Building for the future

Numerous construction projects are about to commence, already under way, or nearly completed on campus. The major projects, which will result in new housing, classrooms, office, and research space, include the following: the Physical Sciences Building (depicted in an artist's rendering, above), to be completed in fall 2003; the Core West Parking Structure, providing space for approximately 500 vehicles in the Science Hill area; the Interdisciplinary Sciences Building, to be completed this fall; the Center for Adaptive Optics, to be completed this fall; Bay Tree Bookstore and Graduate Student Commons, ready for occupancy this spring; and residence halls for Colleges Nine and Ten, which will provide on-campus housing for 800 students by fall 2002. Photo: Al Forster

The mystery behind the vanishing fur seal

	Anthropologist Diane Gifford-Gonzalez, left, and geochemist Paul Koch have teamed up to study northern fur seals (below). Photo: Jennifer McNulty
	Photo: Kimberlee B. Beckmen

For years, anthropologist Diane Gifford-Gonzalez was pestered by nagging questions about some marine mammal bones that were part of UCSC's extensive archaeological archive. Why, she wondered, did the collection contain the remains of so many northern fur seals, a species that today is found primarily off Siberia and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska?

The northern fur seal, one of the smallest of the eared seals, accounts for fewer than 1 percent of all pinniped strandings along the Central Coast today. But the presence of its bones accounted for about one-third of all sea mammals in local archaeological sites. Gifford-Gonzalez and Paul Koch, an associate professor of Earth sciences, have teamed up to determine why the distribution of marine mammals around the Monterey Bay Area has undergone such dramatic changes in the past 2,000 years.

Northern fur seals are perhaps best known for their fur, which was prized by hunters in the 1800s. Long before the coming of the fur trade, however, something made the seals vanish from mainland beaches along the Central Coast. Gifford-Gonzalez and Koch have ruled out the usual suspects: bears, coyotes, and other carnivores. More likely, they believe, would be human overpredation or climate change–or a combination of the two. A small-scale pilot study they have conducted into the mystery has attracted support from the National Science Foundation.

With NSF funding, Gifford-Gonzalez and Koch plan to pinpoint the date of the seal's disappearance and fill in details of the environmental record.

UCSC faculty endorses 'narratives' and grades

UCSC's academic senatein November reaffirmed its commitment to the campus's long-standing Narrative Evaluation System (NES). In a special session of the senate, faculty rejected a proposal that would have made the writing of "narratives" optional.

The outcome drew a thunderous ovation from the students who were able to squeeze into the lecture hall and from the dozens more who listened to the proceedings via a speaker system set up outside.

"We're doing some things right at UCSC, and part of what we're doing right is the NES," noted professor of linguistics James McCloskey.

The meeting brought to a close 12 months of senate discussion about the manner in which UCSC will assess the performance of future students.

As a result of the pro-NES vote–and a vote on letter grades that was finalized only a month earlier–students who enter UCSC this coming fall will receive letter grades in most of their courses and narratives in all of them.

In a separate vote, senators also overwhelmingly endorsed an NES reform resolution authored by Professors Barbara Rogoff and William Ladusaw that, among other things, asked a senate committee to draft guidelines for the writing of narratives and requested administrative support for software that would ease the workload associated with the NES.

Campus enrollment tops 12,000 students

Enrollment at ucsc totaled 12,124 in the fall quarter. The growth mirrors what's happening at campuses statewide, as higher education systems gear up to serve an unprecedented number of new students in the state.

In the UC system alone, it is estimated that space will be needed for 63,000 additional academically eligible students by the year 2010. One scenario under discussion would have UCSC grow to 16,900 by the year 2010.

Endowment boosts Indian classical music

Jawab hamid ali khan, ruler of the state of Rampur, India, in the early 1900s, was well known for his love and patronage of the arts. Now, halfway around the world and three generations later, the great-granddaughter of this respected Nawab and her husband are carrying on that tradition, providing funding that will substantially expand the performance and instruction of Indian classical music at UC Santa Cruz.

The couple are Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Talat and Kamil Hasan of Saratoga, California. Their gift of $350,000 establishes the Kamil and Talat Hasan Endowed Chair in Classical Indian Music, which provides ongoing annual support for UCSC's flourishing programs in Indian arts.

