A Report on Discoveries and Achievements at the University of California
Volume 6, Number 3, November 1997
The following is a glimpse of some recent achievements by the faculty,students and staff of the University of California
Peer Group . . . A major West Coast earthquake engineering research facility called the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center will have the expertise of nine academic institutions to seek ways to reduce the cost and casualties from a major earthquake. UC Berkeley was chosen by the National Science Foundation to lead the group which also includes UCLA, UC Davis, UC Irvine and UC San Diego.
AAAS Fellows . . . The American Association for the Advancement of Science awarded the distinction of fellow to 34 UC scientists out of a national total of 270 new fellows. UC Riverside led the nation with a total of 12; UC Berkeley seven; UC San Diego six; UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara three each; UCLA two; and UC San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz one fellow each.
Humanities Medal . . . President Clinton presented the 1997 National Humanties Medal to two UC faculty members. UC Berkeley’s Maxine Hong Kingston, a writer and senior lecturer, won the award for accomplishments in thought and culture. UC Santa Barbara scholar Luis Leal, a pioneer in Chicano literary history and Mexican short-fiction criticism, was also awarded the medal for contributions to the public understanding of history, literature and other humanities disciplines.
Promising Fellows . . . Five UC researchers are among 20 of the nation’s most promising young faculty members to receive the 1997 David and Lucille Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering. The UC recipients are chemist Steven K. Buratto of UC Santa Barbara, pharmacologist Wendell A. Lim of UC San Francisco, earth scientist Paul J. Tackley of UCLA, physicist David S. Weiss of UC Berkeley and astronomer Dennis Zaritsky of UC Santa Cruz.
Breast Cancer and Diet . . . For the first time, researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center have shown that a diet heavy in soy products, fish oils and vegetables can change the composition of human breast tissue and reduce the risk of breast cancer. The study, led by John Glaspy, indicates at least one aspect of breast tissue in American women can be altered to approximate the breast tissue of women in certain Asian and European countries where the incidence of breast cancer is much lower.
Unclogging Arteries . . . Experimental genetic therapy is helping prevent the recurrence of clogged arteries following balloon angioplasty. The therapy involves injecting a gene which blocks the formation of plaque. In the study of the treatment, led by bioengineer Shu Chien of the UC San Diego School of Engineering, the therapy reduces the recurrence of clogging by 75 percent in animal trials. One of the benefits of the treatment is that it can be applied through a catheter during angioplasty.
Drug Combo . . . Triple therapy drug combination given to AIDS patients who had previously taken other anti-HIV medications cut the risk of AIDS-related infections, cancers and deaths by approximately half. Triple therapy with a drug called indinavir was superior to the two-drug combinations, according to UCLA AIDS specialist Ronald Mitsuyasu, who led the UCLA portion of the National Institute of Health trial.
Hope for Stutterers . . . A drug called Risperdal may help improve the speech of persons who stutter by nearly 50 percent. An initial UC Irvine study conducted by Gerald Maguire, a psychiatry professor and lifelong stutterer, found that the brains of persons who stutter contain more of the chemical dopamine. Risperdal seems to regulate the production of dopamine and while long-term benefits need further study, initial results indicate this could be the most significant advancement in the quest for treatments for stuttering in decades.
Targeting Malaria . . . A fundamentally new approach to vaccine development against malaria has been developed by UC San Diego School of Medicine researchers and the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research. Until now, all vaccines were created using live infectious organisms that represent killed viruses, synthetic proteins or short-lived replicating DNA. This new vaccine recruits the cells of the immune system to manufacture, on an ongoing basis, its own vaccine against disease-causing pathogens.
Looking for The Solution? . . . An obesity program called The Solution, which shuns diets and drugs, has led to continued weight loss two years after the initial 18 week treatment. Put together by weight management specialist Laurel Mellin of UC San Francisco, The Solution works by training participants to develop skills which include nurturing and setting limits. By learning these fundamental skills, Mellin found that dieting and pills are no longer needed to lose weight.
Treating Kidney Cancer . . . A new treatment developed at UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center by Robert Figlin and Arie Belldegrun, nearly doubled life expectancy for some patients witha common and very fatal type of kidney cancer called metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Using a hormone-like protein called interleukin-2 to stimulate suppressed tumor fighting lymphocytes, researchers were able to inject these "pumped up" cells back into patient's body where they began an aggressive attack against cancer cells.
