Every Day is Magic: Ada Limón
In her 2015 collection, Bright Dead Things, a National Book Award finalist for poetry, Ada Limón writes of moving to Kentucky: “Confession: I did not want to live here.” It’s perhaps not a surprising sentiment coming from a coastally oriented person who was raised in Northern California, attended college in Seattle, and then spent over a decade in New York City.
But Limón and her husband, Lucas, have been in Lexington for seven years now and the effects of settling into this place are noticeable in her new book, The Carrying (Milkweed, Aug.). It’s a phenomenally lively and attentive collection replete with the trappings of living a little closer to nature. While Bright Dead Things is marked by a preponderance of light, such as images of fireflies and neon signs, The Carrying features numerous appearances by various trees, birds, and beetles. Limón also demonstrates a greater willingness to be explicit in naming colors, particularly green. “It’s crazy green, the whole book,” she says. “Lexington is the greenest place I’ve ever lived.” Similarly, where in Bright Dead Things, Limón tells a lot of stories and anecdotes, in The Carrying she is very present in her thoughts and experiences.
As it turns out, these shifts in focus have another, altogether unexpected source. While putting Bright Dead Things together, Limón was diagnosed with chronic vestibular neuronitis, which can cause bouts of vertigo. “If I’m really having vertigo, it’s pretty intense and I really have to focus,”
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Filtering Out the Noise
“It’s a familiar situation: You’re talking to a friend at a restaurant, and despite the background din, you still hear each other clearly. Obviously, our brains are capable of filtering out noise, but scientists are still learning how.
Using fruit flies as a model, Luis Franco(link is external), a postdoctoral fellow at UC Santa Barbara, set out to investigate the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. He and his colleague, Emre Yaski at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, in Norway,…”
Alvaro Sahagun Awarded the Parrish Law Firm Academic Scholarship
“…Their hard work (and his own) has paid off. A former student of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Sahagun is now pursuing a doctoral degree in electrical engineering at the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). There, he focuses his studies on “solid-state devices and nanotechnology,” he told Parrish Law Firm representatives…”
https://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/alvaro-sahagun-awarded-the-parrish-law-firm-academic-scholarship
Proteum Energy and Istmo Energy Sign MOU For Production of Low Cost, Clean Hydrogen in the Permian Basin
“…”Istmo Energy is pleased to have the option to leverage our onsite de-ethanizers to produce hydrogen from ethane for our hydrotreaters, while at the same time offer additional clean hydrogen sales in the Permian region,” said Alex Gutierrez, Principal and Co-Founder of Istmo Energy…”
https://www.yahoo.com/now/proteum-energy-istmo-energy-sign-120000729.html
Changing the face of science
“When Faith Bowman was deciding where to attend graduate school, the University of Utah wasn’t exactly at the top of her list. Coming from Wisconsin, she didn’t know much about the school or the state. But during her recruitment visit, an informal gathering with students from the all-inclusive University of Utah SACNAS (Society for Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science) chapter helped her see things differently. After talking with them, she knew that if she came, she would be surrounded by a supportive community. She chose the U, and three years later, that prediction has held true…”
https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/changing-the-face-of-science/
Bilingual mental health resources for the Latinx community Mental health is an issue that affects over ten million people in the Latinx community
“According to a report from Mental Health America, the Latinx community is seen as “happy people” by 66% of the United States population. However, mental health is an issue that affects over ten million Latinos/nas/ne.In 2020, 16% of people reported having a mental illness. It is essential to highlight that 18.3% of the U.S population is estimated to be Latinx or Hispanic…”
Silicon Valley pledged to become more diverse. A year later, has anything changed?
“Minorities remain underrepresented
Percentage comparisons for tech workers versus overall workforce:
| Category | Tech | Overall | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black | 5.0% | 15.3% | |
| Hispanic and Indigenous | 11.1% | 18.6% | |
| White | 58.0% | 59.3% | |
| Asian | 25.1% | 6.8% |
Strength in Diversity
“Thanks to a Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) award from the National Science Foundation, NMHU, UCSB and UCLA materials scientists will leverage their research, technological prowess and strength in diversity to the problem of petroleum-based polymers.
“I grew up in Las Vegas, New Mexico, went to the local public schools and started my undergraduate education at NMHU,” said Read de Alaniz, who directs the NSF-supported BioPolymers, Automated Cellular Infrastructure, Flow, and Integrated Chemistry: Materials Innovation Platform (BioPACIFIC MIP(link is external)), located at UCSB and UCLA. When he learned that NMHU was awarded the NSF-PREM Southwest Pacific Collaboration in Machine Learning, Design, Synthesis and Applications of Metalorganic Hybrid Biomaterials(link is external), it was a cause for celebration.
“This is a huge win for BioPACIFIC MIP,” Read de Alaniz said. “This award will broadly impact researchers underrepresented in STEM, mainly Hispanic or Latinx. NMHU plays a vital role in educating Hispanic students pursuing a college degree and through this partnership it will enable BioPACIFIC MIP to deliver on its promise to make biomaterial discovery resources available to a broad and diverse national user base.”…”
UC Board of Regents votes to end affiliation with restrictive healthcare institutions
“University of California Board of Regents voted on a proposed amendment Wednesday to end the UC’s affiliations with hospitals and healthcare institutions that do not follow the University’s non-discriminatory policy by 2023.
