GOING, GOING, GONE

UC Davis became home to one less water tower this September when Domestic Water Tower No. 2—the one west of Highway 113—came toppling down. Its exterior lead-based paint was corroding, and it was found to be less expensive to build a new ground-level tank than repaint the old one. The 100,000-gallon water tower, erected in 1967, stood about 150 feet tall, but came down quickly after it was drained and two of its legs were cut. News of the impending demolition caused alarm among some loyal Aggie alums, but not to worry. The campus still has two of the towering tanks: a utility tower near the dairy barn and beloved Domestic Water Tower No. 1, with its campus logo visible from Interstate 80. In fact, Tower No. 1 was just repainted two years ago in a $730,000 project that took several months and required the entire tower to be wrapped in plastic to contain the lead paint.

STUDENT SNAPSHOT

These are just some of the snapshots gleaned from the UC Davis Freshman Generations study, the first-ever longitudinal look at the beliefs and behaviors of incoming first-year UC Davis students. The report compared entering freshmen from 1976, 1986 and 2001. Among its findings:

• Students’ biggest life goal: In 2001, 75 percent of students said being very well off financially was most important. In 1986, 72 percent of students wanted to become an authority in their field. And in 1976, 70 percent were most concerned with cultivating a personal philosophy.

• In 2001, 40 percent of freshmen identified themselves as politically liberal as opposed to 30 percent in 1986 and 33 percent in 1976.

• Seventy-three percent of last year’s students cited raising a family as an important life goal, compared with 69 percent in 1986 and 50 percent in 1976.

• Twenty-five years ago, 79 percent of UC Davis freshmen were white; by 2001 that figure had dropped to 39 percent. The Asian-American population has jumped from 9 to 42 percent, the number of Chicano/Latino students has risen from 4 to 10 percent, and the African-American population has remained the same at 3 percent.

• The proportion of students with family incomes of $40,000 or less (expressed in 2001 dollars) has increased from about 15 percent in 1976 to about 30 percent in 2001.

Every three years, the UC Davis Student Affairs Research and Information department surveys a random sample of incoming freshmen. The poll is part of UCLA’s Cooperative Institutional Research Program, which has surveyed students at 1,800 colleges and universities across the nation since 1968.

The study results will help administrators make decisions about how to best serve students, said Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Judy Sakaki: “We look at [the results] and say, ‘Are there things we can do differently to help students be successful?’”

The complete UC Davis survey results are available online at www.sariweb.ucdavis.edu, under “Publications.” It’s report No. 250.

NAMESAKES: MALCOLM HALL

The story of Robert Malcolm is a story of perseverance. A pioneer in the business of large-scale farming, Malcolm reclaimed 5,000 acres of swamp and overflow land in the Sacramento Delta in 1917 and over the first half of this century turned it into an empire that produced millions of dollars in potatoes, asparagus, onions, tomatoes and peas. Built with miles of levees, canals and ditches, Liberty Island, as he called it, faced not only the usual farming adversities of heat, pests and market fluctuations, but also floods—and floods and more floods. During the 55 years that Malcolm and his family farmed the island, it flooded 27 times, often leaving its hundreds of workers huddled in blankets on the levee, the Malcolm home deep in mud and the crops destroyed. But each time the levees would be repaired, the floodwater drained and land planted anew. A dedicated friend of the University of California, Malcolm devoted some of that land to test plots for the university. Over the years, Liberty Island would also be home to a school, a post office and housing for up to 1,000 farmworkers, many of whom would always remember Robert Malcolm as a man of character, drive and courage.

ALARMING AUTISM INCREASE

The unprecedented increase in autism in California is real and cannot be explained away by artificial factors, such as misclassification and criteria changes, according to the results of a large statewide epidemiological study. “Speculation about the increase in autism in California has led some to try to explain it away as a statistical issue or with other factors that [could have] artificially inflated the numbers,” said UC Davis pediatric epidemiologist Robert Byrd, who is the principal investigator on the study. “Instead, we found that autism is on the rise in the state, and we still do not know why. The results of this study are, without a doubt, sobering.”

Byrd and his research team earlier this year gathered information about 684 California children who had received services from one of the 21 regional centers operated by the California Department of Developmental Services (DDS). They looked at children in two age groups—7 to 9 years old and 17 to 19 years old; 375 of the children had been diagnosed with full-syndrome autism and 309 children had been diagnosed with mental retardation without full-syndrome autism.

The study concluded that:

• The observed increase in autism cases cannot be explained by a loosening of the criteria used to make the diagnosis.

• Some children reported with mental retardation and not autism did meet criteria for autism, but this misclassification does not appear to have changed over time.

• Because more than 90 percent of the children in the survey are native born, major migration of children into California does not contribute to the increase.

“While this study does not identify the cause of autism, it does verify that autism has not been over-reported in the California Regional Center System, and that some children diagnosed with mental retardation are, in fact, autistic,” Byrd said.

Byrd, a pediatrician with UC Davis Children’s Hospital, and his colleagues conducted the study for the M.I.N.D. Institute at UC Davis to help find reasons behind significant increases in the number of autistic children entering the regional centers. A 1999 report by DDS found a 273 percent increase in autism cases between 1987 and 1998. The report was the catalyst for the state Legislature and Gov. Gray Davis to direct DDS and the M.I.N.D. Institute to identify factors responsible for the increase, funding the effort with a $1 million appropriation.

A TRUE TAIL

“For a while some people stared at me. It really bothered me, but not for long—because I started to feel better, and my dad told me that he loved me no matter what I looked like.” So goes the story of Buddy, the dog who had brain cancer. He was successfully treated at the UC Davis veterinary hospital by a team led by surgeon Rick LeCouteur (in photo below), and Buddy’s experiences are recounted in a book that is now providing comfort to children with similar disorders. Buddy’s owner, Dave Bauer, wrote the book and teamed up with the National Brain Tumor Foundation, which is distributing it to pediatric centers around the county. The book can be viewed on the Web at buddybook.landofpuregold.com/buddy.htm; ordering information is available on the foundation’s Web site, www.braintumor.org.