Salon.com > University of California

Study: Alcohol, not marijuana, is bad for your brain

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 20:49:00 +0000

Some new science demonstrates that marijuana may not have the harmful effects critics claim. In fact, while pot had no measured impact in a new study, the very legal and very lucratively-marketed substance alcohol actually has a worse health impact on young users.

Specifically, a new study of substance-using teenagers' brains shows that the regular use of alcohol had a harmful effect on the boozing group, while the toking-up group's brains suffered little alteration.

From Medical Daily, emphasis ours:

If you can’t save ‘em, clone ‘em!

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 23:51:00 +0000

LIMA, Peru — With species disappearing rapidly from the planet, Brazil has come up with a simple solution: clone them.

Yet that has many experts, worried this high-tech fix is an expensive detour, asking a simple question: Why?

The Brazilian government’s agricultural research agency, EMBRAPA, is now in the early stages of using genetic material retrieved from roadkill in the Cerrado, a vast savanna in the country’s northeast, to create new animals.

It is initially targeting eight species, including jaguars, maned wolves, collared anteaters, a variety of bison and the black lion tamarin monkey.

According to EMBRAPA officials, the scheme is intended to help stock zoos and the cloned animals would only rarely be released into the wild.

New U.C. logo: A sad sign for higher education

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 18:47:00 +0000

"It's not only ugly because it looks like a Swedish flag being flushed down the toilet," wrote New Inquiry blogger and University of California doctoral candidate Aaron Bady of his university's brand-new logo, "it’s ugly because it so perfectly crystallizes everything that’s been going wrong with the University of California for years."

U.C. recently unveiled its new logo. Gone is the traditional arrangement, centering on an open book adorned with the institution's founding date. The new logo features instead a simple yellow, almost Comic Sans style "C" -- or perhaps it's a swish? -- on a sky blue "U" background. An 11-person team spent three years developing the logo, which aimed to project a "forward-looking spirit" according to U.C. officials cited in the L.A. Times.

$1 million to pepper-sprayed protesters

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 18:07:00 +0000

It's a good news week for pepper-sprayed Occupy protesters. On Monday Salon noted that a young woman famously pepper-sprayed by an NYPD officer is expecting a baby with the medic who helped her stung eyes. Now, the ACLU reports, the University of California will pay out a $1 million settlement to demonstrators doused in pepper spray during a demonstration at U.C. Davis last November. Each of the 21 plaintiffs will receive $30,000, plus an additional $250,000 will go to cover the suit's legal costs.

Images of "pepper-spray cop," campus police officer John Pike, blasting sitting demonstrators with orange pepper spray garnered viral attention. The district attorney determined Pike's behavior "not objectively reasonable," but did not seek criminal charges.