UCSD students will be competing alongside other San Diego college students on Wheel of Fortune’s San Diego College Week from May 12 to May 16. The show airs at 7 p.m. on Channel NBC 7/39.
Atkinson awarded for lifetime achievements
University of California President Richard C. Atkinson will receive the 2003 Vannevar Bush Award for lifetime contributions made to the nation in science and technology.
Atkinson, the 25th recipient of the Bush award, will be awarded by the National Science Board on May 21 at the Department of State. Atkinson, an internationally recognized experimental psychologist and applied mathematician, served as the first director of the National Science Foundation from 1977 to1980. He also served as a Stanford University staff member for over two decades.
In his research, Atkinson developed mathematical theories about the nature of memory, leading the way for research on the effects of drugs on memory and developing one of the first computer-controlled instruction systems.
As the NSF director, Atkinson negotiated the first-ever memorandum of understanding between the People’s Republic of China and the United States, creating closer relations between the scientific communities of the two nations.
Conference will address Mexican judicial reform
U.S. and Mexican officials and law enforcement experts will gather at UCSD’s Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies from May 15 to May 17 to discuss needed reforms to the Mexican justice system.
Among the panelists will be Mexican Attorney General Rafael Macedo, Mexican Secretary of Public Security Alejandro Gertz, Mexican Northern Border Affairs Commissioner Ernesto Ruffo and Mexico City Police Chief Marcelo Ebrard.
The conference will kick off with a presentation by immigration and drug-trafficking expert Peter Andreas of Brown University, who will talk on “”The Tale of Two Borders: The U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada Lines after 9/11.”” His talk will take place at the Copley Conference Center in the Institute of the Americas Complex at UCSD.
From May 16 to May 17, presentations will address law enforcement and public security, indicators of crime and criminality and U.S.-Mexican law enforcement and security.
Racial prejudice shown to affect children at early age
A report by two UC Berkeley researchers indicates that children are aware of and affected by prejudices and stereotyping.
Psychology professors Clark McKown and Rhona Weinstein found that children develop awareness of each others’ stereotypes between the ages of six and 10.
They found that black and Latino children who were aware of broadly held stereotypes performed less well on cognitive tasks when these were presented as a measure of ability than when they were described as problem-solving tasks. Asian and white children performed the same regardless of description.
The researchers concluded that when children are aware of stereotypes, their performance may be adversely impacted under conditions resembling standardized testing due to their concern that they will be judged on the basis of a stereotype.
The report was published in the May issue of the Child Development.
Scientists examine methane release
Scientists from around the world, including UC Santa Cruz, arrived in Rio de Janeiro on May 6 after spending two months at sea near an ancient submarine mountain chain off Africa where they studied evidence of a massive release of methane that caused extreme global warming 55 million years ago.
Scientists believe that about 2,000 gigatons of methane was released into the atmosphere during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum period, triggering massive global warming. This decomposition process lasted about 40,000 years, warming the planet by more than five degrees Celsius.
The scientists, as part of the Ocean Drilling Program Leg 208, set out to test hypotheses about the era. Sediments below the sea floor hold evidence of this methane release.
Technicians needed to retrieve the sediments without deformation of layers to accurately reconstruct past climates. Some layers were about one meter thick with the consistency of mud according to scientists aboard the research vessel, causing much difficulty.
Initial results suggest that the depositing of carbonate shells on deeper shells did not resume for at least 50,000 years. The total recovery state would then take 100,000 years.
