UCSC in the News
January
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January 14, 2020 - The GuardianAmericans are taught FDR was the hero of the Great Depression. For one historian, that’s erasure
In The Guardian, journalist Lauren Aratani profiles UC SAnta Cruz Research Professor and Professor Emerita of History Dana Frank about her new book, What Can We Learn About The Great Depression: Stories of Ordinary People and Collective Action In Hard Times. -
January 13, 2025 - The Guardian
Science has a trust problem. How to solve it? Don’t be condescending
Local newspapers, television and radio stations are the most trusted media in the county, with 85% of Americans saying the local press is essential for democracy. It’s because these reporters are from the same communities they’re writing about, said Erika Hayden, director of the Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, enabling greater transparency and authenticity.
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January 12, 2025 - San Francisco ChronicleRising tides could wipe out Pacifica, but residents can’t agree on how to respond
“We can’t build seawalls high enough to protect us forever,” said Gary Griggs, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz. “So, in the long run, it’s either going to be managed retreat or unmanaged retreat. It’s up to each community to decide.”
Also interviewed on KCBS.
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January 06, 2025 - GristThe business case for saving coral reefs
“It’s kind of a selfish way to look at these ecosystems. We need to maintain them because they’re protecting people,” said Borja G. Reguero, a coastal engineer and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz who’s co-authored much of the relevant science. Such logic is compelling to the emergency authorities and insurance companies that wind up “paying for the Katrinas and Sandys,” he added. -
January 05, 2025 - Santa Cruz SentinelStudy focuses on effect of climate change on California's grasslands
Several UC Santa Cruz researchers contributed to a recent study that combined long-term observational data with results from global change experiments in the region to show that, climate change is causing species that prefer hotter and drier conditions to become more dominant in regional grassland communities. "(We need to) understand what's happening so that we can guide our restoration and conservation efforts," said Environmental Studies Professor Karen Holl. Additional coverage in The Sacramento Bee.
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January 05, 2025 - Rolling StoneChina Is Ready to Take Advantage of Trump Trashing Clean Energy
Environmental Studies Professor Sikina Jinnah discussed how backtracking on climate change affects America's standing with Europe and the rest of the world. “They’re probably thinking, ‘Oh god. Not again,’” she said. “[Trump’s win] signals to not only Europe but the rest of the world that we’re an unreliable partner in multilateral negotiations — not only in the climate context but much more broadly.”
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January 01, 2025 - High Country NewsWind energy jobs are taking off, but so are risks
President-elect Trump has threatened to rescind all unspent IRA money, and the Treasury Department could reopen and rewrite the tax credit rules. Without federal funds and leadership, unionization rates in the wind industry will likely continue to vary across states. Going forward, Mijin Cha, who studies just transition at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said that new labor standards, as opposed to market incentives, would more effectively guarantee good jobs.
December
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December 12, 2024 - CNNHumpback whale makes record journey from South America to Africa
“Our dogmatic thinking is that (whales) always go to the place where they came from,” said Ari Friedlaender, professor of ocean sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the study. “But there has to be some movement where you get some (animal) explorers that decide, for whatever reason, to follow a different path.”
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December 30, 2024 - Smithsonian MagazineHungry Sea Otters Are Taking a Bite Out of California's Invasive Crab Problem, New Study Finds
“The otters are a just super voracious predator,” says study co-author Kerstin Wasson, an ecologist at the reserve and the University of California, Santa Cruz. “We calculated that the current otter population here eats somewhere between 50,000 and 120,000 green crabs a year.”
Additional coverage in the Washington Post, USA Today, and other outlets.
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December 26, 2024 - New York TimesRaging Waves Batter California's Coast and Its Beloved Piers
Michael W. Beck, the director of the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said that big wave events have increased significantly over the past few decades. Daily exposure to stronger waves — which strike multiple times a minute — also causes wear that California’s sea structures weren’t designed to withstand, he said. “The waves have just been relentless on these piers,” Mr. Beck said.
Additional coverage in SiliconValley.com, KQED, and the San Jose Mercury News.
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December 18, 2024 - NPRYou don't look a day over 4.35 billion! Here's the moon's anti-aging secret
"We think that the Moon went through a period when it looked like Io, and for the same reason," says Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist with the University of California, Santa Cruz, and lead author of the paper. "There would have been volcanoes jetting off all over the place," he says. "It would have been very dramatic." The result would be a Moon that seemed younger than its true age.
