UC Davis News: Social Sciences

UC Davis plans 13 commencements, will graduate first nursing students

Tue, 08 May 2012 11:25:00 -0700

Thousands of students from the University of California, Davis, will participate in 13 commencement ceremonies this spring, including the first class from the new Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.

Commencement season begins Thursday, May 17, and concludes Sunday, June 17.

Guest speakers will include:

Goodwin Liu, an associate justice of the California Supreme Court, at the commencement for the School of Law on May 17;
Marie V. McDemmond, president emeritus of Norfolk State University in Virginia, at the commencement for the School of Education on June 13;
James C. Davis, president of Chevron Energy Solutions, at the commencement for the Graduate School of Management on June 16; and
Secretary General Chris Buijink of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation for the Netherlands, at the commencements for the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences on June 17.

For more about speakers, visit: http://commencement.ucdavis.edu/speakers.html.

Commencement dates, times and locations are as follows:

May 17 — School of Law at 2 p.m. at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts;
May 19 — School of Medicine at 10 a.m. at the Mondavi Center;
June 13 — School of Education at 4 p.m. at the Mondavi Center;
June 14 — Graduate Studies at 4 p.m. in the ARC Pavilion;
June 15 — College of Biological Sciences at 9 a.m. in the ARC Pavilion;
June 15 — School of Veterinary Medicine at 10 a.m. at the Mondavi Center;
June 15 — College of Engineering at 3 p.m. in the ARC Pavilion;
June 16 — College of Letters and Science at 9 a.m., 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. in the ARC Pavilion;
June 16 — Graduate School of Management at 10 a.m. at the Mondavi Center; and
June 17 — College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. in the ARC Pavilion.

In addition, the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing will hold a special celebration of its first graduates at 12:30 p.m. on June 14 at the UC Davis Conference Center, before students participate in the Graduate Studies commencement. About 25 nursing students are candidates for a Master of Science degree.

Established in 2009, the nursing school admitted the first students to its master’s and Doctor of Philosophy programs in fall 2010. The school focuses on preparing graduates as educators, researchers and leaders to promote health, advance quality of care and safety, and shape policy.

The School of Law will award 23 Master of Laws and 202 Juris Doctor degrees at its ceremony, and the School of Medicine will award 108 Doctor of Medicine, four Master of Health Informatics and 24 Master of Public Health degrees.

Estimates of degrees to be awarded at the other ceremonies will be available in June. In 2010-11, UC Davis conferred 8,350 degrees.

Tickets are required for all commencement ceremonies except Graduate Studies, and they are distributed to graduating students by individual schools and colleges.

UC Davis will offer live and on-demand webcasts of each of the commencements at http://commencementvideo.ucdavis.edu/.

UC Davis academic associations award prizes for faculty teaching, research, service

Fri, 04 May 2012 15:04:00 -0700

The UC Davis Academic Senate and Academic Federation have announced their 2012 teaching and research prize recipients.

The senate each year presents Distinguished Teaching Awards and Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Awards. The federation honors its members for Excellence in Teaching and Excellence in Research.

ACADEMIC SENATE

Distinguished Teaching Award: Undergraduate

• Frances Dolan, professor, Department of English — Teaching is central in her work and in her own scholarship. Describing her as a “dazzling lecturer” and mentor for students, English professor Margaret Ferguson said: “Whether teaching a course of 200 or mentoring a single MURALS (Mentorships for Undergraduate Research in Agriculture, Letters and Science) student, Fran pays extraordinary attention to the details of pedagogy; she is interested not only in introducing students to new texts, genres and critical questions, but also in strengthening their ability to read closely and to ask big questions of what they read.”

• Ari Kelman, associate professor, Department of History — He shines at the front of a lecture hall in a way that few others do, said David Biale, professor and chair, Department of History. “Working largely without notes, responding frequently to student questions without losing the thread of his own thought, he proceeds through a lecture, crafting a clear narrative and analysis as he goes along.” He added: “While he sometimes ventures into theater — his lecture on the caning of Sen. Charles Sumner is legendary — students appreciate his lectures most for their combination of sophistication and accessibility.”