Alzheimer’s Gene . . . A gene associated with the body’s regulation of immune response may lead to earlier onset of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. The gene, a common form of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) known as HLA-A2, was discovered by a multi-center research team led by Gary Small, director of the UCLA Center on Aging. HLA-A2 was present at the age in which Alzheimer’s patients first develop symptoms and supports the theory that an immune response mechanism is part of the disease process of Alzheimer’s.
Mapping Sea Floors . . . Two scientists, including David T. Sandwell of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, have developed a high-resolution, topographic map of the world’s sea floors using depth soundings from ships and gravity data from satellites. This technique reveals new mountain ranges such as the Foundation Seamounts in the South Pacific which were difficult to find using convential mapping because of large gaps between surveys in remote areas.
Detecting Breast Cancer . . . A new laboratory test may be able to detect whether or not breast cancer returns after surgery. Ira Goldfine, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, found breast cancer was less likely to return five years after surgical removal if the breast tissue had normal amounts of growth regulating proteins called insulin receptors. This study indicates the presence or absence of insulin receptors may be useful in determining who should receive treatment.
Customized HIV Care . . . A sophisticated software program that quickly helps doctors determine the most effective drug regimens for HIV-infected patients has been developed by UC Irvine researchers. Led by Michael Pazzani, chair of UCI’s Department of Information and Computer Science, the team is testing a computer program called Customized Treatment Strategies for HIV which evaluates genetic sequencing data taken from patients’ RNA and presents the most effective drug regimens, along with explanations for those choices.
Bigger & Better . . . With help from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers, the storage capacity of your computer’s hard drive is about to advance dramatically. Simone Anders of the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division at the Berkeley lab and colleagues at UC Berkeley and IBM have found a way to shield disks and other components with ultra-thin "overcoats" of diamond-like carbon. While there are already disks on the market which store 2.64 gigabytes of data per square inch, researchers are aiming for 10 gigabytes per square inch and more.
Noisy Protection . . . Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have patented a new software technique that prevents pirating copyrighted information and the unauthorized manipulation of digital images while allowing storage and transmission of hidden data. The "data embedding" technique uses the electronic "noise" associated with images and other data as space to store information without increasing the size of the host document. The technique could be used to protect digital information with unique “watermarks” that identify illegally copied software or CD recordings.
Seeing Red . . . Those red lights you see in kid’s sneakers will soon be controlling traffic in California, thanks to a UC Berkeley test. Vision scientists found these tiny lights, called light emitting diodes (LEDS) are brighter and cooler than incandescent bulbs used in traditional traffic lights, last 10 times longer and will save the state millions of dollars in energy and maintenance costs.
The Spin Cycle . . . UC Santa Barbara researchers led by physics professor David Awschalom have achieved a breakthrough in semiconductor laser technology that promises to revolutionize the performance of compact discs and other optical storage devices, projection televisions and laser surgery. By achieving prolonged electron spins, scientists are one step closer to building semiconductor devices that use the electron "spin" in a practical way.
Mechanical Blueprint . . . For the first time, a team of bioengineers at the UC San Diego School of Engineering have described in detail what happens to the knee when cartilage is squeezed and flattened while absorbing impact. The results present a blueprint for the mechanical properties of cartilage and how it works in the body which is valuable information for laboratory-grown knee cartilage to replace damaged tissue.
Coral Fossils . . . While coral reefs have long been known for their beauty, scientists at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography are discovering that the reefs also hold a precise record of past climate. Christopher Charles, a professor at Scripps, found that a coral core sample from the Indian Ocean contains a detailed record of sea surface temperatures in the region over the past 150 years. Such data is very important to climatologists since tropical oceans play a central role regulating heat and moisture between the sea surface and atmosphere.
Building Blocks . . . Molecules which may form the building blocks of life can be generated in space with a simple recipe of certain carbon, sulfur and hydrogen molecules and light. Although these molecules were once thought to be dependent on planetary influences, chemist Mark Thiemens of UC San Diego analyzed raw, organic material from a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite and discovered its isotopes were not only unlike, but uninfluenced by planetary forces.
An Eagle’s Flight . . . Researchers at the UC Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group have tracked, for the first time, the remarkable northward migration of a juvenile bald eagle from its nest. The eagle, wearing a tiny backpack fitted with a satellite transmitter, flew nearly 1,000 miles from Lake Shasta in northern California to central British Columbia in less than three weeks. The tracking helps confirm the suspicions of wildlife biologists that young eagles fly into Canada and Alaska on their first flights to learn how to hunt for salmon.