Coverage of this news appeared in more than 1,000 other outlets, including an op-ed from Nimmo in The Conversation, and news coverage in El País, NBC News, Popular Science, Salon, Scientific American.
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December 26, 2024 - San Francisco ChronicleResearch by UC Santa Cruz professor, others yields gruesome discovery
New research by an anthropology professor at UC Santa Cruz and other experts revealed a startling twist on the human sacrifice traditions of an ancient people of Peru.“Most of what we know about human sacrifices with the Moche relates to very public and gruesome forms of human sacrifice,” said Lars Fehren-Schmitz, an archaeogeneticist at UC Santa Cruz and author of the research. Additional coverage in Live Science.
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December 23, 2024 - High Country News
Utah’s coal mines can’t find enough workers
Miners describe eroding benefits as unionized coal mines have closed down. Some former union mines may eventually reopen, but it will be with new names, new owners and no union contracts. Mijin Cha, a just transition researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said that this is a common trend across the nation.
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December 23, 2024 - Grist
Three-quarters of the world’s land is drying out, ‘redefining life on Earth’
Climate change has made great swaths of the planet drier and soils saltier, jeopardizing food production and water access for billions. We can look to current geopolitical and ecological events that are playing out currently to understand what we can expect in the future,” said Hannah Waterhouse, a soil and water scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “Think of what is occurring in Sudan right now, where climate change is exacerbating resource scarcity, which is interacting in governance and geopolitics in violent outcomes for civilians.” Additional coverage in Clean Technica.
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December 20, 2024 - Financial ExpressA haze of institutional weakness
In an opinion article, Distinguished Professor of Economics Nirvikar Singh argues that the standard approach of localized and reactive policies will not India’s air pollution problems. -
December 18, 2024 - San Francisco Chronicle
Scientists are turning fog into water. Here’s what it could mean for California
Peter Weiss, an environmental toxicologist at UC Santa Cruz, started collecting fog during the megadrought that plagued California from 2019 through 2021. “It’s bringing the concept of collecting atmospheric water in this passive way to our everyday lives,” Weiss said. “You can get a tangible quantity of water you can put to use that you wouldn’t otherwise have.” -
December 13, 2024 - The ScientistA Tiny but Mighty Helper Stops Mosquito Viruses in Their Tracks
Even though Wolbachia’s virus-blocking effects were described more than 10 years ago, the mechanisms behind it are still poorly understood, noted William Sullivan, a cell biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has delved into the biology of Wolbachia for more than two decades. “The million-dollar question is the mechanism of virus protection, and there are lots of models out there,” said Sullivan, who emphasized that more research efforts should be devoted to uncovering the basic molecular and cellular biology of Wolbachia interactions with their hosts.
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December 18, 2024 - Cal MattersCalifornia’s attorney general leads a ‘know your rights’ workshop for immigrants
California Attorney General Rob Bonta and other immigrant advocates have warned people to be careful about the legal help they seek and to only use qualified and licensed immigration attorneys. Scams offering fake immigration services or extorting payments by threatening deportation target vulnerable communities, especially in Los Angeles. Cal Matters shared research by UC Santa Cruz Associate Professor of Sociology Juan Pedroza that sheds light on these types of scams, which are likely vastly underreported. -
December 13, 2024 - WDETExploring gender roles in 2024, from ‘girlboss’ to ‘trad wife’
UC Santa Cruz gender and sexual identity diversity expert Dr. Phillip Hammack joined Detroit Public Radio to discuss how gender roles have shifted in the past decade. Hammack said that new labels popularized on social media show that "ideas around how to be a woman, how to inhabit your gender, have now opened up, and there are options,” he said. “Those kinds of micro labels say, ‘You can inhabit your womanhood in different ways, and that’s okay.’”
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December 16, 2024 - San Francisco Public PressShuttered Radiation Lab Poses Ongoing Health Risks for Growing Neighborhood
Coverage of the history of cleanup and development plans at the Navy's San Francisco lab cited research by Associate Professor of Sociology Lindsey Dillon and quoted Daniel Hirsch, the retired director of UCSC's former Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy. Hirsch says there is “high likelihood that contamination migrated from the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard into the neighboring community.”
