Media Coverage
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Cycling through Kansas, I've found people working across divisions
Jenny Reardon, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has spent a few weeks bicycling through her home state of Kansas every year since 2017. In this op-ed, she shares some of her observations and notes that Kansans are working on finding common ground.
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Fact check: As wildfires rage, Trump lashes out with false claims about FEMA and California water policy
Brent Haddad, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, clarified that “there was never a ‘water restoration declaration’ in California that the Governor refused to sign,” and “there is no connection between environmental protection in northern California and low-flow fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades.” Haddad was also quoted on this topic in a wide…
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Up to $150bn damage in LA fires unleashes wave of anger at cancelled insurance
Galina Hale, a professor of economics at the University of California Santa Cruz, told The i Paper that insurance companies use models to determine what is termed “actuarily fair” insurance policy pricing. “Some areas have such high risks that insurance companies would have to charge insurance premia above what people might be willing to pay,"…
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How Venture Capital Flattens Neighborhoods
Associate Teaching Professor of Community Studies Alison Alkon explained how gentrification tends to happen in phases, and the latest phase, funded by venture capital, has attempted to co-opt the aesthetic of the independent businesses that are often last hold-outs in the resistance against gentrification. “The force of this countermovement that was trying to make things kind…
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Listen to the visually impaired in the quest for better audio descriptions
The Santa Cruz Sentinel covered Professor of Computational Media Sri Kurniawan's efforts to a work with the local blind and visually impaired community to identify useful features for new automatically generated audio description programs.
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Americans 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.
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Humpback 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…
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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…
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Rising 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 by KPIX and KCBS.
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Hungry 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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Raging 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…
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You 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…