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UCI Social Sciences 
E-News


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Welcome to the December 2013 issue of the Social Sciences eNews!




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Upcoming Events

Density and Risk Forecast of Financial Returns Using Decomposition and Maximum Entropy
December 2, 2013

New Mathematical Approaches in the Behavioral Sciences
December 2-3, 2013

Real Exchange Rates and Sectoral Productivity In and Out of the Eurozone
December 4, 2013

Whiskey's fer Drinkin' and Water's fer Fightin': California,Climate Change, and Global Aridity
December 4, 2013

IMTFI's Fifth Annual Conference for Funded Researchers
December 4-5, 2013

Coordination and Culture
December 5, 2013

Fieldwork After Ethnos
December 6, 2013

Falmagne Reception
December 9, 2013


Event Calendar



Social Sciences
in the Media

As China's one-child policy fades, new challenges lie ahead
Feng, The Christian Science Monitor and Yahoo! News

Raising minimum wage: Next proposal to threaten small businesses
Neumark, Small Business Trends

Trekkies beam onto UCI campus to fulfill 'Promise'
Maurer, OC Register

Bravo! Varzi
Varzi, OC Register

How a $15 minimum wage would devastate immigrant businesses (Opinion)
Neumark, Seattle Times

Higher minimum wage hurts low-skill workers (Blog)
Neumark, Mackinac Center

Bringing an end to a senseless policy (Op-ed)
Feng, New York Times

China chips away at one-child policy
Feng, Science / AAAS

China expecting a modest baby boom under revised one-child policy
Feng, Los Angeles Times

Katherine Hagedorn dies at 52; Pomona professor was Santeria priestess
Fernandez, Los Angeles Times

Hurdles seen for change to China's one-child rule
Feng, New York Times

China's one-child change doesn't avert demographic collapse (Op-ed)
Feng, Forbes

Easing of China policy may not result in baby boom
Feng, ABC News, NPR, Fox News, CNBC and Christian Science Monitor

Aboard bitcoin's digital roller coaster
Maurer, Orange County Register

The 40-year slump
Neumark, American Prospect

Smashing a relic
Feng, The Economist

China to ease longtime policy of 1-child limit
Feng, New York Times

Should we raise the minimum wage?
Neumark, WHYY / Radio Times

UCI Walking Dead class
Christopherson and Gonzales, PBS SoCal / Real Orange

Are Dems losing Latino love over immigration? (Podcast)
DeSipio, Progressive Radio Network

Get to know our model
Mossavi, Orange County Register

Three (cynical) explanations for the minimum wage groundswell
Neumark, Bloomberg Businessweek

The minimum wage debate: Who's right?
Neumark, Forbes

States moving beyond U.S. minimum wage as Congress stalls
Neumark, Bloomberg

More than money at stake in cuts
Maurer, Orange County Register

Bravo!
Solingen, Orange County Register

Coulter a crowd pleaser
DeSipio, Orange County Register

Tea Party favorite Tim Donnelly runs for governor
DeSipio, San Francisco Chronicle

Black women, interracial dating, and marriage: What's love got to do with it? (Blog)
Feliciano and Robnett-Olsen, The Huffington Post

Research offers a prognosis on reform
Neumark, Orange County Register

Bravo!
Skaperdas, Orange County Register

Is fast food bad value for the public?
Neumark, Wall Street Journal


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Giving back

Alumnus Steve Borowski, '79, supports student research on transportation policy

When Steve Borowski was a young Anteater back in the late 70s, his house, just steps from the beach on Balboa Peninsula, ran him a cool $87 a month in rent. Tuition, books and parking? Less than $1000 a year. "Those were the days," says the now president of Aristotle Capital Management. "Even though a UC education is still a bargain when compared to private institutions, it does carry much more of an economic impact than it once did, hence the increasing need for individual and private sector involvement." In that spirit, Borowski has been an avid financial supporter of UCI athletics and for the past two years, he has made generous donations to the UC Irvine Center for Economics & Public Policy, specifically to undergraduate and graduate research on transportation policy. "In a field of study where much is based on the theoretical, the Center for Economics and Public Policy focuses on real life issues that affect us all. Living in Southern California, transportation is just one of those issues," he says. "Hopefully with some degree of support we can allow very bright students the resources needed to bring practical solutions to long standing problems."

Read on...




Global Connect helps put students on college track

Mission Viejo High School freshmen kick off the program's 2013 campus visits

To many high school freshmen, college is a far off thought, something to worry about down the road as graduation draws near. But having a college plan in mind at an early age is a huge advantage to actually getting into a four-year school, and one that 95 freshmen at Mission Viejo High School helped put in motion Nov 8 with a visit to UCI. Part of the campus's Global Connect program, the students took part in campus tours, Q&A panels with current students and a sit-down with UCI's admissions office where they got the ins and outs on getting into a UC. The visit is one of three Global Connect will host throughout the year for its participating high schools. "One of Global Connect's goals is to prepare students for higher education while providing college mentors who serve as academic interns in the high schools. One practical way we do this is by bringing students to the university, acquainting them to college life, and guiding them to take the right steps now in order to be competitive in the future," says Jessica Chan, Global Connect's new director and a 2007-09 program alumnus. Chan took over the program this year following the retirement of Ellen Schlosser who remains an active participant as the Global Connect curriculum development advisor. "Global Connect made such a tremendous impact in my life as an undergraduate; I hope to be able to facilitate the same for those involved in the program."

