How the other .02 percent lives

One of the advantages of living in such an upscale community as La Jolla is that you get to see – and yes, sometimes even ride in — a lot of cars you could never afford.

Research Report: New Scripps Research vessel honors astronaut Sally Ride

A new research vessel will be named R/V Sally Ride, in honor of the former UC San Diego faculty member who was the first American female astronaut and the youngest American to fly in space.

Research Report: Computer scientists create game to teach programming

Teaching computer science below the college level is difficult, because of few qualified instructors for students in elementary to high school. So, a computer scientist at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego and his graduate students set out to reach students outside of the classroom. The result is CodeSpells; a video game designed to keep children engaged while they cope with the challenges of learning programming.

Honor our planet by ‘going green’ on Earth Day with these food and cooking tips

Earth Day is celebrated globally on April 22 as folks pay homage to the planet’s bounty with a rekindling of community awareness and commitment to a cleaner, greener, safer place in the universe we call home. So rally your sustainable sensibilities while kicking up your heels and shrinking your carbon footprints.

Allowance futures: An investment vehicle for our times

At an Easter brunch with friends, we were discussing the difficulty of finding good financial investments at a time when real estate has been problematical and most conservative vehicles are paying less than 1 percent.

In a similar (if less volatile) market some years back, my now-husband, Olof (whom I was dating at the time), concluded after considerable contemplation and, more to the point, a lot of observation during weekends he spent at our house, that the investment of choice was allowance futures.

Get all your duck eggs in a row — they’re delicious!

A die-hard eggovore, I never met one I didn’t love. Scrambled, hard boiled, over easy, poached, Rocky Mountain toast, frittatas, omelets and deviled. Of course, we’re talking about chicken eggs, right? But the latest egg on the celebrity chef’s radar, and dubbed by Bon Appétit magazine as one of the 25 hottest trends this year is the duck egg. That’s no yolk. Here’s an egg primer so you can choose between the hen house and the duck farm. Quack, quack!

Scientists in La Jolla debut interactive chemistry textbook

Industrial chemists working toward new drugs, as well as organic chemistry students, have a unique new resource to guide them through chemical challenges. A trio of scientists from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has created the first fully interactive advanced organic chemistry textbook. A decade in the making, “The Portable Chemist’s Consultant: A Survival Guide for Discovery, Process, and Radiolabeling” is available as an iTunes download (http://bit.ly/13W4aOc). In contrast to traditional print books that have simply been converted to electronic form, this textbook was created from the ground up exclusively for tablets using Apple software.

Solving the family mystery

I’ve written before about my wonderfully ethnic family — French Catholics, DAR Protestants, Russian Jewish refugees, plus a smattering of Northern European famine flee-ers, all yearning to breathe free. Actually, to be accurate, the French contingent were more yearning to breathe rich. Already a well-regarded textile expert in France, my great-grandfather was recruited to come to the U.S. Northeast in 1901 to manage a woolen mill which he ultimately ended up owning; numerous expansions later, the mill became the largest tax payer in the state.

Betcha didn’t know some of these spring food facts!

Spring gently drifts in, bringing with it a stream of festivals, holidays and sporting events accompanied by a crop of tender shoots and other traditional foods celebrating rebirth, rejuvenation, freedom, the national pastime and the Earth’s bounty. Inquiring culinary minds want to know about spring’s best offerings. Here are the answers.

In gallops the King of Condiments, Hurray for Horseradish!

As a little girl, I hovered around the kitchen after school, especially when my beloved grandma, a governess and trained chef, came over to give my mom cooking lessons. Grandma Eva was one of those old school European cooks who made everything painstakingly from scratch. One afternoon she warned me to steer clear and go outside and play, as this particular lesson was going to be a teary-eyed one.