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Sue Cronmiller, the founding director of the UC Irvine Poetry Academy and Writing LAB at El Sol was on the show yesterday. The collected works of her students as young as 3rd grade from 2003 to 2008 has recently been released in the paperback entitled Mind’s Eye. Sue shared stories of her unique dual-language immersion school and their amazing achievements. Listen to the podcast.
The Easter Sunday Sierra el Mayor Earthquake in Mexico gave UC Santa Barbara seismologists an opportunity to gather earthquake data close to home. Dr. Sandra Seale, project specialist at UCSB’s Institute of Crustal Studies was on Intents & Purposes this morning to talk with Tim and me about the mechanics of these major ground shakers and what we can expect from our seismic future. Listen to the podcast.
Dr. Erkki Ruoslahti, distinguished professor and founding member of the UC Santa Barbara-Sanford|Burnham Center, was in the studio this morning to share with us the details of his group’s very exciting breakthrough in cancer treatment. His team may have unlocked an important door in the treatment of cancerous tumors with the discovery of an amino acid compound called iRGD. iRGD helps existing cancer-fighting chemotherapy drugs penetrate deep into malignant tumors, while leaving the surrounding healthy tissue untouched and patients potentially without side-effects. Listen to the podcast.
A performance by some of my students in The Anacapa School Band on Santa Barbara Channels cable 17 Teen Network News
We had a really cool show this morning on KCSB. We were joined in Studio A by Capoeiristas Rafael Hernandez and Vika Hernandez of the UC Santa Barbara campus group Rhythms of Brazil which practices the centuries old Afro-Brazilian tradition of Capoeira. It combines elements of martial arts, music, and dance. Check out the podcast.
I have enjoyed the stories, antics and brilliance of Dr. Richard Feynman since first reading “Surly You’re Joking Mr. Feynman” years ago. Feynman rose to prominence during the Manhattan Project, received a Nobel Prize in Physics for theories I will have to wait for another life to understand and nearly single-handedly discovered the cause of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger accident. He is perhaps one of the most accomplished and equally well-known modern scientists. His reputation is due in part to his jovial attitude and ability to make complex theory accessible to the masses through his lectures given undergraduate students at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
That being said, I am in Pasadena this week for The California STEM Innovation Network Summit which is being hosted by Caltech. I thought that I should check out the book store here in hopes of finding a memento of my visit to Feynman’s campus. I eventually found, after some fumbling, searching online and circling campus in my car, the illustrious (or rather elusive) Caltech bookstore (picture on the left in a photo from Wikipedia as I didn’t bring my camera). I was surprised to find that the store contained little else than these few Feynman books and some “Caltech Dad” XXL T-shirts on a sale rack. The entire remaining “book department” was bare-shelved and empty and the adjacent computer store was a ghost town. I did found a couple Feynman books on this shelf that I hadn’t read, a Caltech logo hoodie on a back hanger behind a XXS Jet Propulsion Laboratory sweater and at the checkout counter I picked up the prank MIT newspaper that Caltech students distributed at MIT’s 2007 Campus Preview Weekend. While it wasn’t the shrine to Feynman that imagined it was a beautiful sunny campus.
Public education in the U.S. is going through a crisis: Here in California the controversial High School Exit exam has been accused of disadvantaging females and minorities. Dr. Beth Yeager, director of the Center for Literacy & Inquiry in Networking Communities at UC Santa Barbara and Stephanie Couch director of the K-20 California Educational Technology Collaborative were in the studio with us on March 8, 2010 to record this interview which aired this morning. We discussed the Stepping Into Your Future program which aims to bridge this achievement gap. Listen to the podcast.
This is my class’ second year entering the Santa Barbara County High School Video Contest. Students are asked to create a water conservation awareness PSA for broadcast. This is the 2010 entry entitled “Psycho About Water Conservation”
UC Santa Barbara Professor and president of the American Academy of Religion Dr. Ann Taves joined Tim and me yesterday in the studio to discuss her new book Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things which explores the intersections between science and religion. Hear the podcast.
UC Santa Barbara Computer Science Professor Dr. Ben Zhao joined us on the radio this morning to talk about the privacy implications in the exploding social media scene in the wide world of Web 2.0. Listen to the podcast.
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