Organized Research Units

group of twenty beauticians have signed up with the UCSD Cancer Center to conduct a program designed to improve the survival chances of African-American women who contract breast cancer.

The beauticians have been specially trained to help people examine themselves for early signs of breast cancer and to promote healthy behaviors such as weight control and smoking cessation. Known as the Black Beauticians Health Promotion Program, the effort is part of a three-year study funded with a $300,000 grant from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation.

Because they are less likely to get treatment at an early stage of the disease, black women are 50 percent more likely to die from breast cancer than white women. The study will attempt to determine if trusted members of the community can promote early screening, appropriate treatment and better survival rates.

According to Georgia Robins Sadler, the associate director of outreach at the UCSD Cancer Center who is directing the study, the beauty salon is a place where women are comfortable talking about personal issues. “We want to explore whether the delivery of key information through the familiar methods of storytelling and witnessing motivates black women to follow annual breast cancer screening guidelines,” Sadler, who is also overseeing a similar study involving Asian grocery stores, said.

In an interview, Dr. David Tarin, the recently appointed director of the UCSD Cancer Center and holder of the Chugai Pharmaceutical Chair at UCSD, stressed the importance of prevention, education, and early diagnosis and treatment if cancer is to be defeated. “We have made strides in prevention and are committed to education,” Tarin said, “and that includes reaching out to low-income and non-English-speaking communities.” On the scientific front, Tarin, the former pathologist from Oxford University, said, one of the center’s main goals is to use “the most powerful discoveries in molecular biology to enable us to conduct early diagnosis, using noninvasive screening methods.” The UCSD Cancer Center received National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation shortly after it was established in 1979, and today it is the only NCI-designated clinical cancer center serving San Diego and Imperial Counties. One of only fifteen NCI cancer centers in the country, the UCSD center has 125 members from sixteen different academic departments and received $29.4 million in research funding last year.

he Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) exists to foster collaborative working relationships between artists, scientists and technologists, supporting computer-based research in the arts and sciences. The center’s areas of investigation include architecture, cognitive science, computer science, engineering, linguistics, literary arts, mathematics, performing arts, physics, psychology, and visual arts.

“We really do have the most distinguished collection of people and accumulation of talent in this field,” Harold Cohen, CRCA director, international artist, and student of artificial intelligence, said. “The faculty is astonishingly active in completing remarkable research, and offering performances and exhibitions throughout the world.”

For example, composer Roger Reynolds’ “Red Act Arias” recently received its world premiere at London’s Royal Albert Hall. The piece utilizes the advanced signal-processing concepts pioneered by music department chair F. Richard Moore, as well as a sound design developed by a group of faculty members called the TRAnSit group.

Trombonist George E. Lewis uses a black box computer as an intelligent accompanist. Video artist Sheldon Brown works with virtual reality installations, and violinist János Négyesy is currently exploring new ways to “paint” with the electronic violin using MAX, a program designed by mathematician and computer music software technology developer Miller Puckette.

Nineteen of the music department faculty attended and performed at the 1997 International Computer Music Conference in Greece.

CRCA also promotes and enhances the arts computing activities on campus. CRCAnet, created by Brown and music software and hardware developer Peter Otto, will soon provide a true media network infrastructure that will use a revolutionary approach to digital media work and bring newfound freedom and power of production to media artists, researchers, and teachers. As an optimized “real-time” media network, CRCAnet will connect more than two dozen computing labs, studio facilities, and libraries across the UCSD campus.

ICAM, an interdisciplinary computer arts major that is scheduled to be introduced in 1998, will build upon established UCSD programs in computer arts within the visual arts and music departments, and will draw upon–and aim to bring together–ideas and paradigms drawn from computer science, art, and cultural theory.

lthough major changes in regional climates such as El Niños and monsoons that often cause droughts and floods around the world cannot be controlled, people and governments can take precautions to minimize their effects–if they know what to expect.

Scientists at the Climate Research division of UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who are already conducting research on these phenomena and developing models to predict them, are now also participating in a new multi-institutional project that is working to provide just the kind of early warnings that people need to prepare for the disastrous conditions that sometimes result from such changes.

Called the International Research Institute (IRI) for climate prediction, the project combines the scientific expertise and resources of two of the world’s leading climate research centers–Scripps Institution and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

A wide variety of IRI scientists–including climatologists, oceanographers, social scientists, economists, agronomists, ecologists, hydrologists, and others–are working together to predict climate changes, evaluate their potential impacts, and then suggest appropriate courses of action.

Peruvian farmers, who were forewarned of the current El Niño for example, have already avoided heavy losses by planting rice, which grows well with more water, instead of cotton, which does not.

“Our models cannot predict, for example, if it is going to rain the day after Christmas next year, but they can predict whether it will rain more than usual next December,” Nick Graham, a climate research scientist in the Scripps’ Climate Research division and director of the IRI’s climate forecasting division, said.

Current conditions indicate a substantial 1997-98 El Niño, and IRI scientists are collecting vast amounts of data on air and sea conditions before, during, and after the event. The information will be disseminated to a multinational network of research centers, integrated into computer models of the global climate system, and used to improve the reliability of forecasts of future major climate events.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is providing $18 million over three years to fund the research.

hen the Center for Molecular Genetics (CMG) opened its doors about a decade ago on the UC San Diego campus, the world of biology was spinning around laboratory techniques popularly known as “genetic engineering” or “gene splicing.”

For example, the announcement in December 1985 that UC San Diego biologists had spliced into tobacco plants the gene for luciferase–the enzyme responsible for the glow of fireflies–lit up the public’s imagination during that year’s holiday season.

Now, such “recombinant DNA” studies are so commonplace that undergraduate and even high school biology students are doing them.

But the excitement of molecular genetics and its potential for answering basic biological questions and finding cures for intractable diseases is far from over.

At UC San Diego, about 100 faculty members from various departments on campus are affiliated with the CMG, in an interdisciplinary program that crosses the boundaries between general campus science and the School of Medicine, between basic research and applied activities in biomedical sciences. One of the center’s goals has been the establishment of resource centers for biomedical research.

This year, for example, the CMG established a “mouse knock-out” center to create animal models for specific genetically related diseases. This new facility complements the UCSD Cancer Center’s “transgenic” laboratory that allows researchers to insert genes into mice to study specific proteins linked to tumor formation and to examine the developmental consequences of gene functions.

With the help of these new facilities, and others on the drawing board, the center is directing its future efforts toward two areas of research: signal transduction and human genetics.

In essence, signal transduction is the study of how cells respond to each other through a cascade of chemical messages, such as hormones.

“Pharmacology, in part, is the study of signal transduction,” Rick Firtel, director of the CMG, said, “and it is clear that a significant number of medical diseases are based on problems of signal transduction.”

With human genetics, Firtel said he would like to mesh basic science studies with practical therapies to treat genetic diseases. “We don’t just want to identify the gene that causes human disease or a model of the human disease,” he said. “We also want to study the mechanisms that go wrong with cells that result in disease.”

The center, with its Biotechnology InCyte program, also acts as a bridge between the campus and San Diego’s rapidly growing biotechnology industry. “I’m a strong believer that the university has a responsibility to the community,” Firtel said. “We need to help the community and the campus to integrate as much as possible.”