Marking the first time a graduate institution in the United States has raised so much in a single effort, the seven-year campaign to raise $1.4 billion for the University of California, San Francisco has topped the $1 billion mark.
The Campaign for UCSF is the largest university fundraising effort to focus on improving human health. The campus holds more U.S. patents than any other in the UC system.
UCSF scientists virtually launched the biotech industry with the invention of recombinant DNA techniques now used to create human insulin and other lifesaving drugs.
The Campaign for UCSF’s $1 billion achievement will help university scientists overcome such barriers as state budget cutbacks, aging buildings and difficult healthcare economics. The campaign hopes to raise the entire $1.4 billion by June 30, 2005.
With the campaign’s support, construction already has begun at Mission Bay on two new buildings to house UCSF researchers working in neuroscience, genetics and bioengineering. University scientists will begin moving into the first research facility, UCSF Genentech Hall, this month.
UC Berkeley scientists link moon to Big Burp Theory
A mighty “”burp”” early in the moon’s history could account for some of its geologic mysteries, according to a state-of-the-art computer model of the lunar interior used by geophysicists at UC Berkeley.
If correct, the model would provide the first full understanding of the thermal history of any planet, including the Earth, and would be a cornerstone for understanding the histories of all the other planets.
The burp of hot rock nearly 4 billion years ago would have lifted a blanket covering the moon’s core, allowing the core to cool quickly enough to produce a magnetic field. This would explain the old, magnetized rocks picked up from the moon’s surface during the Apollo missions 30 years ago.
The theoretical burp predicted by the computer model would also explain the lunar mare — seas of metal-rich volcanic rock that cover much of the near side of the moon but little of the far side.
Controversy still remains, however, over whether the early magnetism reported from the moon based on analysis of moon rocks is real.
New type of star found, astronomers say
A new type of star that may help astronomers understand some of the recently discovered extra-solar planets in proximity to their suns has been discovered lurking as a low mass component in a very compact binary star system called EF Eridanus.
Astronomers Steve B. Howell of UC Riverside and Tom Harrison of New Mexico State University, Las Cruces confirmed the existence of a new variety of stellar end-product at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in Seattle, Wash.
This new type of star is about the size and temperature of a brown dwarf, given its very different formation process, and has interior and atmospheric structures that are still unknown. Howell, Harrison and NMSU graduate student Heather Osborne are continuing to study EF Eridanus, and will soon have new infrared data obtained using the National Science Foundation’s 320-inch Gemini telescope in Hawaii. The new data will allow them to confirm and accurately derive how the temperature varies from one side of EF Eridanus to the other, as well as provide a detailed study of the atmospheric structure of this new type of star.
Scholarship performance to be held Jan. 19
“”Classicism and Impressionism — Works for Cello and Piano”” will be performed by cellist Charles Curtis and pianist Aleck Karis, musicians in the UCSD Department of Music, at 3 p.m. on Jan. 19 in the Ida and Cecil Green Faculty Club.
Proceeds from the event will go to Thurgood Marshall College’s Lytle Memorial Scholarship, which supports freshman Marshall students who are the first in their family to attend college.
Curtis and Karis are stepping in for UCSD musician Cecil Lytle, who cannot perform because of his pending shoulder surgery. Lytle has presented the scholarship benefit piano recital for the past seven years.
Curtis’ and Karis’ program for “”Classicism and Impressionism”” will include pieces from Leos Janacek’s Pohadka, Ludwig van Beethoven, Haendel and Claude DeBussy.
Tickets for the concert, at which hors d’oeuvres will be served during intermission, are $35. For tickets and further information call the UCSD Faculty Club at (858) 534-0876.