• David Osleger, lecturer, Department of Geology — He has “an exceptional ability to get students involved in the course material,” his faculty colleagues wrote in nominating him. In evaluating his classes, students use words like “fascinating,” “fun” and “enlightening.” For many students, taking a general education geology class from Osleger led them to either take more geology classes, or to become geology or natural sciences majors. Osleger also is committed to recruiting students, especially from underrepresented groups, into natural sciences and geology, and mentoring undergraduates on career choices in geological sciences.

• Jay Stachowicz, associate professor, Department of Evolution and Ecology — He is a motivator, engaging and entertaining in the classroom, and “an incredible mentor,” encouraging students to participate in his lab. “He teaches students more than just the skills needed to run different marine ecology experiments,” Natalie Caulk, Elise Hinman and Kristen Kelley wrote in a nomination letter. “He teaches the process of scientific inquiry.” Faculty colleagues Artyom Kopp and Rick Grosberg said Stachowicz’s research experience energizes all of his classes: “His teaching embodies all that a great research university stands for.”

Distinguished Teaching Award: Graduate and Professional

• Richard Sexton, professor and chair, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics — He is a master of his subject matter, communicates well and is remarkably adept at maximizing classroom participation. In addition, he has played an integral role in curriculum development, especially earning praise for master’s-level macroeconomic theory, which he began teaching in 1994 and later expanded into a two-course sequence. Those courses now attract students from many other disciplines. Sexton pioneered the incorporation of industrial organization concepts into instruction on agricultural market analysis.

• Richard Tucker, professor of cellular biology and human anatomy, School of Medicine — He is the primary instructor for the single largest course in the four-year curriculum: “Gross, Radiologic and Developmental Anatomy,” which includes foreign terminology and physically demanding laboratory sessions. Students laud his caring and motivational style, “fantastic ability to present a large amount of developmental information in a short period of time,” and his knowledge of the material, which he “can explain at any level of detail the moment demands.”

Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Award

• Liz Applegate, senior lecturer, Department of Nutrition — She puts as much effort into public service as she does to her teaching, notably Nutrition 10, which draws rave reviews, owing to her philosophy of making nutrition and fitness education actionable and pertinent. Off campus, she gives countless lectures and workshops to a broad range of community groups, particularly those comprising underrepresented populations — people who are disabled or chronically ill, for example. She also works with state and national organizations, and youth sport groups. In addition, she is a valuable resource for the media.

• John Largier, professor, Department of Environmental Science and Policy, and the Bodega Marine Laboratory — He has played a notable and sustained role in service to the public by providing scientific advice on matters related to the health of marine and coastal environments via media events and interviews, membership on assessment and advisory teams, participation in working groups and on task forces, and presentations at public meetings. His efforts are across the spectrum from service intended to spur development of science beyond the university, to the application of science in policy, advising agencies and informing the public.

• Mark J. Mannis, professor and chair, Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Science, and director, Eye Center — Recognized for his efforts to increase the number of high-quality ocular tissues available for transplant, as well as the number of ophthalmologists and technicians trained in the latest corneal transplant and eye-banking methodologies — thus restoring sight for tens of thousands of people with blinding diseases around the globe. Starting 30 years ago, Mannis and the UC Davis Medical Center turned the Lions Club’s fledgling eye bank into the well-established Sierra Eye and Tissue Donor Services.

• Robert K. Washino, emeritus professor, Department of Entomology — Throughout his academic career and now in retirement, he gives freely of his time and expertise to local, state, federal and international agencies, as well as the private sector. He served on U.S. Department of Agriculture and California Department of Food and Agriculture task forces targeting such insects as the Africanized honeybee and Mediterranean fruit fly. He added breadth and depth to such organizations as the Entomological Society of America and the World Health Organization.

ACADEMIC FEDERATION

Excellence in Teaching

• Eric Mann, lecturer, Department of Microbiology — His faculty colleagues said he is enthusiastic about his teaching and strives to stimulate his students to think independently. In their evaluations, students praise his clear lecture style, meticulous organization and remarkable sense of humor. His extensive work in curriculum development included a revamp of introductory microbiology to meet the needs of preprofessional students, and a reorganization of the MIC 101 labs so they could be offered in the summer. His dedication is astounding, said his colleagues, noting that he supervises lab instruction 18 hours a week in a typical quarter.

