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A Better Next Big Thing
Environmental Studies and Sociology Professor Chris Benner is featured in a documentary film about the world’s largest and cleanest lithium supply in California’s Salton Sea region. Benner discusses the clean energy transition and how to support local communities in the process.
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‘Isaac Julien: I Dream a World’ Opens at de Young Museum April 12
Sir Isaac Julien, a distinguished professor in the History of Consciousness and Art Departments, will have his work on display at the De Young Museum. I Dream a World is Julien’s first solo exhibition at the museum and uses video instillations and visual narrative to explore African American narratives.
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Game of clones: Colossal’s new wolves are cute, but are they dire?
Beth Shapiro, an expert on ancient DNA who is now on a three-year sabbatical from the University of California, Santa Cruz, as the company’s CSO, acknowledged in an interview that other scientists would bristle at the claim. “What we’re going to have here is a philosophical argument about whether we should call it a dire…
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Odd-Looking Blue Creatures Are Washing Up in Large Groups on California’s Beaches Once Again
Velellas typically wash ashore in Northern California in spring or early summer, because “in the spring is when we have upwelling,” explains Raphael Kudela, a marine scientist at University of California, Santa Cruz, to KQED’s Danielle Venton and Sarah Mohamad. “Upwelling brings lots of nutrients, and lots of nutrients bring phytoplankton and zooplankton.”
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Impact of Trump’s tariffs on India will be lower than for other countries, including China
Distinguished Professor of Economics Nirvikar Singh wrote about the potential impacts of new U.S. tariffs on India. Singh suspects that the tariffs are mainly an aggressive starting point for a negotiation process that will proceed bilaterally. But he says the Trump approach undermines institutions and trust.
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Art Scholars Pledge to Boycott Columbia University
Art historians and professors are among the hundreds who signed an open letter denouncing the school’s capitulation to Trump’s demands.
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Donna Haraway and Italo Rota awarded Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement
Donna Haraway, a distinguished professor emeritus from the History of Consciousness Department, recently won a “Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement” from La Biennale di Venezia. Her philosophical work covers both science and science fiction, as well as speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, science and technology studies and multi-species worlding.
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Geoengineering could be crucial in the fight against climate change. But first scientists need to learn how to talk to the public about it.
Environmental Studies Professor Sikina Jinnah shared her insights from working to help the geoengineering sector incorporate governance and public-engagement best-practices documented by social science research. “It’s really, really hard to be taken seriously,” she said. “There’s a handful of scientists who I think bend over backwards to support social science and to advocate for the inclusion…
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Trump administration axes more than $125M in LGBTQ health funding, upending research field
Amid the prospect of both gay and trans people’s erasure from the nation’s research priorities, 30 editors of leading journals that focus on sex and gender research published an editorial last month in The Journal of Sex Research on this work’s importance, NBC reported. UC Santa Cruz Psychology Professor Phillip Hammack coauthored the editorial in his role…
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UC Santa Cruz sociologist sees ‘a real opportunity’ for labor power right now
Sociology Professor Steve McKay, director of the Center for Labor and Community, says union power helps to push back against increasingly precarious conditions in our country’s economy and society. “Unions are one of the only independent structures that actually fight that kind of precariousness and help empower workers,” he said. Additional coverage was included in…