Uc Irvine

Field scientists and students who rough it in UC Irvine's Steele/Burnand Anza Borrego Desert Research Center in eastern San Diego County will soon be settling into a new laboratory, apartment building and dormitory thanks to $2.8 million in Proposition 84 funds awarded by the California Wildlife Conservation Board. The lab, four-unit apartment complex and dorm with room for 24 students will support research by biologists, astronomers, anthropologists and others in the heart of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park's stark landscape of dry washes, palm groves and cacti.

UC Irvine's chancellor pledged Wednesday to find and discipline whoever slipped a racist note into a black female student's backpack last week. The student found the note, which read "Go back 2 Africa slave," while she was in the science library on May 7, according to UCI police. The department is investigating what it is calling a hate incident. "When apprehended, the responsible individual(s) will face appropriate sanctions," Chancellor Michael Drake said in a statement on UCI's website.

The new industry of large-scale online education will garner an important measure of academic respectability Thursday when the American Council on Education announces that four courses of the Mountain View, Calif.-based Coursera organization are worthy of college credit - if anti-cheating measures are enforced. It is now up to colleges and universities to decide whether to allow their students to replace traditional courses taught in classrooms with low-cost online courses that enroll many thousands of students worldwide and involve little direct interaction with instructors.

So cool were the UC Irvine Anteaters, even when top-ranked and top-seeded Brigham Young had three set points and seemed poised to generate some momentum Saturday night in the NCAA men's volleyball championship match at Pauley Pavilion. Even when BYU had a 24-21 lead in the third set, the Anteaters were smiling and patting one another on the back. Maybe they knew something. By scoring the final five points of the match, UC Irvine beat the Cougars, 25-23, 25-22, 26-24, to become the first team since UCLA in 1996 to successfully defend an NCAA men's volleyball title.

In a push to simplify mortgage modifications, federal regulators announced a streamlined process that doesn't require borrowers to prove a hardship. "This new option gives delinquent borrowers another path to avoid foreclosure," Edward J. DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said in a statement announcing the modifications Wednesday. The new modifications, however, would not include reducing the loan balance, a move promoted by housing advocates and others but resisted by DeMarco, who says it would end up costing taxpayers money and would encourage defaults.

UC Irvine's chancellor pledged Wednesday to find and discipline whoever slipped a racist note into a black female student's backpack last week. The student found the note, which read "Go back 2 Africa slave," while she was in the science library on May 7, according to UCI police. The department is investigating what it is calling a hate incident. "When apprehended, the responsible individual(s) will face appropriate sanctions," Chancellor Michael Drake said in a statement on UCI's website.

R. Duncan Luce, a UC Irvine mathematical psychologist who received the National Medal of Science in 2005 for his pioneering scholarship in behavioral sciences, died Aug. 11 at his home in Irvine after a brief illness, the university announced. He was 87. In 1988, Luce founded and became director of UC Irvine's Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences. He was later named distinguished research professor in cognitive sciences and economics. His work, according to the university, combined formal math models with psychological experiments to try to understand and predict human behavior, including how individuals and groups make decisions.

MEN at Seattle 82, UC Irvine 81: Charles Garcia made two free throws with 16 seconds left to give the Redhawks (6-5) their 14th consecutive home victory. Garcia had 29 points to lead all scorers. Michael Hunter had 23 points for the Anteaters (5-4), but he lost the ball as he was trying to get off the final shot and Garrett Lever scooped it up for Seattle and ran out the clock. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo 73, at South Dakota State 66: Lorenzo Keeler had 21 points and Kyle Odister added 17 for the Mustangs (3-5)

MEN at Pepperdine 72, UC Irvine 62: Lorne Jackson scored 28 points for the Waves (3-2), who held the Anteaters to 34% shooting. Daman Starring led Irvine (3-4) with 25 points off the bench. Texas State 81, UC Riverside 69: The Highlanders (1-6) lost their third game in a row at the Great Alaska Shootout as the Bobcats (3-3) made 11 of their first 12 shots and raced to a 20-2 lead. Chris Harriel led Riverside with 16 points. at Alaska Anchorage 83, Loyola Marymount 77: The Lions (3-2)

Cal State Fullerton 72, at UC Irvine 61: Gerard Anderson and Orane Chin had double-doubles as the Titans (12-11, 6-5 Big West) completed a sweep of the Anteaters (10-15, 3-8). at Cal State Bakersfield 60, Cal State Northridge 57: The Matadors (9-15) made only one of 13 three-point attempts and fell to the Roadrunners (6-17). -- Associated Press MEN'S SCHEDULE Pepperdine at San Francisco...7 p.m. Loyola Marymount at Santa Clara...7 Long Beach State at Cal Poly SLO..

