serving the uc davis campus and communit y since 1915www.theaggie.orgvolume 131, number 6 wednesday, january 18, 2012

Today’s weatherChance of showersHigh 52Low 43

ForecastEnjoy what is left of the sunshine today because we may not

see the sun again for some time. Although we will have warmer mornings, rain will be sticking with us for the next several days.

Stay dry out there!Kenneth Doss, atmospheric science major

Aggie Forecasting Team

Rain Rain

Friday

High 55Low 44

Thursday

High 51Low 42

Today is Sara Kruzan Wednesday! Call the governor’s office at (916) 445-2841 - hit 1, wait,

then hit 6 and ask for Sara Kruzan’s immediately release from prison. Visit http://stopslavery2012.com/sarakruzanwednesday.html for more info.

Mimi Vo

Redevelopment agencies to be dissolved by Feb. 1

UC Davis reaches new fundraising height

To tweet or not to tweet?

Campus store to bring new life to secondhand items

Steps for superior tweeting, hashtagging, networking

Donors commit more than $117.6 million last fiscal year

Abolishment provoked by California’s budget deficit

Sustainability professor calls Aggie ReStore an “idea generator”

By CLAIRE TANAggie Staff Writer

The California Supreme Court recent-ly ruled on two state assembly bills regard-ing the status of the state’s redevelopment agencies.

The California Supreme Court decid-ed on Dec. 29 to uphold Assembly Bill 26 (AB1X 26) and to strike down Assembly Bill 27 (AB1X 27).

AB1X 26 eliminates redevelopment agencies while AB1X 27 would have al-lowed redevelopment agencies to con-tinue operating, provided they make pay-ments to schools and special districts ev-ery year, that is, $1.7 billion this fiscal year and $400 million onward.

“If a political entity has been created by the legislature, it can be dissolved by the legislature, barring some specific constitu-tional obstacle,” said the Supreme Court in a statement.

According to the California Redevelopment Association (CRA), under state law, redevelopment agencies have the specific goal of revitalizing deteriorated ar-eas in cities and counties. The agen-cies replace and upgrade infrastruc-ture such as streets, water lines and sewers, fund affordable housing, provide community facilities and clean-up contaminated properties.

In response to AB1X 26, the CRA has called out to its members to take immedi-ate action to reestablish redevelopment.

“Without immediate legislative ac-tion to fix this disaster, this ruling is a tremendous blow to local job creation and economic advancement,” said CRA Board President Julio Fuentes in a statement.

The CRA said the ruling of AB1X 26 will result in hundreds of thousands of jobs lost.

“We have ideas for ways to restore redevelopment while also providing the state bud-getary relief,” said CRA’s Interim Executive Director Jim Kennedy in a statement.

T h e Davis City Council h a s

promptly reacted to the dissolution of re-development agencies by deciding at its Jan. 10 meeting to become the successor to the Davis Redevelopment Agency. In other words, the city council will take over the role of the soon-to-be dissolved lo-

cal redevelopment agency.

“Becoming a successor agen-cy makes the most

sense,” said Davis Councilmember Dan

Wolk in an e-mail. “Although there are some risks in doing so, this would

give the city a greater level of control over how the rede-

velopment agen-

cy’s obligations and assets are handled as it dissolves.”

The staff report states the council be-lieves the legislature’s decision to dis-solve redevelopment agencies and the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold this legislation does not serve the coun-cil’s goals of fiscal stability, community strength and effectiveness and econom-ic development.

“In Davis, redevelopment has done a lot of good, particularly with respect to af-fordable housing, limiting growth on our periphery and infrastructure,” Wolk said. “I hope that all the parties in Sacramento are able to work together to fashion a so-lution that preserves some of the benefits of redevelopment.”

Most recently, new legislation has been proposed to post-pone the Feb. 1 deadline to April 15,

allowing for agencies to negotiate with Gov.

Jerry Brown and the legis-lature to keep reconfigured

redevelopment agencies.“I understand where the leg-

islature and governor are coming from on redevelopment,” Wolk said.

“In a time of budget crisis, redevelop-ment agencies are a prime target.”

CLAIRE TAN can be reached at city@theaggie.org.

By CHARLOTTE YOUNGAggie News Writer

In the 2010-11 fiscal year UC Davis reached a new goal, attaining $117.6 mil-lion in fundraising, making this the fifth year in a row that donations exceeded $100 million.

The total amount of contributions was reached by a combination of 40,000 do-nors including alumni, parents, facul-ty, staff, students, corporations, founda-tions and other organizations that have helped fund each of Davis’ four under-graduate colleges and six professional schools.

