluate nerve injury and identify patients with "inoperable" pain who can be cured with surgery.
Mouse Hunt . . . Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory are trapping mice throughout the southwestern United States in an effort to study hantavirus, the fatal disease carried by rodents that had its first outbreak on the Navajo Reservation in 1993. As part of a five-year, $1.1 million study funded by the National Institutes of Health, the mice are trapped, analyzed and released, giving researchers data on how many animals are infected, where they live and what factors might affect spread of the disease.
Fat and Gender . . . Working with guinea pigs and monkeys, a group of UC Davis researchers found that male fat cells are more susceptible to dioxins than female fat cells. They differ not only in the degree to which the cells respond, but in the actual mechanics. The researchers say similar gender differences are likely to be found in people. The discovery may have implications for future chemical exposure guidelines.
Hospitals on the Wane . . . Inpatient hospital care in California declined by 30 percent between 1983 and 1993, faster than anywhere else in the nation, according to a study by professor of public health James C. Robinson of UC Berkeley. In place of the old style of hospital care is a large increase in outpatient surgeries — which more than doubled during the decade — and an expansion of care delivered in the doctor's office or at home. Robinson called the change "a historic transformation in the role of the hospital."
Prozac and Pregnancy . . . Women who take the antidepressant
drug Prozac during pregnancy have an increased risk for complications,
according to a study headed by UC San Diego pediatrician Kenneth Lyons
Jones. In the study, women who took Prozac during the third trimester of
pregnancy had a higher rate of premature delivery in comparison with the
control group, while full-term babies had lower birth weight and a higher
rate of admission to special-care nurseries. Babies exposed to the drug
during the third trimester also had a number of other non-life-threatening
health problems. Prozac is the most frequently prescribed antidepressant
drug in use in the United States.
Sky Scanner . . . Astronomers at Lick Observatory, operated by UC Santa Cruz, dedicated the Katzman Automated Imaging Telescope in October. Designed and built by UC Berkeley astronomer Alex Filippenko, the sophisticated robotic telescope will scan the sky for supernovas and other objects that vary in brightness.
Sniffing the Environment . . . An airborne sensor developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to measure the presence of airborne releases from nuclear and chemical weapons plants could be used to monitor the environment. Some environmental agencies are interested in using the sensor, designed to ride under aircraft wings, to measure gases coming off wetlands, look for coral damage off the Florida keys and sample air in shipping lanes off the California coast.
Hot Ice . . . Researcher Bill Durham of Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory and scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey accidentally
created ice that doesn't liquefy when heated well beyond its usual melting
point. The research team stumbled upon the high-temperature ice in the
course of synthesizing methane clathrate, a compound of methane and water
found on icy moons in the outer solar system.
Bending the Helix . . . A team including UC Riverside chemist Christopher Switzer succeeded in deforming DNA. Scientists know that the DNA double helix — a sort of spiral chemical ladder that carries the genetic information of almost all life — is often deformed within genes in order to carry out essential biological processes such as the creation of enzymes and proteins. But they haven't known how it was done. It's the first time the process has been accomplished in the laboratory.
Signals and Noise . . . UC San Diego researchers led by Henry Abarbanel, director of the Institute for Nonlinear Science, and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Cornell University were awarded a three-year, $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study communication over optical fibers. Among other things, the researchers will explore ways of sending information embedded within electronic "noise" — meaningless signals — and then extracting the information at the receiving end.
Strobe Light for Atoms . . . Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
researchers produced the world's first directed beams of femtosecond x-rays.
Lasting only a few hundred millionths of a billionth of a second, the strobe-like
pulses of x-ray light will be used to study the motion of atoms during
ultra-fast physical and chemical processes. A femtosecond is to one second
in duration what one second is to 30 million years.
Warmer Than Ever . . . Warmer sea surface temperatures in the tropics may be contributing to the melting of high-latitude glaciers, according to climatologists Nicholas Graham and Henry F. Diaz of UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The researchers say the tropics are warmer and more humid than at any time in the past 2,000 to 5,000 years, and thus influence sea temperatures to the far north — yet another piece of evidence in support of global warming.
Oil Mortality . . . Few birds cleaned and released after oil spills survive more than one or two years in the wild, despite heroic efforts by cleanup crews, according to a report co-written by Dan Anderson, a UC Davis professor of wildlife, fish and conservation biology. The reason: current rehabilitation techniques aren't effective. The report may lead to more effective oil-removal techniques and better strategies for releasing birds back into the wild. The researchers also question whether, instead of cleaning oiled birds, it might be more effective in the long run to protect birds from spills in the first place or work to restore their populations after spills.
