Volume 30 · Number 2 · Winter 2013
News & Notes
Global destination
Undergraduate students from more than 100 countries push international enrollment to a new level.
No. 8
UC Davis’ ranking among public universities in U.S. News & World Report’s list of 2013 “Best Colleges,” up from No. 9 a year ago.
UC Davis welcomed its largest-ever group of new international undergraduates this fall with programs to help their transition to U.S. college life, from coping with culture shock to understanding different expectations in the American classroom.
The university enrolled nearly 600 new international undergraduates, up from last year’s 404 freshmen and transfer students.
At the same time, the number of California resident freshmen also increased — up by more than 450 from last fall’s 4,357. They continued to represent more than nine in 10 students in the entering freshman class.
Undergraduate Admissions said in November that new freshmen totaled 5,208 and new transfer students reached a record high of 2,888.
To ease the transition for international students, UC Davis offered expanded orientation services, as well as a new mentoring program and a special seminar series. Similar services are provided for all new students, but these focus on the unique needs of students from other countries.
“We want to ensure the success of all our students, and we’ve found that orientation programs are critical to getting our students off on the right foot,” said Ralph Hexter, provost and executive vice chancellor.
Mentoring
To offer additional ongoing support, Services for International Students and Scholars has launched a new program to train UC Davis students — including continuing international students — to be mentors for international students.
Raymond Lo of Oakland signed up to be a Global Ambassador. A fourth-year student double majoring in international relations and Chinese, he is returning from study abroad in Taiwan.
“In Taiwan, I experienced firsthand just how difficult it is to adjust to the culture shock and the environment,” Lo said. “I want to help change that for an incoming international student.”
Seminar series
For the classroom, a new series of seminars has been designed to help international students understand more about American culture and the university experience. Offered through the Student Academic Success Center on campus, the three courses will explore American cultural values at work in the university and highlight opportunities for students to become involved at the university and in American life.
Sally Teaford Alexander, the center’s coordinator of international student resources, said the course includes guest speakers and teaching assistants who have some sort of international experience. “The campus is really coming together to make it happen,” she said.
College prep program
Another new program is helping high school graduates from overseas enhance their English-language and academic skills before they enroll at American universities. Students in the nine-month Global Achievement Program, offered through UC Davis Extension, take courses in English and work with tutors to prepare for a standardized test that many universities use to evaluate a nonnative speaker’s ability to use and understand English.
They also study American culture; learn about higher education in the United States; and develop skills for academic writing, making oral presentations and participating in group discussions.
Beth Greenwood, associate dean of the Center for International Education within UC Davis Extension, said the program provides a lot of support — including furnished apartments and cultural excursions — for what is a major transition.
“We know many international students experience culture shock and homesickness,” she said. “We help them build academic, English and life skills they will need in college and encourage them to become a part of the Davis community.”
In her second year at UC Davis, Anum Idris, a psychology major from the United Arab Emirates, said she already considers UC Davis her home away from home. “Though the weather cannot compare to the heat of Dubai, it comes in at a close second.
“I was drawn in by the beautiful campus, the friendly people and, most importantly, the rigorous academics,” Idris said. “I can’t imagine myself being anywhere else, and I am very thankful to call myself an Aggie.”
Record-high research funding
Research funding at UC Davis totaled nearly $750 million during the fiscal year that ended June 30, a record high for the university and an increase of about $65 million from the previous year’s total.
The new total places the campus fourth in the UC system in external research funding, up from fifth the year before. UC Davis has had the fastest growth of any of the 10 UC campuses in research funding since 1995.
“This record funding for our campus underscores the strength and breadth of research at UC Davis,” said Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi. “But university research is about more than just new ideas. It translates into jobs, economic health and the long-term competitiveness of our state and nation.”
The record total brings UC Davis three-quarters of the way toward a goal Katehi set in fall 2011 to reach $1 billion dollars in research funding by 2020. Katehi’s “2020 Initiative” also calls for increased undergraduate enrollment and new faculty hires. The new professors would generate additional research grants and programs that address the world’s most critical issues in food, water, health, society, energy and the environment, as well as providing new opportunities for students to learn.
