Lick Observatory Celebration of the 400th Year of the Telescope
September 26, 2009
6:00 - 10:00 pm

UC Observatories Director Michael Bolte cordially invites you to an evening at Lick Observatory celebrating key astronomical events in the past, present and future! This year marks the 400th year of the telescope and the 50th anniversary of our own Shane telescope, as well as the commissioning of our Automated Planet Finder telescope (APF). We are also very pleased to present the inaugural James Lick Award to Mr. and Mrs. Ken and Gloria Levy, whose generous gift has helped to make the APF a reality.

Location: Main Building, Lick Observatory, Mt Hamilton.

RSVP to specialevents@ucsc.edu or call 831-459-5003

The mandate of the Bio-Info-Nano Research and Development Institute (BIN-RDI) includes the generation of renewable, sustainable solutions to the energy challenges confronting our world. The institute establishes partnerships among universities, Silicon Valley companies, and federal laboratories at the UCSC facilities at NASA Ames in the heart of Silicon Valley. BIN-RDI was formed as a new model of public-private partnership between academia, industry and government, receives major funding and support from NASA, and is currently located in the agency's Advanced Studies Laboratory (ASL).

The New York Times interviewed sociology professor Paul Lubeck about the recent outbreak of violence in Nigeria. Lubeck, who was in Nigeria, attributed the violence to the nation's dire economic circumstances.

Astronomer Gregory Laughlin continues to attract media attention as an expert on planets: He was quoted in an article in the New York Times about the role of Jupiter in the history of our solar system; he was featured in a Planet Quest article about the future of our galaxy; and a front-page story in the Santa Cruz Sentinel covered his interview for a History Channel documentary at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, where he used bumper cars to illustrate how planetary liquids form.

Four research programs headquartered at UC Santa Cruz have received awards in the 2009 UC Multi-Campus Research Programs and Initiatives Competition (MRPI).

The four programs—all directed by UCSC faculty—will be funded for a total of $6.3 million over a five-year period, with each of the programs expending effort on multiple UC campuses.

The MRPI awards are based on excellence of research, competitiveness and innovation, and the impact and benefits of the programs to the UC system.

They are presented to collaborative research projects that involve three or more campuses, and to programs that focus on topics important to both UC and the state of California.

Of the 28 awards conferred, UC San Francisco and UC Irvine joined UCSC in receiving four awards, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego earned three, and UC Davis, two. UC Santa Barbara was the top award-winner with a total of five.

"We are delighted at the success of our UCSC faculty in winning these programs in the face of intense competition across the 10 UC campuses,” noted Bruce Margon, UCSC vice chancellor for research.

“We have always considered one of UCSC’s greatest strengths as bringing front-line, internationally recognized research to our students in a small, intimate environment, and this is just the latest example,” said Margon.

“We're particularly pleased that these new centers will span not just the technical fields, but also the humanities and social sciences, reflecting the broad diversity of our campus programs,” he added.

UCSC garnered two awards for proposals in the Humanities, one in the area of Emerging Sciences & Technology, and one in the Social Sciences.


Professor of Physics Joel Primack

The following programs received awards:

• High Performance AstroComputing Center—directed by physics professor Joel Primack

• Collaborative Research for an Equitable California—co-directed by education professor Rodney Ogawa and associate education professor Ronald Glass

• Pacific Rim Research Program—directed by history professor Gail Hershatter

• Mediterranean Studies Multi-Campus Research Project—co-directed by associate history professor Brian Catlos and literature professor Sharon Kinoshita


Professor of History Gail Hershatter

The High Performance AstroComputing Center (HIPACC) will focus on computational astrophysics—using the growing power of supercomputers to address the most difficult problems in astrophysics and cosmology.

The purpose of the center is to realize the full potential of UC's groundbreaking computational astrophysicists by enhancing their interactions with each other and their use of data. This multidisciplinary effort will link theoretical and observational astrophysicists, physicists, Earth and planetary scientists, applied mathematicians, and computer scientists at nine UC campuses and three national laboratories.

