by Rina Shaikh-Lesko | Nov 13, 2012 | Posts
Ted Goldstein is not someone you would expect to find pursuing a doctorate in cancer research. After more than 25 years working in Silicon Valley, he left an executive-level position at Apple to return to grad school at his alma mater, UC Santa Cruz. UCSC’s Cancer...
by Kelly Servick | Nov 12, 2012 | Posts
“What’s hard to say?” This was Alan Alda’s first question to an audience full of particle physicists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory on October 25. Alda’s talk, “Helping the Public Get Beyond a Blind Date with Science,” started by evoking the types of...
by Kelly Servick | Nov 9, 2012 | Posts
I have a passion for cooking that’s uncommon for someone with so little culinary talent. Recipes involving chemical changes to ingredients (in other words, endeavors beyond assembling a sandwich), have a fail rate of about 25 percent in my kitchen. But it recently...
by Jessica Shugart | Nov 7, 2012 | Posts
Before I was old enough to be embarrassed by such matters, I loved listening to my father’s loud conversations with elephants at the zoo. Egged on by my sister and I, he would purse his lips together and blow his cheeks out, making a loud trumpet that commanded...
by Liz Devitt | Nov 5, 2012 | Posts
On an early morning run at New Brighton State Beach, I take the salt-tanged air deep in my lungs, grin at the seagulls shuffling out of my way, and glimpse the dark arcs of dolphins rising above the wave break. I count myself lucky to live beside the ocean—even when...
by Thomas Sumner | Nov 2, 2012 | Posts
On Tuesday we Californians will vote on Prop 37 to decide whether or not to force companies to label their genetically modified foods. The European Union already requires the labeling of these GMOs, and some European countries ban genetically modified products...
by Ryder Diaz | Oct 31, 2012 | Posts
Almost every morning since I moved to Santa Cruz, I’ve seen their long, brown-and-yellow bodies slither across my counter tops. My unwanted house guests are cellar slugs and I imagine that their shimmering slime trails are chock-full of germs, ready to infect me. Like...
by Chris Palmer | Oct 29, 2012 | Posts
The deeply nasal, yet strangely calming voice would echo through my living room, keeping me company during the middle of the night. Each sentence was overstuffed with ideas, like airborne zip files, waiting to be unpacked. I would be utterly absorbed by this voice for...
by Laura Poppick | Oct 25, 2012 | Posts
We all have our reasons for choosing paper vs. plastic vs. reusable bags. A woman at a checkout line in Alabama told a friend of mine that she uses reusable bags because she would rather see petroleum go into NASCAR races than plastic bags. Like I said, we all have...
by Paul Gabrielsen | Oct 24, 2012 | Posts
I am a newbie to the Pacific Coast, but I am no stranger to living on a fault. As a kid in Utah I stuffed emergency kits with my parents and dove under my desk during earthquake drills at school. When you live in earthquake country, it pays to be prepared. An...
by Rina Shaikh-Lesko | Oct 22, 2012 | Posts
Four years ago, honeymooning in Big Sur, my husband and I stumbled onto an overwintering site for monarch butterflies. Monarchs arrive at pine and eucalyptus groves up and down California’s coast this time of year after migrating hundreds of miles. On a hike in Andrew...
by Tanya Lewis | Jun 3, 2012 | Posts
As we wind up our year in the UCSC Science Communication Program, it’s a time of transition. Not only for the ten of us, as we wrap up our final stories, multimedia projects, and internships, but also for the solar system. This week marks a rare celestial event,...
