Vasant drops out of student services race
Independent A.S. commissioner of student services candidate Kelly Vasant has dropped out of the race, citing the need to focus on other commitments and priorities without short-changing the attention needed to effectively fill the position.
Vasant’s withdrawal will mean that the two remaining candidates, Revolution! candidate Maurice Junious and independent Faina Shalts, will compete alone for the position. Vasant said she would not endorse either candidate.
Nobel laureates to speak at symposium
Three Nobel laureates will be among more than 500 biologists who will discuss the newest discoveries in the field at a UCSD symposium.
The talk will cover the latest findings on the roles played by molecules of ribonucleic acid, commonly known as RNA, which are carriers of genetic information.
Biologists now believe that RNA is a critical component of the mechanisms that regulate and maintain cellular activities. Students who want to attend the April 1 event must sign up ahead of time and pay the necessary registration fee.
Newsom to discuss same-sex marriage
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom — who raised controversy across the country last year by granting marriage to same-sex couples — will be the keynote speaker in this year’s DeWitt Higgs Memorial Lecture.
The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 6 p.m. on April 11 at RIMAC Arena.
Newsom, who was elected mayor in December 2003 and also attended last year’s Democratic presidential convention, will speak about the status of same-sex marriage, and will be introduced by Senior Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs David R. Miller.
Study may lead to better autism diagnosis
Information about an individual’s mirror neurons — which are thought to be involved in the execution of movements based on observations and also in higher cognitive thought — may allow doctors to make earlier diagnoses of autism and find new therapies, UCSD researchers predict in a new study.
In a report to be published in the journal Cognitive Brain Research, the researchers present electroencephalograph readings from 10 autistic individuals that they believe link dysfunctional mirror neuron systems to disorders that cause autism. The EEGs suggest that these brain circuits do not function normally in autistic people.
Because autism is characterized, in part, by a lack of social interactions and communication based on learning through imitation, previous research has speculated that mirror neurons may explain the abnormal manifestations of the disorders. The new findings, researchers stated, support this hypothesis.
College degree nearly doubles annual salary
College graduates bring in almost twice as much money as workers with only a high school diploma, new educational attainment data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows.
On average, degree holders make $51,206 per year, compared to $27,915 for high school graduates, the agency found. Workers with advanced degrees make an average of $74,602 while high school dropouts average $18,734.
Though women continue to graduate from high school at slightly higher rates, a higher proportion of men receive at least a bachelor’s degree, according to the data. For both genders, fewer than a third of individuals graduate from college.
Student debt burden flat, despite more loans
Though a combination of rising tuition and increased limits in the federal student loan program has caused “dramatic” increases in borrowing by college students, more loans have not translated into a higher debt burden for graduates over the past decade, the Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics has reported.
Sixty-five percent of college students borrowed to finance their education in 1999-2000, compared to 49 percent eight years earlier, and took out an average amount of $19,300, or $7,000 more than they did in 1992-93, NCES data show.
However, lower interest rates and higher salaries have allowed the percentage of the monthly paycheck committed to debt repayment to remain largely flat.