"Individual UC and lab teams are fairly well funded, but we do not routinely share knowledge, postdocs, students, or computing resources," noted UCSC professor of physics Joel Primack, who will direct the center. "Because of our broad and complementary expertise, much can be gained by promoting cross-fertilization and also by fostering a tradition of systemwide collaborations."

The Collaborative Research for an Equitable California (CREC) program will bring together university researchers with community organizations and policymakers to tackle the state's interconnected crises in education, employment, health, nutrition, housing, and the environment.

"Historically, the university has done research in education, in health care, in housing, in economic development—we want to begin where all these crises intersect," said Ronald Glass, UCSC associate professor of education who will co-direct the center with fellow education professor, Rodney Ogawa. "It's not an accident that kids who don't eat well and don't have good health care don't do very well in school."

The interdisciplinary center will establish long-term research sites around the state, ultimately growing to seven sites including one on the U.S. border with Mexico, said Glass. The goal of the center is to prepare a new generation of scholars in the social, behavioral, health, and natural sciences who are skilled in working with community-based entities, government agencies, and policymakers, and to generate strategic interventions that will benefit California.


The Pacific Rim Research Program (PRRP) funds research that increases our understanding of how regions are made and unmade, and how societies envision their futures. Administered as a systemwide program for the past 23 years, the program will now be housed on the UCSC campus under the direction of history professor Gail Hershatter.

PRRP provides grants for scholars from every UC campus to conduct cutting-edge research in and about the Pacific Rim. Investigations range from economics to the environment, migration to artistic innovation, and resource utilization to public health. This research continues to help Pacific Rim nations and peoples cooperate in confronting the challenges facing the region.

"California's connections across the region are longstanding and complex, and the knowledge we produce about the Pacific Rim is important in understanding our intertwined past and shaping our shared future," said Hershatter. She added that grants made this coming year will support research on responses to crisis in the Pacific Rim, as well as funding advanced graduate student research.


The Mediterranean Studies project will integrate UCSC’s long-standing Mediterranean Studies initiative—which includes campus-based activities and an NEH Summer Institute for College and University Professors—with programs at eight other UC campuses to collaborate on a wide range of research and curricular projects.

Mediterranean Studies is an emerging interdisciplinary field that is part of the trend towards oceanic studies, environmental history, and the re-thinking of regional and national models of study in such fields as history, literature, art history, religious studies, political science, and anthropology. At present, 50 UC faculty have committed to the project, as well as nearly 100 associate scholars across the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

“The Mediterranean is of particular importance as an area of origin for religions, a shared community of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, and a historical place of exchange between Africa, Europe and Asia,” said UCSC associate history professor Brian Catlos, who will co-direct the program with UCSC literature professor Sharon Kinoshita.

The 2009 Freshman Orientation is moving on to day 2 today.  In June, UCSC had over 3,500 'intent to register' statements from prospective freshmen expressing their intent to enroll. Freshman Orientation has over 3,500 students and over 2,400 family members registered to engage in activities and opportunities at orientation including campus tours, Major Advising, enrolling in classes, taking placement exams, learning about campus resources and facilities  and taking photos for student ID's.



"We are very excited to welcome the Class of 2013 to the University of California, Santa Cruz, and we're very gratified by the strong interest they have shown in our campus," said Chancellor George Blumenthal. "The academic quality and diversity of this class is especially impressive."..

Chemists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have developed novel compounds that show promise for photodynamic cancer therapy, which uses light-activated drugs to kill tumour cells.

The new compounds, called dye-sensitised ruthenium nitrosyls, are absorbed by cancer cells and respond to specific wavelengths of light by releasing nitric oxide, which triggers cell death.

'For cancer treatment, you want localised delivery of a very high concentration of nitric oxide. We've designed these molecules to do just that,' said Pradip Mascharak, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCSC.