The amendment, written by UC Board of Regents Chair John Pérez, stated the UC should only affiliate with organizations that offer non-discriminatory care and refrain from entering into new affiliations with institutions with discriminatory guidelines. The amendment also protects the freedom of UC personnel working in affiliate facilities to provide care without being prohibited by any discriminatory or religious restrictions and plans to terminate any affiliations with organizations unwilling to comply with the UC’s non-discriminatory policy by Dec. 31, 2023…”
I left my home in Mexico to work as a farm veterinarian in America. But it was a trick.
“…But not all uncertainty is exciting or acceptable. While working at a dairy farm in Texas in 2019, I got a glimpse of how employers are profiting from the hopes and aspirations of Mexican veterinarians like me. U.S. farmers are luring Mexican animal scientists into exploitative jobs with the promise of professional development…”
Feedback Loops in Marine Protection
“…Research co-led by Anastasia (Tasha) Quintana(link is external) at UC Santa Barbara and Alfredo Giron-Nava at Stanford University investigated feedback loops for community-based conservation in northwest Mexico. Their results suggest that adaptation, learning and trust within fishing communities contribute to a greater and growing impact — positive feedback loops — for conservation and fisheries management. The paper, published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science(link is external), is part of a special issue focusing on the work of early career researchers…”
‘A Sense of Belonging’ Campus partners on grant project to expand representation, achievement in STEM among graduate students of color
“…“Research has found that students of color feel isolated within STEM classrooms,” said Dolores Inés Casillas, an associate professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at UCSB and director of the Chicano Studies Institute. “The collective goal for all HSIs is to foster a sense of belonging for STEM students of color, in hopes of seeing that translate into academic achievement and degree attainment. This grant proves that it will take a village to make a substantial gain in STEM graduate degree attainment. Together with fellow HSIs as well as two-year institutions, we hope to make a substantial impact on our current rates of Latinx students and students of color within STEM.”..”
Machine finds tantalising hints of new physics
…”Dr Paula Alvarez Cartelle, of the University of Cambridge, was one of the scientific leaders behind the finding. She commented: “This new result offers tantalising hints of the presence of a new fundamental particle or force that interacts differently with these… particles…”
My Child’s Egg Donor Is Latin American. Does That Make Him Latino?
“…I am the parent of a child who was conceived via in vitro fertilization and surrogacy using the sperm of a Caucasian man and a donor egg from someone who is half Colombian and half Central American. My spouse and I are professionals and both Caucasian, so (knock on wood) our son will most likely not encounter financial hardships. May we in good conscience check “Latino/Hispanic” on his college application?…”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/magazine/egg-donor-latin-american.html
By the numbers: Who’s going to chemistry and chemical engineering graduate school in the US
“…The average annual enrollment increases were higher across the board for chemical engineering, with an overall percent change of 3.6% in first-time enrollment and 3.2% in total enrollment. First-time enrollment of Hispanic students was particularly high, at an average annual increase of 17.3%, followed by first-time enrollment of Asian and Pacific Islander students at 6.0%…”
https://cen.acs.org/education/graduate-education/numbers-s-chemistry-chemical-engineering/97/i30
Meet Elora López-Nandam An evolutionary biologist dives into microscopic marine mysteries.
“Tucked into the labyrinthine recesses of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, among 32 million specimens and cultural artifacts, is the slow loris. Rather, century-old specimens of the petite nocturnal primate from Southeast Asia, with whom Elora López-Nandam became quite acquainted. After spending a summer extracting and decoding their DNA while an undergrad at Columbia, López-Nandam turned her attention to another sluggish creature, the sea cucumber, and the conservation implications of its genetic diversity in the coral reefs near Fiji. Along the way, she decided to devote her life to…”
https://stanfordmag.org/contents/meet-elora-lopez-nandam
Covid: Mexico passes 100,000 coronavirus deaths
“Mexico has recorded more than 100,000 deaths from Covid-19 – the fourth country to pass the sombre milestone.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the country has suffered 100,104 deaths since the pandemic began.
The news comes just days after the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country reported more than one million infections.
Government officials have acknowledged that the true toll from the pandemic is likely higher.
Only the US, Brazil and India have recorded more deaths than Mexico, which has a population of roughly 125 million. Its mortality rate of 9.8% is one of the highest in the world, according to Johns Hopkins data…”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55011840
President-elect Biden picked this Bay Area doctor to serve on his COVID task force
“We are optimistic. We plan to start turning this thing around in January,” said Dr. Robert Rodriguez, a professor in UCSF’s department of emergency medicine and an emergency physician at San Francisco General Hospital…”
The Community Web New book co-edited by UCSB scholar examines the role of digital communications in activism in Latin America
“For many Americans, digital media is a way to share personal news. But some indigenous communities in Latin America have harnessed its potential as a means of survival…”
Mario Molina, Nobel-winning Mexican chemist who made key climate change finding, dies at 77
“MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mario Molina, winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1995 and the only Mexican scientist to be honored with a Nobel, died Wednesday in his native Mexico City. He was 77 years old.Molina’s family announced his death in a brief statement through the institute that carried his name. It did not give a cause of death.He won the prize along with scientists Frank Sherwood Rowland of the United States and Paul Crutzen of the Netherlands for their research into climate change…”
Off and Running, Gerardo Aldana steps into new post as College of Creative Studies dean with a vision and a plan
“Not a lot of people have come into a new job as ready as Gerardo Aldana, the new dean of UC Santa Barbara’s College of Creative Studies (CCS), the campus’s unique community of self-motivated undergraduate students.
A professor of anthropology and of Chicana and Chicano studies, Aldana was associate dean of CCS from 2014 to 2016 and served two terms on the CCS Faculty Executive Committee. He knows the territory…”
