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Two UCSF programs offer fun incentives to avoid overindulgence. » PAGE 8
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Fitness challenge for Thanksgiving
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The UCSF Student
synapse.ucsf.edu | Thursday, November 20, 2014 | Volume 59, Number 4
Campus honors veterans’s service
UCSF celebrated the dedication
and service of our nation’s veteran and military service members with musical performances by the Chamber Music Society and the Vocal Chords. The program ended with a presentation on military medical advancements over the past century by retired Navy Reserve Capt. Kristine Warner, MEPN director and assistant dean of nursing.
Breakthrough Prize symposium celebrates scientists as celebrities By Hanna Starobinets Staff Writer
Actors like Jon Hamm and Cameron Diaz are no strangers to extravagant events such as the Oscars or Emmys, but at a recent gala they attended in Silicon Valley something was different: Scientists were the stars. The 2015 Breakthrough Prize winners were announced Nov. 9 at a ceremony at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. The event was catered by esteemed restaurant The French Laundry. Hosted by Seth MacFarlane, it included celebrity award presenters such as Hamm, Diaz, Benedict Cumberbatch and Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Several news sites have referred to the prize as the “Oscars of Science.” “This year’s Breakthrough Prize winners have made discoveries that will help cure disease and move the world forward. They deserve to be recognized as heroes,” said Mark Zuckerberg, who co-founded the prize in 2013 with Priscilla Chan, Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, and Yuri and Julia Milner. The day after the gala, the laureates participated in panel discussions at the three Breakthrough Prize Symposia held
Hanna Starobinets/Synapse
Science Oscars: Winners of the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences take questions during
a panel discussion at Stanford University. The preceding day’s award ceremony included celebrity presenters.
at Stanford University: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Mathematics. At the second annual Life Sciences Symposium (the first was held at UCSF in December 2013), a group of students and postdoctoral scholars from UCSF, Berkeley and Stanford asked the new winners about their careers, mentors, the role of collaboration, future directions, and of course the burning question: What will they do with the $3 million in prize money? The common answer: They want to invest in younger scientists.
The winners of the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences are: Dr. C. David Allis (Rockefeller University), for the discovery and work on histone modifications in gene regulation and chromatin organization Dr. Alim–Louis Benabid (Joseph Fourier University), for the discovery and work on deep-brain stimulation in treatment of Parkinson’s disease Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier (Helmholtz Center for Infection Research
A not-so-sweet outcome for soda tax proposition Photos by Sam Lee/Synapse
By Sean Treacy–Abarca Staff Writer
required a two-thirds majority since revenue from the soda tax would be earmarked for youth health programs. This may have been a reason former In the aftermath of the Nov. 4 elections, San Francisco became the 31st city to reject New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a high-profile supporter of soda taxes, gave a soda tax, while Berkeley became the first in the country to levy a 1-cent-per-ounce tax $85,000 to the Berkeley campaign but not the one in San Francisco. on sugary drinks. Berkeley’s Measure D, which did More than $9 million, largely from the not require a two-thirds American Beverage This past election “really majority since funds were Association, was was not about the health not earmarked for any funneled into defeating aspects of sugar, but more particular cause, passed by the San Francisco measure, known about the financial effects,” a 3-to-1 margin. This past election as Proposition E. “really was not about the health Support for the proposition, led pro-bono aspects of sugar, but more about the by a major political firm, tallied some financial effects,” said Cristin Kearns, $255,000. a postdoctoral scholar UCSF who has Despite the monetary imbalance, studied the impact of the cane and beet UCSF MPH candidate Lon Ogunduyile industry on public policy. expressed surprise at the measure’s defeat. “If the most progressive city in the A March 2010 study published in the country can’t pass a soda tax, what chance Archives of Internal Medicine said a 10 percent tax on soft drinks led to a 7 do smaller, less progressive cities have?” percent reduction of calories. Similarly, Although 54.5 percent of voters the authors said an 18 percent tax would supported Proposition E, its passage
BREAKTHROUGH » PAGE 7
result in a weight loss of 5 pounds per person per year. Despite these figures, the measure failed to gain traction in low-income and minoritypopulated neighborhoods, while higherincome neighborhoods, such as Castro, Haight and Potrero Hill, supported it. Research by Georgetown University Professor Lawrence Gostin found that opposition to the soda tax often stems from low-income neighborhoods, where people tend to drink more soda and cannot afford the price hikes. Such neighborhoods are also disproportionately affected by the negative health effects of sugary drinks and a lack of availability of low-cost, healthy food options. “Making healthier choices more attractive often requires making unhealthy options less attractive,” said first-year medical student Berkadesh Geberkristos. “Minority communities lack the public health awareness to make healthier choices, and this is one the most important
SODA » PAGE 10
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