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December 12, 2024 - San Francisco Public Press
Destroyed Records, Dying Witnesses Obscure SF Radiation Lab
“You almost have a sense of a military entity, knowing it was involved in rights violations and other questionable activities, burning the file before the incoming troops arrived,” said Daniel Hirsch, the retired director of the former Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has authored several reports about shipyard and lab activities. Hirsch was also quoted in Part 4 and Part 6 of this series
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December 12, 2024 - Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionGeorgia prison system engages in deception as crisis builds
A leading expert on prison conditions and solitary confinement, Craig Haney, was brought in to study the unit, and he described the SMU as "one of the harshest and most draconian" solitary confinement facilities he had ever seen. … "The atmosphere inside E Wing was bedlam-like, as chaotic and out of-control as any such unit I have seen in decades of conducting such evaluations," wrote Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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December 11, 2024 - KTVULuigi Mangione: Societal support for alleged criminals isn't unprecedented
"Sometimes communications online, particularly social media, can kind of give us an idea of where the public is at. And I don't think anybody can dismiss the fact that there are divergent opinions on this murder," said Nolan Higdon, a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. This story was picked up by Yahoo News.
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December 18, 2024 - Lookout Santa CruzScotts Valley didn’t get a tornado warning, but San Francisco did. Why?
Environmental Studies Professor Michael Loik explained how climate change could potentially lead to increased opportunities for tornado development. “From a mechanistic standpoint, if you warm up the atmosphere, you warm up the ocean, you create more evaporation, you create more storminess,” he said. “From a statistical standpoint, then that might lead some to predict more tornadoes but there’s so much more that goes into it than that.”
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January 01, 2020 - San Francisco Public Press
Cold War Human Radiation Experiments Pushed Ethical Boundaries
“This testing on people who were not genuine volunteers, who were not genuinely informed of the risk — they were human guinea pigs in an experiment that had no value at the end of the day,” said Daniel Hirsch, the retired director of the former Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “This is a real abuse of power.”
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December 08, 2024 - Monterey County HeraldClimate change swiftly remaking region’s grasslands
Climate change is altering regional grasslands at remarkable speed as species that thrive in hotter, drier conditions dominate the ecosystem, scientists reported in a recent study. The researchers found this strong trend at test sites across California, with the most notable results near Elkhorn Slough, at UC Santa Cruz and in coastal Mendocino County. "I think what I was most surprised about was how consistent the results were across multiple sites," said study author Karen Holl, an ecologist from UC Santa Cruz whose lab provided the observational data for Monterey and Santa Cruz counties
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December 06, 2024 - TODAYHow to keep a dream journal — and why you should
Thematic dream analysis can help you uncover the repetitive thoughts, emotions and behavioral patterns that could use some addressing. Thematic analysis as a dream method has been developed and refined by several researchers over time, including the prominent work of G. William Domhoff, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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December 06, 2024 - PoliticoThe litmus test posed by ‘Lithium Valley’
The jury is still out on whether lithium development at the Salton Sea will help the majority-Latino communities living in California’s second-poorest county. This is the topic of a new book from Chris Benner, sociologist and director of the Institute for Social Transformation at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and scholar-activist Manuel Pastor, director of the University of Southern California’s Equity Research Institute. Additional coverage in E&E News.
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December 04, 2024 - VoxWhy thousands of people are traveling to one country to see these birds
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela is a conservation ecologist who has been studying the explosion of bird-watching tourism in Colombia. Activity on eBird, a platform where birders can record their observations, increased more than 27-fold in Colombia since 2010, according to unpublished research by Ocampo-Peñuela and other authors that’s currently under review.
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December 07, 2024 - Scientific InquirerMangroves save $855 billion in flood protection globally, new study shows
Mangroves have been shown to provide $855 billion in flood protection services worldwide, according to a new study from the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience at UC Santa Cruz. The research, conducted by project co-lead, Pelayo Menendez and center director, Michael W. Beck, is featured in the World Bank’s 2024 edition of The Changing Wealth of Nations.