..Professor Pardip Mascharak..
Nitric oxide is a simple molecule with a wide range of biological effects. Long known for its role in regulating blood pressure, it has attracted the attention of cancer researchers in recent years. According to Mascharak, one advantage of nitric oxide for cancer treatment is that it induces an orderly type of cell death known as apoptosis. Also known as 'programmed cell death,' apoptosis does not lead to the inflammation, pain, and swelling normally associated with damage to cells and tissues in the body.

The drugs currently used in photodynamic therapy, called photosensitisers, produce a highly reactive form of oxygen when activated by light. The reactive oxygen kills cells in a way that tends to cause local swelling and inflammation.

Mascharak and graduate student Michael Rose have synthesised several different ruthenium nitrosyls in their lab. They described these compounds in detail in a recent paper published in Inorganic Chemistry (published online May 29, 2009). In another paper published last year in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers reported that the compounds were effective against breast cancer cells in laboratory experiments.

'We know it works in cancer cells, so now we're very confident about taking it to the next level,' Mascharak said. 'The idea for cancer therapy would be to embed the compounds in a matrix that you can place in the treatment site, then shine light on it to produce a high concentration of nitric oxide.'

In designing the ruthenium nitrosyls, Rose and Mascharak were inspired by natural bacterial enzymes called nitrile hydratases, which release nitric oxide as a by-product when activated by light.

'We borrowed the idea from nature,' Mascharak said. 'Our initial goal was to understand these very unusual enzymes. Every hint that nature embedded in the behaviour and structure of the enzyme we employed in designing a drug that can deliver nitric oxide in a very site-specific and controlled way.'

Rose, who earned his Ph.D. this year, has been working on the project since 2004. He began by replacing the iron atom in a synthetic model of the enzyme with a different metal, ruthenium.

'Iron complexes are good in nature because they are highly reactive, but if you're trying to make a drug you want something that's more stable,' Rose said. 'The ruthenium complexes are much more stable when dissolved in water.'

The first ruthenium nitrosyls he made released nitric oxide only under ultraviolet light, so Rose spent several years developing ways to sensitise them to specific wavelengths of visible light that could be used in photodynamic therapy. He did this by attaching dye molecules, called chromophores, to the ruthenium complex.

To test the resulting compounds as potential drugs, the chemists teamed up with breast cancer researcher Lindsay Hinck, a professor of molecular, cell, and developmental biology at UCSC. Hinck and postdoctoral researcher Rebecca Marlow worked with Rose to test the dye-sensitised ruthenium nitrosyls against breast cancer cells growing in tissue culture.

The unactivated compounds are fluorescent, which allowed the researchers to track them using a fluorescence microscope as the compounds were absorbed by the cancer cells. The release of nitric oxide after exposure to light quenched the fluorescence, and the cells showed signs of apoptosis within four to eight hours.

'That was probably the most exciting day of my grad school career, when I looked through the microscope and saw the fluorescent compounds in the cells,' Rose said.

Rose used a commercially available dye initially, then synthesised new dyes so that he could customise their properties. 'In the end, the whole molecule was built from scratch in our lab,' he said. 'That's the fun of synthetic chemistry: It's like building with Legos, but you get to make your own Legos, so it's even better.'

Mascharak said he now plans to collaborate with medical researchers at UCLA to conduct additional tests of the compounds in a tumour model. Meanwhile, he and Rose have continued to investigate the unusual chemistry of nitrile hydratases. They have just published their findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (published online 27 May).

'We have now clearly shown the mechanism for how the enzyme nitrile hydratase is photoregulated by nitric oxide. This process gave us the idea of making light-sensitive metal nitrosyls as antitumour drugs,' Mascharak said.

Dency Nelson, a Theater Arts major from Porter ('74) has been chosen as one of the two Democrats of the year in the Los Angeles area.