• John Rundin, lecturer, Classics Program — He is described as being abundantly generous to students inside the classroom and out, keeping an open door for those in need of assistance in one of the most difficult subjects: Latin. “His office is next to mine, so I can hear him patiently explaining Latin forms or grammar — never losing his sense of compassion and his conviction that every student can grasp the language — and also offering encouragement and advice,” wrote Emily Albu, associate professor and Classics Program director. “I see the academic results in the number of students who continue to a classics major or minor.”

Excellence in Research

• Wei Yao, assistant adjunct professor, School of Medicine — Her most recent work, published in Nature Medicine earlier this year, involved the development of a novel technique (using the molecule LLP2A-Ale) to enhance bone growth — offering a potential treatment for osteoporosis. Nancy E. Lane, who holds the Endowed Chair in Healthy Aging and Geriatric Medicine, said Yao has made a number of seminal scientific discoveries at UC Davis. “The scope of inquiry, the importance of the topic matter, the methodical construction of a unified approach to the questions and the gratifying results all speak for themselves,” Lane said.

A year after bin Laden’s death, UC Davis professor analyzes his role in al-Qaida history

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:55:00 -0700

It has been a year since Navy SEALs stormed the compound of al-Qaida terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and killed him, but for University of California, Davis Professor Flagg Miller, the job on bin Laden isn’t finished. He still hears his voice.

Miller, an associate professor of religious studies, has been listening to bin Laden and his associates since 2003, translating a collection of more than 1,500 tapes acquired by CNN in 2001 from bin Laden’s residence in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Miller was the first academic researcher to study the tapes. He has been lecturing, writing papers and penning a book based on the tapes’ contents, working to bring what he says is a hugely misunderstood bin Laden legacy into focus.

“Ten years later and with bin Laden dead, I believe that we are in a better position to reassess the accuracy and legacy of this early wealth of history for our understanding of the movement bin Laden claimed to represent.”

Miller explains the history behind al-Qaida leading up to both the 9/11 attacks and bin Laden’s death, in a paper published this spring by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Advanced Governmental Studies, “Re-reading the Origins of al-Qaeda through Osama bin Laden’s Former Audiocassette collection.” The paper, which was first presented at a conference last fall, is available at: http://issuu.com/johnshopkinsaap/docs/gov1220_ndu-final-issuu?mode=window&viewMode=doublePage).

“After 9/11, we needed a set of narratives to explain how this happened and what to do about it,” Miller said. “We in the United States thought we were the prime target, and we were on that day. But al-Qaida had left many other victims in its wake — both before 9/11 and afterwards.”

According to Miller, the U.S. — in a rush to hold someone accountable — oversimplified its views of Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida terrorist organization, based in part on misleading court records, poor translations and an inadequate understanding of al-Qaida’s history.

Western intelligence and terrorism experts, together with global media networks, helped fuel bin Ladin’s growing reputation in ways that were exploited by Osama and those who supported his militant vision, he argues in his paper.

Miller’s primary sources include the tapes as well as military and court documents related to the U.S. government’s prosecutions of bin Laden and one of his associates, Enaam Arnaout.

Miller’s research suggests that al-Qaida marginalized bin Laden in the early years. By the latter half of the 1990s, however, bin Laden had positioned himself as al-Qaida’s leader, an achievement Miller credits to self-marketing and media outreach — as well as family wealth, social connections among Saudis, an expanding community of Afghan-Arab volunteers, and political alliances forged throughout the 1980s and early ‘90s.

Bin Laden’s anti-American sentiments had also become very much part of his public rhetoric by the late 1990s, Miller found, a departure from his speeches during the 1980s and early ’90s, in which he directed his outrage at corrupt Muslims — not the West.

In the months and years following 9/11, many experts spoke of bin Laden’s “intimate involvement with the establishment and development of al-Qaida,” Miller notes. But that view exaggerates bin Laden’s true role, he argues.

“Given the generalizing and often breezy nature of narratives about bin Laden’s role in history, it is important to recognize their inadequacy as records of the past,” Miller warns.

Listen to two of bin Laden's recordings (with English translations):

A list of UC Davis experts on the death of Osama bin Laden can be found at: http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10200.

A videotaped interview with Flagg Miller about his research on Osama bin Laden is available at: http://www.youtube.com/embed/ngONOOwf6Xs.