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December 05, 2024 - LAistTsunami reality check
Although it’s unlikely, Steven Ward, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz, has created a series of animations to show how a big tsunami might spread through San Francisco Bay. In Ward’s simulations, the incoming wave stands just over 16 feet tall.
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December 05, 2024 - KTVU
Tsunami warning along Northern California coast canceled, Bay Area residents react
"It’s really a subtle effect between an earthquake that can cause a very large tsunami and one that doesn’t at all, and that has to do with what direction the fault moves. If it’s moving side to side it’s not very likely to push up a big pile of water and make a tsunami, but if the fault moves [up and down] then it does," said Emily Brodsky, Distinguished Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, who added that she felt the tsunami warning was warranted. Also picked up by Yahoo.
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December 04, 2024 - Yahoo TechScientists achieve major step forward in developing innovative diesel fuel alternative: 'This could really impact people'
University of California, Santa Cruz, researchers say they have improved the waste oil-to-biodiesel production process with a simple, circular method involving mild heat. "I always wanted to work on biodiesel," said doctoral student Kevin Lofgren, the study's lead author. "I started exploring this new material that we made to see if it could attack the fats in oil to help catalyze biodiesel, and it all flowed from there."
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December 03, 2024 - Tech ExploristStudy confirms a 40-year-old quantum theory
According to co-author Jairo Velasco, Jr., associate professor of physics at UC Santa Cruz, as electrons move from one point to another in a closed orbit, the property of the subatomic particle is better preserved. This could have wide applications in everyday electronics, demonstrating how data encoded in electrons’ properties could be transferred without loss.
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December 02, 2024 - Forbes30 Under 30 - Healthcare (2025): Immergo Labs
Adjunct Professor of Computational Media Aviv Elor and Electrical and Computer Engineering Ph.D. student Ash Robbins, who co-founded the telehealth physical therapy company Immergo Labs, were recognized in the 2025 Forbes 30 under 30 list in the Healthcare category. -
December 02, 2024 - The Washington PostEnter the ‘ether,’ where scammers weaponize your emotions
Anthony Pratkanis, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, co-wrote a source book for fraud fighters. “We’re looking at it from the outside, and we may not see all the little details and trappings that create that powerful situation for the targeted victim,” he said.
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December 02, 2024 - Los Angeles TimesElevated radiation detected at former Bay Area landfill turned art park
State-ordered environmental testing has uncovered elevated levels of cancer-causing radiation at the Albany Bulb, a former municipal landfill for construction debris that now features scenic hiking trails and a sprawling collection of outdoor art. The new testing adds to the serious public health and safety concerns for one of the Bay Area’s most cherished coastal spaces. Gamma radiation is particularly concerning as this high-frequency energy can move through solid objects and human tissue, damaging DNA molecules and raising a person’s risk for cancer, according to Daniel Hirsch, retired director of environmental and nuclear policy at UC Santa Cruz. “It’s like subatomic bullets being fired at the cells,” Hirsch said. “There is no safe level. Every level carries some risk.”
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November 30, 2024 - Washington Post
Animations of coiled hair for Black film characters improve with new algorithms
The Washington Post highlights research from Professor A.M. Darke. Her recent work helped create programs for better animating coily hair. This work will help create better representation in animation.
November
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November 25, 2024 - The GuardianRevealed: how a San Francisco navy lab became a hub for human radiation experiments
The navy’s San Francisco lab was one of many research centers and hospitals across the country that exposed people to radiation and other hazards for scientific purposes. That makes it a demonstration of “the ways that people have been seen as disposable, to science or to the military”, said Lindsey Dillon, a UCSC assistant professor of sociology who is among a handful of academics familiar with the lab’s history. Daniel Hirsch, the retired director of UCSC's former Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy, says the lab demonstrated a remarkable disregard for radiation’s hazards and a cavalier attitude toward human health, even by the permissive standards of the time. Originally published in the San Francisco Public Press, with an accompanying podcast. -
November 22, 2024 - MongabayHuge deforested areas in the tropics could regenerate naturally, study finds
Karen Holl, professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the research, noted that it’s critical to include local communities in regeneration efforts. Holl’s own research in Costa Rica has shown that people often see natural forest regeneration as “messy,” and they tend to place more value on planted landscapes. What’s also important is how long these forests last once they’ve regrown, Holl said. “We sort of assume that the land is growing back, and the large-scale data suggests that it’s not as permanent as it seems,” she added. “The problem is that you can’t map people’s decision-making at large scales.”
