May 7, 2015
May 7, 2015 —
Women outpace men at every level of education in the United States. When it comes to earning degrees, they get a greater share of high school and college diplomas, and PhDs. But if you look up the ranks—in business or in academia—the numbers thin dramatically. In the University of California system, for example, only 28 percent of tenured faculty members are women. And what percentage of U.S. college presidents are female? Only 26 percent, according to the American Council on Education and to sociologist Marianne Cooper, who came to campus April 29 to moderate the Social Sciences Supper Club “A Culture of Women's Leadership: From Trailblazing to Teamwork.”
April 16, 2015
April 16, 2015 —
Can people change their ways? Yes. But don’t bother preaching against a culture’s conventions, or outlawing them. Neither will work – or not for long, says Gerry Mackie, associate professor of political science in the UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences. When it comes to stopping a harmful social practice, Mackie says, the people practicing it must band together and abandon it as a group. You must empower a community to change itself.
April 2, 2015
April 2, 2015 —
Alan Daly explores ecosystems. He also parses networks. But the former schoolteacher and school psychologist is neither a biologist nor a computer scientist. Daly is chair of education studies in the UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences who believes that the only way to improve schools is to understand the environment in which we’re trying to effect change.
March 19, 2015
March 19, 2015 —
Five UC San Diego faculty members are being honored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation with Sloan Research Fellowships for 2015—three from the Jacobs School of Engineering and two from the Division of Social Sciences. This year’s recipients are computer scientist Shachar Lovett, economist Paul Niehaus, Padmini Rangamani from the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering, nanoengineer Andrea Tao and neuroscientist Bradley Voytek.
January 29, 2015
January 29, 2015 —
Three UC San Diego researchers say they can predict the spread of flu a week into the future with as much accuracy as Google Flu Trends can display levels of infection right now.
January 15, 2015
January 15, 2015 —
If you’ve ever wondered about the old television sets scattered around the lawn in front of the Media Center/Communication Building, wonder no more. The TV graveyard – along with a reproduction of Rodin’s famous “Thinker” and several small statues of Buddha gazing into the empty monitors – is the exterior portion of “Something Pacific” by Nam June Paik (1932-2006). Commissioned as part of the university’s renowned Stuart Collection of public art, “Something Pacific” was in 1986 Paik’s first permanent outdoor installation. The indoor portion is in the building lobby: a bank of 24 cutting edge and interactive TVs – except that they are no longer interactive or cutting-edge. A recent grant from the National Endowment of the Arts will change that.
November 20, 2014
November 20, 2014 —
A team of developers that includes UC San Diego cognitive science alumna Jelena Jovanovic has won the $500,000 grand prize in Intel’s Make It Wearable challenge for their wrist-mounted drone. The device—named Nixie—can travel a fixed distance from its owner to take a photo or video of them, and then return. Images or video can instantly be shared with friends.
November 10, 2014
November 10, 2014 —
The Assyrian Empire once dominated the ancient Near East. At the start of the 7th century BC, it was a mighty military machine and the largest empire the Old World had yet seen. But then, before the century was out, it had collapsed. Why? An international study now offers two new factors as possible contributors to the empire’s sudden demise – overpopulation and drought.
October 30, 2014
October 30, 2014 —
Cal-BRAIN—a statewide research grants program that aims to revolutionize our understanding of the brain—is officially underway. The first call for proposals has gone out, and the program expects to announce its first awards in early 2015.
October 23, 2014
October 23, 2014 —
It’s no secret that philosophy, around the country and abroad, has “a woman problem.” From undergraduate majors through to faculty ranks, women are underrepresented in the discipline. Philosophers are also notorious for talking more than doing. Not so much at UC San Diego, where faculty and students are actively working to change the numbers for the better.