America's "war on immigrants" focus of Sheffrin lecture

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:23:00 -0700

Wednesday, May 16 — Doug Massey, the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, will deliver the 2012 Sheffrin Lecture in Public Policy at 5 p.m. in the UC Davis Buehler Alumni and Visitor’s Center, AGR Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Massey’s research points to paradoxical origins of what he terms the United States’ “war on immigration.” While immigration reforms initiated in the 1960s are widely thought to have opened the door to mass immigration from Asia and Latin American by eliminating past discriminatory policies, Latin Americans faced more restrictions, not fewer, according to Massey. The boom in Latin American migration, he asserts, occurred in spite of changes in U.S. immigration laws. Massey will explain how Latinos in the U.S., in just 40 years, grew from 9.6 million people and 5 percent of the population to 51 million people representing 16 percent of the population.

Massey is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. His books include “American Apartheid” (1993), which won the Distinguished Publication Award of the American Sociological Association, as well as “Miracles on the Border” (1995) and “Beyond Smoke and Mirrors” (2002). He also authored “Brokered Boundaries: Constructing Immigrant Identity in Anti-Immigrant Times” (2010). The Sheffrin lectures in public policy are made possible by a gift from Steven M. and Anjali Y. Sheffrin. Steven M. Sheffrin is professor of economics and the director of the Murphy Institute at Tulane University and was dean of the Division of Social Sciences at UC Davis from 1998 to 2008. He is a professor emeritus of economics at UC Davis.

Media sources on anniversary of U.S. attack on Osama bin Laden

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:35:00 -0700

The following UC Davis experts are available to comment as the nation approaches the first-year anniversary of the U.S. attack on Osama bin Laden’s compound on May 2, 2011, in which bin Laden was killed.

Al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden

UC Davis religious studies professor Flagg Miller has examined how Western intelligence and terrorism experts, together with global media networks, helped fuel Bin Ladin’s growing reputation in ways that were exploited by Osama and those who supported his militant vision. Miller’s paper: “Re-reading the Origins of al-Qa`ida through Usama Bin Ladin's Former Audiocassette Collection,” was published this spring in a collection of papers, Ten Years Later: Insights on al-Qaeda’s Past & Future Through Captured Records, published by Johns Hopkins University Center for Advanced Governmental Studies and Conflict Records Research Center (http://issuu.com/johnshopkinsaap/docs/gov1220_ndu-final-issuu?mode=window&viewMode=doublePage). Miller and others presented papers in September 2011 at a conference at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., that focused on the effects of the 9/11 attacks on the United States a decade later. Miller is writing a book that investigates the contents of bin Laden’s personal audiotape library, a collection of more than 1,500 tapes acquired from his residence in Qandahar, Afghanistan, by CNN in 2001. Miller was the first academic researcher to study the tapes. He has worked as a linguistic anthropologist in Yemen, bin Laden’s ancestral homeland, and is the author of the book, "The Moral Resonance of Arab Media: Audiocassette Poetry and Culture in Yemen" (2007). Contact: Flagg Miller, Religious Studies, (530) 574-3758, fmiller@ucdavis.edu.

Civil rights at home

Kevin R. Johnson, a professor and dean of the UC Davis School of Law, has written extensively about how security measures adopted in the war on terrorism have adversely affected the civil rights of Arab and Muslim noncitizens and impacted immigration enforcement generally. Contact: Kevin Johnson, School of Law, (530) 752 -0243, krjohnson@ucdavis.edu.

9/11 conspiracy theories

UC Davis history professor Kathryn Olmsted can talk about conspiracy theories related to 9/11, including a poll showing that one-third of Americans believe the U.S. government was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. She is the author of “Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11” (2009), and has given numerous talks on 9/11 theories. Contact: Kathryn Olmsted, History, ksolmsted@ucdavis.edu.

War on terrorism

Scott Cutler Shershow, professor of English at UC Davis, can talk about the legal, political and philosophic issues raised by the war on terrorism. He is the co-author of recent essays examining indefinite detention, torture and warrantless wiretapping. A condensed version of his co-authored work, “The Guantánamo ‘Black Hole’: The Law of War and the Sovereign Exception,” is available online at http://www.mafhoum.com/press6/177C31.htm. Contact: Scott C. Shershow, English, (530) 400-4751, scshershow@ucdavis.edu.

