May 2006
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Saturn’s moon Enceladus may have rolled over to put a hot spot at the pole
Enceladus, a small icy moon of Saturn, may have dramatically reoriented relative to its axis of rotation, rolling over to put an area of low density at the moon’s south pole. According to a new study, this reorientation process could explain the polar location of a region where NASA’s Cassini spacecraft recently observed icy jets…
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Two geographic sites in Antarctica named in honor of UCSC biologists
Costa Spur and Terrie Bluff, once nameless features of the austere Antarctic landscape, have now been officially named in honor of Daniel Costa and Terrie Williams, professors of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Both scientists have done extensive field research on marine mammals in Antarctica. The U.S. Board on…
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UC Santa Cruz receives $75,000 gift to fund Hindi/Urdu language program
A consortium of donors has committed to funding Hindi/Urdu language courses at UC Santa Cruz through spring of 2010. The combined gifts in support of the program total $75,000 and will enable the university to provide courses that would otherwise be eliminated due to budget cuts. The gift was initiated by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Kamil…
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Stephen Thorsett named dean of physical and biological sciences at UCSC
The University of California, Santa Cruz, has appointed Stephen Thorsett to serve as dean of the Division of Physical and Biological Sciences. The UC Board of Regents approved the appointment today, effective July 1. Stephen Thorsett Photo by Andrea Michels Thorsett, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics, has served as acting dean of physical and…
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Seismologists detect a sunken slab of ocean floor deep in the Earth
Halfway to the center of the Earth, at the boundary between the core and the mantle, lies a massive folded slab of rock that once formed the ocean floor and sank beneath North America some 50 million years ago. A team of seismologists led by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, detected the…
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Chancellor Denton wins the 2006 Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award
Denice D. Denton, chancellor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has won the 2006 Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award, a prestigious national recognition of exceptional work that advances opportunities for women and girls in the sciences. A jury of distinguished educators and scientists selected Denton, citing her work in developing programs on university…
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New capture scenario explains origin of Neptune’s oddball moon Triton
Neptune’s large moon Triton may have abandoned an earlier partner to arrive in its unusual orbit around Neptune. Triton is unique among all the large moons in the solar system because it orbits Neptune in a direction opposite to the planet’s rotation (a “retrograde” orbit). It is unlikely to have formed in this configuration and…
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Hubble surveys find gamma-ray bursts and supernovae in different environments
Long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are associated with the deaths of only the most massive stars and occur relatively rarely in spiral galaxies such as our own Milky Way, according to research published online in Nature this week. That’s good news, because a nearby gamma-ray burst could wreak havoc on Earth by destroying the ozone layer…