A Report on Discoveries and Achievements at the University of California
Volume 9, Number 3, November 1999

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

In The News

Coast-to-Coast UC Groundbreakings . . . Ground has been broken in San Francisco on the new 43-acre UC San Francisco health sciences research campus on a 303-acre site at Mission Bay. The public-private enterprise creates a new neighborhood that will have at its core a research campus surrounded by private life sciences companies. The first research building is expected to open in two years. Chancellor J. Michael Bishop and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown wielded the ceremonial shovels. Ground has also been broken in Washington, D.C., for the new UC Center, scheduled to open in June 2001.

Interdisciplinary Approach . . . UC Berkeley recently announced a health sciences initiative that promises to stimulate new developments in cancer treatment, medical imaging, therapies for brain and spinal cord injuries, and the understanding and treatment of genetic and infectious diseases and the onset of dementias in old age. The effort aims to redefine health science research by uniting physical and biological scientists and engineers. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory also will participate. Proposed new facilities, faculty hires and equipment will bring the initiative’s cost to more than $500 mil­lion, much of it from private donations.

Attacking Pests . . . UC Riverside has been selected to manage a major research funding program that develops ecologically sound, integrated methods to manage damaging insects, weeds, diseases and other plant pests in agricultural and urban settings. As host institution for the Western Region Integrated Pest Management Program, the campus will administer a federally funded research grant program expected to total about $800,000 in each of the next five years.

UC Broadcasts . . . In a three-way partnership, UC San Diego, Intel Corp. and InterVU Inc. is offering the general public access to educational programming from UC campuses. The pilot program is designed to demonstrate the role technology can play in deliver­ing social and educational information via the Web. UCTVonline.org’s programming will originate from UCSD-TV, an independent station that operates from the UCSD campus.

Science Adviser . . . U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno has named Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory physicist Donald Prosnitz as chief science and technology adviser for the Department of Justice. Prosnitz will be responsible for advising the attorney general and other senior department officials on technological research, development, procurement, policy and legislative policy. He will be on a two-year detail to the Justice Department from the Laboratory.

To Russia, With Help . . . An 11-member team of pediatric heart specialists from the Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA traveled to the Bakulev Heart Center in Moscow in October to help save the lives of newborns suffering from congenital heart disease. The team performed five surgeries on critically ill newborns. Physicians Hillel Laks and Alvaro Galindo led the UCLA team.

Health and Nutrition

New Cancer Therapy . . . Researchers are readying a new cancer therapy developed at UC Berkeley for human trials sometime next year. Unlike other immune therapies that stimulate the body’s immune system to attack tumors, the Berkeley technique releases a natural brake on the immune system to unleash an assault on the cancer. So far, the therapy has been tried with impressive results in animals with melanoma and prostate cancer.

Deadly Virus Identified . . .Ian Lipkin and col­leagues at UC Irvine’s College of Medicine have identified the virus that caused the recent fatal encephalitis outbreak in New York City. They report the virus is a new form of encephalitis called “Kunjin/ West Nile” never before seen in the Americas. The findings could help develop a vaccine.

Dietary Supplements Study . . .UCLA is establishing a Center for Dietary Supplements Research on Botanicals, dedicated to advancing scientific knowledge on the safety, effectiveness and biological activity of botanical dietary supplements such as Chi­nese Red Yeast Rice, Green Tea, Echinacea and St. John’s Wort. Among other things, the research will focus on assessing the levels of active ingredients in botanicals sold as dietary supplements.

Leukemia Advance . . . Scientists at UC Berkeley report the first discovery of a genetic mutation that can protect against some types of acute leukemia. The researchers found that adults who carry double copies of a particular mutated gene in the folate pathway were “very significantly” protected from the life-threatening disease. The new findings may mean a diet fix is the route to prevention. Folate, or folic acid, is one chemical in the vitamin B complex commonly found in green vegetables, fresh fruit, liver and yeast.

Developments and Discoveries

Tiny Teeth, Old Bones . . . In Madagascar, UC Santa Barbara paleontologists have unearthed dinosaur fossils that predate the oldest known remains. They have also found three tiny teeth that indicate mammals roamed the earth at the same time as dinosaurs. The teeth, embedded in a piece of lower jawbone from a furry creature about the size of a mouse, were dated in the Middle Jurassic period. The dinosaur fragments date back to the mid-late Triassic period and are more than 227 million years old.

Ribosome Images . . . Researchers in the Center for the Molecular Biology of RNA at UC Santa Cruz have obtained images of the complete structure of the ribosome, tiny molecular machines present in all living cells. Knowing the structure of the ribosome may lead to more effective antibiotics, new insights into the 

origins of life and other significant advances. The researchers used the Macromolecular Crystallography Facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Alcoholism Enzyme . . .UC San Francisco researchers have identified an enzyme that could prove to be a target for reducing the craving for and excessive use of alcohol, a hallmark of alcoholism. They report that mice genetically engineered to lack the enzyme, known as PKC, were 75 percent less apt to imbibe than their normal brethren.