Representations of terrorism in fiction

Noha Radwan, assistant professor of Arabic and comparative literature, can talk about representations of terrorism, especially related to 9/11, in Arabic and western literature. She is the author of a paper, “Fictional Terrorists: Representations of 9/11 in Contemporary Narrative,” which is due to be published by Fairleigh Dickenson Press. She can also discuss Arab reactions to the “War on Terror,” which is taking on new significance in Egypt as Umar Sueliman, a key Egyptian military figure involved in the American rendition program and war against terrorism, is running for president in Egypt. Contact: Noha Radwan, Comparative Literature, 510 334 6223, nmradwan@ucdavis.edu.

Human rights

Historian Keith David Watenpaugh, an associate professor in the Religious Studies Program at UC Davis, can speak about modern Islamists, particularly in Europe and North America. Watenpaugh has lived and conducted research in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq. He is the author of the book, “Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism and the Arab Middle Class” and has written articles on Middle East culture and politics for the American Historical Review, the International Journal of Middle East Studies and others. His work has been translated into Arabic, French, German and Persian. Contact: Keith David Watenpaugh, Religious Studies, (530) 752-1344, kwatenpaugh@ucdavis.edu.

Guantánamo and post 9/11 detention policies and practices

Almerindo E. Ojeda is the founding director of the UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas and the principal investigator for its flagship project, The Guantánamo Testimonials Project. He can talk about his research, which shows that the U.S. government underreported the number of juvenile detainees at Guantánamo and raised questions about the circumstances surrounding the first three deaths in detention at the base. He started The Davis Group, a gathering of military and civilian lawyers, human rights defenders and academics that drafted specific recommendations for investigating U.S. detention policies and practices post 9/11. See http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu/. Contact: Almerindo Ojeda, Linguistics, (530) 574-4865, aeojeda@ucdavis.edu.

UC Davis dean elected to Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:30:00 -0700

Immunologist James Hildreth, dean of biological sciences at the University of California, Davis, has been elected to the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars.

Hildreth, a leading AIDS researcher, came to UC Davis in 2011 upon his appointment as dean. He left Tennessee’s Meharry Medical College, where he was a professor and director of the Center for AIDS Health Disparities Research.

Before that he served on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he began his research on HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

His work at Johns Hopkins University qualified him for the Society of Scholars. Established in 1967, it includes former postdoctoral fellows, postdoctoral degree recipients, house staff, and junior or visiting faculty who served for at least one year at Johns Hopkins and later gained marked distinction in their fields of physical, biological, medical, social or engineering sciences, or in the humanities.

Hildreth earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1979; his doctorate in immunology from Oxford in 1982, as a Rhodes scholar; and his medical degree from Johns Hopkins in 1987.

•••

Newly awarded fellowships are supporting a half-dozen University of California, Davis, faculty members in their research and writing.

Simons Foundation fellowships went to Anne Schilling, professor, and Dan Romik, associate professor, both of the Department of Mathematics; and Warren Pickett, professor of physics.

The awards provide support to extend academic leaves for up to a year, allowing recipients to focus solely on research.

The American Council of Learned Societies is supporting three faculty members in their book projects on medieval French farces, Mark Twain and human rights in the Middle East. The recipients:

• Noah Guynn, associate professor, Department of French and Italian, who is writing The Many Faces of Farce: Ethics, Politics, and Urban Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern France, challenging assumptions that such farces were used to entertain the masses while reconciling them to lives of subservience. Instead, Guynn reveals evidence of cultural resistance and political risk in the genre.

• Hsuan L. Hsu, professor, Department of English, who is writing Sitting in Darkness: Mark Twain and America’s Asia. Hsu describes it as “the first book-length study of Mark Twain’s responses to trans-Pacific historical phenomena such as Chinese immigration, diplomatic relations with China, the annexation of Hawaii and the U.S. regime in the Philippines.”

• Keith David Watenpaugh, associate professor, Department of Religious Studies, who is writing Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, the first major study of the history of human rights and international humanitarianism in the Middle East.

•••

Professor John Eadie of the University of California, Davis, has been honored for his waterfowl conservation efforts.

The waterfowl biologist, affiliated with the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology, received the awards at the 77th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference.