"Indian classical music is a remarkable art form," said Kamil Hasan. "It stands out from popular music because it not only pleases the mind and senses, it goes much deeper. It's important to us to do our part to keep this tradition flourishing."

Talat (seated) and Kamil Hasan
Photo: R. R. Jones

Extinct rhino behaved like modern hippo

Among the large mammals that roamed prehistoric North America was a type of rhinoceros that seems to have lived in the water, much like a modern hippopotamus. The extinct rhinoceros, known as Teleoceras, ranged from Florida to the West Coast from about 17 million years ago until about 4.5 million years ago. Its semi-aquatic lifestyle, first suggested by its body shape, has been disputed by some researchers. But evidence preserved in fossil teeth now indicates that in some areas, at least, Teleoceras did spend much of its life in the water."Morphologically, Teleoceras looked a lot like modern hippos, with large, squat bodies and short legs, and we now have evidence from isotope analysis that they were semi-aquatic like hippos," said Mark Clementz, a graduate student in Earth sciences, who presented his findings at a recent meeting of the Geological Society of America.

An artist's rendering of the Teleoceras habitat in Miocene Nebraska.
Art credit: University of Nebraska State Museum

Clementz and Paul Koch, an associate professor of Earth sciences, analyzed oxygen isotopes in fossil Teleoceras teeth for clues to the animals' habits. Oxygen occurs in nature as three different isotopes. The two heavy isotopes are very rare (together they make up less than 0.5 percent of all oxygen atoms), but their greater mass has interesting consequences. Evaporation, for example, acts preferentially to remove water molecules containing the common, light isotope of oxygen.

The water left behind, whether in a puddle or in the body of an animal, ends up with a higher proportion of heavy oxygen isotopes. The Teleoceras study grew out of work Koch had done on modern mammals in East Africa comparing different species within the same ecosystem.

New federal marine research facility dedicated

Congressman Sam Farr (center) and Norman Mineta, commerce secretary in the Clinton administration and President Bush's trans- portation secretary-designate, joined Chancellor Greenwood for the dedication in October of the new federal marine research facility next to UCSC's Long Marine Laboratory. In addition to conducting fisheries research, the new National Marine Fisheries Service Santa Cruz Laboratory will house the nation's first National Science Center for Marine Protected Areas. "Our oceans are indispensable lifelines from both environmental and economic perspectives and require first-class research to ensure their health," Mineta said. "This laboratory will provide researchers with the critical tools they need to help shape the future of our oceans." Photo: Victor Schiffrin

Grant helps students 'gear up' for college

Students in the city of Watsonville will get a boost on their way to college from UCSC, which has received a $3.7 million, five-year federal grant to help disadvantaged students prepare for college.

The funding comes from the U.S. Department of Education's GEAR UP program, which stands for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs. The mission of GEAR UP is to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education.

The Educational Partnership Center at UCSC will administer the grant. The funding will support programs at Watsonville High School and its feeder middle schools.

UCSC is partner in new science institute

David Haussler
Photo: UCSC photo service

UCSC will play a key role in one of three new California Institutes for Science and Innovation established in December by Governor Gray Davis. The Institute for Bioengineering, Biotechnology and Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3) will be centered at UC San Francisco with major research components at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley.

The institute promises to lead the next revolution in biomedical research. It will integrate physical, mathematical, and engineering sciences to create powerful new techniques for attacking biological problems of such enormous complexity that they have simply remained unapproachableÑuntil now. This integration of sciences could open the way for discovery of treatments and cures for some of our most intractable diseases, such as brain disorders, cancer, and diabetes.

One focus of QB3 will be bioinformaticsÑcomputing methods to sift through the volumes of data generated by the human genome project and other new developments in biomedical research. The institute's bioinformatics program will be based at UCSC.

"As experimental methods become more sophisticated and the amount of data skyrockets, the role for bioinformatics is dramatically expanding," said David Haussler, UC Presidential Professor of computer science at UCSC and a codirector of the institute. He and his colleagues at UCSC have played a key role in the Human Genome Project, assembling the first publicly available working draft of the human genome sequence.