DNA Analysis . . . Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have performed an analysis of changes in the structure of a single molecule of DNA and how a protein affects that structure. In addition to discovering more about fertility, their findings may point the way to a method of making gene therapy more effective.

Cirrhosis Trends . . . Although cirrhosis of the liver has long been associated with heavy drinking, U.S. cirrhosis mortality trends have not always corresponded with the nation’s total alcohol consumption including beer, wine and hard liquor. Researchers at UC San Francisco have now reported that the trend of hard liquor consumption by itself, excluding beer and wine, closely follows the long-term pattern of cirrhosis mortality.

The Cutting Edge

Environmental Data Access . . . The National Center for Environmental Analysis and Synthesis at UC Santa Barbara has begun to develop a computer network that will link all information on biocomplexity, provide a structure to manage the information and give scientists a way to access it. A second project will develop a computerized community database on marine ecology that will allow anyone, not just scientists, to access the information on the Internet.

Ticket Technology . . . Computer scientists at UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering and NEC Corp. of Japan have developed a new application that allows computer users to purchase entertainment tickets on the Internet and print them to their desktop. The only equipment needed is an Internet Web browser, a desktop computer and a laser or inkjet printer capable of at least 300 dots-per-inch.

Microdrilling, Mega-savings . . . A microdrilling technology developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory could fundamentally change the face of oil and gas exploration, allowing for the drilling of holes with equipment carried on a tandem-wheel trailer pulled by a standard pickup truck. When developed for depths to 10,000 feet, it will replace traditional deep drilling methods that use massive amounts of costly equipment, material and manpower.

Asthma Gene . . . Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC San Francisco have discovered two genes that contribute to the development of asthma. The finding suggests that decreasing the activity of the two genes could help reduce susceptibility to asthma attacks. More than 14 million people in the United States suffer from asthma and other chronic respiratory ailments. The number of asthma sufferers has doubled over the last 15 years and continues to rise.

A Faster Transistor . . .UC Santa Barbara scientists, in conjunction with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, have developed a record-breaking, high-speed transistor. The bipolar transistor made from gallium arsenide can amplify signals as high as 1 terahertz, a trillion cycles per second.

When Looks Matter . . . A UC Irvine researcher, Sharad Mehrotra, is developing a search-engine data­base that uses textures, shapes, colors and words to conduct online information searches. MARS (multimedia analysis and retrieval system) promises to speed up searches by merging browsing and retrieving into a single format. MARS could eventually have considerable consumer applications, especially in e-commerce.

Showers of Diamonds . . . If experiments at UC Berkeley are any indication, future explorers of our solar system may well find diamonds hailing down through the atmospheres of Neptune and Uranus. Both planets contain a high proportion of methane, which researchers have shown can turn into diamond at the high temperatures and pressures inside these planets.

Proton Movie . . . The world’s first “motion picture” of the dynamics of an implosion has given researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory a new tool to see what occurs during the inward burst of energy that triggers a nuclear weapon. A recent successful test of the revolutionary new technical application called proton radiography used high-energy protons from a linear accelerator, rather than the more tradi­tional X-rays, to create the image.

Planet and Environment

Damaged Deserts . . . Southern California’s deserts have been profoundly altered by human activities and it may take centuries for the ecosystem to recover without vigorous intervention to restore habitats, says a study by UC Riverside researchers and colleagues. The scientists reviewed more than 150 studies and concluded the Mojave and Colorado deserts have been seriously altered by such activities as development, off-highway vehicle use, livestock overgrazing, military training exercises, air pollution and the spread of non-native plant species.

Regional is Better . . . To restore endangered species successfully, conservation plans should take a regional, integrated approach, say UC Davis researchers. They report that patches of restored habitat, for example, succeed better if they’re located next to areas in which the target species already exists. Most habitat restorations occur in an ad hoc manner.

Greenhouse Implications . . . Increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide – one of the greenhouse gases implicated in global warming – is placing plants under greater nutrient stress and triggering changes in soil structure that can help plants cope, says a study by UC Riverside plant pathologist Michael Allen and colleagues at Stanford University and the U.S. agriculture department. The study emphasizes the complex relationship between increases in greenhouse gases and natural ecosystems and suggests that future research take into account the changes in soil structure caused by elevated amounts of carbon.

Ant Pruning . . .UC Davis researchers report a little-known species of African ant prunes its home trees into leafy islands, preventing murderous takeover raids by other ant species. The ants live in acacia trees which often touch, forming bridges for ant invasions. But Crematogaster nigriceps ants eliminate those bridges by chewing off their host tree’s new growth, which stop the host tree’s reproduction.

Nanosponging Contaminants . . .Los Alamos National Laboratory has licensed a new method that could be used to purify home water supplies. A polymer-based material commonly called a nanosponge forms tiny pores that absorb and trap contaminants in water. The recently signed, exclusive six-month license option agreement with Manhattan Scientifics Inc. aims to further develop nanoporous polymer water filtering technology for home use.