Ducks Unlimited presented a Wetland Conservation Achievement Award, commending Eadie for his research on food resources for migrating ducks in the Central Valley’s seasonally flooded wetland and rice land — data that contributed to a conservation model for these critical wintering grounds.

Eadie received the National Blue-Winged Teal Award from the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, a joint project of the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Eadie, who runs the Avian Conservation and Ecology Lab, joined UC Davis in 1995 as the first holder of the Dennis G. Raveling Professorship.

•••

Composer-musician Kurt Rohde of the faculty at the University of California, Davis, has scored two commissions and two residencies.

One commission is from the Lydian String Quartet at Brandeis University, and the other is from the independent and nonprofit Meet the Composer, part of New Music USA. For the latter, Rohde is collaborating on a work for small ensemble, with narrator and projected images.

Rohde’s residencies will be at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, where he will work on the chamber opera projects during the 2012-13 academic year; and the Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga (Santa Clara County), where, during the summers of 2013 and 2014, he will collaborate on a film project.

•••

With a swearing-in ceremony in Washington, D.C., physics professor Robin Erbacher of the University of California, Davis, officially became a member of the federal government’s High Energy Physics Advisory Panel.

It advises the government on research in theoretical and experimental physics, reporting jointly to the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

Erbacher earned her doctorate from Stanford University and joined the UC Davis faculty in 2004. She is a member of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland.

•••

Professor Laura Marcu of the University of California, Davis, has been elected a fellow of the professional organization SPIE, in recognition of her achievements in biomedical optics.

For example, she developed handheld probes for identifying the edges of tumors during surgery, and probes that can be inserted through catheters to investigate atherosclerotic plaques in heart disease.

SPIE began in 1955 as the Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers, and has changed names twice. It is now known simply as SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.

•••

Nancy McTygue, executive director of the California History-Social Science Project, based at the University of California, Davis, has taken a seat on the California Instructional Quality Commission, by appointment of the state Board of Education.

The Instructional Quality Commission, known as the Curriculum Commission up until Jan. 1, 2012, serves in an advisory capacity to the state board, on issues related to kindergarten through grade-12 curriculum and instruction.

This is McTygue’s forte. The only panel member with a university-affiliated post, she oversees seven regional sites, each a collaborative of teachers (kindergarten through four-year college) and scholars dedicated to improving history and social science curriculum and instruction in the state’s schools.

The sites range from the UCI History Project at UC Irvine in the south, to The History Project at UC Davis in the north.

National Science Foundation director to speak

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

April 25, Wednesday -- Subra Suresh, director of the National Science Foundation, will speak at UC Davis as part of the Chancellor's Colloquium speaker series. His talk, "Science and Engineering in a Globalized World," will begin at 4 p.m. in the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre at the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.

Suresh was sworn in as director of the NSF in October 2010. The agency has an annual budget of $7 billion and is charged with advancing research and related educational programs in all areas of basic science and engineering.

Before his appointment to the NSF, Suresh was dean of the School of Engineering and Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Bachelor of Technology degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India; a master’s degree from Iowa State University; and a Doctor of Science degree from MIT.

At the NSF, he has established several new initiatives including INSPIRE (Integrative NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education), PEER (Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research, in collaboration with USAID), the NSF Career-Life Balance Initiative, and the NSF Innovation Corps.

Admission to his talk is free, but please register in advance at http://chancellor.ucdavis.edu/initiatives/colloquium/index.html.

For more event information, please call (530) 754-2262.

Nobel-winning physicist and his art critic son debate creativity

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

April 26, Thursday -- Martin Perl, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in physics, and his son, Jed Perl, art critic for The New Republic, will discuss the creative process in science and the arts beginning at 8 p.m. at the UC Davis Conference Center. Their discussion will be moderated by Dean Simonton, distinguished professor of psychology at UC Davis. The event is free and open to the public.

Martin Perl is a professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Stanford University. He shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery of a subatomic particle, the tau lepton. Jed Perl has been art critic for The New Republic since 1994. He is the author of a number of books, including "New Art City: Manhattan at Mid-Century" (2005), which was an Atlantic Monthly best book of the year and a New York Times notable book. Jed Perl is currently a visiting professor of liberal studies at The New School in New York City.