The men and women chosen for this title are the grassroots activists who every day give generously of their time and energy to help elect Democrats at all levels of government.

They will be on the front lines in the 2010 elections as we fight to elect a Democratic Governor, re-elect Senator Boxer, grow our majorities inSacramento andWashington, DC, defeat the open primary and overturn the 2/3rds majority requirement that has crippled our state.

Mrs. Nelson will be honored at the 2009 Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Democrat of the Year Awards at the Radisson Hotel at the LA Airport on Sunday, August 9.

Dency Nelson is married to Moira Learner Nelson (Cowell '74) and they are the current parents of sophomore Charlie Chaya Nelson.

UC San Diego professor Andrew Scull as well as 22 other professors proposed that the closure of U.C. Merced, U.C. Riverside or U.C. Santa Cruz is the solution to the 800 million dollar budget shortfall. The professors said the campuses were a drain on what they called the 10-campus system's flagship institutions.

UC President Mark Yudof says he opposes closing any campus, and UC Merced officials say the campus "stands behind its track record of success."

The UC Board of Regents is scheduled to vote this week on furloughs for thousands of its employees to offset deep funding cuts.

Sarah Grimké Aucoin (Porter '91, biology), director of New York City's Urban Park Rangers, was profiled in the New York Times.

Aucoin has worked for the city's Department of Parks and Recreation for nine years and, as director of the Urban Park Rangers, has expanded New Yorkers' opportunities for outdoor adventure and education through citywide programs like overnight camping, catch-and-release fishing, raptor conservation, and the stewardship of New York City's street trees.



Article by The New York Times

This week, Sarah Grimké Aucoin, the director of the Urban Park Rangers, a division of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, responded to readers about where and how to interact with wildlife in the city.

The Urban Park Rangers have been providing public hands-on, outdoor, environmental education programs to park visitors for 30 years.

Working out of 14 ranger stations and nature centers in parks throughout the city, the rangers reach hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers every year, and strive to heighten awareness of the open green spaces and natural resources hidden within the urban landscape. The rangers work to link New Yorkers to the natural world, teach them to care for the environment and their parks, defend the parks and their wild residents, and restore New York’s natural heritage.

Ms. Aucoin’s tenure in the parks department spans nine years of innovation and programmatic expansion in the Urban Park Rangers division. As deputy director of the rangers for seven years, Ms. Aucoin’s efforts took a broad focus, but she devoted much of her expertise and effort to the preservation of the endangered piping plover in Rockaway Park, the development and growth of the bald eagle reintroduction initiative in Inwood Hill Park, and most recently, the installation and management of the Alley Pond Park Adventure Course, the first public challenge course in New York City and the largest in the Northeast.

As director, Ms. Aucoin has expanded New Yorkers’ opportunities for outdoor adventure and education through citywide programs like overnight camping, catch-and-release fishing, raptor conservation and the stewardship of New York City’s street trees.

Ms. Aucoin has more than 18 years’ experience working in environmental conservation and education, having conducted research and developed programs for the American Museum of Natural History, the United States Forest Service, the National Park Service, and state conservation departments in Colorado and Missouri. From training marine mammals in California and surveying native geese in Hawaii, to tracking bobcats and coyotes in the Bronx and rescuing pickerel frogs in Queens, Ms. Aucoin’s experience working with wildlife is extensive and varied. She is an accomplished writer and has published a number of peer-reviewed monographs on subjects ranging from tadpole competition and amphibian declines to sexual bias in studies of animal behavior.

Ms. Aucoin has lectured on urban ecology and conservation at Columbia University and at the Eugene Lang New School for Liberal Arts and was selected to participate in the New York City Leadership Institute in 2004. She holds a bachelor of Arts degree in biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a master of science degree in ecology from the University of Louisiana. Ms. Aucoin lives in the Bronx with her husband Brian, the director of the GreenApple Corps and the MillionTrees Training Program for New York City Parks, and their two sons, Arthur and Oscar.