Insights on Society

Health and Jobs . . . People who lose jobs often experience a worsening of health by the following year and those with poor health are more likely to lose jobs by the next year, according to results of the second California Work and Health Survey led by UC San Francisco researchers. People who reported health problems in the first year of the survey (1998) were more than twice as likely to lose their jobs in the following year as those who did not.

More Advertising . . . Misled by unreliable research, advertisers are underspending by as much as 30 per­cent and failing to realize the profits that more ads would generate, according to researchers at UC Davis. In a case study of a leading cereal brand, they found measurements of advertising awareness were off by 40 percent and those for gross rating points, which represent how many people have seen an ad and how often, were off by 17 percent.

Money and Elections . . . In the first systematic study of how money and interest groups affect the voter initiative process, a UC San Diego researcher has found that interest groups that funnel vast sums of money into political campaigns are usually not successful. The study by Elisabeth Gerber showed that if citizens are opposed to a proposed initiative, an expensive campaign is not going to change voters’ minds and could even be self-defeating.

Zapotec Dictionary Published . . . The UCLA Chi­cano Studies Research Center has published the first dictionary with English definitions of a Zapotec language. The endangered variety of Zapotec language is spoken in the valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, and by immigrants in Los Angeles. The Zapotecan language family is one of the largest in Mexico. The two-volume dictionary contains more than 9,000 entries and cross references.

Looking to the Future

Poverty, Health and Retirement . . . Findings from a UC San Francisco survey of older Californians ages 45-70 show one in five retired early (before age 50) and almost half of those early retirees left their jobs for health reasons. UCSF researchers also found that Californians who retired early are more likely to experience fair or poor health and are two and a half times more likely to live in poverty than those who retired after age 50.

Neuron Network . . . Using $7.50 worth of parts from Radio Shack and dozens of spiny lobsters, scien­tists at UC San Diego have, for the first time, connected artificial and biological neurons to function in a network family. The team integrated an electronic neuron within a group of 14 biological neurons from the California spiny lobster; the artificial neuron was accepted by the real ones and its signaling rhythm fell into pace with the other cells. The research may eventually lead to restoring brain function in patients suffering from stroke, Alzheimer’s and other neurological dysfunctions.

Instruction Across the Pacific . . .UCLA and Japan’s Kyoto University – separated by the Pacific Ocean and a 17-hour time difference – are jointly teaching two courses this fall in which the students can see and hear one another and the professor in each classroom in real time. It marks the first time live lectures and synchronized interactive multimedia are being offered between universities over the Internet. The courses aretaught in English.

Kudos

Honors for Tien . . . U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley has appointed former UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien to the new National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century, a 24-member council chaired by former senator and astronaut John Glenn. Tien has also been sworn in as a member of the National Science Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation. He joins UC Berkeley physics professor Mary K. Gaillard and UC Santa Cruz Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood.

Historian Appointed . . . A UC Santa Cruz historian is one of five people to be named by President Clinton to serve on the 26-member board of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Pedro Castillo, an associate professor of history, was named as one of five new members to serve on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Psychology Honor . . .UC Riverside’s Howard S. Friedman has received the 1999 career award for “Outstanding Contributions to Health Psychology” from the American Psychological Association. Friedman was the first scholar to uncover the link between depression and heart disease; to document a life-long association between early personality and longevity; and to publish a psychological study on preventing skin cancer.

Math Program Honored . . . A program developed at UC Davis to help 8th- to 12th-grade students learn mathematics has been honored by the U.S. Department of Education. Mathematics professor Tom Sallee, with comments and ideas from hundreds of teachers, developed the program. Sallee’s program was one of five nationwide selected as an exemplary program in teaching mathematics from 61 nominees.

Six R&D Honors . . . Research teams at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have captured six awards for scientific and technological innovation at the annual R&D 100 awards. The awards are sponsored by Chicago-based R&D magazine.

Science Foundation Award . . .Anurag Acharya, a UC Santa Barbara assistant professor of computer science, has received a National Science Foundation Career Award. Acharya will receive $200,000 over four years to fund his research.

Investing in Education

Arts Gift . . . The UC Irvine School of the Arts has received a $650,000 gift from Newport Beach residents Robert and Winifred (Winnie) Smith, long-time supporters of the campus whose past gifts have been used to establish music scholarships and upgrade performance venues. The Smiths’ most recent gift will be used towards renovating the interior of the 29-year-old Concert Hall.

Alumni Do More . . . Alumni who returned to UC Berkeley for class reunions this fall did more than see old friends and reminisce. They also raised $1.5 million toward their class reunion campaigns that will support a variety of programs, including the University Library, scholarships and the unrestricted Chancellor’s Millennium Fund – three of the campus’s highest priorities.

Carol Burnett Gift . . . Actress, comedienne and singer Carol Burnett has given UCLA, her alma mater, an extensive collection of materials from The Carol Burnett Show. The materials will be housed in the UCLA Library and in the Film and Television Archive.

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