A Report on Discoveries and Achievements at the University of California
Volume 9, Number 2, September 1999

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

In The News

Tops Again . . . All eight general campuses of the University of California are ranked within the top 31 national public universities in the United States in the annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report magazine. UC Berkeley was listed as the top public university in the country. Six UC campuses ranked among the top 50 national universities, public or private.

Berman Appointed . . . Larry Berman, a political scientist from UC Davis with specialized academic interests in the American Presidency, the war in Vietnam and American institutions, has been appointed director of the University of California's Center in Washington, D.C. The appointment was effective Sept. 1. Groundbreaking for the center is scheduled Oct. 18.

NCI Designation . . . The UC San Francisco Cancer Center has become the only National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in northern California. The UCSF center is one of only 59 NCI-designated centers nationwide, clearing the way for increased funding - up to $850,000 per year for the next three years.

Bailey Appointed . . . David N. Bailey, has been appointed interim vice chancellor for UC San Diego Health Sciences and dean of the School of Medicine. He has been a member of the faculty since 1977 and replaces John F. Alksne, who returned to the faculty after serving a seven-year term.
 

Health and Nutrition

Vision Study . . . UCLA and Harvard researchers have found that even the earliest forms of age-related macular degeneration can have a negative impact on an older adult's ability to pursue everyday visual activities. Macular degeneration, involving deterioration of the retina, is the leading cause of irreversible vision loss among the elderly in developed countries, with more than 25 percent of those over 75 having some early form of the disease.

Fast Protein Scope. . . Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have discovered a method for rapidly analyzing proteins. The Rapid Protein Folding Assay has the potential for revolutionizing the way proteins are assayed in medical, commercial and scientific laboratories - and that could lead to the development of drugs to treat currently incurable diseases.

Obesity Switch . . . Scientists at UC Irvine have found a receptor that appears to control eating behavior in animals. Olivier Civelli and colleagues found that when the receptor for a chemical in the brain called melanin-concentrating hormone was blocked, rats became lean and didn't eat, while rats with a normally functioning receptor had normal weight and eating behavior. The study could eventually mean a new class of pharmaceuticals designed to treat obesity.

Genetic Treatment. . .UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center reports preliminary indications from an experimental genetic treatment for ovarian cancer have yielded promising results for some women whose disease has failed to respond to conventional treatments. The genetic treatment targets alterations in a gene called p53. Defects in the gene are linked to approximately 57 percent of ovarian cancers.

Eat Fat, Get a Headache. . . A new book by UC Irvine researcher Zuzana Bic reports that a low-fat diet can help prevent painful migraine headaches and reduce the severity of migraines that do occur. Bic found that patients who lowered the amount of fat in their diets did not experience as many migraines and those the patients did experience were less painful.

Anti-Cancer Soy . . . Health food advocates have long touted soy as an anti-cancer preventative. Now, UC Berkeley researchers have discovered a gene from soybeans that, when inserted into cancer cells, can have an effect similar to the anti-cancer drug taxol. They report the soybean gene they discovered produces a protein called lunasin that stops mitosis, the process by which cells replicate.
 

Developments and Discoveries

Sensitivity to Estrogen. . . Genetically different strains of laboratory mice vary dramatically in their sensitivity to estrogen, report researchers at UC Davis. The findings call into question the validity of current laboratory animal-based safety tests of estrogen-like chemicals and suggest that an individual's genetic makeup should be considered when prescribing estrogen and related hormones.

Brains and Pains . . . Researchers have long known that the body can activate its own form of pain relief in response to painful stimuli. Now, UC San Francisco investigators have determined that, in rats, this long-lasting relief is produced by the brain's "reward" pathway - the neural circuitry activated by drugs of abuse. The finding provides the first physiological evidence that pain itself elicits analgesia.

Tasty Tenacious Tangerine. . . "Gold Nugget," a seedless tangerine with an extraordinary long harvest season, has been released for commercial production by UC Riverside. More than 30 years in development, the extra-sweet new tangerine is highly regarded for its ability to hold on the tree from February to June, an important consideration for commercial and backyard growers alike. It is the first citrus variety to be released since the mid-1980s.

Oxygen to the Rescue. . . Getting oxygen and getting it fast could reduce the long-term effects of retinal detachment in humans, report UC Santa Barbara researchers. The therapy, which has been tested only on animals, supplies needed oxygen to the light-sensitive cells of the retina at the onset of the detachment and keeps the cells alive until the retina is reattached.

Seizures Cause Brain Changes. . . Physicians have long thought that seizures in children that were accompanied by fevers were no cause for alarm. But Tallie Z. Baram and Ivan Soltesz at UC Irvine have found that febrile seizures lasting longer than 20 minutes caused changes in the way certain neurotransmitters worked in the brains of rats. Because these changes lasted until adulthood, the researchers report physicians may need to pay closer attention to these longer-lasting seizures since they may predispose children to convulsions later in life.