Read on...




Social thinkers

ISTC-Social welcomes an interdisciplinary class of fellows for 2013-14

Why do some backcountry hikers joke about how great it is to find a "three-bar forest" - a stretch of wilderness where their cell phones get a strong signal? How do people decide who gets to run the Facebook page of their deceased friend? How do the engineers behind online music-recommendation systems guess that fans of The National might also like Arcade Fire? These are just a few of the questions being explored by this year's class of fellows at the Intel Science and Technology Center for Social Computing (ISTC-Social), one of a network of university-based research centers supported by Intel Corporation. Based at UC Irvine, ISTC-Social is focused particularly on interdisciplinary investigations of the social and cultural aspects of information technology and digital media.

Read on...




Making good on a promise

Social sciences celebrates Promise for Education success with Star Trek day

Captain's Log, Stardate 1118.3. The Enterprise landed in social science plaza. Our 1 day mission: to support access to higher education. Mission progress: success! Thanks so much to everyone who came out for an out-of-this-world day. It was a fun way to celebrate our Promise for Education success. Live long and prosper!

Read on for photos and video...




Ruiz is named president-elect of American Historical Association

Official induction to take place at association's annual meeting in January 2014

Vicki Ruiz, Chicano/Latino studies chair and history professor, has been named president-elect of the American Historical Association. Founded in 1884 and now with more than 14,000 members, the AHA is one of the oldest and largest national history associations in the U.S. Ruiz will be officially sworn in as president-elect at the American Historical Association's annual meeting January 2-5, 2014 in Washington, D.C. She will serve one year under the leadership of Jan E. Goldstein, University of Chicago, before taking the full reigns as president in 2015. The news follows on the heels of Ruiz's 2012 induction into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and her new Distinguished Professor title, the latter an honor considered UCI's highest campus-level distinction for faculty. "This is yet another remarkable achievement for a remarkable scholar of our intellectual community," says Bill Maurer, social sciences dean. "Bravo, Vicki!"

Read on...




More interviews with soc sci's top profs

What's your most significant research accomplishment and how has it made a difference?

We asked some of our National Academy members, Distinguished Professors, Chancellor's Professors and named chairs in social sciences to comment on the above and we got some really interesting responses. Learn more about their work below and be on the lookout for more videos.

  • Kristen Monroe, political science Chancellor's Professor and UCI Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality director, discusses her research on altruism, rational choice and how real people go about making moral decisions.
  • David Neumark, economics Chancellor's Professor and Center for Economics & Public Policy director, discusses his research on minimum wage and anti-poverty policy.
  • Kim Romney, anthropology Distinguished Professor, discusses his work developing methods for objectively studying cognitive anthropology and shared cognitive patterns.
  • Brian Skyrms (pictured), logic & philosophy of science Distinguished Professor, talks about his work on evolutionary game theory and the social contract.




Bringing an end to a senseless policy

An op-ed by Wang Feng, sociology professor, is featured in the New York Times November 19, 2013

China announced last week that it would loosen its famous "one-child" policy, enforced since 1980. The world's most controversial birth-control policy, initially imposed as an emergency measure at the start of the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping, seems to finally be on its way out, more than a generation later. This change, however, has come rather late, and it is still highly limited. Since its inception more than 30 years ago, China has made only one set of adjustments to the policy. In the mid-1980s, responding to a backlash of violence and abuse associated with enforcement of the policy, the government allowed rural couples with only a girl to have a second child (so the parents could try for a son) and, later on, couples who are both only children could have a second child. Now couples will be allowed to have two children if just one parent is an only child.

Read on...




More than money at stake in cuts

A column by Bill Maurer, anthropology and law professor and social sciences dean, is featured in the Orange County Register November 11, 2013

In the late 1960s, just after UC Irvine was founded, a motley group of professors and students set up an experimental community called the Farm. There, economists, anthropologists and others lived with students and indigenous people from Guatemala in an environment designed to explore the human experience through immersive education. OK, it was a hippie commune where people spun clay pots and took care of farm animals. A photo from the UC Irvine archive contains a caption someone wrote at the time: "The farm is a place to unscramble your brain." Right. Unscramble. Most people don't know this quirky history of the social sciences at UC Irvine, but as dean, I find myself thinking back to the Farm. That early experiment holds lessons for the current funding predicament in the social sciences. Funding for research in the social sciences has traditionally come from federal agencies like the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. Budget politics in Washington are threatening the future of social science research. Are you curing cancer? No? Well, then, no federal money for you!

Read on...




SPOTLIGHT EVENT: New Mathematical Approaches in the Behavioral Sciences

December 2-3, Social Sciences Plaza A, Room 2112

The UCI Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences presents a conference on new mathematical approaches in the behavioral sciences. Hear from leading mathematicians, cognitive scientists and philosophers.

Read on...




SPOTLIGHT EVENT: IMTFI's Fifth Annual Conference for Funded Researchers

December 4-5, UCI Student Center, Doheny Beach Rooms

This conference brings together the institute's fifth-year award recipients who will present their preliminary findings. As more and more philanthropic, industry and development actors ask whether mobile technology can help provide access to needed financial services like savings and money transfer, these projects look to the experience on the ground of existing, traditional money systems and financial practices, as well as the potential and real impact of new technology in providing access to finance for the world's poor.

Read on...






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