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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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