UC Santa Cruz - Review Magazine

Fall 2007

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Beyond the Ivory Tower

At UC Santa Cruz, graduate student research is not just about earning a degree. In every field of advanced study, UCSC attracts graduate students who are eager to acquire the knowledge and skills they need to find solutions to global challenges. [More] [PDF]

Breaking New Ground

Long before Wal-Mart began selling organic food, a charismatic Englishman and a group of students transformed a brush-covered hillside across from UC Santa Cruz’s Stevenson College into a lush garden where vegetables and flowers were grown without chemical pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. [More] [PDF]

Saving Endangered Languages

On a planet that seems to be growing smaller by the day, it’s surprising to discover that people still use approximately 6,500 languages for their day-to-day communication. But linguists estimate that nearly half of these will be gone within the next hundred years, an extinction rate equivalent to one language lost every two weeks. [More] [PDF]

Stem Cell Start-Up

Over the past two years, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has awarded UCSC nearly $5 million in grants for training programs, faculty research, and dedicated laboratory facilities for stem cell research. [More] [PDF]

Composed

This past January, the San Francisco Chronicle identified Sylvain Carton as the “powerhouse alto saxophone player” in one of the Bay Area’s “most provocative jazz ensembles.” It was richly deserved praise for the up-and-coming co-leader of the Mitch Marcus Quintet. [More] [PDF]

Getting to Know You

In October 2006, the movie rental company Netflix announced a $1 million competition to develop a better movie recommendation system. Within a week, a team led by UC Santa Cruz computer scientist Yi Zhang had already developed a computer algorithm that performed better than the Cinematch system Netflix currently uses to help customers identify movies they’ll like. [More] [PDF]

We Are What They Ate

If anthropologist Nathaniel Dominy had a time machine, he’d set the dial for 2 million years ago and transport himself back in time. That way, he’d finally get definitive answers to the questions about human evolution that have fascinated him ever since he picked up a National Geographic magazine at the age of nine. [More] [PDF]