Decline Not Normal in Aging . . . In a study that tracked changes in cardiovascular health and cognitive function in 5,888 senior citizens annually over a 10-year period, researchers at the UC Davis School of Medicine and Medical Center say cognitive decline is not a normal part of aging for the majority of elderly people. In fact, they report only people with high levels of atherosclerosis or diabetes and those with the apolipoprotein E4 gene associated with Alzheimer's are at high risk for a decline in cognitive ability.
 

The Cutting Edge

Chemical Computers. . . Researchers at UCLA and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories have demonstrated molecular-based computer logic gates for the first time and have shown that, for certain tasks, molecules can effectively achieve the same or better results than silicon. The results are a significant step toward producing computers that will be molecular-based rather than silicon-based.

Icy Landforms, Frigid Seas . . . The best images ever taken of Saturn's mysterious moon Titan reveal a complex surface that may be home to icy landforms and frigid hydrocarbon seas. Astrophysicists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, UC Berkeley and UCLA captured the images using a special technique on the Keck telescope, the world's largest.

Brains, Hormones and Sex. . . UC Berkeley researchers report finding the first evidence in mammals that circulating male sex hormones can dramatically change the size of a brain region. The structure under study is associated with sexual arousal in male rats and its size seems to be completely controlled in adult animals by levels of ndrogens or male hormones that circulate through the bloodstream.

New Engine Testing. . . A new internal combustion engine weighing just 120 pounds and with only three moving parts will begin testing at the UC Riverside College of Engineering Center for Environmental Research and Technology. The tests will determine whether the OX2 engine can produce the same torque as a large V-8.

Record Resolution. . . Using the New One-Ångstrom Microscope at the National Center for Electron Microscopy, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have made unprecedented images of columns of carbon atoms in a diamond lattice, only 0.89 angstrom apart - less than one ten-billionth of a meter. For the first time, moreover, an electron microscope has been able to resolve nitrogen atoms in the presence of more massive gallium atoms in gallium nitride, in columns spaced only 1.13 angstroms apart.

Perfection on Paper. . . Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory engineers have devised a system to inspect every inch of a 25-foot wide sheet of paper as it zips along rollers at 60 mph. The near-infrared linescan camera system could help paper manufacturers reduce both energy costs and waste because they would detect moisture irregularities faster and could correct problems immediately, before miles of off-quality paper are produced.

Not Quite a Loss . . . When the Wide-Field Infrared Explorer satellite went haywire early this year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the science community wrote it off as a complete and costly loss. But UC Berkeley's Derek Buzasi won permission to use the one instrument aboard that still worked, a two-inch telescope. He was able to observe a nearby cool star and record starquakes - the first time, after 30 years of trying, that anyone has observed such vibrations on a normal, cool star.

Crash Splash . . . Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are analyzing data from the controlled crash of the NASA's Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the moon last July. They are seeking final proof for the presence of frozen water on the moon.

Split-Liver Transplant. . . UC San Diego Healthcare has joined only about a dozen medical centers nationwide performing split-liver transplants. Surgeons recently divided a donor liver into two segments for transplantation into a 62-year-old man and an 18-month-old baby.
 

Planet and Environment

Earthquakes Differ by Depth . . . The world's largest earthquakes occur in subduction zones, where one plate of the earth's crust dives down below another plate. A new analysis by UC Santa Cruz researchers indicates that key properties of the fault zones change systematically with depth, resulting in different types of earthquakes depending on the depth at which the fault ruptures.

Urban Villages . . . So-called "urban villages" - human-scaled and pedestrian friendly - may be one way to accommodate California's population growth while improving air quality and reducing sprawl, say UC Davis researchers. Their urban village model would reduce development pressures on farm lands, ecosystems and open spaces, and because it would have more "walkability," automobile use could drop by as much as 25 percent.

Timing "Tickers" . . . Ticking clusters of identically repeating tiny earthquakes on a stretch of the San Andreas Fault can be timed to reveal the rate at which two great tectonic plates are grinding past each other deep within the earth, say scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The timing of these "tickers" provide a new way to monitor the buildup of fault strain associated with larger earthquakes.

Pollution and Violence. . . UC Santa Barbara researcher J. Robert Hatherill says pollution causes some people to commit violent crimes. Hatherill points to growing research that heavy metals such as lead and pesticides reduce mental ability and increase aggressiveness.
 

Insights on Society

Death Peaks . . . A UC San Diego study has found that death rates at the beginning of the month in the United States were 14 percent higher than death rates at the end of the month when substance abuse was mentioned on the death certificate. The researchers say the cause may be substance abuse by people who receive government support payments at the beginning of the month.

Children Lack Insurance. . . The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research says the number of children without health insurance from immigrant families has risen sharply. The researchers say this is an unintended result of welfare reform, as non-citizen parents fear that enrolling their children in government programs may compromise their immigration status. The number of non-citizen children who do not have health insurance rose from 36 percent in 1995 to 43 percent in 1997, according to the study.

