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by Andy
Evangelista First
appeared 26 May 1999
M*A*S*Hing Around the Campus
Actor Alan Alda, who once played a doctor and now rubs elbows with some of the world's top
scientists, has trekked to such exotic spots as the Galapagos Islands where Darwin
traveled, Thulamela in South Africa for archaeological digs, and Scandinavia to learn how
Viking ships sailed to North America 500 years ago.
 And last Wednesday (May 19) Alda was seen in UCSF's Saunders Court
with geneticist Cynthia Kenyon and an enlarged version of a nematode roundworm. The
writer, director and former star of the TV hit series M*A*S*H is in his sixth season as
host of PBS' "Scientific American Frontiers." He and a film crew spent Wednesday
with Kenyon, who studies genes involved in aging and life span in a worm, which in reality
is about the size of a piece of lint. The program is scheduled to air next January.
Proudly Presenting
The campus' two-week Asian Pacific American Celebration concluded Monday with Pilipino
Cultural Day in Millberry Union, where an employee and student group honored Kathleen
Giacomini for outstanding achievement and as the first Filipino-American to be appointed
chair of an academic and research department at UCSF.
 Giacomini, a faculty member here since 1981, now chairs the
department of biopharmaceutical sciences in the School of Pharmacy. Her research is in the
field of "pharmacogenetics," and she is leading efforts to tailor drugs to fit
individuals based on their genes. Giacomini -- whose mother is from the Philippines and
father is Irish-American - was a 1995 winner of the campus' Martin Luther King Jr. Award
and a 1997 Chancellor's Award for the Advancement of Women.
The Joke's Online
Research at its joking best and worst: A UC Berkeley professor has created a website that
offers jokes tailored to an individual's sense of humor. "If amazon.com can predict
the books you'll like and moviefinder.com can try to pick movies you'll enjoy, why not
jokes? " says Ken Goldberg, an associate professor of industrial engineering and
operations research.
He has developed the site - "Jester
2.0 - Jokes for Your Sense of Humor" -- using a technique called
"collaborative filtering." Similar filtering is used to recommend movies and
books, but in those situations the method often breaks down because not everyone has seen
or read each movie or book in a standard sample.
Jokes don't have that problem - when you see or hear one, and you can form an opinion in
30 seconds, says Goldberg. With Jester, each person is given 15 jokes to rate on a sliding
scale from Not Funny to Very Funny. Based on these responses, people with similar opinions
are lumped together, and the system recommends jokes based on how you rated the first 15.
.
Here are samples from the site's joke file:
1) A horse walks into a bar. Bartender says: "So, why the long face?"
2) Q: If a person who speaks three languages is called "tri-lingual," and a
person who speaks two languages is called "bi-lingual," what do you call a
person who only speaks one language?
A: American!
And all joking aside, the Berkeley team claims that this is serious research stuff aimed
at coming up with faster, more efficient methods of collaborative filtering.
Wait Until Dan Quayle Sees This
Leave it to someone in a department called "public affairs" to notice. While
flipping through the Sunday newspaper ads, UCSF's Katherine Riordan pulled out the
Strouds' (The Linen Experts) supplement and admired the cover photo of smiling handsome
man in pajamas gazing at handsome blonde woman in blue jammies in nicely decorated bed.
Turn to page 8, and you find a series of shots of the same bed, same room, with same man
in same pajamas, but with a brunette woman with same pajamas as the other woman. Hey, but
at least they changed the sheets and pillow cases.
Crossing Our Fingers for Better "Days"
There are various quit-smoking days and numerous "fill in the disease" awareness
days. And today (May 26) is the "Great American Crossout," which is part of
"Leg Health Awareness Week." Nearly half (45%) of American women cross their
legs most or nearly all the time, even though 75% know that it is bad for circulation,
according to a national survey by Venestat, a dietary supplement which helps maintain good
venous blood flow to legs.
Pharmaton Natural Health Product, which markets Venestat, is sponsoring the Crossout,
urging women not to cross their legs for a single day. Habitual crossing of the legs, they
say, slows the flow of blood from leg veins up to the heart and increases pressure in the
leg veins.
Leg crossing is a matter of routine rather than manners for women, 72 %of whom say they do
it out of habit, 69% because it is more comfortable and 44% because they were taught it is
polite, the Venestat survey showed. Men, on the other hand, are creatures of comfort, with
72% saying they cross their legs because it is more comfortable, 57% out of habit and 13
percent because they were taught it is polite.
If women - and men - today forget about the Great American Cross-Out and go back to the
bad habit, will they be double-crossing the company?
Readers: If you have any items or suggestions
for this column, send us an email: aevangelista@pubaff.ucsf.edu.
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