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November 20, 2024 - Los Angeles Times
California's rainy season begins with a bomb cyclone bang. Are we in for a third record wet winter?
“This is welcome to a certain extent, it moves us away from fire risk by wetting down ecosystems,” said Michael Loik, a professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz. “On the other hand,” he added, “it can be too much of a good thing too quickly.”
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November 15, 2024 - Financial Express
India and the US elections
Nirvikar Singh, distinguished professor of economics at UC Santa Cruz, argues in this op-ed that the importance of the recent U.S. elections for India cannot be overstated. The political landscape in the U.S. has shifted dramatically.
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November 14, 2024 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
UC Santa Cruz awarded $4 million grant to address systemic racism, ableism in K-12 math
The National Science Foundation awarded more than $4 million in grant funding to UC Santa Cruz to support a project aimed at addressing systemic racism and ableism in K-12 math education. “I really want teachers in mathematics education to have better ideas, resources and pedagogies to teach all of their students,” said assistant professor of elementary mathematics education and project lead Paulo Tan. “The big hope is that we can challenge the systemic barriers in math education in a meaningful way.”
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November 14, 2024 - The Guardian
Washington state farm workers worry about boom in legal foreign workers
Rosa Navarro, a sociology doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, researches the guest worker program’s expansion in Washington state. Farm workers have told her that some farms replaced their entire workforce with guest workers, and advocates say that the H-2A program is making inroads with agricultural sites that haven’t used its workers before.
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November 06, 2024 - Good TimesThe Hills are Alive: Concerned residents are saving wildlife from deadly crashes…and saving drivers
Good Times covered research by Chris Wilmers through the Santa Cruz Puma project, particularly how findings from the project are informing efforts to protect pumas from traffic fatalities. Wilmers calls a new wildlife crossing tunnel on Laurel Curve “the best opportunity for maintaining puma connectivity across Highway 17 in Santa Cruz County.” -
November 26, 2024 - Popular ScienceGreat Red What? Check out Jupiter's giant, magnetic tornado
Jupiter’s immense size–about 1,000 Earths could fit inside of it–and its swirling and jiggly Great Red Spot typically get most of the attention. Now, the planet’s northern and southern poles have entered the discussion. A team of astronomers that includes Xi Zhang, a professor of planetary sciences, have discovered equally large spots at both poles that appear and disappear seemingly at random. Additional coverage by Forbes, Futurism, Earth.com, Space.com, Cosmos Magazine, and other news outlets.
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November 25, 2024 - Oceanographic MagazineWhale-ship strikes reduced if 2.6% of ocean made safer
“Trade-offs between industrial and conservation outcomes are not usually this optimal,” said co-author Heather Welch, a research scientist with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and the University of California, Santa Cruz. “Oftentimes, industrial activities must be greatly limited to achieve conservation goals, or vice versa. In this case, there is a potentially large conservation benefit to whales for not much cost to the shipping industry.” Additional coverage in the Conversation, Earth.com, Eco Magazine, the Guardian, and others.
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November 22, 2024 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
Stuck in the muck: Scientists study carbon trapped by Elkhorn Slough
Scientists are measuring how much carbon dioxide Elkhorn Slough can suck from the atmosphere. Their research is funded by a $3.5 million grant awarded in 2022 by the University of California Office of the President. It is part of a broader effort to find ways to remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. “Wetlands are one of the best natural systems to sequester CO2,” says Adina Paytan, a principal investigator at the UCSC Center for Coastal Climate Resilience. She is leading the study.
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November 22, 2024 - CleanTechnicaEarthquake And Remembrance: The Tsunami Of 2004
Some of the answers could be forthcoming under a research project at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where professor Emily Brodsky is working on a $1.1 million Department of Energy grant aimed at studying the potential to induce earthquakes from different kinds of human activity including geothermal wells and groundwater management systems as well as fracking and carbon sequestration.
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November 19, 2024 - Scientific AmericanShould Offshore Oil Rigs Be Turned into Artificial Reefs?