Simonton has written extensively on genius and creativity in science and art. Among his current projects is an upcoming book, the "Handbook of Genius," to be published by Wiley-Blackwell. He is also president of the Society of General Psychology.

The event is sponsored by the UC Davis College of Letters and Science, the Office of University Development, Department of Physics, and the Art Studio Program.

Human Rights Watch director to speak March 5

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

March 5, Monday — The inaugural UC Davis Provost’s Lecture in Human Rights features Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. The lecture is free and open to the public, and will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Walter A. Buehler Alumni and Visitor’s Center, AGR Room. Whitson’s talk “At last, an Arab Spring: Black Swans of the Middle East; Human Rights Watch Reports from the Ground,” will address the role of the international community in Arab uprisings and challenges ahead.

The lecture opens UC Davis’ celebration of Human Rights and Humanities Week March 5-9. More information: http://humanrightsinitiative.ucdavis.edu/human-rights-and-the-humanities-week-march-5-9-2012/.

Whitson is an expert on Middle East and North Africa issues, having led landmark investigations of human rights conditions in Libya and Saudi Arabia since joining Human Rights Watch in 2004. She graduated from UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School. Whitson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Whitson’s full bio: http://www.hrw.org/en/bios/sarah-leah-whitson.

The Provost’s Lecture in Human Rights demonstrates UC Davis’ commitment to human rights, said Ralph J. Hexter, UC Davis provost and executive vice chancellor and a longtime advocate of human rights on college campuses.

"A commitment to human rights has always been central to UC Davis — to what we believe as an institution, and to our mission of public service," said Hexter. "In recent years, the subject of human rights has not only gained a new prominence, and urgency, around the globe, but also received a growing amount of scholarly attention — a key component in the advancement of this cause. I am personally delighted to contribute to our campus’ work in this crucial area through the establishment, this year, of the Provost’s Lecture in Human Rights."

Hispanic bar association, Mensa honor UC Davis professors

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

University of California, Davis, faculty members recently received top honors from the Hispanic National Bar Association and Mensa. In addition, the California Invasive Plant Council recognized a UC Davis expert in weed control.

The bar association presented its highest honor, the Lincoln-Juarez Award, to Professor Emeritus Cruz Reynoso, recognizing him as “a lifelong trailblazer who is dedicated to helping those of humble beginnings have access to the legal system.”

Reynoso joined the law school faculty in 2001 and was the first to hold the Boochever and Bird Chair for the Study and Teaching of Freedom and Equality.

From civil rights attorney representing California farmworkers, Reynoso rose to become an associate justice of California’s 3rd District Court of Appeal and the state Supreme Court. President Clinton appointed him to the Commission on Civil Rights and subsequently presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Reynoso co-founded the Hispanic National Bar Association, which named its highest award after Abraham Lincoln and Benito Juarez, the presidents of the United States and Mexico, contemporaries, both lawyers who fought injustice.

Psychology professor Dean Simonton and one of his former graduate students, Anna V. Song, shared the 2011 Mensa Award for Excellence in Research. Song is now an assistant professor at UC Merced.

Mensa International Ltd., whose goals include fostering human intelligence for the benefit of humanity, joined with the Mensa Education and Research Foundation in honoring Simonton and Song for their study, “Eminence, IQ, Physical and Mental Health and Achievement Domain: Cox’s 282 Geniuses Revisited,” published in 2009 in Psychological Science.

The California Invasive Plant Council presented its highest honor to Joe DiTomaso, a Davis-based UC Cooperative Extension specialist who serves as director of the UC Weed Research and Information Center.

DiTomaso helped establish the state council in 1992. Over the years, he has provided “extremely valuable resources, tools and books for land managers in California and beyond, and for helping guide Cal-IPC in many endeavors,” the council declared in giving him the Jake Sigg Award for Vision and Dedicated Service.

Cal-IPC, in cooperation with other nonprofit organizations, as well as industry and government agencies, works to protect California’s land and water from invasive plants through science, education and policy.

DiTomaso is a fellow of the Weed Science Society of America and editor-in-chief of the journal Invasive Plant Science and Management.

Couples in the same place emotionally stay together, UC Davis study says

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Despite life’s ups and downs, couples whose feelings are in sync consistently over time are more likely to stay together, says a University of California, Davis, study.

