Scientists share Tyler award, $200,000
Two men who together pioneered the field of conservation biology
will share the 2001 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and
its $200,000 award.
The Tyler Prize will go to Jared Diamond, professor of
physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, whose work has led to
the recognition of a subfield of community ecology based on
“assembly rules,” competition and community dynamics,
and Thomas Lovejoy, a Smithsonian biologist on detail as chief
biodiversity advisor to the president of the World Bank. Lovejoy
elucidated the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems concept and was
thus central to calling to world attention the critical problem of
dwindling tropical forests.
“The contributions of these two scientists have not only
significantly advanced science on several fronts, but they have
increased the chance of survival of countless species, including
humans,” said Robert Sullivan, chair of the 11-member Tyler
Prize Executive Committee.
Diamond received a National Medal of Science in 1999 and also
won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction for “Guns, Germs,
and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.” “The Third
Chimpanzee,” an account of human evolution, won
Britain’s Science Book Prize.
Doctors perform new Alzheimer’s
surgery
In a groundbreaking procedure, physicians at the UC San Diego
School of Medicine have surgically implanted genetically modified
tissue into the brain of an Alzheimer’s patient.
This launches the first phase of an experimental gene therapy
protocol for Alzheimer’s disease.
The 11-hour procedure was performed April 5 at UCSD’s John
M. and Sally B. Thornton Hospital in La Jolla on a 60-year-old
woman in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The patient
is recovering well and was discharged from the hospital
Saturday.
The study, led by UCSD neurologist Dr. Mark Tuszynski, is the
first attempt to use human gene therapy to treat a disease of the
nervous system. The researchers will attempt to prevent cell loss
in Alzheimer’s disease using gene therapy to deliver a
natural brain-survival molecule called nerve growth factor to the
dying cells in the brain.
Propositions may have hurt minority
progress
Four propositions passed by the California electorate in the
1990s were orchestrated to hobble the social and economic progress
of the state’s growing minority population, according to a
professor at UC Berkeley.
All four propositions, including the 1996 Proposition 209, which
ended affirmative action in state hiring and admissions, were
heavily financed by the California Republican Party, and three were
directly launched by Republican Party leaders or candidates, said
Jewelle Taylor Gibbs, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of social
welfare.
She said the propositions were aimed at preserving long-standing
advantages of the white population.
The cumulative impact of these propositions, said Gibbs in a new
book, “Preserving Privilege: California Politics,
Propositions and People of Color” has been to impede the
progress of many minorities, even as they emerge as the new
California majority. The greatest impact has been on Latino and
African American populations, she said.
In addition to Proposition 209, she also examines 1994’s
“Three Strikes and You’re Out” Proposition 184;
Proposition 187, also passed in 1994, that withheld education and
medical care from undocumented immigrant children and their
families; and 1998’s Proposition 227, which severely limited
bilingual programs in schools.
Compiled from Daily Bruin wire reports.