COLUMNIST HONORED
California Focus columnist Thomas Elias was named the year’s best columnist expressing one person’s viewpoint on public affairs in the 2022 competition of the Los Angeles Press Club. The awards were announced last month. The Elias column appears in 101 newspapers of all sizes throughout California, including The Coast News. Said the judges, members of other press clubs around the nation: Elias is “an observant columnist holding the powerful accountable. As fewer observant eyes monitor local, regional and state level politics, there is no doubt his role has grown all the more important in recent years.
WELL DONE
• Yolanda Vilardi of Oceanside was recently initiated into The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi at Oregon State University.
• Oregon State University spring 2022 graduates include, from Cardiff: Rebecca Bland and Nolan Sunder; Carlsbad: Olivia Carney, Kyrie Koehn, Alexandra Simpson, Blair Stone and Patrick Zimmer; Encinitas: Alexis Arteaga, Marina Keller and Andrew Ross; Escondido: Cameron Wiesner; Oceanside: Madison Arkeder, Jaime Justo, Viktor Medvinsky, Rafael Robles and Mick Shipman; San Marcos: Jordyn Bunting, Julia Drizin, Natalie Gould, Gabrielle Nosewicz and Christian Plue; Vista: Bryan DiStefano.
• Reese Billington and Erica Zito of Solana Beach; Isabella Carroll of Encinitas; Garret Collins, Darah Matos and Andrew Poole of Oceanside; Cade Madeira, Riley Raynor and Kyle Wada of Carlsbad; Marisa Mitchell and Brooke Willoughby of Carmel Valley; Taylor Mitchell of Rancho Santa Fe; and Daphne Tenuto and Camryn Wick of San Marcos are spring 2022 graduates of the University of Alabama.
• Gabriella Bacino of Rancho Santa Fe was named to the College of the Holy Cross spring 2022 dean’s list.
• University of Iowa graduates include, from Encinitas, Nicole Cirino, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Cameron Dickson, Tippie College of Business and Evita Woolsey, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; from San Marcos, Maya Tyra Sevilla, College of Public Health and from San Diego, Anandita Watts, Master of Arts.
• Chad Geddes of San Diego graduated with a Bachelor of Science in nursing from Ohio University’s College of Health Sciences and Professions in spring 2022.
• David Caccavo of San Marcos earned a Bachelor of Science in business and economics and Nate Schutte of Encinitas earned a Bachelor of Science in computer engineering from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
• Libby Lambert of Carmel Valley was named to the spring 2022 dean’s list at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania.
• Sean Malter of Carlsbad; Reagan Kan, William Nute and Dakota Oberhauser of San Diego; Devin Waltman of Rancho Santa Fe and Courtney Wolpov of San Marcos earned graduate degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology in spring 2022.
BRAIN RESEARCH
Sandra Encalada, PhD, of Scripps Research, was awarded $4.1 million from the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), for research into how prion diseases kill brain cells. Some prion diseases, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), can arise sporadically or from an inherited mutation in the prion protein. In other cases, prion diseases can be transmissible between animals or—in even more rare instances—infect people who eat contaminated meat.
EARLY WARNING
On June 16, Metrolink announced an advancement in its Earthquake Early Warning System with new technology that automatically applies the brakes for safe and rapid slowing or stopping of trains in the event of an earthquake. A previous version of the technology, that Metrolink deployed in September 2021, had the capability to send automated messages to train crews to begin to slow or stop the train but did not include automated brake enforcement.
