FREE DOWNLOADS EXACT A PRICE

A federal judge recently ruled that Verizon, an Internet service provider (ISP), must hand over to the Recording Industry Association of America the names of its customers suspected to be trading copyrighted music files. This means that the Internet is no longer an anonymous safeguard by which copyright infringers can avoid legal action.

The surge in college students’ copyright infringements over campus networks, especially by typically law-abiding students like Julie, has forced colleges to evaluate the issue more closely. Earlier this year UC Davis Provost Virginia Hinshaw, Vice Provost John Bruno and Vice Chancellor Stan Nosek issued a letter to the campus community addressing the nearly threefold increase seen this year in violations on campus and warned of the possible consequences for individuals who use file-sharing software illegally.

Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, UC Davis and other college campuses have the option to respond to the industries’ infringement claims and avoid being liable themselves. The law states that ISPs may avoid liability for their users’ copyright violations provided that they block access to any infringed material of which the copyright holder has made them aware.

When UC Davis receives a notice of an infringement by a student offender, the Business Contracts office sends the violator an e-mail notification, and the Internet port is disconnected from the network (or dial-in access terminated) until the matter is resolved. Business Contracts refers the matter to Student Housing Judicial Affairs, Student Judicial Affairs, department administration or other authorities as appropriate. Student violators who do not live in the residence halls must meet with judicial affairs; individuals living in residence halls must meet with an Area Conduct Coordinator. Second-time offenders may have their computer use privileges terminated indefinitely.

“When students’ ports are turned off,” says Student Judicial Affairs Officer Donald Dudley, “they realize how important it is to use the network for studying as opposed to downloading and sharing files.”

For more information, see Web site vcadmin.ucdavis.edu/contracts/copyright%20Resources.html.

RADIO WAVES AND NUTS

“There is increasing interest among packers in developing treatment methods that don’t rely on chemical pesticides such as methyl bromide,” said Mitcham, an expert in postharvest handling of fruits and nuts. “We’re finding for nut crops that radio-frequency treatments offer the triple benefit of no chemical residues, no decrease in produce quality and minimal environmental impact.” They’ve found that maintaining quality has been a bigger challenge with fresh fruit.

When radio waves or microwaves—both forms of electromagnetic energy—are applied to fruits or nuts, they cause the molecules in the produce to vibrate and heat up, much like food does in a microwave oven. The increase in temperature over just a few minutes is not sufficient to damage the nuts but is enough to kill insect larvae.

Mitcham and colleagues at Washington State University and U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service offices in Washington, California and Texas have been testing the radio-wave treatment method on walnuts, pistachios and other nuts in a pomology department laboratory. They have been observing how effective the process is on insects like the codling moth. They have also tested this method on fruit, particularly sweet cherries. They found that the treatment reduces the storage life of the fruit but that it may be acceptable if the fruit is marketed promptly.

The search for a new nonchemical pest treatment is urgent for fruit and nut packers, because the widely used fumigant methyl bromide is being phased out of use and, as of 2005, will no longer be available except for specific exempted purposes because of its harmful effects on the atmosphere.

While radio waves are a success when it comes to killing the insects and preserving nut quality, Mitcham cautions that it remains to be seen whether the treatments will be tolerated by fresh fruit and if the technology will be cost-effective when it comes to commercial use.

NAMESAKES: ROBBINS HALL

Practical botanist. When Claude Hutchison became director of the University Farm in 1932, his first recommended faculty appointment was Wilfred Robbins, who had already distinguished himself with his teaching and research in Colorado. Upon arriving on the Davis campus, he didn’t miss a beat, taking up his new duties in the Division of Botany with the same vigor and enthusiasm.

In Robbins’ view, botany wasn’t a theoretical subject to be studied only in the abstract. He believed knowledge was meant to be useful, and he put that belief into practice throughout his career, which he dedicated to applying botanical knowledge to improve crop production. Along with conducting extensive research on asparagus and weed control, Robbins was instrumental in helping the fledgling sugar beet industry successfully establish itself in California.

A direct descendant of the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, Robbins worked his way through college by playing the cello. A jack-of-all-trades who plumbed and wired his own house and an avid and skilled fisherman, he also regularly entertained a group of fellow professors at weekly Saturday night poker games. Dubbed by California Monthly as “a goodwill ambassador from the University of California to the farmers of the western world,” Robbins had a droll sense of humor and light-hearted, easy-going teaching style that made him popular with both faculty and students. He was, said a colleague, “a most stimulating speaker with the rare ability to teach while he entertained.”

DIGGING INTO PREHISTORIC MEALS

With a shotgun close at hand to ward off curious polar bears, Christyann Darwent spent the summer on an Alaskan peninsula sifting through garbage looking for bones.

These were not just any bones, but charred, gnawed, torn-apart bones from walruses, whales and seals—all that remains from once-tasty Inupiat meals from thousands of years ago.

Darwent is UC Davis’ first zooarchaeologist—she studies what prehistoric people ate to find out how they lived. For five short weeks each summer, she rummages through prehistoric garbage sites in Alaska, Canada and Greenland to understand long-term changes in hunting and subsistence patterns between 1,000 and 4,000 years ago.

The Arctic is one of the better places for peeking through that door to the past. Here, where cold temperatures prevent decay, researchers don’t have to dig far to find well-preserved specimens, especially along emerging shorelines. “In the Arctic, the older sites are exposed on the surface, and it’s pretty much like putting things in a freezer,” Darwent said.

A pile of rocks likely supported a tent site from two or three thousand years ago. And that garbage pit? It’s layer upon layer of frozen refuse discarded by the Paleo-Eskimos who spent their summers hunting sea mammals on the Artic shores.

And what has Darwent learned from such sites? Through her work on the McDougall Sound Archeological Research Project in Canada, for example, Darwent has added to our understanding of how hunter-gatherers evolved.

“We think humans became more sedentary,” she said. “Over time the people ended up focusing more and more on smaller animals—Arctic foxes and hares, which had so much less meat—instead of moving their camps to where the bigger game was.”

This discovery adds more proof to UC Davis anthropologist Bob Bettinger’s model of how hunter-gatherers tended to limit their migrations over time as their population increased and their culture developed.

Darwent’s work adds to the understanding not only of humans but animal populations. For instance, she most recently she challenged a common assumption that Greenland’s musk oxen were decimated by the fur trade of the 18th and 19th centuries. Using maps of historical musk ox distributions developed through bone discoveries, Darwent has established that the shaggy, horned mammals were already dying off at least 3,000 years ago—long before Europeans were toting guns into the wild.

Such discoveries can help biologists working on wild animal conservation, Darwent said. “We’re able to help modern conservation biologists look beyond the last few hundred years.”

And the discoveries will continue. She just received a $260,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct a two-year survey of archeological remains in northwestern Greenland, including those of American explorer Robert Peary’s expedition to the North Pole.