Matt Fradkin, a fourth-year student in UC Irvine’s School of Medicine, was doing research at CHOC Children’s Hospital when he saw firsthand how music could relieve a patient’s suffering. A boy of about 7 with cancer had been lying in bed complaining constantly of pain when a music therapist entered his room and began playing […]
They call it “the baby monitor,” but it’s nothing like the ones sold at Babies “R” Us that alert parents when junior’s crying in his crib. Developed by UC Irvine pediatrics professor Dr. Dan Cooper, the sophisticated wireless device can detect subtle movements in infants that signal increased risk of cerebral palsy, autism and other neurological […]
Think you know the difference between right and wrong? Let’s say you’re a surgeon with five patients whose survival depends upon organ transplants. A healthy patient of yours would be an ideal donor for all of them. Do you transplant his organs (against his will) into the bodies of the other patients? What if five […]
Compared to the hospitals, research labs, university buildings and other important structures Rebekah Gladson has designed as campus architect and associate vice chancellor of UC Irvine, an orphanage in India might seem like a small, insignificant project. Not to her. For Gladson, whose visionary buildings have earned her the Design-Build Institute of America’s Brunelleschi Lifetime Achievement […]
Summer’s here, and the reading’s easy. So stash the dry textbooks, research tomes and heavier literary works that pile up on the nightstand during the academic year. The latest by David Sedaris? Got it right here with the sunscreen. No. 17 in Janet Evanovich’s epic Stephanie Plum series? It’s in the beach bag. (Hey, don’t […]
When four members of the UC Irvine student chapter of Engineers Without Borders headed to Endana, Kenya, last August to see how they could best help the rural community, it proved to be a real-life pass/fail test in leadership. “We didn’t know what we were getting into,” recalls Morgan Bailey, EWB chapter president and a doctoral candidate […]
Lourdes Medina had a common problem: relentless back pain and sciatica caused by a herniated disk and an unstable spine. The solution, however, was anything but common. At UC Irvine Medical Center, she underwent the first robot-assisted spinal surgery on the West Coast. Within a day of her March 15 operation, the 32-year-old Los Angeles woman was […]
His name is pronounced “Googy,” and in his native African tongue, it means “work.” It’s fitting, because prolific author Ngugi wa Thiong’o has worked hard his entire life, turning out books, plays and newspaper columns that have made his unusual name known the world over. Now in his 70s, Ngugi could be forgiven for slowing down the […]
The ancient Greeks knew the battlefield could leave emotional scars, and they had a distinctive way of dealing with it: They put on a play. Dramas about Achilles and Ajax showed these mythological war heroes suffering from the “divine madness” caused by combat — known today as post-traumatic stress disorder. “Scholars say Greek theater helped […]
Physical abuse of the elderly has long been difficult to prove because of older people’s propensity to bruise easily and their sometimes-dubious powers of recall, giving perpetrators a handy defense. But thanks to studies by UC Irvine’s Program in Geriatrics, that’s changing. The research has identified bruises most likely caused by abuse and established that […]