PARENTAL GUIDANCE: Kym Salness of Yorba Linda...

PARENTAL GUIDANCE: Kym Salness of Yorba Linda wanted to be a veterinarian, but his physician father persuaded him to go to medical school. Salness retained his interest in what he calls “critters.” He’s the one the county calls at 2 a.m. when someone’s had a snakebite. Now Salness will face a new challenge. . . . He’s been elected president of the 1,400-member staff at the UCI Medical Center, beset with critical financial woes. Salness says it feels “both exciting” and beleaguering.

EYES ON IO: Get a good pair of binoculars and you can see Io, one of Jupiter’s 18 moons. That may be of only mild interest, but 80 scientists from around the world are gathered at the San Juan Institute in San Juan Capistrano this week to study its high temperatures and wild volcanic activity. . . . “Io has a surface completely in turmoil,” says Doug Nash, the institute’s director.

HOPE ART: When Laguna Niguel artist Fitz Maurice was commissioned to do a piece for the U.N. human rights conference going on in Vienna, she knew she had to address two themes: violence and hope. “All my life I’ve known I wanted to be an artist,” she says. “This was the kind of challenge I wanted.” Her “The War of Human Rights” now hangs in the Vienna conference room. Maurice splits her time between Orange County and Germany, where she’s done works for the German parliament.

LOS DINOSAURIOS: You don’t have to speak English to enjoy the highly popular “Jurassic Park.” It’s showing at the Pacific’s Twin Drive-In in Orange with Spanish subtitles. . . . Toni Munoz, manager at the drive-in, which converted from all Spanish-language to mostly Spanish subtitle movies last summer, says it’s been a popular move: People learning Spanish like the subtitles, and “Latins who don’t speak English like it because they can enjoy the movie.” A bonus: Spanish-speaking parents whose children speak mainly English can go as a family.