Diet links to breast cancer
A fatty diet at an early age may boost the risk of breast cancer later in life, new UC Davis studies suggest.
The studies with mice used a diet supplemented with a form of the fatty acid known as 10, 12 conjugated linoleic acid or 10, 12 CLA, which mimics specific aspects of a broader metabolic syndrome.
In humans, this syndrome is linked to a broad array of changes associated with obesity that can increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
In this study, the supplement stimulated the mammary ducts to grow, despite the fact that the mice lacked estrogen.
The researchers demonstrated that the diet-induced breast development also increased the formation of mammary tumors in some of the mice.
“It’s long been assumed that circulating estrogens from the ovaries, which underlie normal female reproductive development, were crucial for the onset of breast growth and development,” said Russ Hovey, an associate professor of animal science and senior author on the study.
“Our findings, however, suggest that diet and shifts in body metabolism that parallel changes seen during obesity and Type 2 diabetes can also stimulate breast growth entirely independent of estrogen’s effects,” he said.
Boning up on jaw cancer
Whiskey, a 60-pound Munsterlander dog from San Francisco, still tugs on chew toys and snacks on doggie treats thanks to a new procedure that regrew the jawbone he lost to cancer.
Whiskey is among eight canine patients in the past two years to be successfully treated with the experimental procedure developed by UC Davis veterinary surgeons and biomedical engineers.
“Because the defect caused by the cancer was six centimeters — more than two inches wide — we had to amputate about half of Whiskey’s lower right jawbone,” said veterinary surgeon Boaz Arzi.
Using the new procedure, surgeons reconstructed the jawbone by means of a titanium plate and screws, and a piece of scaffolding that contains proteins that stimulate regrowth of the bone.
“Within two weeks after the procedure, you could feel bone forming under the skin, and by three months we had new bone that was very similar in density to that of the native bone,” said Dan Huey, a biomedical engineer.
Knowledge gleaned from treating the dogs may yield valuable information for biomedical treatments in both human and veterinary medicine.
“Formerly, when we had to remove a portion of the bone, we were forced to leave the defect in the jaw because there was no better alternative,” said Professor Frank Verstraete, who heads the Dentistry and Oral Surgery Service at the veterinary teaching hospital.
Video:
A nano-close shave
A new UC Davis startup company aims to bring you a better shave through semiconductor manufacturing technology. Nano-Sharp Inc. plans to use silicon wafers to make razor blades and surgical tools far more cheaply than metal blades.
The cutting edge of the new blade is just a few atoms across, said Nano-Sharp co-founder Saif Islam, a professor of electrical and computer engineering: “They have atomic sharpness approaching that of a diamond blade that metal blades cannot exhibit.”
Ceramic or silicon blades are extremely sharp and keep an edge much longer than metal blades. But they are expensive, so their use is limited to high-end kitchen knives and surgical tools. For example, a ceramic scalpel for eye surgery costs about $600, Islam said.
Conventional silicon blades are made by sharpening the edge of a silicon wafer, he said. In contrast, his new, patented technique creates blades across the surface of the wafer.
Nano-Sharp is one of three new companies in the College of Engineering’s incubator, the Engineering Translational Technology Center. The new businesses hope to grow into viable companies that attract private funding.
“Every single one of these companies is looking at a multibillion dollar market,” said Jim Olson, the center’s business specialist and a visiting assistant professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management.
Task force to assess post-Nov. 18 reforms
Task force members
Here is the list of everyone who has been asked by Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi to serve on the Review Committee on Post Incident Reforms.
California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, state legislators Lois Wolk and Mariko Yamada and a prominent ACLU attorney have been invited to join UC Davis faculty, staff, students, alumni and others on a new task force to evaluate the campus’s progress on reforms following the Nov. 18, 2011, pepper-spray incident.
In all, Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi has invited 18 people to serve on the Review Committee on Post-Incident Reforms, a panel that she says “reflects the diversity and richness of our campus and surrounding community.” Katehi urged them to “engage in a rigorous and independent evaluation of our progress on recommendations issued" in the wake of the November 2011 incident on the Quad.