“We are so grateful that this accom-plishment has occurred during difficult economic times, and believe it is a tes-tament to the faith donors have in UC Davis,” said Tom Hinds, development communications manager.

Most of the funds will be going to spe-cific purposes as designated by the do-nors, spanning across almost every aspect

of campus. “Private gifts are a crucial source of fund-

ing for UC Davis as we work to address the world’s most critical issues through our in-novative teaching, research, patient care and public service,” Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi said in a press release.

These donations have helped to contin-ue The Campaign for UC Davis, a multi-year initiative to have 100,000 donors give $1 billion by 2014. With this year’s dona-tions, Davis has reached 70 percent of its goal, or about $702 million, from 82,889 donors.

The amount donated to each program varied. The College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences earned the most support receiving $36.2 million, with the Health Center following behind earning $20.25 million.

Out of the total amount of donations, gifts from alumni reached $7.4 million, in-creasing 30 percent from the year before.

CHARLOTTE YOUNG can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.

By LANI CHANAggie Features Writer

For those who have not yet hopped on the Twitter band-wagon, learning how to tweet may provide for a more useful and informative social network-ing experience.

Since the site went live in 2006, Twitter has gained 300 million users, making it one of the most popular social networking ser-vices. Users can instantly ‘follow’ any other user they choose, giving them access to a stream of con-densed information from multi-ple sources all in one place.

Features such as the 140 char-acter limit, the option to ‘retweet’ and ‘follow’ settings distinguish it from other social networking sites such as Facebook and help to facilitate a different type of in-teraction. Young professionals, in particular, may find the Twitter community to be one worth be-ing part of.

“Twitter allows you to follow people who are thought leaders in your field,” said Dr. Andy Jones, @andyojones on Twitter, UC Davis University Writing Program and technocultural studies profes-sor and an expert in social media. “All of us are hoping to improve our knowledge in the area that we work, all of us have someone who we wish we could have as a mentor. Seeing what they’re talk-

ing about gives you an opportu-nity to engage in a sort of profes-sional development all the time. It’s instructive. Facebook doesn’t do that.”

The compact nature of Twitter posts has made the service more accessible to a broad spectrum of users, including political fig-ures, celebrities, business-es and nonprofit organi-zations. Professionals can use Twitter to create a public platform for themselves, and career-minded individuals can use it to learn from them.

Emma Schatz, sophomore neurology, physiology, and biol-ogy major, said that the profes-sional networking opportunities that Twitter provides would be a compelling reason to start using an account.

“You don’t hear much about the site working like that,” Schatz said. “My impression was that Twitter has allowed people to post sort of pointless updates on their life, so I’ve never really felt the need to get one. But I could see getting an ac-count if I could use it for profes-sional development, especially as a lot of older professionals aren’t really on Facebook.”

Users can follow people they do not know personally, which makes the sharing of information more accessible and convenient.

“We all have control over our Twitter streams,” Jones said. “We

don’t a l l

w a n t to sign up for mailing lists. So if you’re a fan of, for example, “The Daily Show”, you could sign on to see what Jon Stewart is talking about. You might not want e-mails with pic-tures and videos and links but you will read 140 characters about what he has to say.”

So what specific features should aspiring Tweeters be familiar with before getting started?

Hashtags, which take the form of a ‘#’ sign followed by one or two key words, have become a vi-tal part of the ever-evolving social networking vocabulary.

“Hashtags allow you to give someone else a sense of the context for what you’re saying in just a few characters,” Jones said. “For example, you could make a joke or observation and write a corresponding hashtag for favorite television show, and

others who watch that show could reply and be spared hav-ing to say ‘and of course what I’m referring to is this specific

television show’ because that would take up your

entire tweet.”Originally intended to

be a simple device to in-crease efficiency of individual

Tweets, hashtags have become so commonplace that they have be-come subject to misuse in a vari-ety of ways.

“I think they’re often abused, for people who use Twitter en-tirely too much, which I would probably be one,” said Arthur Gies, @aegies on Twitter, UC Davis alumnus, who now works as an editor at Joystiq.com and is an avid Twitter user with just un-der 12,000 followers. “They’re of-ten the punch line to a joke. But they can be useful. For example, in the Occupy movement, they’re a rallying cry and means for mass communication.”

Another feature of Twitter is the ability to tag others by using an ‘@’ sign followed by another user name, or Twitter handle.

