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'Round and about

SEX AND GENETICS

Are we born male or female? How do we choose our mates? Experts from universities and colleges across the nation will offer insight into the complexity of sex and genetics while reflecting on the cultural and historical forces that shape our sexual behaviors, attitudes and our own understanding about ourselves. "Gender and Genomics: Sex, Science and Society" will be presented Jan. 30 by UCLA's Center for Society and Genetics. The third annual symposium will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Covel Commons. It is free and open to the public. Among the speakers will be psychologist Alice Eagly of Northwestern University, molecular biologist Lee Silver of Princeton and UCLA's Eric Vilain, human genetics. For more information, see www.socgen.ucla.edu.

GARDEN VOLUNTEERS

The Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden is seeking volunteer docents for its public education program for schoolchildren and community groups. Training begins Feb. 1. Experience in botany is not required. Arthur Gibson, professor of biology and garden director, will lead six workshops. Trainees will receive a training manual and tips from senior docents. Deadline to apply is Jan. 31. To learn more, attend an orientation 10 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 28 in 328 Botany Building. Questions? Call (310) 206 3887 or e mail cfelixso@ucla.edu.

TUTORING PAYS OFF

BruinCorps, a student program that provides tutors to youths who attend educationally disadvantaged schools in Los Angeles, has received a $410,907 grant from the national service organization AmeriCorps. The grant will allow more UCLA students to tutor youths, kindergarten through eighth grade, in reading, writing and math. Currently, 268 UCLA students participate in BruinCorps, through which more than 1,000 low achieving children will be tutored. In the past three years, 80% of the children showed improvement in their school readiness skills, 85% in reading and literacy skills, and 80% in math proficiency. BruinCorps is a unit within the Office of the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs.

IT'S ALL IN THE NUMBERS

Can physics help explain what makes a book a bestseller? UCLA physicist and complex systems theorist Didier Sornette thinks so. He used statistical physics and mathematics to analyze 138 books that made Amazon.com's bestseller list between 1997 and April 2004. His team's initial results were published in Physical Review Letters Nov. 26. "Is it possible to derive a quantitative law of how book sales behave?" Sornette asks. "We have derived a law of how a sale's shock to the system will jump up and decline over time. The books we analyzed behaved the same way. We can statistically predict how the system will evolve, how sales peaks can emerge, and we can predict the expected decline slope for books that rise sharply." A specialist in the scientific prediction of catastrophes in a wide range of complex systems, Sornette has applied techniques of physics to earthquakes as well as economic data, and has developed a quantitative model that can predict the signatures of a coming stock market crash. Go to www.ess.ucla.edu/faculty/sornette to learn more.