Mark Carr of the University of California, Santa Cruz, wrote that there are few natural rock reefs at the depths of the California oil platforms and none with comparable physical characteristics. If the goal is to contribute to overall reef area, their value is “minuscule.” If, however, the intent is to preserve their unique habitats, their value is “100 percent.”
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November 13, 2024 - Smithsonian MagazineVoyager 2 Measured a Rare Anomaly When It Flew Past Uranus, Skewing Our Knowledge of the Planet for 40 Years, Study Suggests
“The Uranus system is one of the big blank spots that are left on our map,” said Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. -
November 22, 2024 - ArtforumDreams of Dakar
Artforum, one of the world's leading art magazines, highlighed the work of UC Santa Cruz Humanities Professor Gina Athena Ulysse in its story about the prestigious Dakar Biennale (Dak'Art). A featured artist at the Biennale, Ulysse, a prolific Haitian-American scholar and artist, has a vibrant installation on the facade of the Ancien Palace de Justice, where the exhibition is being held in Senegal.
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November 20, 2024 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
UC Santa Cruz Theater Arts lives up to a smart adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s ‘Inspector General’
Professor and Chair of the Department of Performance, Play & Design Michael Chemers reimagined the classic Russian play Inspector General for a new era. Santa Cruz Sentinel writer Jake Thomas gives the play a stunning review, in large due to its "ability to inspire reflection." Inspector General will be playing until the end of this week, with its last show on November 23, 2024. -
November 16, 2024 - Broadway World
World Premiere of ‘Here Comes the Night’ to Open at Moving Arts Theatre
UC Santa Cruz alumna Hailey McAfee, who graduated with a B.A. in Theater Arts, is currently directing a new play. Here Comes the Night is set to premiere in Los Angeles in January and run through mid-February. -
November 14, 2024 - Allure
We’re Much Closer to A Disney Princess With Type 4 Hair
A.M. Darke, a UC Santa Cruz professor of Performance, Play, and Design, recently released a paper with a colleague from Yale focusing on their research in animating coily hair. Animation didn’t even include texture in Black hair until 2021 with Disney’s Encanto. Darke’s research is game changing in the field of animation and will lead to greater representation in film, video games, and more. -
November 12, 2024 - San Francisco Chronicle
A mysterious deep-sea creature appeared in Monterey Bay. Now scientists are finally telling the world
In 2000, a team of scientists first laid eyes on what they would later call the Mystery Mollusk via a remotely operated vehicle at 8,576 feet. After 150 viewings, many rounds of measurements, some genetic studies and 24 years later, a scientific description of the animal with the scientific name Bathydevius caudactylus has been published. The description was co-written by Steven Haddock at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz.
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November 12, 2024 - Modesto BeeS.F.’s Ocean Beach could be transformed with massive seawall. Surfers are not happy
An upcoming scientific article about the impact of development on California beaches by geologist Gary Griggs of UC Santa Cruz and coastal engineer Bob Battalio called armoring and repeated beach nourishment solutions that are expensive and only "effective over a few decades at best."
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November 11, 2024 - Australian Broadcasting Network
Composing music with AI isn't new, but recent advances have serious implications for the music industry
As AI quickly advances there are a lot of questions about its ethics. But whether it is good or bad there is no denying that AI plays a major role in the future of music making. One of the early pioneers of AI music was David Cope, a UC Santa Cruz professor emeritus of music. His work with computers starting in the 1980s laid the groundwork for the music we have today. -
November 12, 2024 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
UC Santa Cruz’s ‘Inspector General’ updates classic political play
The UC Santa Cruz Arts Division is premiering a new play this week. Inspector General, which is an adaption of a Russian play by the same name, raises a conversation around political corruption in the modern day. The Santa Cruz Sentinel spoke to Michael Chemers, the chair of the department of Performance, Play, and Design who wrote the play, to break down its importance in relation to contemporary politics. -
November 01, 2024 - Mother JonesEnvironmental Justice? Not if Project 2025 Has a Say.
Mijin Cha, a professor of environmental studies at University of California, Santa Cruz, says Inflation Reduction Act grant programs could be improved by providing benefits more directly to underserved people. “The federal government gives money to a third party, and then that third party distributes the money,” says Cha. “Is it not more efficient to just have that be a direct investment?” Project 2025, however, would eliminate these programs entirely.
