Homebodies Invited to Help Monitor Earthquakes
Elizabeth Cochran, assistant professor of earth science, has designed a program that has the potential to save lives by inviting the public to help monitor earthquakes by using their laptop computers at home.

Called the Quake-Catcher Network, the project makes use of inexpensive motion sensors, called accelerometers, which are already in place as safety devices in most new laptops.

Anyone with a personal computer will be able to participate in the experiment once software linking the computers to the project is publicly released, tentatively this summer.

The free software, which is being developed by Cochran and colleagues Jesse Lawrence of Stanford University and Carl Christensen, a software architect and consultant, will be available at boinc.berkeley.edu.

Already, about 300 people spread around the world are taking part in the Quake-Catcher Network.

Currently, approximately 350 stations monitor earthquakes in Southern California using underground sensors. They do so, however, not in real time.

“There is a delay of 10 to 15 seconds from when the sensors record an earthquake to when the data is processed at either Caltech in Southern California or UC Berkeley in Northern California,” Cochran explained. “Quake-Catcher Network would process data in real time, as it comes in. And the network can stretch out to any region of the world. Besides being inexpensive, it makes an extremely small demand on CPU resources.”

Turner Delivers Plenary Address, Co-publishes Book
Jonathan Turner, distinguished professor of sociology, gave the Ruth and John Useem Plenary Address at the March conference of the North Central Sociological Association in Cincinnati. His topic was “The Practice of Scientific Theory in Sociology, and the Use of Scientific Theory in Sociological Practice.”

Turner and UCR sociology professor Alexandra Maryanski have co-authored a book, “On the Origins of Human Societies by Natural Selection,” which will be published by Paradigm Publishers in August. They have published several other books together, including: “Functionalism,” “The Social Cage: Human Nature and the Evolution of Society,” and “Incest: Origins of the Taboo.”

Another book by Turner, “Human Emotions: A Sociological Theory,” was published recently by Routledge.


Several of his books have been translated into other languages: “The Sociology of Emotions,” written with sociology professor Jan Stets, in Chinese, Japanese and Croatian; “On the Origins of Human Emotions,” Japanese and Portuguese; “Macrodynamics: Toward a Theory on the Organization of Human Populations,” Chinese; and “The Structure of Sociological Theory,” Farsi, Chinese, Danish, Polish, Russian and Korean.

Students Get NSF Fellowships
Lindsay Yee, an undergraduate student working with David Cocker, an associate professor of chemical and environmental engineering, has been awarded a three-year graduate research fellowship by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Working with Cocker, Yee studies how secondary organic aerosol (SOA) forms. SOA is a contributor to fine particulate matter in the atmosphere and can affect atmospheric visibility and global climate change, and cause adverse human health effects.

Yee will graduate June 2008 with a B.S. degree in environmental engineering with a concentration in air pollution control.

She will use the $121,500 fellowship, which begins in the fall, to supplement her Ph.D. studies in atmospheric studies, and living costs.
Currently in the process of choosing among three graduate schools, she plans to continue her SOA research.

Matthew Wolak, a first-year Ph.D. student in evolutionary biology working with Daphne Fairbairn, a professor of biology, has also been awarded the three-year $121,500 graduate research NSF fellowship.

Wolak studies sexual dimorphism – the difference between sexes in size, color and other traits – as well as its evolution and ecology.
He plans to graduate in four years.

This year NSF awarded 913 fellowships nationwide.

IGPP Director to Speak in Korea
Gary Zank, Chancellor’s Professor of Physics and the UC systemwide director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP), has been invited by the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) to give a Solar Terrestrial Distinguished Lecture at the 2008 AOGS meeting, which takes place in June in Busan, Korea.

Zank’s lecture will address the science of the heliosphere, the area in space that encompasses the solar system, the solar wind and the solar magnetic field.

The AOGS is an international society that promotes geophysical science and public benefits for Asia and Oceania.

Cranor Speaks about Chemical Toxicity
Carl Cranor, professor of philosophy, presented “Chemical Toxicity in Children and Adults: Moral and Regulatory Issues” last week as part of UC San Francisco’s Perspectives in Medical Humanities seminar series.
The series is part of the 20th anniversary celebration of the UC Humanities Research Initiative, which demonstrates how perspectives from across the medical/humanities spectrum can encourage scholarship in the humanities that engages with medical research. and research in the health sciences that considers insights drawn from the humanities.

Cranor, a national expert on the regulation of toxicants, noted that the Centers for Disease Control have found that Americans and their children are contaminated with hundreds of industrial chemicals.

The majority of substances in commerce have not been tested for toxicity, he said, which poses important comparisons between moral and legal requirements for medical experimentation and absence of similar requirements for products that contaminate our bodies.