NASA Ames park is preferred site for Silicon Valley Center

Chancellor greenwood has announced that planning for UCSC's Silicon Valley Center will focus on the proposed NASA Ames Research Park as the preferred site for a permanent location. Further planning studies will lead to a final proposal to the Regents.

Among the criteria for siting the center are visibility, accessibility, opportunity, net cost, and alignment with the teaching, research, and service mission of UCSC. Ames Research Center is one of ten field centers of NASA. The proposed site is part of a collaborative R&D campus currently being developed by NASA Ames that includes a range of research, education, and museum activities. UCSC's Silicon Valley Center would be included on a parcel within the NASA Research Park, which is located adjacent to the existing campus of the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field.

"NASA's proposed R&D park fulfills the location criteria for our Silicon Valley Center," Greenwood said. "NASA's innovative vision for a research complex that emphasizes synergy among participants is compatible with our campus's goals. Because of our existing research collaborations with NASA Ames and numerous other educational partnerships between UCSC and Silicon Valley institutions, we already have a strong foundation on which we can develop further academic programs of benefit to the region."

The center is expected to serve as a portal to the UC system, connecting all of the campuses to Silicon Valley, especially in the areas of research. The University of California and NASA share many research areas of interest and strengths, such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, planetary sciences, and astro-biology. In addition, research is expected to be conducted on issues of social justice, education, labor, and economics, among other topics.

It is expected that UCSC will offer classes for both under-graduates and graduates at the Silicon Valley Center. The specific curricular offerings and subjects of research are to be determined through planning by faculty, which now is under way.

The formation of a partnership to address Silicon Valley's critical education and workforce needs was announced this past fall by leaders from UC Santa Cruz, San Jose State University, Foothill-De Anza Community College District, and NASA Ames Research Center. The "collaborative" envisions joint research and education programs among the institutions, to take place at the proposed NASA Research Park. Joining Chancellor Greenwood at a press conference announcing the partnership were Robert Caret (also seated), president of SJSU; Leo Chavez (standing, right), chancellor of the community college district; and NASA Ames Research Center director Henry McDonald. Photo: Greg Pio

UCSC's Academic Senate honors exemplary and inspiring teachers

Each year, UCSC's Academic Senate honors a number of the campus's most exemplary and inspiring teachers. Thirteen such professors and lecturers were chosen to receive Excellence in Teaching Awards for 1999-2000. The recipients, above, were nominated by students for qualities such as their enthusiasm for teaching, commitment to learning, and the content of their courses. Photo: UCSC photo services

Astronomers set sights on next telescope

The desire for ever larger telescopes has driven astronomers relentlessly for nearly 400 years. In 1610, Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter using a telescope with a lens not much more than an inch in diameter. Today, the largest optical telescopes are the twin Keck Telescopes in Hawaii, with 10-meter mirrors that gather the faint light from distant galaxies. But, of course, astronomers still want bigger telescopes, knowing they can yield new insights into the nature and origins of the universe.

The next milestone in telescope size is likely to be one with a primary mirror 30 meters in diameter, which would provide ten times the light-gathering area of each of the Kecks. UC and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have teamed up to design and build a 30-meter telescope, dubbed the California Extremely Large Telescope (CELT). The project is still in the early planning stages, but researchers led by UCSC astronomers are making steady progress on the conceptual design for CELT.

Project leaders hope to build the massive telescope within the next ten to 15 years, said Joseph Miller, director of UC Observatories/Lick Observatory (UCO/Lick). Miller estimated the total cost of the project would be around $500 million, but it's not clear yet where that money would come from.

Many of the distant objects revealed in the Hubble Deep Field, a revolutionary image of deep space taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, are too faint for detailed study with existing telescopes. With CELT, astronomers would be able to probe the faintest smudges of light in the Hubble Deep Field, some of which may show the earliest stages of galaxy formation in the universe.

Robert Williams, Hubble Deep Field Team; NASA

Please pass the caterpillar pie

Dane Archershmuel
Photo: Thaler/Santa Cruz Sentinel

Imagine a potluck buffet featuring fried spiders and rattlesnake. Sound yucky? Welcome to the world of food preferences, where what is considered delicious–and disgusting–is more a matter of culture than most people think.

