Education 10-30

Attorney Barry Cappello on 10/22 argued before the Court of Appeal on behalf of Concerned Citizens over Westmont Expansion. The group appealed a December 2007 decision by Superior Court Judge Thomas Anderle in which he opined that the school’s environmental impact report for its 345,000-square-foot campus expansion was thorough enough and that the planned construction was consistent with the Montecito community plan. The appeal court will make a decision on the matter in 90 days. The school broke ground on its first phase of construction on 10/23. (/westmont1030)

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Coinciding with reports of malfunctioning voting machines around the U.S., Giovanni Vigna-head of UCSB’s Computer Security Group-spoke at UCSB on 10/23 of a year-old study in which he and colleagues demonstrated the ease with which electronic voting machines can be manipulated. Vigna, whose research in the matter has received a boost in popularity thanks to a YouTube clip summarizing the group’s findings, noted that a single corrupt election worker could potentially taint the votes of an entire state. (/vote1030)

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This week saw UCSB archaeologist Anabel Ford one step closer to realizing her dream of a peace park spanning the Belize-Guatemala border, on which she has spent 20 years. Vilma Fialko, a representative of Guatemala’s Institute of Anthropology and History, signed a memorandum of understanding on behalf of her country to build the park on the historic, 5,000-acre site known as El Pilar and restore its ruins. (/elpilar1030)

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UCSB physics professor James Hartle will be honored with the 2009 Einstein Prize, UCSB announced this week. He will receive the award, and a $10,000 prize, from the American Physical Society for his “outstanding accomplishments in the field of gravitational physics,” much of which involve the implications of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. (/jameshartle)