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Drawing on my own experiences at the University of California, Santa Barbara as a college professor of radical social change for 31 years who has been focused on the climate crisis for the past 10, I explore the crisis of higher education with respect to this most pressing existential challenge of the twenty-first century and propose various approaches, actions, activities, and projects for both classroom teachers and networks of educators.

These include the UC-CSU NXTerra Knowledge Action Network, the UCSB-developed nearly carbon neutral conference, and engaging students in designing and implementing systemic alternatives outside the classroom in their own communities such as Eco Vista in the 23,000-person community of Isla Vista just adjacent to UC Santa Barbara, among others.

The essay will end with a vision of a new type of university, exemplified in the world-spanning Ecoversities Alliance, and dreamed of in Transition U and Eco Vista U, two prototypes that I have been involved in co-creating with students, staff, faculty and community members in Santa Barbara, California, and in the Transition US movement.

The following paper is a “Q & A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned entrepreneur regarding the evolution, commercialization and challenges of bringing a technological invention to market.

The interviewee is Dr Yulun Wang, an inventor, self-taught entrepreneur, business leader and world-renowned authority on robotics and health care. Dr Wang shares his successful three-decade journey that began with researching the market needs and aligning himself with medical experts, followed by pioneering robotic solutions specifically for the health care industry. In the process, Dr Wang founded and spearheaded both a public and private robotics company.

Dr Yulun Wang received a BSc and an MSc in Computer Science, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering, from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). After teaching at UCSB for a few years, with a grant he won from NASA, Dr Wang founded Computer Motion, Inc. in 1989 and conducted research on endoscopic robots. Computer Motion went public in 1997 and later merged with its competitor, Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:IRSG) in 2003 to forge the multi-billion dollar surgical robotics industry. Dr Wang founded InTouch Technologies (d.b.a. InTouch Health), in 2002, named one of the fastest-growing biomedical companies in the USA by INC Magazine.

Dr Wang launched his career at the intersection of health care and technology with his invention of the voice-controlled robotic arm AESOP, the first US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-cleared surgical robot. His next generation ZEUS robotic surgical system (ZRSS), was cleared by the FDA in 2001. Also in 2001, ZRSS was used in the world’s first telesurgery, as surgeons in New York controlled the arms of the Zeus to perform a cholecystectomy on a patient in Strasbourg, France, via a high-speed fiber optic supplied by France Telecom. This led Dr Wang to found InTouch Health, a company that pioneers remote presence robot systems that enable health care professionals to provide more effective and efficient health care. Dr Wang has received multiple other entrepreneurship and leadership awards, including being elected to the prestigious ranks of the National Academy of Engineering in 2011. He is the author of over 50 scientific publications, and holds over 100 patents registered in his name. Dr Wang serves on several boards, including the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) Board of Directors, where he also serves as an officer.

In this column, I'd like to deviate from the normal focus on the mechanics of network tools and instead take some time to step back and reflect on the culture of network navigation.

After briefly covering Bill Freudenburg’s early years, this essay reviews his major scholarly contributions and professional accomplishments while a faculty member at Washington State University, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of California-Santa Barbara. Bill’s unique strengths – especially his keen sociological imagination – and crucial conceptual, theoretical and empirical contributions are highlighted, as well as his commitment to providing valuable mentoring for students and colleagues. The enduring importance of his work is ensured by the continuing application and extension of his ideas by other scholars.

During the implementation of a new interlibrary loan management system, Virtual Document eXchange (VDX), the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) analyzed all aspects of its operation to gain processing efficiencies and improve its service. This paper attempts to quantify the gains achieved from the implementation and to offer explanations for the improvements measured.

Six months before implementing VDX, UCSB participated in the Association of Research Libraries' “Assessing ILL/DD Service Study” conducted in spring 2003. The results from the spring 2003 study were used as a benchmark for measuring the improvements observed after implementing VDX. To assure the validity of the results, an equivalent study using the same protocols prescribed in the 2003 ARL study was carried out in spring 2007.