Sometimes it takes a losing coach to give the best assessment of the next event. Penn State men's volleyball coach Mark Pavlik lost to top-seeded Brigham Young on Thursday night in the NCAA semifinals at Pauley Pavilion, and he saw second-seeded UC Irvine beat Loyola Chicago. Saturday at 6 p.m. the two teams each of which has been in the NCAA finals four times and won three titles (the Anteaters most recently a year ago) will meet for the third time this season. The Cougars (26-4)

Collin Mehring had been a growing boy and a somewhat unreliable contributor to the UC Irvine men's volleyball team for two years while being an intense student in the school's acclaimed computer science engineering program. And that's hardly surprising. Mehring is a walk-on. He almost didn't play volleyball in college. "You know," he said, "I wanted to be a student and didn't know if I could do both. " At the last minute, with a pep talk from his high school coach Mike Rubin - who was also Mehring's physics teacher at St. Francis High in Mountain View - Mehring decided to try to do both.

The longtime campus newspaper at UC Irvine may be forced to cease printing in the next year if students fail to approved a quarterly fee to help sustain the weekly publication. Like newspapers across the country, rising printing costs have forced UCI's weekly New University to cut back, according to the paper's student editor. Once a robust 60-page newspaper, the paper has shrunk to 24 pages in the last six years and editors  have had their compensation chopped in half, now earning between $24 and $50 a week.

Days after her dramatic rescue from a brush-covered ledge, the 18-year-old hiker who was missing for four days said she has only fleeting memories of her time lost in the south Orange County hills recalling only hallucinations, fending off animals and crying when she and her parents reunited. "I honestly didn't even know I was missing," Kyndall Jack told reporters Monday outside UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange. "I didn't know I was gone. I didn't know anything was going on. I just thought I was in a big dream.

Early this year, Orange County Register executives approached officials at three local universities with an offer they couldn't resist - weekly, six-page sections packed with positive news about their schools. For $275,000 apiece, UC Irvine, Cal State Fullerton and Chapman University were promised a half-page ad in each of 45 sections over the next year, along with feature stories, events coverage, personality profiles and other light fare produced by Register staffers. The schools jumped at what one UCI marketing official called "an exciting new partnership.

The University of California has agreed to pay $1.2 million to settle a federal whistle-blower lawsuit charging falsification of records and poor supervision of patients by UC Irvine anesthesiologists. The suit said anesthesiologists at the university's medical center filled out patient care reports before procedures started, "making it appear the anesthesiologist was present" when he or she wasn't. The lawsuit was brought by Dr. Dennis O'Connor, a former professor of anesthesiology at UCI School of Medicine, who will receive $120,000 of the settlement.

at Cal State Bakersfield 68, UC Irvine 55: Trent Blakley scored 20 points for the Roadrunners (5-16) in a nonconference game. Eric Wise scored 18 points but the Anteaters (9-14) lost their fourth in a row. TONIGHT'S GAMES MEN Cal State Northridge at UC Riverside...7 UC Santa Barbara at Pacific...7 Cal Poly San Luis Obispo at UC Davis...7 Cal State Fullerton at Long Beach State...8 WOMEN UCLA at Stanford...7 USC at California.

The path to the LPGA? Apparently one route is through UC Irvine. Irvine women's golf program will host an invitational Feb. 23-25, with the winner getting sponsor exemption into the 2013 Kia Classic. The UC Irvine Invitational, sponsored by Kia, is the only is the only tournament in the nation where the winner advances to a LPGA event. Irvine, Brigham Young, Gonzaga, Idaho, Long Beach State, Montana, North Dakota State, Northern Colorado, Portland State, Sacramento State, San Diego State, Santa Clara and UC Riverside will compete at the Santa Ana Country Club.

I love the Big West Conference, going back to its days as the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. when Lew Cryer was commissioner and Nevada Las Vegas was a national power. I still drink coffee out of a PCAA mug that was a media gift from the 1985 tournament held at the Fabulous Forum. I was a student at current Big West member Cal State Fullerton in 1978 when the Titans came within a shot of making the Final Four. I traveled the road as UC Irvine's basketball beat writer in the early 1980s with Bill Mulligan, the  school's quote-machine coach.