"People feel very strongly about what they will and won't eat," said sociologist Dane Archer. "Westerners cringe at the thought of some Asian cultures that eat dog meat, because dogs are sacred in our culture. But Hindus feel the same way about cows and are horrified by the 'dead animal' racks in our supermarkets."

Food preferences and taboos are extremely emotional and value-laden, said Archer. People tend to regard their own diet as sensible and the diets of other cultures as bizarre or irrational, all of which makes food a "powerful way to teach about cultural diversity and tolerance," he said.

Archer, a professor of sociology at UCSC, has produced a new educational video about food, entitled A World of Food: Tastes and Taboos in Different Cultures. The engaging 35-minute video features interviews with people from different cultures and undercuts the dominant Western view that "what we eat is normal and what everybody else eats is strange."

The video describes the prohibitions against certain foods in the major religions of the world and presents a seven-rung food ladder, or "hierarchy of eligible foods," that ranks what is considered edible, delicious, and disgusting in various cultures.

Several new faces in campus administration

Four new deans have assumed positions within UCSC's senior administration this academic year.

Wlad Godzich, a department chair at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, is the new dean of the Division of Humanities; Sung-Mo "Steve" Kang, a department chair at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, the dean of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering; Cathy Sandeen, an assistant dean at UC San Francisco, the dean of University Extension/Summer Session; and Frank Talamantes, of UCSC's Department of Molecular, Cell, and Develop-mental Biology, has been named vice provost and dean of Graduate Studies.

Humanities gets boost in funding for center

This past october, more than 70 faculty, staff, and students gathered at a Porter College courtyard for an inaugural celebration of UCSC's new Institute for Humanities Research (IHR).

The festive mood of the reception turned even more celebratory following surprise announcements of additional funding to the center.

Clockwise, from upper left: Godzich, Kang, Talamantes, and Sandeen
Photo credits (clockwise): UCSC photo services, UCSC photo services,
Chris T. Anderson, Titangos photography studio

Humanities Dean Wlad Godzich promised to earmark $60,000 over the next three years to support a distinguished lecturer series and, in another surprise announcement, Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor John Simpson pledged $38,000 to the IHR for graduate student support.

The IHR was created in 1999 to support humanities faculty and graduate student research and academic programming. The IHR is also the home of the internationally renowned Center for Cultural Studies, one of the nation's premiere centers of interdisci-plinary research. IHR also supports Focused Research Activities in Feminism, Mind and Meaning, and Pre- and Early Modern Studies (PEMS).

New map provides detailed views of UCSC

New campus map
Credit: Cherie Northon

A new map of ucsc has been unveiled that illustrates the campus with unprecedented clarity. The new campus map differs from its predecessors in several important ways: It is detailed enough to show all paved pedestrian and bike paths, it shows the topography of the campus, and it has been produced in color.

The map is available from the campus's Bay Tree Bookstore as a poster ($8.95) or as a folded map ($2) that includes insets for all of UCSC's off-campus sites (including Long Marine Lab, Lick Observatory, the Monterey Bay Education, Science, and Technology Center, and all UC Santa Cruz Extension locations).

The map was created by cartographer Cherie Northon, who used existing maps, aerial photos, and fieldwork to check for accuracy.

The map was produced under the direction of UCSC's Office of Planning and Analysis. Funding was also provided by a number of other offices: Housing, Transportation and Parking Services, Admissions, Public Information, University Relations, the Division of Social Sciences, and the Arboretum.

Economist funds grad student awards

David kaun, a professor of economics at UCSC, has worked with some very good graduate students over the years. But he was so impressed by two talented teaching assistants that he has given the campus $50,000 to establish a new annual award that will recognize outstanding teaching by graduate students.

At right: David Kaun, flanked by Matt McGinty (left) and Garrett Milam Photo: Jennifer McNulty

Two graduate student recipients of the new Milam-McGinty-Kaun Award will be named each year: one from the Economics Department and one from another department in the Division of Social Sciences. Each will receive a $1,000 award. The award is named after its first recipients, Garrett Milam and Matt McGinty, who are in UCSC's doctoral program in international economics. Milam and McGinty were TAs last year in Kaun's Intermediate Microeconomic Theory course, which had an enrollment of about 120. "These two wonderful young men were phenomenal in every dimension. They were so good, I just wanted to acknowledge that kind of teaching assistance."