The findings confirmed that turnaround times and fill rates had improved after implementing VDX, despite an overall workload increase of 19 percent. Other findings revealed: automating end‐user requesting methods improves turnaround time; automating the creation of brief bibliographic records in the local circulation system reduces labor costs; and adjusting local policies and procedures to conform with a new ILL management system is essential to an implementation's success.

ILL practitioners will find this case study useful, especially if they are implementing a new ILL management system or are evaluating their current operation and hoping to improve its efficiency.

This study aims to focus on roughening N-face (backside) GaN substrate prior to GaN-on-GaN light-emitting diode (LED) growth as an attempt to improve the LED performance.

The N-face of GaN substrate was roughened by three different etchants; ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH), a mixture of NH₄OH and H₂O₂ (NH₄OH: H₂O₂) and potassium hydroxide (KOH). Hexagonal pyramids were successfully formed on the surface when the substrate was subjected to the etching in all cases.

Under 30 min of etching, the highest density of pyramids was obtained by NH4OH: H₂O₂ etching, which was 5 × 10⁹ cm^–2. The density by KOH and NH₄OH etchings was 3.6 × 10⁹ and 5 × 10⁸ cm^–2, respectively. At standard operation of current density at 20 A/cm², the optical power and external quantum efficiency of the LED on the roughened GaN substrate by NH₄OH: H₂O₂ were 12.3 mW and 22%, respectively, which are higher than its counterparts.

This study demonstrated NH₄OH: H₂O₂ is a new etchant for roughening the N-face GaN substrate. The results showed that such etchant increased the density of the pyramids on the N-face GaN substrate, which subsequently resulted in higher optical power and external quantum efficiency to the LED as compared to KOH and NH₄OH.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of AlN nucleation thickness in reducing the threading dislocations density in AlN layer grown on sapphire substrate.

In this work, the effect of the nucleation thickness at 5 nm, 10 nm and 20 nm on reducing the dislocation density in the overgrown AlN layer by metal organic chemical vapor deposition was discussed. The AlN layer without the nucleation layer was also included in this study for comparison.

By inserting the 10 nm thick nucleation layer, the density of the dislocation in the AlN layer can be as low as 9.0 × 10⁸ cm⁻². The surface of the AlN layer with that nucleation layer was smoother than its counterparts.

This manuscript discussed the influence of nucleation thickness and its possible mechanism in reducing dislocations density in the AlN layer on sapphire. The authors believe that the finding will be of interest to the readers of this journal, in particular those who are working on the area of AlN.

The prevalence and stability of marriage has declined in the United States as the economic lives of men and women have converged. Family change has not been uniform, however, and the widening gaps in marital status, relationship stability, and childbearing between socioeconomic groups raise concerns about child well-being in poor families and future inequality. This paper uses data from a recent cohort of young adults – Wave IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health – to investigate whether disparities in cognitive ability and non-cognitive skills contribute to this gap. Blinder–Oaxaca decompositions of differences in key family outcomes across education groups show that, though individual non-cognitive traits are significantly associated with union status, relationship instability, and single motherhood, they collectively make no significant contribution to the explanation of educational gaps for almost all of these outcomes. Measured skills can explain as much as 25 percent of differences in these outcomes by family background (measured by mother’s education), but this effect disappears when own education is added to the model. Both cognitive and non-cognitive skills are strongly predictive of educational attainment but, conditional on education, explain very little of the socioeconomic gaps in family outcomes for young adults.

The purpose of this paper is to put forward the position of chief learning officer (CLO) as a potential new role or models for new roles in libraries wishing to integrate human resources, strategic planning, and budgeting.

The paper reviews the history and present functions of the CLO role in the corporate world, correlating work within the library field with key aspects of the position as way by which to conceptualize the integration of disparate library operations.

The position of CLO has not yet entered the library and information science (LIS) discourse.

Libraries that do not have CLO-like positions in their organizations may benefit from adopting or adapting the position to their libraries.

The paper introduces the CLO position to the field of LIS.