Standardized Testing. . . UC Santa Cruz Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood was instrumental in the development of "Myths and Tradeoffs: The Role of Tests in Undergraduate Admissions," a report from the National Research Council and National Academy of Sciences that assesses the role of standardized tests in undergraduate admissions. The report examines the myths of standardized testing, identifies ways to use test scores in a technically sound manner and considers if there are alternatives to standardized tests.

'Battle Ready' Adolescents . . . The more adolescents are exposed to violent acts, the more "battle ready" they say they are, according to a UC Irvine study. Researchers found that a majority of urban youths have witnessed or been the victim of a beating, mugging or other violent behavior. The greater the exposure to such behavior, the more willing they are to use physical aggression in dealing with conflict.
 

Looking to the Future

Teachers Need Tech Support . . . UC Irvine researcher Henry Becker and colleagues report that in 1992, there was but one computer for every 14 public school students; as of 1998, there was one for every six. But challenges remain. Half the teachers surveyed said they need technical support at least once a month as they integrate technology into lessons - and two-thirds of them said timely support isn't available.

Adaptive Optics . . . UC Santa Cruz in November will become home to a new Center for Adaptive Optics, with up to $20 million in funding over five years to coordinate the efforts of researchers across the country. UCSC's 27 partner institutions in the center will include UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UCLA, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and UC Irvine. Adaptive optics is a method used in astronomy and vision science to actively compensate for changing distortions that cause blurring of images.

Your Own Digital Library. . . UC Santa Barbara's Alexandria Digital Library Project has received $5.4 million to develop tools that will allow online users to create their own digital libraries. Project ADEPT (Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype) also will research ways ADEPT can be incorporated into undergraduate instruction.

Shake Test . . . UC San Diego researchers are subjecting a five-story building to a series of simulated earthquakes to validate new precast concrete construction systems for earthquake-prone regions. At 40 feet tall and 900 square feet per floor, the building is the largest structural model ever tested in the United States.
 

Kudos

Edward Teller Medal. . . Larry Foreman, who works in Los Alamos National Laboratory's Polymers and Coating Group, has won the 1999 Edward Teller Medal. The American Nuclear Society selected Foreman for his scientific leadership in the U.S. program to develop cryogenic targets for Inertial Confinement Fusion, including targets for the National Ignition Facility now under construction at Livermore.

Top Teachers . . . Four professors at UC Berkeley are this year's winners of the campus's Distinguished Teaching Award, UC Berkeley's top prize for teaching. The award has been given annually since 1959 by the Committee on Teaching of the Berkeley division of the Academic Senate. This year's award recipients are Anil Chopra, Richard Muller, Oliver M. O'Reilly and John Searle.

EPA award . . .Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's technology to remove underground contaminants from soil and water in record time has been recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency for its "outstanding" innovation. LLNL scientists Robin Newmark and Roger Aines were honored for their work on technologies that heat soil and groundwater to remove contaminants and destroy them in place.

Creative Students. . . A group of UC Santa Barbara students has received the Sherrill C. Corwin-Metropolitan Theatres awards, which recognize excellence in script writing, filmmaking, choreography and music composition. The winners were Cynthia McCreery, Philip Zwerling, Kinsey Packard, P.K. Eiselt, Lara Alexander, Tara Miele, Shari Brookler, Kimberly Chips, Brian Herritt, Galen Hollins, Ken Habib, William Loewe and James Ieraci.

Kyoto Prize . . . Walter Munk of UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography will receive the 1999 Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences for his fundamental contributions to the field of oceanography. The prizes are awarded by the Inamori Foundation and include a cash award of 50 million yen, or about $400,000. This is the first time the prize has been awarded to an oceanographer.

Conservation Award. . . James Estes, a marine ecologist with UC Santa Cruz, has been named a 1999 Pew Marine Conservation Fellow. Fellows receive an award of $150,000 to carry out a project addressing an urgent conservation challenge facing the world's oceans. Estes will study the use of marine reserves to manage and protect the Bering Sea marine ecosystem, now considered to be on the verge of collapse.
 

Investing in Education

Aquarium, Oceanography Students Benefits . . . Twila Critchlow and her sister Billee Gerrodette of La Jolla have a long relationship with the ocean. They were the first women in the United States to be certified as scuba divers and have spent their lives as aquatic adventurers and philanthropists. Critchlow recently created a $1 million charitable remainder annuity trust to benefit UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The sisters decided on the gift to Scripps, specifically its Birch Aquarium, to support research in saving the ecology of the ocean and coral reefs and to enable students interested in these areas to continue their educations.

More Teachers . . . The number of students pursuing careers as teachers in California's underserved inner city schools will increase, thanks to a gift of more than $1 million to UC Berkeley. The gift by Mary Jane Brinton, a loyal supporter of the campus's Graduate School of Education, will establish a model training program to attract outstanding students who will become teachers in inner city public schools.

Bird Boost . . . The Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group, part of UC Santa Cruz's Institute of Marine Sciences, has received a $200,000 grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The grant will support ongoing programs to monitor endangered bird species and will also provide transitional support as the organization expands its mission.
 
 
 
 

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