Under the Volcano . . . Researchers Timothy Rose and M. Lee Davisson of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory may have found a new method for determining how potentially active a volcano really is. They theorize that the less carbon 14 — a radioactive isotope of carbon — is present in water samples taken near a volcano, the more potentially active the volcano is. The reason: magma without carbon 14 comes from deep within the earth. If it's near enough to the surface to affect groundwater, that means lots of it is welling up from below — and perhaps is ready to spew out of the volcano.
One Bug's Meat . . . A team led by environmental chemist Marc Deshusses of UC Riverside won a $200,000 grant from the UC Toxic Substances Research and Teaching Program to conduct full scale testing of a biological pollution filter. The filter uses hydrocarbon-eating microorganisms to filter a class of pollutants called volatile organic compounds out of emissions from factories. Deshusses says the bacteria thrive on the pollutants — so the more pollutants, the more bacteria there will be to eat them.
Where Penguins Roam . . . Yearling Antarctic emperor penguins may travel as far as 2,000 miles north from their home in the Ross Sea, well beyond their previously recorded range, according to marine scientist Gerald L. Kooyman of UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Kooyman says the young penguins may be endangering themselves by venturing near waters used by commercial fishing fleets and their big nets. He says that in order to protect the species, scientists need to learn exactly how far from home the young penguins roam.
Towering Scrubbers . . . Researcher Melvin Prueitt of Los Alamos
National Laboratory designed a 650-foot cooling tower that would scrub
city air using ocean water. Prueitt says a series of 95 such towers could
scrub half the air above Los Angeles every day, using water from the nearby
Pacific. The towers would cost $10 million each, meaning that Los Angeles
could have clean air for around $1 billion. Prueitt hopes to have a demonstration
tower built within five years.
Insights on Society
Shrinking Housing . . . Single-family housing projects for the rural poor are no longer affordable, according to Patricia Harrison, UC Davis professor of environmental design. Harrison says that because of rising costs and an increasing number of low-income rural residents, dense clusters of smaller, pre-manufactured dwellings make better sense.
Mediating Violence . . . Victim-offender mediation is an effective and efficient way to deal with violent crime in New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain and parts of the United States, according to UC Santa Barbara sociologist Thomas J. Scheff. In the process, victims confront their assailants in the company of advocates for both parties; a lone mediator resolves each case. Scheff believes the system could be an alternative to the costly and unwieldy American justice system.
Don't Worry, Be Happy . . . Mildly depressed people are better off not
thinking about themselves and their feelings, according to UC Riverside
psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky and undergraduate honors student Nicole
Caldwell. The researchers found that self-analysis leads mildly depressed
people to self-blame and self-criticism — but if they think about pleasant
subjects and imagery for at least eight minutes, their moods lift. The
researchers recommend that therapists identify mildly depressed patients
who have a tendency to ruminate and teach them how to distract themselves.
Materials Grant . . . The National Science Foundation awarded the Materials Research Laboratory at UC Santa Barbara a $13.75 million grant. The lab, known for its cutting-edge search for new high-tech materials, will receive $3 million a year through the year 2001.
Cleanup Grants . . . The U.S. Department of Energy awarded $6.2 million to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for five projects to research and develop new environmental cleanup technologies. The projects range from developing more accurate underground pictures of contaminated sites to creating new methods for tracking contaminants as they flow toward the water table.
Cooperative Research . . . The U.S. Civilian Research Development
Foundation awarded cooperative research grants to 23 UC researchers for
joint projects with scientists and engineers in the former Soviet Union.
There were five winning projects from UC Berkeley; four each from UC Davis
and UC San Diego; three from UCLA; two each from Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, UC Irvine and Los Alamos National Laboratory; and one from
UC Santa Barbara. The winners were among 238 projects chosen from more
than 3,000 proposals submitted.
Institute of Medicine Members . . . Three UC faculty members were among 55 new members elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. They are Charlene A. Harrington of the UC San Francisco School of Nursing; Bernard Lo, UCSF professor of medicine; and Susan S. Taylor, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego. Institute members make a commitment to devote significant volunteer time to studying a broad range of health policy issues.
Mint Fights Pollution . . . Environmental toxicology Ph.D. student Eric Gilbert of UC Riverside was cited in the sixth annual BF Goodrich Collegiate Inventors Program, a competition that honors the best discoveries and inventions of college students across the country. Gilbert was cited for his discovery that carvone, the compound that gives spearmint its distinctive flavor, promotes the decay of PCBs. The finding opens the way to the possible use of carvone to help clean up PCB-contaminated soils.
Major Engineers . . . Imaging researcher Thomas F. Budinger of
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and systems engineer Petar V. Kokotovic
of UC Santa Barbara were inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
Election to the NEA is one of the highest recognitions an engineer can
receive.
Compiled by Communications, Office of the President, steve.tokar@ucop.edu