UC ON THE AIR

The university has launched UCTV, 24-hour television programming that includes documentaries, lectures and interviews, research symposia and artistic performances from each of the 10 UC campuses.

Started in January 2000 as a direct broadcast satellite channel, UCTV is now also carried by a growing number of cable channels in California and is broadcast live on the Web. Via satellite, UCTV is found nationwide on Channel 9412 of the Dish Network. On cable it is available throughout the state, including in Sacramento (channel 72) and Davis (channel 14). A list of additional areas and channels and the live broadcast are available on UCTV’s Web site: www.uctv.tv.

Programming ranges from Master Gardner lectures, “Science Today” programs on health, nutrition, the environment and social and physical sciences, a program that introduces middle-school children to major musicians and, recently from UC Davis, documentaries about Tahoe and veterinary medicine research.

NAMESAKES: SHIELDS LIBRARY

Father of the Farm. At the conclusion of the state fair in 1899, the head of the fair’s dairy department told Peter J. Shields that Humboldt County had won the first-place award for butter. “How do you judge butter?” asked Shields, who was then secretary of the State Agricultural Society, which conducted the fair. “How can one package of butter be said to be better than another? Isn’t butter just butter?”

“Oh, no!” replied the young dairyman, ex-plaining that butter can have many important differences in color, texture, grain and flavor.

Shields, im-pressed, asked how the young man had learned this. Pennsylvania State College, he answered, adding that California had no comparable institution.

And thus UC Davis was born. From this casual conversation would come, as Shields later said, “a great institution.” Shields was passionate about the state’s need of a school that would provide the agricultural education that he, as a farm boy, had not received. He became, as he said, a zealot and a crusader for his idea. He corresponded with leaders at agricultural colleges in other states, and he spoke to anybody who would listen about the plan. He drafted a legislative bill for an agricultural college, and after several years of effort and anxiety, he saw it through passage and execution.

Shields went on to have a long career as a Superior Court judge and as a friend of the Davis campus. At age 92, he looked with great satisfaction on what at he called “my beloved institution,” and he marveled that the reality was even better than his dream.

GENDER-BENDING SONGBIRDS

With synthetic hormones leaking into the environment through pesticides and other manufactured sources, researchers have wondered how these powerful chemicals might be affecting wildlife. Now scientists have discovered that estrogen can alter the brain circuitry of female zebra finches enough to make them sing. Normally, only male finches can sing. More significantly, exposure to estrogen can severely affect the birds’ ability to reproduce.

In one study, scientists fed zebra finch hatchlings for a week with estradiol, an estrogen hormone used in hormone replacement therapy. When the birds grew into adults, the scientists found that the estradiol-treated female finches could sing. Dissecting the birds’ brains, the scientists discovered that the regions controlling singing were well developed in the females treated with estradiol.

In another study, they found that female finches exposed to estradiol had more brittle eggs, and that groups with estradiol-treated males had more infertile eggs. The result of administering estradiol to both males and females resulted in a smaller number of eggs laid and severely reduced the number of eggs hatched.

“These results indicate that songbird populations may be at risk if they are exposed to estrogenic chemicals as chicks,” said James Millam, professor of animal science and lead author of the studies.

Millam noted, however, that his lab’s study does not answer the question of whether estrogens exert comparable effects in wild songbird populations. That, he added, is still to be determined.