Jan
18
UC Santa Barbara
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Predominantly UCSB’s five schools offer graduate and/or undergraduate majors, degrees and credentials. These are listed below for each school. For more information, visit the on-line catalog pages for the individual colleges. See also the alphabetized listing of majors, degrees, and credentials.
College of Creative Studies
College of Engineering
College of Letters and Science
Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management
Gevirtz Graduate School of Education
Jan
18
December 5, 2007
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) – The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, a projected 30-volume series of the work of the 19th-century American naturalist and social philosopher, has reached the halfway mark with the publication of its most recent volume. The Thoreau Edition, which has been headquartered at several universities across the country since its inception in 1966, is now based at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Under the direction of editor-in-chief Elizabeth Witherell, the book, “Excursions,” (Princeton University Press, 2007) continues a scholarly endeavor that began four decades ago. When completed, the Thoreau Edition will include the contents of all 47 volumes of Thoreau’s handwritten Journal, his writings for publication, his correspondence, and other uncollected papers. The first volume in the series, “Walden,” was published in 1971.
Edited by Joseph J. Moldenhauer, the Mody C. Boatright Regents Professor Emeritus in the English department at the University of Texas, Austin, “Excursions” presents the texts of nine essays, including some considered to be Thoreau’s most engaging and popular.
“These are some of Thoreau’s best known essays,” said Witherell. “Our texts of them reflect Thoreau’s intentions much more closely than any other available versions.”
Spanning the period from 1842 to 1862, the essays represent many stages of Thoreau’s writing career. They include early works, such as “Natural History of Massachusetts,” in which Thoreau cast a Transcendentalist eye on four surveys of Massachusetts flora and fauna, and “A Yankee in Canada,” a book-length account of a trip to Canada, the first chapters of which appeared in print during Thoreau’s lifetime. Later pieces include “Walking” and “Autumnal Tints,” which Thoreau shaped as lectures in the 1850s and which were not published as essays until after his death.
“This volume has been in the works for a long time,” said Witherell. “The editorial process was complicated because each essay has a different composition history. But the wait has been worth it. ‘Excursions’ contains some of Thoreau’s most brilliant and appealing writing. The last four essays especially – ‘An Address on the Succession of Forest Trees,’ ‘Walking,’ ‘Autumnal Tints,’ and ‘Wild Apples’ – are such a pleasure to read. They evoke the environment of Concord very specifically, and at the same time they set that environment into the universal cycles of nature.”
Lauding Moldenhauer’s work on “Excursions,” Witherell said: “This is a crowning achievement for him as well as for the Thoreau Edition.” In addition to “Excursions,” Moldenhauer has edited three other volumes in the series.
Five other volumes in the series are currently in the editing process. These include “Journal 7: 1853-1854,” slated for publication in 2008, “Journal 9: 1854-1855,” and three volumes of Thoreau’s correspondence that cover the period 1836 through 1862.
In fall 2001, the project added a new component that makes unedited transcripts of Journal manuscripts available on the Thoreau Edition Web site before the edited volumes appear in print. They can be found at the library.
Jan
18
Understanding the Mechanisms of Life
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UCSB Awarded $1.75 Million by W. M. Keck Foundation
To Film Protein Molecules in Action
December 10, 2007
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) – The W. M. Keck Foundation has awarded UC Santa Barbara a $1.75 million grant to support a pioneering multidisciplinary research initiative to understand the motion of proteins, the molecular machines that enable life.
“The scientific discovery and knowledge that are likely to emerge from the proposed research will make a quantum leap toward understanding the molecular mechanisms of life processes,” said UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang. “UCSB is grateful to the Keck Foundation for its generous support for this ambitious endeavor.”
Every function in a living cell depends on proteins. Although scientists know a great deal about the molecular structure and function of proteins—which include such specialized forms as hemoglobin molecules for oxygen transport, antibodies for immune defense, and enzymes for metabolism—how they perform critical biological processes remains a mystery.
“In order to understand how a machine functions, you want to somehow watch it move, which is extremely challenging with a machine as tiny as a protein,” said Mark Sherwin, a UCSB experimental physicist and leader of the Keck research project, which involves scientists and engineers from UCSB and Florida State University (FSU).
Existing protein “cameras” are insensitive to motions on time scales that are critical to the proteins’ biological function.
“We believe that ‘filming’ proteins in action using our free-electron lasers will make singular contributions to the understanding of life itself, specifically the molecular machinery that underlies life’s processes,” said Sherwin, who is also director of UCSB’s Institute for Quantum and Complex Dynamics.
The Keck grant will be used to build a high-frequency, high-powered electron spin resonance and absorption apparatus using terahertz-frequency electromagnetic radiation generated by sources unique in the world—UCSB’s free-electron lasers. The innovative apparatus will be housed in UCSB’s new Terahertz Dynamics Laboratory.
“These are the only free-electron lasers entirely dedicated to the underserved portion of the electromagnetic spectrum between 0.1 and 10 terahertz,” Sherwin explained. One terahertz is 1000 times higher in frequency than the clock speed on a 1 gigahertz computer, and about 1000 times lower in frequency than visible light.
“No other sources of electromagnetic radiation can deliver the high-power, finely-tunable terahertz pulses, which are necessary to accomplish the task of recording rapid motions of proteins in their natural environment,” noted Sherwin. Proteins do most of their work when dissolved in water or when embedded in cell membranes.
“The basic science of understanding and being able to visualize protein motion would elucidate one of the real mysteries of life,” said Sherwin.
In addition to its fundamental scientific significance, discovering the mechanisms of protein function would provide tangible benefits to society. For example, it would facilitate the engineering of new proteins to perform new functions, or illuminate the reaction of proteins with therapeutic drugs.
Other UCSB researchers involved in the project are physicist S. James Allen, molecular biophysicist Kevin W. Plaxco, biochemist Song-I Han, electrical engineer Mark Rodwell, applied physicist Elliott Brown, and experimental cosmologist Phil Lubin. Louis Claude Brunel and Johan van Tol, scientists at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at FSU, are also collaborating on the project.
“This is a diverse team of exceptional scientists and engineers who have the complementary skills necessary for this project—and each person on the team is also fun to work with,” said Sherwin.
Based in Los Angeles, the W. M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 by the late W. M. Keck, founder of the Superior Oil Company. The foundation’s grant making is focused primarily on pioneering efforts in the areas of medical research, science, and engineering. The foundation also maintains a Southern California Program that supports organizations providing civic and community services, health care, early childhood and pre-college education, and arts and cultural enrichment.
Jan
18
Chemist Wins Prestigious Plous Award
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Thuc-Quyen Nguyen, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has won UC Santa Barbara’s 2007-08 Harold J. Plous Award, one of the university’s two most prestigious faculty honors. The honor is given annually by UCSB’s Academic Senate, on behalf of the faculty, to an assistant professor from the humanities, social sciences, or natural sciences, who has shown exceptional achievement in research, teaching, and service to the university. Nguyen, who joined the faculty in 2004, will have an opportunity to showcase her research when she delivers the annual Plous Lecture this spring. The date has not yet been set.