A team of UCLA engineers have taken an old spray-cooling method and applied it to silicon-based transistors. The result is a new method to cool down powerful transistors like those found in electric cars, aircraft, radar stations and personal computers. Transistors work by amplifying electric current in various types of electronic devices, from household items […]
Category Archives: Science & Health
Column: PDAs have come of age
Personal Digital Assistants: people have lived without them for millennia, so why buy one now? If you have been waiting for wireless internet, now may be the time to take the plunge. This month, both T-mobile and Sprint are releasing the first implementations of the 3G wireless internet protocol. This high-speed protocol promises to offer […]
Altruism is evolutionary instinct says UCLA professor in new book
Greedy corporate executives, greedy athletes, and greedy politicians have loomed large in popular culture and the national news over the past few months. But the apparently natural human instinct to be selfish has been over-emphasized for too long, according to UCLA professor Shelley Taylor in her new book. In “The Tending Instinct: How Nurturing Is […]
UCLA pediatric unit to try laughter as part of treatment
“Take two Charlie Chaplins and a small dose of the Simpsons and call me in the morning.” This is the kind of prescription UCLA doctors hope to one day prescribe. Hollywood and UCLA Jonsson Cancer center researchers have come together in an unusual partnership to conduct the first project ever to use humor as a […]
UCLA study reveals leptin’s effect on human health and development
Since its discovery almost a decade ago, the believed benefits of the “anti-obesity hormone” called leptin has fluctuated back and forth. The hormone first caused a stir when scientists announced they could cause fat mice to lose weight by injecting them with the weight-regulating hormone. But then, as a panacea for human obesity, it failed. […]
Science briefs
Botanical garden’s new attractions The Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden at UCLA opened its new hummingbird and butterfly pollination bed on Aug. 10. The new exhibit, located on the north end of the 8-acre garden, features perennial plants, daisies and tubular flowers of various sorts. The 70-year-old garden also houses plants from tropical America, Australia, […]
Formerly conjoined twins in critical but stable condition
Doctors remain “cautiously optimistic” about the condition of Maria Teresa and Maria de Jesus Quiej Alvarez, who remain in critical but stable condition with vital signs in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at UCLA’s Mattel Children’s Hospital in Westwood. Both girls remain under sedation and are responding to stimulation, according to Dr. Andy Madikians, assistant […]