Making science shockingly fun

Daniel greenhouse, a senior physics and math major, thinks learning about science should be fun. He began experimenting with electricity when he was 12 years old, and before long he was building Tesla coils that could generate huge arcs of electricity. This led to special-effects projects for concerts by the Grateful Dead and Phish bands.

More recently, however, Greenhouse has helped a group of UCSC physics faculty and local high school teachers develop a physics demonstration for use in high school science classes.

The demonstration, involving such electrifying sights as a five-foot bolt of electricity striking a person in a metal suit, is part of the educational outreach activities of UCSC's Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP). The visual spectacle of the exhibit provides an attention-grabbing context for teaching a range of basic concepts about the power of electromagnetic fields. "I've always been interested in using electronic devices to get people excited about science," Greenhouse said. "I love seeing someone's eyes open wide in wonder."The demonstration was developed as part of SCIPP's summer research associates program, which brings high school teachers into the SCIPP labs for hands-on research experience. Teachers from local schools in Santa Cruz and Watsonville were among those involved in the project, along with UCSC physics faculty and staff. The first public demonstration was held last July at Aptos High School's summer session. Hartmut Sadrozinski, adjunct professor of physics and coordinator of SCIPP's summer research program, said the response has been tremendous. "You could see from the expressions on the students' faces that they were really impressed." He plans to bring the demonstration to other local high schools as well as to schools in San Jose and San Francisco. At the heart of the demonstration is a Tesla coil, invented in the 1890s by Nikola Tesla. Tesla's inventions include the alternating-current (AC) power system used to supply electrical power throughout the world.

Daniel Greenhouse demonstrates one of the cool special effects–arcs of electricity breaking out of his fingertips–that can be achieved with a Tesla coil. Photo: courtesy of Daniel Greenhouse

Manganese exposure and Parkinson's

Anew study suggests that too much manganese, an essential element required by the body in tiny amounts but toxic at elevated levels, may contribute to the early development of Parkinson's disease symptoms in susceptible people. Recent epidemiological studies have suggested an association between Parkinson's disease and elevated exposure to manganese. The new study in animals shows that exposure to low levels of manganese does not directly contribute to the disease, but affects a different part of the brain in a way that exacerbates the effects of Parkinson's.

UCSC researchers evaluated the effects of low-level exposure to manganese using rats with a condition that mimics pre-Parkinsonism, an early stage of the disease in which no symptoms are apparent. Their findings were published this past fall in the scientific journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology.

The study highlights the importance of looking at the effects of toxic substances on sensitive subsets of the population who may be most vulnerable, said Donald Smith, an associate professor of environmental toxicology and a coauthor of the paper.

"We are concerned about how chronic low-level exposures to toxic substances may accelerate the emergence of neuro-degenerative diseases like Parkinson's," Smith said.

The possibility that people in the early stages of Parkinsonism could be especially sensitive to moderately increased levels of manganese is disturbing, he said. Manganese is ubiquitous in the environment, and its increasing use in industrial processes may cause some people to take in greater amounts from water, food, and airborne sources.

In addition, increased exposure to airborne manganese could result from the use of the manganese compound MMT as a gasoline additive. Currently, none of the major oil refineries are using MMT, but that could change, Smith noted.

Alumni Association names award winners

In Memoriam

Ronald W. Henderson, a professor emeritus of education and psychology at UCSC whose research focused on improving educational opportunities for underrepresented minorities, died at his Santa Cruz home in November after a lengthy battle with melanoma. He was 67.

Henderson's dual academic interests in child development and education fueled his research on social and cultural influences on development, academic motivation, cognition, and mathematics and science education.

His specific research interest was in the development of instructional approaches that would increase achievement and participation in mathematics by Latino students, women, and other groups that are under-represented in math and the sciences. He specialized in the development of motivation to achieve and participate in mathematics. Henderson, who joined the UC Santa Cruz faculty in 1977, also served as provost of UCSC's Crown College, chair of the Academic Senate, and dean of the Division of Graduate Studies.

His illness forced him to retire in 1999. Ronald Henderson Photo: Don Harris