“The ‘@’ sign means that I’m talking about you and I’m letting you know that I’m talking about you,” Jones said. “It’s generally a positive reference. If there’s an author you like and respect, you can mention that you’re really en-joying their book. If you put the

‘@’ sign in front of his name, your post will show up on his feed as well.”

Each user’s Twitter feed will therefore be an aggregate display of condensed packets of informa-tion from people who you follow and people who have mentioned you.

“Twitter can foster the spread of information in a viral way,” Jones said. “A tweet can take off like wildfire because people can be so excited to share something that is important.”

This ease of sharing has helped Twitter to take off, becoming a setting for more public discourse, engagement and transparency. It is for these reasons that Jones said social media services such as Twitter are a positive force for the world.

“There are ways that [these type of] communications make democratic thoughts and feel-ings possible,” Jones said. “Many of us worry about the extent to which freedom of speech is only possible for those who can afford air time. Twitter allows those of us who have insight to share in-formation and not be dependent on moneybags to get the message out.”

Follow The Aggie on Twitter @californiaaggie.

LANI CHAN can be reached at features@theaggie.org.

By RICHARD CHANGAggie News Writer

As a part of the university’s goal to go “zero waste by 2020,” a sustainabili-ty professor, along with two graduate stu-dents, collaborated to found a second-use store that is slated to open Jan. 25 at the Memorial Union.

Known as the Aggie ReStore, the project was inspired by UC Davis Professor Ann Savageau’s course in sustainability.

“For one project, students collect so-called campus ‘waste’ or post-consumer materials, and figure out how to make new, attractive, usable products. I knew we had something special that needed to be expanded to the larger campus community,” Savageau said.

Aggie ReStore seeks to provide a second life for items that would otherwise have gone to waste in a landfill.

“Our store is unique because donators de-termine our inventory, so the type of items we provide are always changing,” said Loni Coelho, unit director for Aggie ReStore.

According to Coelho, prices will range

from a nickel to $20. The store will carry school supplies, clothing, small electronics and kitchenware.

Additionally, interested students may also showcase and sell what Savageau likes to call “handcrafted items made with recy-cled materials.”

The business is being run as a nonprofit unit under ASUCD. The staff consists almost entirely of volunteers. Graduate student Carol Shu — one of the founders — said the profits will fund store’s operations and de-pending on the amount of sales, profits may also be used for outreach programs.

Savageau is optimistic about the impact of Aggie ReStore.

“It will be an important idea generator and will serve as an example of what can be done to extend the life of products, con-serve our precious natural resources and reduce waste,” she said.

The Aggie ReStore will be holding its grand opening on Jan. 25. There was also a soft opening Tuesday.

RICHARD CHANG can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.

Irisa Tam / Aggie

Irisa Tam / Aggie

Between the fields of psychology, linguis-tics, sociology and

computer science, there are at least 10 theories on the evolution of humor. “Relief Theory” is my favorite. It posits that we laugh to re-lease tension. In this way, humor is a kind of homeo-static mechanism for regu-lating fear. If this is true, we may get a stitch in our side, fall off our chair and be-gin crying — all at once — from laugh-ing at the recession. It goes without saying our current economic decline is intim-idation incarnate. Like a stethoscope to our anxiet-ies, Hollywood is keeping with the beat by placing re-cession center stage with recent television premieres. With all the humor, it’s worth asking wheth-er we’re laughing at, or laughing with. Just be-cause these shows are pred-icated on recession, their role in relieving economic hardship shouldn’t be tak-en for granted. Let’s enter-tain three shows that have premiered in the last seven months. On CBS, “2 Broke Girls” joined the comedy line-up to bring together 1 and 99 percents. There’s Max, an embittered wait-ress literally playing dead to avoid paying back debt from credit cards and stu-dent loans, and Chelsea, a new waitress pushed into the working class after her father’s Madoff-esque scheme is unraveled. An unlikely duo, they plan to open a cupcake shop to-gether one day. But this is a comedy, not a feel good story, so racial stereotypes and more than a dozen rape jokes in the first six episodes sustain the hu-mor. Yeah, rape jokes. Where “2 Broke Girls” is set in working-class condi-tions to reflect fiscal hard-ship, the ABC comedy “Work It” is explicitly about the “mancession.” This is the portmanteau the two lead males use to describe

the (fictionalized) gender disparity of the recession, wherein males are losing their jobs to female hires. Their solution is to dress in drag, speak an octave high-er and apply to positions as females. “Work It” reached a level of notoriety among critics from the get-go, one of whom labeled it offen-sive to “People of Earth.” Just as I sat down to write this column, ABC pulled “Work It” off the air. Good riddance. The most recent of these premieres is Showtime’s star-powered “House of Lies” with Don Cheadle and Kristen Bell. In many ways, this show bears a lot of po-tential for the way it inter-rogates race, power and sexuality. But then there are the scandalized displays of sex — angry sex, lesbian sex, deflowering a devout Mormon and so on — that

