A Montreal court last month fined the Canadian teen-aged hacker known as "Mafiaboy" $165 and sentenced him to eight months in a detention center for his role in last year's attacks on CNN and other Web sites, which used "zombie" computers at UCSB and elsewhere. Kevin Schmidt, the network programmer who first detected the campus intrusion, noted that the case "demonstrated this type of activity can be tracked and a successful prosecution can result. This is more important than the actual sentence."

The Bren School has a new Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy system with X-ray microanalysis and wet imaging capability. Running the system is engineer José Saleta, who reports that it is available for a "modest recharge" to all departments on a first-come, first-served basis. His e-mail address is: saleta@bren.ucsb.edu, or call x5892.

William Ashby, professor of French and provost of the College of Creative Studies, has accepted a three-year appointment as North Ameri-can editor for the Journal of French Language Studies. It is a newly created position.

Jim Blascovich, professor and chair of the Psychology Department, has been elected president of the 4,000-member Society of Personality and Social Psychology, as of 2003. He will serve as president-elect in 2002

Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez,professor of Chicano studies, has published a bilingual (Spanish/English) biography "Lydia Men-doza's Life in Music" (Oxford University Press, 2001) and written and edited the anthology "Re-emerging Native Women of the Americas" (Kendall Hunt Publishers, 2001).

Alexander DeConde, professor emeritus of history, examines the elements of private gun violence in his new book "Gun Violence in America: The Struggle for Control" (Northeastern University Press, 2001).

Carl Gutierrez-Jones, professor and chair of the English Department, has written and edited "Critical Race Narratives: A Study of Race, Rhetoric and Injury" (New York University Press, 2001), which will be published in November.

Maria Arroyo, formerly a Santa Ynez Apartments custodial supervisor for Housing and Residential Services, has been promoted to the post of housing's Storke office manager.