Author: Public Affairs

Ben Crow Assistant Professor of Sociology Ben Crow studies international development issues with a focus on water and agriculture. Crow’s current focus is on peasant agriculture in south Asia; he has spent almost ten years studying the rural rice and finance markets of Bangladesh, exploring the thesis that access to markets varies by social class…

The seismic gap hypothesis of earthquake recurrence, threatened by four large and seemingly "premature" quakes in the last two years, appears under closer scrutiny to remain valid. The hypothesis maintains that once an earthquake ruptures a fault, the same region will not rupture again until enough time passes–usually many decades or centuries–for stress to rebuild.…

By a two-to-one margin, members of UCSC’s Academic Senate have approved a proposal that will permit new students–beginning next fall–to accumulate a grade-point average. Under the grading plan, both new and continuing students will also be eligible to request letter grades for all classes, beginning in the fall. Of a total of 276 votes cast…

A national Associated Press article called upon UCSC astronomers Robert Kraft and Michael Bolte for input about a new theory that researchers have overestimated the ages of the oldest stars in the galaxy by several billion years. Kraft, Bolte, and others are taking the theory seriously, but have yet to be convinced. Andy Markovits of…

"Hot spots," the isolated patches of volcanism unrelated to plate tectonics, may spring from surprisingly deep within the planet: the turbulent boundary between earth’s mantle and its core. That conclusion, sure to put scientists on the spot at the AGU meeting, has arisen from intense study of a layer at the base of the mantle…

Research News And Feature Ideas, Issued Periodically By The UCSC Public Information Office Astronomy I Keck Telescope spies the likely building blocks of modern galaxies Acting as the world’s most powerful telescopic tandem, the Hubble Space Telescope and the W. M. Keck Telescope are starting to unravel the evolutionary histories of galaxies dating to when…

The following letter was sent on December 26, 1996 by President Atkinson to UC chancellors concerning a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson to issue a preliminary injunction against enforcement of Proposition 209. December 26, 1996 CHANCELLORS Dear Colleagues: On December 23 Judge Henderson of the United States District Court for the Northern…

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA–Frank Drake, president of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View and research professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, has issued the following statement about the death today of astronomer Carl Sagan. Drake and Sagan were close friends and longtime working colleagues, dating to their simultaneous tenures…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Adrienne Zihlman, professor of anthropology at UC Santa Cruz, is the featured speaker in this month’s Humanities Lecture Series, presented jointly by UCSC’s Humanities Division and the Museum of Art and History. Zihlman’s talk, ""Africa, Apes, and Ancestors: An Abridged Account of Human Evolution," takes place from 7 to 8 P.M. on Thursday,…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Two sons colluded in a self-described conspiracy to surprise their mother and before they were done they had inveigled respectable members of the local community, top campus administrators, and three former chancellors to join in the scheme. The sons, Mark Engel of Santa Cruz and Charlie Engel of Beverly Hills, plotted to surprise…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Members of a University of California task force charged with developing strategies to get more Latino students "in the pipeline" toward higher education have issued a new report that concludes that the university must work closely with public schools to help prepare Latino students for college, and that parents can play an important…

The latest nod to David Chalmers’s new book came from the London Times. Following up on earlier coverage, the paper printed two stories on Chalmers in a recent Sunday edition–one in the magazine section and one in the books section listing The Conscious Mind as one of the best science books of the year. The…