don’t inter-rogate the experience of different lifestyles so much as create a

spectator sport out of them. Though we’re supposed to find dark humor in the be-hind-the-scenes of corpo-rate avarice, the show func-tionally paints sleazy busi-ness in cool, cavalier tones. The Gordon Geckos of “House of Lies” are not bad, but badass. In each of these cases, the recession is not actu-ally the subject of humor. We aren’t laughing at the recession. The humor, as it manifests on television, laughs at women, transgen-der communities, scandal-ized sex and sleazy busi-ness. Recession is merely a set piece to a humor that regresses to the mean by recycling sitcom tropes. If these shows seem old-fash-ioned, that’s because they are. This is all to say that we are not finding relief from the recession. It’s already a destructive economic phe-nomenon, now the reces-sion abets a divisive culture industry. While Relief Theory is my favorite, it’s not the most appropriate theory for re-cession humor after all. For that, we may turn to Superiority Theory, an ex-planation that finds its roots in Ancient Greece. Under this model, humor becomes the self-defense mechanism by which we laugh at the misfortune and inferiority of others to ele-vate our identity. If this is true, let’s hope that explain-ing this joke can kill it.

If you think the byline is the punch line to this column, humor RAJIV NARAYAN at rrnarayan@ucdavis.edu.

What if the magic pill to easier study-ing was the food

that you ate? In most cases, diet will directly impact the key variables to successful learning — namely, mood, energy and brain health.

If these are on your list of resolutions, look to what you eat. When midterms be-gin, you may find yourself cutting ev-ery corner for study time, in-cluding eat-ing healthy. Yet, while junk food seems more con-venient, it can also make you retain less information. Should you be eating health-ier for your grades? Here is why I say yes and what to do for optimum brainpower.

As nature has it, every-day living contributes to the damage and death of your brain cells. Luckily, antioxi-dants like vitamins E, C and other chemicals found in plants protect those cells you need to think. By and large, adding more fruits and veg-etables to your diet will put you at a lower risk for mental diseases and impaired learn-ing. Sources highest in anti-oxidants include cloves, ba-sil, cinnamon, blue/red ber-ries and fruits, artichokes, dark chocolate, pecans, oats, red wine and green tea.

While a green and col-orful diet is important, re-membering the fats at the top of the food pyramid is also vital. The brain is 60 percent fat, and you better believe you are what you eat because the type of fat you consume is what goes into it. Two healthy oils, DHA and EPA, are the most im-portant for brain develop-ment, function and mood.

These are shown to im-prove memory recall in the midst of stress and aging, and may even improve at-tention span. Flexible oils like DHA make this possi-ble by allowing faster com-munication between brain cells. We also have to get these from our diet, so if you don’t like fish I suggest capsules because DHA and EPA are best found in salm-on, anchovies, mackerel,

halibut, bass, roe, crabs and lobsters, all of which are very high in protein, too.

While high-protein di-ets are a current fad, carbo-hydrates are often forgotten. You don’t need a starchy diet to make your noggin work, but I absolutely do not ad-vise going cold turkey. Our brains run on sugar — de-prive yourself of it and you will likely experience that ex-act sugar-craving come back with a vengeance, and don’t take it out on the DC. Not only is hunger distracting, but limiting the fuel to your brain can slow thinking, too. Luckily, there are many ways to get sugar and the best are from foods digested slow-ly for a constant flow of en-ergy. These are typically car-bohydrates that come with fiber such as whole grains, squash, beans, legumes, fruits, vegetables and nuts.

Now, even if you know what to eat, how much and when you eat is just as valu-able. Let’s start with

your morning routine. While breakfast may not improve memory directly, it can en-hance mood and energy. Our brains also prefer the afore-mentioned constant flow of sugar without the highs and lows, which is why I rec-ommend carrying snacks to campus. Eat too little and you won’t think as clearly, but eat too much and more blood will go to your belly, produc-ing the same result.

As long as you eat throughout the day, mod-est dieting can actually boost your memory because the mild stress makes your brain more alert. So why not lose a little weight in the midst of studying? Of course, on a quarter system, this is like-ly a never-ending voyage. I say, you should eat up un-til you’re 80 percent full and/or have a small snack every three to four hours.

