By Tim Stephens, UCSC Public Information Office
Can marine ecologists bring white abalone back from the brink of extinction? How might tiny meteoroids threaten the satellite industry? Will a local startup devise a treatment for an extremely rare skin disease? Why do faint traces of the atom bomb in our teeth help forensic detectives?
These and five other compelling stories about the work of Bay Area scientists are available now in Science Notes 2013, the annual magazine published by UCSC’s Science Communication Program.
The stories are enhanced by multimedia elements created by the writers, as well as stunning artwork from the students in the Science Illustration Program at CSU Monterey Bay. This ongoing partnership makes Science Notes unique among student-produced science magazines nationally.
This year’s issue spotlights a local doctor’s efforts to get FDA approval for a treatment for mushroom poisoning, cosmologists struggling to understand “dark energy” that pervades the universe, a project to sequence the genome of the passenger pigeon with the aim of bringing it back from extinction, and much more.
UCSC faculty featured in the stories include evolutionary biologists Bruce Lyon and Beth Shapiro, computer engineer Sri Kurniawan, astronomer Rebecca Bernstein, and forensic anthropologist and campus provost Alison Galloway.