The incident — in which campus police pepper-sprayed demonstrators who had refused to disperse — prompted a federal lawsuit and four major investigations, reports and reviews. Those inquiries resulted in dozens of recommendations that range from improving police training and tactics to educating campus leadership about emergency response and more clearly defining what constitutes free speech and peaceful protest.
Since those reports were issued, UC Davis has taken steps to enact many of the recommendations and has established timelines to implement others.
Maya collapse
Decades of extreme weather crippled, and ultimately decimated, first the political culture and later the human population of the ancient Maya, according to a new study by an interdisciplinary team of researchers that includes two UC Davis scientists.
The collapse of the ancient Maya is one of the world’s most enduring mysteries. Now, for the first time, researchers have combined a precise climatic record of the Maya environment with a hieroglyphic record of Maya political history to provide a better understanding of the role weather had in the civilization’s downfall.
“Here you had an amazing state-level society that had created calendars, magnificent architecture, works of art, and was engaged in trade throughout Central America,” said UC Davis anthropology professor and co-author Bruce Winterhalder. “They were incredible craftspersons, proficient in agriculture, statesmanship and warfare — and within about 80 years, it fell completely apart.”
To determine what was happening in the sociopolitical realm during each of those years, the study tapped the extensive Maya Hieroglyphic Database Project, run by linguist Martha Macri, a professor of Native American studies and director of the Native American Language Center at UC Davis. Macri, a specialist in Maya hieroglyphs, has been tracking the culture’s stone monuments for nearly 30 years.
“Every one of these Maya monuments is political history,” said Macri.
Inscribed on each monument is the date it was erected. The researchers noted that the number of monuments carved decreased in the years leading to the collapse.
But the monuments made no mention of ecological events, such as storms, drought or references to crop successes or failures.
For that information, the research team collected a stalagmite from a cave in Belize, less than one mile from the Maya site of Uxbenka and about 18 miles from three other important centers. Using oxygen isotope dating in 0.1 millimeter increments along the length of the stalagmite, the scientists uncovered a physical record of rainfall over the past 2,000 years.
Periods of high and increasing rainfall coincided with a rise in population and political centers between A.D. 300 and 660. A climate reversal and drying trend between A.D. 660 and 1000 triggered increased warfare, overall sociopolitical instability, and finally, political collapse. This was followed by an extended drought between A.D. 1020 and 1100 that likely corresponded to crop failures, death, famine, migration and, ultimately, the collapse of the Maya population.
“It has long been suspected that weather events can cause a lot of political unrest and subject societies to disease and invasion,” Macri said. “But now it’s clear. There is physical evidence that correlates right along with it. We are dependent on climatological events that are beyond our control.”
Who's your daddy?
Pity the male of the marine whelk, Solenosteira macrospira. He does all the work of raising the young, from egg-laying to hatching — even though few of the baby snails are his own.
The surprising new finding by researchers puts S. macrospira in a small club of reproductive outliers characterized by male-only child care. Throw in extensive promiscuity and sibling cannibalism, and the species has one of the most extreme life histories in the animal kingdom.
The family secrets of the snail, which lives in tidal mudflats off Baja California, are reported online in the journal Ecology Letters.
In the study, professor of evolution and ecology Rick Grosberg and his co-authors report that, on average, only one in four of the hundreds of eggs that a male S. macrospira carries around on his back belong to him. Some carry the offspring of as many as 25 other males.
Such extreme cases provide the raw material on which natural selection can work and shed light on more “mainstream” species, said Grosberg.
“It opens our eyes to viewing other kinds of behavior not as weird or harmful but as normal,” he said.
Hero dog
Dental and facial surgeries for Kabang, the hero dog from the Philippines, will have to wait until early March while UC Davis veterinarians first treat her for heartworms and a tumor.
The dog arrived at the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital in October for treatment of her traumatic wounds to her snout, which was sheared off when she leapt in front of a motorcycle to save two children from being hit.
The School of Veterinary Medicine has created a Kabang website, with news updates and background information.