So to those of you who choose to eat for a compet-itive edge in school, I hope you are not in my class. Still, I encourage eating for your brain because not only is it good for you, but also that diploma. After all, getting a college degree can make you absolutely sure of two things: you have a college degree, and you have no money.

We don’t have to sacri-fice our health for our wal-lets, though, so next week I will show you how to eat healthy on a budget.

THERESA RICHARDSON is bringing you the latest research to keep your college waistline and health in check. For questions or comments contact her at terichardson@ucdavis.edu.

page two The california aggie2 wednesday, january 18, 2012

daily calendardailycal@theaggie.org

Recession is merely a set piece to a humor that regresses to the mean by recycling sitcom tropes

... you better believe you are what you eat because the type of fat

you consume is what goes into it

today

the House internship info Session9 to 10 a.m.Moss Room, Third Floor of Memorial UnionApply to intern at The House, a free and confidential peer counseling resource on campus. The House will be holding info sessions for applicants for two weeks from Jan. 17 to 23. You must attend an info session in order to receive an application. Visit http://caps.ucdavis.edu/thehouse or call The House at 530-752-2790 for additional info session times.

orientation leader info SessionNoon to 12:45 p.m.1150 Hart HallInterested in being an Orientation Leader for Summer 2012? Applications are due Jan. 30, but attend an info session to learn more about these hiring opportunities in Student Housing.

davis Startups Meeting: VentureStart program5:30 to 7 p.m.Little Prague, 330 G St.Eric Ullrich, Program Manager for SARTA, will discuss the VentureStart program, a free mentorship program for high-tech startups. Following the discussion, there will be an informal Q&A from 6:30 to 7 p.m.

circle K international Meeting6 p.m.6 OlsonJoin Circle K to make friends while doing community service.

davis college democrats Kick off6 p.m.234 WellmanCongressional Candidate Dr. Ami Bera will talk to the club about his campaign and what it’s like to be in politics.

wellness carnival6 to 8 p.m.ARC LobbyThe fifth annual Wellness Carnival, sponsored by Health Education and

Promotion and Campus Recreation, will showcase various student organizations and departments, plus interactive activities, to help you balance your health and wellness. Bring a reusable mug for some free Starbucks coffee.

tHUrSday

davis college democrats pizza and politics6 p.m.234 WellmanEat pizza and discuss politics with the members of the Davis College Democrats.

French club Meeting6 to 8 p.m.184 YoungMeet the members of French Club.

poetry night reading Series: rae gouirand8 p.m.John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 First St.Rae Gouirand’s poems and essays have appeared nationwide in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Columbia, The Kenyon Review: KROnline, Seneca Review, Bateau, and Memoir. Her work has appeared in two recent volumes of the Best New Poets series. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early to sign up for a spot on the Open Mic list.

“why would anyone Believe in god?”8 p.m.123 Sciences Lecture HallDr. Justin Barrett, senior researcher of the Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, will explain the innate mental tools everyone possesses and why religion is cognitively natural, using evolutionary and naturalistic reasons.

To receive placement in the AGGIE DAILY CALENDAR, e-mail dailycal@theaggie.org or stop by 25 Lower Freeborn by noon the day prior to your event. Due to space constraints, all event descriptions are subject to editing, and priority will be given to events that are free of charge and geared toward the campus community.

Recession & regression

RajivNarayan

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Food for 4.0s

TheresaRichardson

True or FalseTrading Jack for jackets

Aggie Digest

EPA Game Day ChallengeUC Davis was named the Diversion Rate

Champion in the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2011 Game Day Challenge.

The diversion rate category measures the per-centage of waste material that was diverted from landfills to be recycled or composted at home foot-ball games during the 2011 season.

UC Davis finished the season with a 93.1 per-cent diversion rate, best of any of the 75 compet-ing universities.

UC Davis also finished second in the category of waste minimization per-person, which measures the amount of waste created per attendee.

Spectators at Aggie football games created an average of .124 pounds of waste per person, trail-ing only Central Connecticut State, whose fans cre-ated just .059 pounds per person.

— Trevor Cramer

to Inuits. Studying the DNA of ancient dogs found in archaeological sites is helpful as a substitute for studying ancient human DNA, since genetic testing of this type in-volves the destruction of parts of the re-mains.

“I’m interested in how dogs were used by prehistoric and historic groups — for exam-ple, in sled pulling, pack carrying, hunting assistance [and as a] food source,” Darwent said. “Our recent research has pushed the

Canadian Inuit dog breed back to at least 1300 to 1400 AD. Further studies are under-way to understand the antiquity and mi-gration of dogs across the Arctic.”

