Pocket microscope – turn a cellphone into a microscope for $10

The #1 innovation of 2011 – the pocket microscope – is a marvel of the cellphone age. For $10 a phone can be turned into a laboratory and offer poor areas – with no hospital – access to sophisticated medical tests. From The Scientist: Diagnosing malaria or other blood-borne illnesses used to require analyzing cell slides under …

Scientists discover the motion of sperm cells using 3-D technology

If nature finds the best way, then move in a spiral pattern to get there the quickest, from the UCLA Newsroom: The team developed a lensless computational imaging platform that accurately tracked more than 24,000 individual sperm cells in a large volume. This involved observing the individual rotations of each sperm cell, including helical movement …

In support of gay marriage, the lustful monster, and the missing link

I love this story for its integrity and raucous quotes. So raucous I can’t post them, but you can read them here. The full story below, but it leaves one obvious question unanswered. Why did two seemingly random football players, both married to women, come out in support of gay marriage, with one loudly defending …

The Passion Bucket

Today, I’ve been thinking a lot about the “passion bucket”. The term comes from Rick Neuheisel, former football coach at my alma-mater UCLA. Back in 2008, he was on The Dan Patrick Show and said, “When you’re at UCLA, you have to have your passion bucket full when you play the Trojans.” Since then it has gone viral, …

A set of podcasts is 21st-century equivalent of a textbook, not a teacher

An intelligent essay from Pamela Hieronymi, professor of philosophy at UCLA, discussing the impact of technology on education: A set of podcasts is the 21st-century equivalent of a textbook, not the 21st-century equivalent of a teacher. Every age has its autodidacts, gifted people able to teach themselves with only their books. Woe unto us if …

Helping China, the world’s largest smoking country, move away from tobacco farming

Curbing tobacco use by growing less In China, 350 million people smoke. Each year, 1 million die from smoking. Many more become disabled. Approximately 20 million Chinese farmers produce the world’s largest share of tobacco, nearly 40 percent of the global supply. A compelling story of how one scientist created a for-profit organization for the …

UCLA researcher discovers Mars has tectonic plates

Planetary geologist An Yin has made a startling discovery about Mars: UCLA scientist discovers plate tectonics on Mars For years, many scientists had thought that plate tectonics existed nowhere in our solar system but on Earth. Now, a UCLA scientist has discovered that the geological phenomenon, which involves the movement of huge crustal plates beneath a …

PAC-12 network launches on August 15, 2012 – UCLA already has 39 games scheduled for the fall

I’m super excited that the PAC-12 is getting its own network. I love watching all sorts of college sports on TV and hopefully this channel will give me all I can eat.     More fans will see more UCLA sports on more channels than ever before when the Pac-12 Networks launches on August 15. …

Students create their own composting program in the dorms

Hauling trash-bags full of coffee grounds and kitchen scraps, two three-wheeled rickshaw bicycles raced past campus foot traffic. The fleet had just finished their first compost pickup. The owner of the cafe, Devon Jackson-Kali, met the students near the cafe to give them leftover coffee grounds…he also gave them pounds of cabbage heads, carrot peelings, …

Easter Island excavations reveal huge bodies beneath the heads

There’s more to the world-famous heads of Easter Island than meets the eye. Ask archaeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg, a research associate at the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and director of its Rock Art Archive, who has been lecturing and writing about Easter Island’s iconic monolithic statues for years. She and her team of …