Author: Public Affairs

SANTA CRUZ, CA–A new technique may let seismologists estimate which parts of a fault are likely to rupture most severely during an earthquake, even if the fault hasn’t broken for a century or more. The technique relies upon an apparent connection between the pre-earthquake geology of a fault zone and the amount of motion that…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Billions of barrels of oil lurk beneath the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, shrouded by twisted layers of rock and domes of salt. If Ru-Shan Wu’s group does its job well, the oil industry soon will have far better tools to find that black gold. Wu and his colleagues at the UC…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian, two prominent San Francisco area poet/authors, will read from their works on Thursday, November 30, at 4 p.m. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in the Cowell College Provost’s House. The talk is free and open to the public. Bellamy is a leading figure in the "New…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–The Million Man March. The O. J. Simpson trial. The Los Angeles riots. The Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings. In recent years, current events have put issues of race at the top of the American agenda, and each of these events is indelibly linked with television images, says Herman Gray, an associate professor of…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Biochemists have published the first detailed view of the molecular tango between two critical units in the life cycle of a retrovirus–a virus that uses RNA, not DNA, to direct its genetic infiltration of a host cell. The research reveals a precise fit between the viral RNA and a section of a protein…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–The Crow’s Nest restaurant on the shores of Monterey Bay will support public education programs at another well-known bayside institution, the Long Marine Laboratory, with "Cheers at the Crow’s Nest," a benefit holiday celebration on Thursday, December 7. For all diners who state their support for Long Marine Lab, the Crow’s Nest will…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Joel Primack, a professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest federation of scientists. The AAAS Council elevates members to the rank of fellow to recognize distinguished efforts toward advancing science or its…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–By pinpointing individual suns in the glare of the most tightly packed cluster of stars in our galaxy, the Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled hints of either a massive black hole or another remarkable phenomenon: a "core collapse" driven by the intense gravitational pull of so many stars in such a small volume…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Amid concerns about the lingering effects of DDT along California’s coast comes this bit of good news: Sea lions carried about one hundred times less of the toxic substance in their fat a few years ago than they did two decades earlier. The average level of DDT and its major breakdown product, DDE,…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–For anthropologist Carolyn Martin Shaw, the decision to address the subject of female genital mutilation in her new book meant confronting much of the feminist rhetoric about clitoridectomy. "I am not an apologist for this operation–I think it should be ended–but at the same time, I wanted to understand why women participate in…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Eleven science students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have received $5,000 scholarships from the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation. The students were honored today (November 1) at a ceremony in San Francisco. Now in its 23rd year of awarding scholarships, the northern California chapter of the ARCS Foundation awarded…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Leta Miller and Fredric Lieberman, both professors of music at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have received a $51,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support their work on a book on composer Lou Harrison. In addition, Miller received a prestigious NEH summer stipend to work on the project…