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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2009
San Diego Community Newspaper Group
www.SDNEWS.com Volume 15, Number 14
Lady Torreys crowned state volleyball champs BY DAVE THOMAS | VILLAGE NEWS
The goal of any scholastic team is to be playing in the final game of the season when the title is on the line. Winning that contest is even better. The La Jolla Country Day (LJCD) girls volleyball team accomplished both tasks last weekend in the state title game in Irvine. Advancing to their first-ever state title game, the Lady Torreys left the UC Irvine Bren Events Center last Saturday with the state championship in hand, scoring a 25-19, 25-20, 25-17 victory over the Sacramento Christian
Brothers team. Finishing an outstanding season with a record of 35-1, LJCD carried on the tradition of Southern California schools, claiming the region’s fifth title in six years of play against the north. “The team played strong all year and this was more of the same,” LJCD head coach Peter Ogle commented. “We have a good starting team, but the strength of our team is the ability to practice at a very high level. It is our reserves that push us every practice that kept us improving and sharp. It was just a tremenSEE CHAMPS, Page 2
IT’S A WRAP! Dressed in gift bags, Girl Scouts from Bird Rock (above) march down Girard Avenue during the Dec. 6 La Jolla Christmas Parade. The cavalcade kicked off with musket shots from the San Diego Sons of the Revolution (right) and ended at La Jolla Recreation Center with a Holiday Festival. The theme of the 52nd annual parade was “Christmas Through the Eyes of a Child.” VILLAGE NEWS | PAUL HANSEN
SIO will use grants for underwater robots From Israel, Mini Nishri’s “Esther, Queen of the Swamp” video projection depicts the queen as both a young prostitute and an older homeless woman.
International artists take viewers ‘Off Beaten Path’ BY ADRIANE TILLMAN | VILLAGE NEWS
The latest art exhibition at UCSD aims to sensitize people to the pain, violence and oppression that afflict women through art that enables the viewer to empathize with feeling vulnerable, violated or deliberately masking pain – rather than zeroing in on the act of violence itself. Artist Yoko Ono, for example, created a video called “Cut Piece” in which she’s sitting on a stage allowing people to take scissors and snip a piece of her dress, like
vultures stripping her bare. Some cutters seem to simply want a square of her dress as a souvenir, while another cutter takes the opportunity to snip her dress at the strap causing the front of her dress to fall and expose her. Called “Off The Beaten Path: Violence, Women and Art,” the exhibition features 21 artists and organizations from 19 countries and is being held through Dec. 12 at the University Art Gallery on the west end of the Mandeville Center at UCSD. The exhibition SEE PATH, Page 5
BY JULIE KINYOUN | VILLAGE NEWS
Two oceanographers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) are on the cusp of cracking the mysteries of red tides and marine-protected areas (MPAs). Recently, Jules Jaffe and Peter Franks, both professors at SIO, won two grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) totaling nearly $2.5 million. This money will support their efforts to build and develop underwater robots that measure physical characteristics and currents in the ocean. Ultimately, this data will provide information about red tides and MPAs as well as oil spills, airplane crashes, algae blooms and other phenomena that have eluded researchers for so many years. The robots, called
We’re sampling clouds by sticking a balloon on a wire and leaving it there ... PETER FRANKS SIO
Autonomous Underwater Explorers (AUEs), will be about a liter in size and placed in groups underwater near an area of interest to oceanographers. Collaborators strive to understand “clouds” beneath the surface of the ocean. The exact makeup of these clouds is yet to be
explained but is most likely microorganisms that live in a cluster and travel with ocean currents. These clouds are currently inaccessible from the surface of the water and not visible by satellite. “We’re sampling clouds by sticking a balloon on a wire and leaving it there for a long period of time — watching clouds go by,” Franks said. In order to effectively submerge and resurface these AUEs, Jaffe and Franks will need to perfect the size and shape of the robots to control buoyancy. By sinking and floating the AUEs they can lower and raise them from the surface of the water to their underwater destination. If researchers are able to place hundreds of these AUEs in vicinSEE ROBOTS, Page 4