“We found that the longer periods of stability for the couple were great predictors of staying together,” said Emilio Ferrer, a psychology professor and principal author of a research paper on the topic.

Researchers looked at surveys of 131 couples of various ages, married and unmarried, and analyzed their responses to daily questionnaires for at least 60 days and as long as 90 days. The test subjects recorded their emotions for nine positive feelings such as “trusted,” “physically intimate” and “free,” and nine negative mood feelings, such as “discouraged,” “lonely,” “angry” and “deceived.”

The researchers followed up after one to two years to inquire about each test pair’s status as a couple. The researchers were able to get the information from 94 couples; 72 of them, or 76 percent, reported still being together.

“Our emotions fluctuate every day and throughout the day … and there is substantial variation in the way individuals react to different things that happen,” Ferrer said.

Yet, even if both halves of a couple react differently, they can still be in the same place emotionally — and have a better chance of staying together, Ferrer said.

Differences in the emotions between members of a couple, even for three or four days at a time, was a predictor of couples breaking up. Ferrer said this was true even for couples whose times of unhappiness were followed by periods of happiness.

“If they move around on the chart and are not consistent, they were more likely to break up,” he said.

The paper, “Analyzing the Dynamics of Affective Dyadic Interactions Using Patterns of Intra- and Inter-individual Variability,” is due to be published in the February issue of Multivariate Behavioral Research.

The paper can be accessed here: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/ferrer/pubs/MBR_Fixations_2012.pdf

The National Science Foundation supported the research.

Co-authors: Joel S. Steele, a former student in Ferrer’s lab and current assistant professor at Portland State University; and Fushing Hsieh, a UC Davis statistics professor.

All couples surveyed were from the Sacramento region, and ranged in age from 19 to 74. The length of their relationships ranged from eight months to 35 years.

Of the 113 couples, 19 never responded when asked if they were still together one to two years later. Ferrer said it was unclear whether those who did not answer had moved, were tired of the study or had broken up.

Two people in their 70s comprised one of the most emotionally consistent relationships, Ferrer said.

“So, either they figured it out by then, or they had always been this way,” he said.

Monogamous societies have fewer social problems than polygamous ones, UC Davis researcher says

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Compared to monogamous societies, polygamous cultures see more rape, kidnapping, murder, assault, robbery, fraud, child neglect and child abuse, a new UC Davis study suggests.

The reason: When men take multiple wives, the competition for fewer available women results in greater levels of strife, the researchers hypothesize.

The findings may explain the global rise of monogamy as the dominant marriage institution in recent centuries, replacing the polygamy once practiced by 85 percent of the world’s societies, said Peter Richerson, an environmental science professor at UC Davis and co-author of the study, which appears in the January issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

“We wanted to understand both why monogamous societies have been economically more successful in the last few centuries and why monogamy has spread to many formerly polygamous societies in the course of modernization,” he said.

Criminological data suggest that unmarried men, particularly unmarried men of lower social status with lesser prospects of attracting wives, are disproportionately responsible for violent and other seriously disruptive behavior, he said.

Polygamy continues to be practiced in parts of Africa, Asia, the Middle East and North America.

“The emergence of monogamous marriage is also puzzling because multiple marriage is mostly practiced by the economic and political elite who should be in a position to defend the practice,” Richerson said. “South African President Jacob Zuma, for example, is proud of having several wives.”

But, Richerson pointed out, what seems good for the man who has many wives does not work out as well for the rest of society.

“Our findings suggest that institutionalized monogamous marriage provides greater net benefits for society at large by reducing social problems that are inherent in polygamous societies,” he said.

By shifting male efforts from seeking wives to paternal investment, institutionalized monogamy increases long-term planning, economic productivity, financial savings and child investment, the study found.

Monogamous marriage also results in significant improvements in child welfare, including lower rates of child neglect, abuse, accidental death, homicide and intra-household conflict, the study found. These benefits result from greater levels of parental investment, smaller households and increased direct “blood relatedness” in monogamous family households, according to the researchers.

Joseph Henrich, a cultural anthropologist at the University of British Columbia, led the study, working with Richerson and Robert Boyd, a UCLA anthropology professor.

The study, “The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage,” is available online: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1589/657.full.pdf.