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November 02, 2024 - BBC Wildlife MagazineAs scientists plot to bring back the dodo, Helen Pilcher asks whether we should—and what would happen if we did
In 2022, geneticist Beth Shapiro from the UC Santa Cruz, who is a scientific advisor to Colossal Biosciences, decoded the dodo’s genome. Scientists at Colossal are now determining the sequences which they will edit into cells collected from the dodo’s closest living relative, the Nicobar pigeon. Then, just as for the passenger pigeon, the edited cells will be used to create adult birds that create dodo sperm and eggs. -
November 01, 2024 - Washington Post
How to use AI to help plan your vote
University of California, Santa Cruz Associate Professor of History Benjamin Breen was featured in a Washington Post story about using AI chatbot technology to help voters research long and complex ballots. -
November 01, 2024 - The AtlanticMAGA is tripping: Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign has cemented the right’s romance with psychedelics.
University of California, Santa Cruz Associate Professor of History Benjamin Breen, author of Tripping On Utopia: Margaret Mead, The Cold Ward, and The Troubled Birth Of Pscyhedelic Science, was featured in an Atlantic Monthly feature story about the American hard right's recent embrace of psychedelics.
October
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October 30, 2024 - The Jewish News of Northern California
Founder of Center for Monster Studies isn’t scared when the lights go down
Michael Chemers, the chair of the department of Performance, Play, and Design and the founder of the Center for Monster Studies, talks about his role in monsters studies. In this Q&A for The Jewish News of Northern California Chemers explores monsters through the lens of Judaism, in particular discussing the golem which comes from Jewish folklore. -
October 28, 2024 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
Guest Commentary | Immigrant safety at risk from election rhetoric
Political leaders who use racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric are directly harming safety and wellbeing in our communities, write UC Santa Cruz faculty members Regina Day Langhout and Saskias Casanova. Recent research conducted in Santa Cruz County supports this assertion. In Fall 2023, youth researchers in United Way of Santa Cruz County’s Alzamos la Voz program worked with undergraduates and faculty from the University of California, Santa Cruz to analyze data from a survey of over 500 Santa Cruz County community members. Findings showed the importance of immigrant safety for the wellbeing of all community members. -
October 25, 2024 - Financial Express
Growth, jobs and manufacturing
Distinguished Professor of Economics Nirvikar Singh argues that increases in productivity and wages that come from investment in human capital are going to benefit a larger slice of the population than investment in physical capital that substitutes for workers, though both kinds of investment matter. -
October 24, 2024 - WIREDThis App Set Out to Fight Pesticides. After VCs Stepped In, Now It Helps Sell Them
Silicon Valley–style venture capital places enormous emphasis on scale and a startup’s ability to grow rapidly, says Madeleine Fairbairn, a sociologist at UC Santa Cruz, who studies agriculture and food systems. “Everybody’s used to this claim that we have a growing population, and they’re going to starve if we don’t feed them,” she says. For Fairbairn, this is a failure of imagination. “If the imperative for corporate and venture capital profit and rapid funder exit could be decentered from this drive for digital agriculture, it could potentially be something really amazing,” she says.
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October 31, 2024 - Los Angeles Times
A deadly fungus that has killed millions of bats may have arrived in Southern California
“Those early kind of signals can be helpful for understanding the progression of the fungus, of where it’s getting to,” said Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International and an adjunct professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. -
October 30, 2024 - earth.comWeddell seals have a surprising survival strategy
“Weddell seals live in one of the most hostile environments on the planet and need to keep their internal clock running during periods when the sun never sets or when the sun never rises,” noted Daniel Costa, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. -
October 24, 2024 - Voices of Monterey BayMonsters under the microscope
Professors Michael Chemers and Renée Fox are featured in an article about the Center for Monster Studies, an interdisciplinary space where scholars from across the academic spectrum can come together to explore the role of monsters in culture, literature, politics, and even science and technology. The GoodTimes also featured the center. -
October 24, 2024 - earth.com
Military sonar does a lot more damage to dolphins than previously disclosed
Scientists from UC Santa Cruz and their collaborators have achieved something monumental — they’ve managed to directly measure the behavioral responses of these dolphins and unraveled some surprising findings. Also covered by Study Finds, Interesting Engineering, and others.