A Reliable Test . . . A powerful geologic dating technique called argon-argon dating has pegged the 79 A.D. eruption of Mt. Vesuvius so precisely that it establishes one of the most solid and reliable anchors for any dating method. UC Berkeley geologist Paul Renne of the Berkeley Geochronology Center concluded the radioactive argon dating technique can reliably establish the age of rocks as old as the solar system or as young as 2,000 years.
Ancient Housing . . . Simple microbes covering the ocean floor 2.5 billion years ago built what has been identified as perhaps the Earth’s oldest known complex communities. Evidence of these elaborate structures were found within unusually old South African rocks by UC Davis geologist Dawn Y. Sumner. The single-celled organisms, most probably bacteria, organized into two communities that interacted, yet had distinctly different architectures and effects on their environment.
Space Technology . . . Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists led the development of two scientific sensors that will provide key measurements of the space environment around Saturn when the Cassini spacecraft reaches the ringed planet in 2004. The ion beam spectrometer takes advantage of space technology Los Alamos first developed and flew in the 1970s while the new ion mass spectrometer sorts out the composition of Saturn's rings and moons.
Marijuana Study . . . Sociologist Craig Reinarman of UC Santa Cruz will oversee an in-depth National Institute of Drug Abuse study of marijuana use to answer fundamental questions about the drug, including whether it leads to the use of "harder" drugs, its long-term effects and whether users become dependent on the drug. The U.S. component of the three-year, $780,000 study will target San Francisco, where employees of UC Berkeley’s Survey Research Center will survey 4,000 residents at random.
Public Aid Myth . . . Challenging popular notions about immigrants’ use of government assistance, UCLA researcher David Hayes-Bautista found that U.S. immigrants from Mexico and Central America use public aid programs such as Medicaid no more often, and in some cases less often, than the nation’s population in general. The findings are of particular interest as national welfare reform is causing states to decide whether to continue providing benefits to immigrants.
In Your Dreams . . . Contrary to some prevailing theories, dreams are not necessarily expressions of unconscious desires or anxieties, nor are they the products of random brain activity. Rather, they are spontaneous narratives of metaphor and memory not unlike daydreams, according to Bert O. States, a professor emeritus of dramatic art at UC Santa Barbara and the author of "Seeing in the Dark: Reflections on Dreams and Dreaming."
Virtual Reality Lab . . . Supported by a $530,000 National Science Foundation grant, a team of UC Irvine professors has begun creating a sophisticated virtual reality laboratory. Researchers and graduate students will use the lab to conduct broad-ranging studies of human behavior and performance in virtual environments.
Veteran's Grant . . . The Department of Veteran's Affairs has awarded a four-year, $1 million grant to UCLA researchers Joann Damron-Rodriguez, Takashi Makinodan and Nancy Harada. The grant will support research identifying the ethnic and cultural factors influencing the use of outpatient health care by minority veterans nationwide.
Care Station . . . The California Department of Fish and Game has awarded $250,000 to the Predatory Bird Research Group at UC Santa Cruz for construction of a new Oiled Seabird Facility. The care station will treat and release up to 150 birds the size of pelicans and greater numbers of smaller seabirds in the event of an oil spill along the California coast.
Swedish Prize . . . World renowned political scientist Arend Lijphart, an authority on comparative government and a faculty member in UC San Diego’s Department of Political Science, has received the Johan Skytte Prize, an award that has become known in Sweden as the Nobel Prize for political science.
United Nations Award . . . Ralph Cicerone, a UC Irvine professor of Earth System Science and an acclaimed atmospheric scientist, was one of only six American scientists to receive a prestigious United Nations award for research aimed at protecting the ozone layer.
Call To Action . . . Oxana Alexandra Zhukovsky, a mathematics/science major at UC Berkeley, was one of five California students to receive a "Call To Action" Opportunity Scholarship from Governor Pete Wilson. The $5,000 award is designed to help women pay for schooling in order to pursue careers in business, education, health care, law enforcement/public service and mathematics/science.
A Promising Scientist . . . Donald Sandoval, an engineer in Los Alamos National Laboratory's Nuclear and Hydrodynamic Applications Group, beat out 60 nominees nationwide in 10th annual Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards for Most Promising Scientist. Sandoval was recognized for his work on theoretical models relevant to the performance and safety of nuclear weapons.
Nutrition Award . . . The American Society of Clinical Nutrition honored UC Davis nutrition professor Kenneth Brown with the E.V. McCollom Award. The society cited Brown's research with children in developing countries which challenged conventional views on infant feeding and contributed to better understanding of dietary determinants of children's growth.
Compiled by Communications Services, Office of the President, Larissa.Branin@ucop.edu