Volume 25 · Number 1 · Fall 2007
End Notes
Flying Feathers
Biologist Gail Patricelli proved to be the hit of the press conference for the upcoming PBS Nature special “What Females Want and Males Will Do” — but not because of her expertise on sexual selection or her research on the courtship behavior of the sage grouse. No, what had caught all the TV critics’ attention was her story about trying to get her female sage grouse robot through airport security.
Patricelli uses a remote-controlled “fembot,” as she calls it — a feather-covered model that she takes to the Wyoming prairie and sets up on a model-railroad track. There it moves seductively along the track, enticing the male sage grouse to perform his elaborate courtship song-and-dance. The fembot’s tiny video camera and microphone capture the display from a bird’s-eye perspective.
And despite the fact that the fembot sits atop a model train engine instead of comely legs, she’s quite successful at attracting the male’s attention. Of course “the bar is set quite low,” says Patricelli, noting that the promiscuous male grouse isn’t particularly picky.
But what worried Patricelli was just how well this electronic-stuffed device would move through airport security on her way to the press conference in Los Angeles. Not wanting to check the one-of-a-kind bird with her baggage, Patricelli had it in her carry-on bag.
“I had been thinking all morning about how I would explain this and had my business card with me,” she says. “I put my bag on the X-ray belt, and I walked to the other side. The [screener] looked up and said, ‘Can I ask you a question about your bag?’
“And I thought, ‘Here we go.’ But it turned out she wasn’t asking me; she was actually asking the woman right behind me who had a water bottle.”
What’s in a Ranking?
When it comes to picking a university, college rankings — like those of U.S. News & World Report — matter a great deal to students. But they don’t care so much about the methods used or what the rankings are actually attempting to measure, according to a small survey conducted in May by Dateline UC Davis, the campus’s faculty and staff newspaper. Of 60 students surveyed in classrooms and online university forums, 51 said that the rankings were important, but more than half didn’t bother to check the methodology.
Homespun Host
Huell Howser visited the California Raptor Center and many other campus attractions. (Photo: Cameron Tucker)
Huell Howser, star of PBS’s Road Trip, always finds something that excites him on his forays into corners of California. But he found his trip to UC Davis particularly “Ah-mazing!” For the first time, he devoted an entire episode to one place — spending the whole hour reporting on UC Davis attractions that are open to the public, like the Coffee House, Bohart entomology museum, California Raptor Center and other spots. He was especially effusive about the arboretum. “This is about the most beautiful setting that I have seen anywhere in California!” he said not once, not twice, but four times in the first five minutes of the
program — and that’s not counting his “This is just beautiful!”s or his “This whole setting is spectacular!”s. He was similarly impressed by the rest of the campus, even dubbing the Segundo Dining Commons “one of the best lunch buffets in California!”
(Photo: Karin Higgins/UC Davis)
A Good Fight
A caped crusader wields a cardboard shield to fend off foam-noodle attackers during an “Epic Quad Battle” in June. The annual noon free-for-all was started by students three years ago — pitting forces from the north Quad against those from the south Quad. “Every side claims to be the winner,” said Emil Kasowski, a fourth-year international relations and history major. This year’s battle saw the entry of a third foe — red-caped Spartans — and some new armaments, including a water-balloon-lobbing trebuchet, as well as noodles reinforced with PVC pipe and other materials. However, after one student suffered a head injury, organizers of next year’s event announced a ban on weapons made of anything harder than foam. Several student-made videos of the event have been posted on YouTube.