Campus News

San Francisco’s Moscone Center and surrounding hotels will host 12,000 researchers this week for the 213th national meeting of the American Chemical Society. Developmental AIDS therapies, obesity treatments, oxygenated fuels, life on Mars, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and other intriguing topics are among the highlights of the massive meeting. More than two dozen faculty members…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Great Britain’s Royal Astronomical Society has awarded the 1997 Gold Medal, its highest honor, to Donald Osterbrock, professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and astronomer emeritus at UC Observatories/Lick Observatory. The award recognizes Osterbrock’s lifetime achievement in the field of astronomy. The society bestows its Gold…

Three members of the Institute of Marine Sciences earned kudos in recent months. The California Academy of Sciences elected professor of biology Dan Costa as a fellow. IMS director and professor of earth sciences Gary Griggs joined the National Research Council’s Committee on Coastal Engineering Research and Education Needs. Lastly, the Society for Marine Mammalogy…

The science journal Nature recently ran a commentary piece by linguist Geoffrey Pullum on the Oakland school board’s decision to recognize Ebonics as a language. Pullum argued that Ebonics, which he calls African American English, is a dialect of English with its own grammatical rules, no different from a dialect of, for example, Arabic or…

Nominations for three open Staff Advisory Board positions are due by April 30. Board members will serve two-year terms beginning July 1. Nominees must be staff members who are not represented by an exclusive bargaining agent. For a nomination form or for more information, contact Jo Ann McFarland at (408) 459-3260 or joann@cats.ucsc.edu. Gateway to…

For the second consecutive year, an alumna of UCSC has snared a Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s most prestigious honor. This year’s recipient was Santa Rosa Press Democrat photographer Annie Wells (College Eight ’81), who won the prize for spot news photography. The Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University lauded Wells on April 7 for her "dramatic…

Studying Russia is a habit that’s tough to break, says political scientist Michael Urban (), who caught the bug as a graduate student 25 years ago. Ever since, Urban has been captivated by the drama and spectacle of Russian politics. He’s visited the country at least 16 times since 1975 and was invited in 1995…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–An impressive array of organic perennials will be among the hundreds of plants for sale at the annual UC Santa Cruz Farm and Garden plant sale on Saturday and Sunday, May 3-4. Hours are 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. each day in the Barn Theater parking lot at the intersection of Bay and…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–The sight of hummingbirds sipping the sweet nectar of sages is a sure sign that spring has returned to the UC Santa Cruz Farm and Garden. The 25-acre organic Farm features gardens, orchards, and fields of row crops. The smaller Alan Chadwick Garden is a delightful mix of vegetables, dwarf fruit trees, and…

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Carla Freccero, a professor of literature and women’s studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will present an Inaugural Lecture titled "Archives in the Fiction: History and Literature in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron." The talk takes place at 8 P.M. on Wednesday, April 16, on Performing Arts Second Stage. The talk is…

April 22 Talk On Harrison’s Music And Politics Is One Of Several Ucsc Events Honoring The Composer SANTA CRUZ, CA–Musicologist and flutist Leta Miller will present an inaugural lecture titled "Sounding Off: Lou Harrison’s Musical Politics" at 8 P.M. Tuesday, April 22, in the Music Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The talk…

A simulated collision between two galaxies, created by UCSC astrophysicist Lars Hernquist and former UCSC postdoctoral researcher Chris Mihos, now at Johns Hopkins University, was nominated for a 1997 Computerworld Smithsonian Award in the science category. The awards recognize innovative uses of information technology. The galaxy collision, featured in the IMAX film Cosmic Voyage, is…