Brown is enthusiastic about interdisci-plinary work involving dogs and humans.

“Blending veterinary genetics with an-thropology and archaeology research is definitely increasing in popularity,” Brown said. “There are so many types of ques-tions that can be answered in ways never thought possible by the simple combina-tion of these disciplines.”

BRIAN RILEY can be reached at science@theaggie.org.XXX

Dogscont. from page 4

By ALEX sTANToNAggie Science Writer

I’ve often heard students swear by the warming effects of alcohol in the winter cold. Even though college al-ways seems to be booze season, can it really help you stave off the flu and cold season?

Those of you who abide by the preachings of ethanol, I have some bad news. Alcohol actually lowers core body temperature, even though it makes you feel warmer.

That drink of hooch you sip to banish the cold acts as a vasodila-tor — meaning that it widens the blood vessels. This mechanism al-lows blood to flow closer to the skin where the nerves that perceive temperature reside. When this hap-pens the body feels like it’s warm because it senses the warmth of the blood.

However, by diverting heat to these nerves, less heat is being transferred to the body’s core. In addition, with the blood flowing closer to the skin it can more easily exchange heat with the cold environment, which can lower your overall body temperature even more.

Alcohol is also suspected to be involved in disrupting other real mechanisms of temperature reg-ulation. For instance, the Army

Research Institute of Environmental Medicine has found that alcohol decreases the body’s ability to shiv-er, a primary method of temper-ature control. Other research has shown that alcohol’s illusory effect on temperature may cause a sweat-ing reaction — further cooling the body down. In more extreme cir-cumstances, these effects have

been known to cause or complicate hypothermia.

So, next time you think a swig from the bottle will keep you comfortable, keep this article in mind. Leave al-cohol to do its real work: social lu-brication and creating embarrassing Facebook pictures.

ALEX STANTON can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

courtesydoes alcohol really warm you up?

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EXPERIMENTAL SUBJECTS partici-pants needed for easy 60-90 min. exper-iment. Perform group decision-making task. Must be 18 years or older to partic-ipate. Register: www.experimetrix2.com/ucdesp. One time participation only. You will be compensated $10-20. Payment determined in part by individual success in task. Help Wanted

STUDENTPAYOUTS.COM Paid Survey Takers Needed in Davis. 100% FREE to join! Click on Surveys.

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Tuesday’s puzzle solved

wednesday, january 18, 2012 3The california aggie

By CHLOE BREZSNYAggie News Writer

The City of Davis has an-nounced the implementa-tion of a new program that is designed to serve local youth. The Teen Services Grant Program will provide fund-ing for existing organiza-tions and community pro-grams that offer mentor-ship and the development of leadership skills to chil-dren aged 12 to 18 years. Anne Marquez, commu-nity services supervisor for the City of Davis, said that the city hopes to make a good impact in its first year of the program. “Our goals are to pro-mote, support and as-sist programs that cater to

teens in our community,” she said. The program is based off of the Search Institute’s 40 Developmental Assets for Adolescents. In addition to providing teens with extra-curricular opportunities, the City of Davis seeks to promote strong communi-ty ties and personal growth. Marquez said that the city also aims to educate kids on how to make responsi-ble decisions that will keep them out of trouble. This initiative comes two years after the city council voted to replace the Teen Center, located Third and B Streets, with the Davis Bicycle Hall of Fame. At the time, a youth interest sur-vey was taken which indi-cated that only 24 percent

of the teens questioned said that they had been to the Teen Center in the pre-vious six months. Many cit-ed lack of interest as a pri-mary reason. During the debate on whether or not to close the Teen Center in 2009, Lamar Heystek, who was a councilmember at the time, said that teen pro-grams were not successful because they did not re-ceive any funding. Today, the city is confident that the Teen Services Grant Program will greatly assist organizations that have al-ready proved to be effec-tive in the community. Marquez explained that to qualify for a grant from the city, an organiza-tion must be based in Yolo

County. Other require-ments include at least three years of operation, and the involvement of a member-ship base that is made up of a minimum of 75 per-cent residents aged 12 to 18 years. Upon review of the grant applications, the city is prepared to give out as much as $10,000 per year to a single organiza-tion. Contracts are for sev-en years, in which time an organization could receive as much as $70,000. The amount of money award-ed will be based on finan-cial need and the size of the organization. Programs and organiza-tions that are interested in applying for the Teen Grant Service Program must turn

in their applications to the City of Davis by Jan. 25. Grants will be dispersed in March after being approved

by the city council.

CHLOE BREZSNY can be reached at city@theaggie.org.

City of Davis to support teen programsUp to $10,000 per year given in grants

Melody Tan / aggie

the Bike Hall of Fame on third street used to house the teen center before teen programming was cut.

&Science Technology

Of the myriad child-hood illnesses and dis-

orders that cause anxiety to pregnant women every-where, few are as common yet mysterious as autism. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about one in every 150 children are born with autism; how-ever, despite decades of re-search, scientists are left with scant clues on the pos-sible cause or causes of this disorder. A UC Davis study called Markers of Autism Risk in Babies: Learning Early Signs (MARBLES) is a unique attempt to find and test many possible causes and how they may interact to cause autism.Despite its common, sin-gular name, autism is more accurately described as be-ing part of a spectrum, called Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) that vary in severity. The most se-vere is Autistic Disorder, what most people think of as “classic” autism. People with Autistic Disorder have problems communicating in social situations, over-react to minor changes in routine and may develop obsessive interests or other unusual behaviors. The most common way to study the possi-ble causes of autism (and many other conditions) is through twin studies. The idea here is that the twins will have the same envi-ronment and same age; the only thing that is different between identical and fra-ternal twins is that identi-cal twins share all of their DNA. If the identical twins are more likely to both have autism than the fra-ternal twins, then it makes it more likely the cause of autism is genetic. However, twin studies have a major weakness. If the answer isn’t primarily in the genes, the twin studies don’t have much more to say. “Twin studies are con-cerned with heritability, while MARBLES is looking for the non-heritable fac-tors, which is everything except DNA,” said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, an epide-miologist, environmental chemicals expert and the MARBLES study principal investigator. The process of look-ing for these non-herita-ble factors the MARBLES way means first finding mothers of autistic chil-dren who plan to become pregnant again. When the mother does become preg-

nant, the team gets to work collecting samples of pret-ty much everything a child is exposed to in its first few years: blood, urine, breast milk, stool, even things like dust and cleaning products. “We do a walk through which details how many TVs are in the house, and we do a dust collection for the dust in the house,” said McKenzie Oliver, the proj-ect manager of MARBLES. “We have nutrition ques-tionnaires, environmental history questionnaires, ex-posure questionnaires, so we get actual samples to analyze any self-reported data.” The work isn’t just on the researchers’ end, though. The mother has to fill out a weekly symptom dia-ry while she is pregnant, a monthly diary for the first year of the baby’s life and a quarterly diary for the two years after that. The work can be taxing. “We have some families

that are re-ally excited to be part of the re-search and will do any-thing to help us and

don’t think of us as a bur-den in their life,” Oliver said. “With other [families], we struggle to get them to complete the question-naires and forms and com-plete a visit.” When the families live far away, there are oth-er challenges. Most of the study involves home vis-its, but they do have to vis-it a MIND Institute clinic, which can be problematic. “Some families already have two or three kids that may be in school, and have to drive all the way to Sacramento,” Oliver said. “It can be their whole day to drive from San Jose to Sacramento, and going to the MIND Institute and having to go back. It’s a real challenge that we’re facing now.” Hertz-Picciotto, the prin-cipal investigator, thinks looking at the big picture of environmental factors is the way to find clues. “Environmental factors have to be taken broad-ly, including nutrition, ma-ternal medical and obstet-ric [women’s reproduction] conditions (which create the environment for the fe-tus) and some chemicals in household products, par-ticularly those that dis-rupt systems crucial for fe-tal development,” Hertz-Picciotto said. Funding for the proj-ect comes partial-ly from the UC Davis Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders (MIND) Institute, but they also received a five-year, $10 million grant from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). “We’re at the first five years of the grant, so things are just getting started,” Oliver said.

AMY STEWART can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

Amy Stewart

Marbles

If the answer isn’t primarily in the genes, the twin studies don’t

have much more to say

By HUDSON LOFCHIEAggie Science Writer

We can build it. We have the tech-nology. Research into unmanned ro-botics has received ample attention lately. This is mostly due to the mili-tary’s increased use of drones to fight remotely without endangering hu-man life. However, unmanned robots are also receiving attention from en-gineers who wish to use them not for waging war but for performing res-cues in the aftermath of disasters. When the terrain is treacherous, the air is toxic or when hazardous chem-icals pervade the environment, ro-bots need to be able to navigate and do their job in the most effective way possible. Researchers at the UC Berkeley Center for Interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research (CiBER) lab are working on a robotic design that uses a tail de-rived from lizards and dinosaurs to provide unsurpassed stability even when the robots lose their balance. “Inspiration from lizards will like-ly lead to far more agile search-and-rescue robots,” said Robert Full, team leader and a professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley. The research team, consisting of graduate and undergraduate stu-dents in biology and engineering, has discovered that lizards use their tails as a counterbalance to prevent them from falling head over heels when they jump. The team added a tail to a robotic car called Tailbot and found that landing safely after losing balance is strongly depen-dant on the angle of the tail relative to the body. The team used high-speed camer-as to film lizards as they jumped. “To see whether the lizards used their tails to stabilize themselves, we had them run down a track and jump up to a wall,” said Thomas Libby, an

integrative biology graduate student and co-author of the study. “We used a slippery patch to make them slip during the jump and if they couldn’t stabilize themselves, they would crash headfirst into the wall.” The researchers found that the liz-ards swung their tails up or down to keep their body perfectly oriented for an accurate landing. The swing-ing motion of the tail transfers an-gular momentum away from their body, which reduces rotation during jumps and fast movement. “It’s analogous to how a human might swing their arms when they slip on ice, but lizards are much more effective at it because their tails are so large,” Libby said. As Libby pointed out, directly copying a lizard’s tail for a mechan-ical design is a bad idea. The live lizard uses its tail for many func-tions that include maintaining bal-ance, storing fat, communication and defense. The mechanical ver-sion will not have to satisfy all of these requirements. Their research shows that the tail from a velocirap-tor would have much more effec-tive stabilizing properties, but there just is not enough data available to know if velociraptors had the same

amount of tail articulation (range of motion) that the lizards do. “The biological form is not the tar-get. If other technologies were better we would [use them], for example, a small flywheel,” said Evan Chang-Siu, a mechanical engineering grad-uate student on the Berkeley team. “We analyzed the trade-offs and have come to the conclusion that tails are uniquely suited to this task.” To undertake a project of this com-plexity and magnitude requires a re-markable level of interdisciplinary cooperation. Biologists had to work with engineers, who had to work with programmers and all of these groups had to work cohesively to make a working final product. “The interdisciplinary team was the key to the whole project,” Libby said . “Not only did the lizards inspire the robot, but the robot was then used as a physical model to shape our hypothesis for the animals.” The robots are not yet ready for large-scale use, but as researchers refine the design, the robots come closer and closer to real-life use in the field.

HUDSON LOFCHIE can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

Robots borrow tail design from jumping lizards

Tails used to stabilize and maintain balance during jumps

courtesyJumping lizard

By BRIAN RILEYAggie Science Writer

Ben Sacks, the direc-tor of the Canid Diversity and Conservation Group in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine has a dream: to take on the huge task of compiling an “at-las” of all the world’s dogs — whether wild, domes-tic, stray, or something in-between — that includes information on what they eat, how they relate to hu-mans in different cultur-al contexts, what they look like and other physical data.

Newly published results from one project that in-volved Sacks, along with UC Davis post-doc re-searcher Sarah Brown and UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine pro-fessor Niels Pedersen, as well as other researchers from around the world, point toward surprising conclusions in the field. After careful genetic anal-

ysis of 642 dogs, and also some wolves, in areas as varied as Canada, Israel, Iran, China, Australia and Bali, it appears that mod-ern European dogs stem mostly from Southeast Asian dogs that were brought to Europe as a re-sult of the Silk Trade.

This is important be-cause it was previous-ly believed that European

dogs descended mostly from Middle Eastern dogs, which in turn descend-ed mostly from Southeast Asian dogs. Now there ap-pears to be very little ge-nealogical linkage be-tween modern European dogs and modern Middle Eastern dogs.

“This was kind of a sur-prise,” Sacks said. “It’s not what we did the study to

look for.” One of the main pur-

poses of the study was to find out if modern Middle Eastern dogs and modern Southeast Asian dogs are indigenous, meaning they descend from long lineag-es of dogs in their respec-tive areas. The study sup-ports this conclusion.

Another important ram-ification of the new study is that now, Europe is once again a candidate for the ultimate historical ori-gins of the world’s domes-ticated dogs. According to Sacks and Pedersen, there could have been multiple domestication events in Eurasia.

“Europe is back in the game,” Sacks said.

Sacks and Brown are also working with UC Davis anthropology pro-fessor Christyann Darwent in a project involving the genetic study of Arctic dogs and their relationship

Marco Fido? UC Davis researchers show European breeds trace back through silk trade

courtesyEuropean dogs

See DOGS, page 2

4 wedneSday, january 18, 2012 The california aggie