Monday, February 1, 1999
Community Briefs
BRIEFS:
Scientists to study aerosol pollutants
Scientists from around the world will begin the intensive field
phase in February 1999 of an international experiment sponsored in
part by the National Science Foundation to determine the role that
pollutants known as aerosols play in cooling the planet and
mitigating the effects of global warming.
The $25 million experiment called the Indian Ocean Experiment,
or INDOEX, will be coordinated by the Center for Clouds, Chemistry
and Climate (C4) at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a National
Science Foundation Science and Technology Center at the University
of California, San Diego.
Paul J. Crutzen, director of the Max Planck Institute for
Chemistry and a 1995 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and V. Ramanathan,
director of C4 at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, will
serve as co-chief scientists and lead an international team of
scientists from England, France, Germany, India, Maldives,
Mauritius, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States.
Aerosol cooling is one of the largest remaining sources of
uncertainty in predicting future climate. Data collected during
INDOEX will provide scientists with crucial information needed to
develop more accurate global climate prediction models.
"This is one of the first comprehensive experiments aimed at
understanding the magnitude of the cooling effect of sulfates and
other aerosols on climate," Ramanathan said.
"One fundamental thing we hope to learn is to what extent the
aerosol cooling has offset the global warming due to human-produced
greenhouse gases and how that may change with increased regulation
of aerosol emissions in the United States and Europe."
Aerosols are tiny particles of about a micron (one millionth of
a meter) or so in diameter that scatter sunlight back to space and,
thus, cause a regional cooling effect. The particles also can have
an indirect cooling effect on climate by acting as seeds for cloud
condensation and, thus, increasing the reflectivity, or albedo, of
clouds.
Greeks to donate $10,000 to UniCamp
The UCLA Greek community will present a check of $10,000 to
UniCamp, UCLA’s official charity, today at noon in Westwood
Plaza.
Leaders of the Greek System said that such philanthropic
activities will earn over $35,000 for charitable organizations
nationwide.
To help prepare the UniCamp summer site, UCLA Greeks said they
will be performing over 7,000 hours of service in the next few
months.
UniCamp is designed to provide summer camping to children with
special needs.
UC Santa Cruz opens teacher training center
With Gov. Gray Davis and the public demanding skilled and
effective teachers at the same time that California is facing a
critical teacher shortage, UC Santa Cruz is opening the New Teacher
Center, a training institute to help school develop high-quality,
well-trained teachers.
The first of its kind, the New Teacher Center is a long-needed
statewide and national resource on the bast practices in teacher
induction, organizers said.
Current projections indicate that California’s credentialed
teaching pool will have to double in size within the next five
years to meet class size reduction goals.
The problem is particularly acute in Los Angeles, where over 20
percent of the teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District
have only emergency teaching credentials.
Compiled from Daily Bruin staff reports.
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