Science & Ethics: The Ethics of Boosters - Craig Stephens, Lawrence Nelson, H. Westley Clark, Kat Saxton.

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

I don’t know about all of you, but I have certainly been busy this week! The campus has been abuzz with many events and celebrations, including a number related to the official dedication of the Sobrato Campus for Discovery and Innovation. Our Science & Ethics: The Ethics of Booster Vaccines event featuring Larry Nelson (Philosophy), H. Westley Clark (Public Health), and Kat Saxton (Biology and Public Health), moderated by Craig Stephens (Biology and Public Health) was a very timely and thought provoking discussion—one I enjoyed very much. As the week’s activities wind down, I encourage you all to participate in the Campus Celebration and Dedication events taking place today!

Last weekend’s Grand Reunion events were a joy to be a part of. Not only did I get to meet our alumni face to face (or as we say in the COVID era, mask-to-mask), I also got to honor the Class of 2020 during their official graduation celebration. Amazingly, 700 of our 2020 class came to campus for their in-person celebrations! It was heartwarming to see them process through campus with their friends and family and finally walk across the stage to celebrate their accomplishments.

I love seeing all of your updates each week and I encourage you to keep sending them in!

Sincerely,

Daniel

Highlights

Lang Chen (Psychology & Neuroscience) published a peer-reviewed research article with Kimberly Derderian '21 (Neuroscience) in Neuropsychologia, entitled "Category-specific activations depend on imaging mode, task demand, and stimuli modality: An ALE meta-analysis." In this work, Kimberly and Chen reviewed 113 published papers that reported category-specific activations for living or nonliving concepts from the past two decades, and we characterized the brain regions associated with living and nonliving concepts and revealed how the observed patterns were heavily influenced by methodological factors including imaging mode, task demand, and stimuli modality. Our findings provided the most comprehensive summary of category-specific activations for living and nonliving concepts and critically revealed that these activation patterns are highly contextually dependent. This work advanced our knowledge about the organization of the cortical semantic network and provided important insights into theoretical accounts and future research directions. This work was supported by Santa Clara University WAVE Visualization Grant to Chen.

Ryan Anderson (Anthropology) was featured on the podcast Shorewords along with his colleague Kiki Patsch (CSU Channel Islands). Shorewords is hosted by Lesley Ewing and is part of the American Shoreline Podcast network. The episode discusses a recent (2020) article that Ryan published in Shore & Beach with Patsch, Gary Griggs (UC Santa Cruz) and Charles Lester (UC Santa Barbara). The episode covers the coastal changes that are expected with rising sea level and shoreline retreat, ways to convey information of shoreline change to people in coastal communities, issues with both infrastructure and private development, and changes in coastal economics. The episode ends with some favorite coastal books and favorite beaches.

David Jeong (Communication) co-authored an article published in Frontiers in Psychology, titled "User-Agent Bond in Generalized Environments: Long-Term Risk-Reduction via Nudged Virtual Choices." This longitudinal work demonstrated the effectiveness of using virtual avatars and games in reducing risky health decisions over time among sexual minority youth. This work was supported by the WAVE+Imaginarium Lab.

Kirsten Read (Psychology), with student co-authors Grace Gaffney '21 (Psychology and Child Studies), Amina Imran '21 (Psychology), and visiting UCLA student Ashley Chen, just published a new study of the impacts of COVID-19 related "stay-at-home" orders and early childhood education and care (ECEC) closures in the Spring and Summer of 2020 on young children and their families' shared book reading at home. The research found that, even while COVID massively disrupted young children's care routines, families with the resources available still prioritized their children's reading time, and found creative, screen mediated, ways to adapt - one small, but important sign of resilience for families in an otherwise tumultuous and challenging year.

The article was published in the Early Childhood Education Journal and had a preprint archived here.

Rohit Chopra (Communication) was invited to discuss his recent book, The Gita for a Global World, by the Bangalore International Centre, India. The event, titled "Reclaiming the Gita: An Investigation of the Epic in the Modern World," involved a conversation about the relevance of the themes of the book with Salil Tripathi, a writer, journalist, and Chair of PEN's Writers in Prison program.

Takeshi Moro (Art & Art History) published a monograph book “Moraga Garden Center.” The book features 60 gardens/plants in the Moraga, CA area. The gardens have plants that originated from Moraga Garden Center, a Japanese-American owned family business. The store highlights the legacies of Japanese-American agriculture and economic discrimination that immigrants endured throughout the 20th century. The store is closing this month after half a century of serving the Bay Area.

Two hundred copies will be created as a limited edition book. It is designed and printed in San Francisco by Colpa Press, an artist-book publisher. The book features a foreword by Karen Korematsu, Founder and Executive Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute. For more information please read the coverage in Nichibei Weekly, "Community laments the pending closure of the Moraga Garden Center."

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar