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<dc:date>2008-09-06T10:07+52:00
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<item rdf:about="http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8771">
<title>UC Davis Business School Dean to Step Down</title>
<link>http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8771</link>
<description><![CDATA[Nicole Woolsey Biggart, dean of the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis, and an influential ambassador to the Northern California business community, has announced her intention to step down from her administrative post next July.

Biggart, who has served as dean since July 2003, will then complete a yearlong sabbatical before returning to full-time teaching and research.

Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef praised Biggart as "an accomplished academic with an interest in the sociology of business. Nicole is a natural as dean. She's taken the school into a new era, from securing a $10 million gift for a new education building to establishing a campus in the Bay Area and continuing to build the Graduate School of Management's reputation as an innovative, collaborative and excellent business school. And she is a true campus citizen, always looking for opportunities to leverage the strengths of UC Davis in broader service to the region."

A national search for a new dean will begin immediately, with the goal of having Biggart's successor on board for the 2009-10 academic year.

As dean, Biggart's accomplishments include the launch of an annual survey of California women business leaders, which focused attention on the fact that only one in 10 top corporate executives and directors are women. She also oversaw the start of construction of Maurice J. Gallagher Jr. Hall, a new campus home for the Graduate School of Management. The new building, on schedule to open its doors in September 2009, will help anchor UC Davis' new gateway entry. Under Biggart, the school also developed a successful San Francisco Working Professional MBA Program, allowing UC Davis' entry into one of the nation's most competitive MBA markets. Next month, the school will officially dedicate a new teaching suite for the program in the Bishop Ranch Business Park in San Ramon. Additionally, the school launched a technology management minor degree program for science and engineering undergraduates.

Biggart said she began her term as dean "with several aspirations, and I am pleased that we have achieved substantial progress toward these goals in the past five years. The Graduate School of Management is well-positioned to explore new opportunities and to develop further. The faculty is widely recognized for their research and teaching skills and is among the best in the country as measured by rankings, research productivity and reputation. The school's staff is entrepreneurial, dedicated and willing to take on new challenges. And our students are among the best in the world."

Under Biggart's leadership, the Graduate School of Management has played a major role in promoting a culture of entrepreneurship at UC Davis. She was instrumental in establishing the school's Center for Entrepreneurship, which has educated MBA students and hundreds of scientists and engineers (from UC Davis and from research institutions nationwide) about the commercialization process.

In addition, the school has continued to earn national and international recognition. The Financial Times ranked the school No. 1 in the world in the field of organizational behavior, Biggart's specialty. Recruiters surveyed by The Wall Street Journal placed the school among the top 30 regional business schools in the U.S. The Aspen Institute's Beyond Grey Pinstripes survey ranked the UC Davis MBA program among the top 30 worldwide for integrating issues of social and environmental stewardship into curricula and research. And, for the 13th consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report ranked the Graduate School of Management among the top 50 business schools in the nation.

"I am deeply proud of the Graduate School of Management and UC Davis," Biggart said. "I feel that with all the momentum we are experiencing here on campus that this is the right time to step down and return to my teaching and research."

Biggart was among the first faculty members to join the then-Graduate School of Administration faculty in 1981, the year the school opened. She is an expert in organizational theory and management of innovation, with research interests in economic and organizational sociology, firm networks, industrial change and social bases of technology adoption. In 2002, she was awarded the Jerome J. and Elsie Suran Chair in Technology Management. She became dean on July 1, 2003.

Today, she is active and deeply engaged in the Northern California business community. She serves on the editorial board of Comstock's business magazine. She serves on the board of the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance. She is a member of the Business Development/Entrepreneurship Action Team of Partnership for Prosperity, a diverse group of stakeholders that is building a business plan for the Sacramento region that leverages its unique strengths and market opportunities. Biggart also represents UC Davis on the Bay Area Council, a business-sponsored, public-policy advocacy organization for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.

The author of seven books or book-length reports, Biggart has also written more than 30 articles and chapters and numerous books reviews, and is a frequent presenter at international meetings. She has held leadership positions in the Academy of Management, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics and the American Sociological Association, and has served on the editorial boards of several professional journals. Her work has been published in many of her field's top scholarly publications.

Biggart received her bachelor's degree from Simmons College in Boston, Mass., a master's degree from UC Davis, and a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a native of Brooklyn, N.Y.]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8772">
<title>University, Developer Sign Ground Lease for West Village </title>
<link>http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8772</link>
<description><![CDATA[The University of California, Davis, has taken a major step toward the development of the first phase of West Village -- a combination of faculty, staff and student housing, a community college center, and a mixed-use area to be built just west of the main campus.

UC Davis and its development partner, West Village Community Partnership LLC, last week signed a ground lease for the project, clearing the way for the design and construction phase of the project. UC Davis will start construction this fall on the project's off-site infrastructure, including water and sewer connections to campus systems, a storm water drainage system and entry road improvements.

West Village Community Partnership, a joint venture of Urban Villages of Denver and Carmel Partners of San Francisco, is then expected to break ground in spring of 2009. Faculty/staff housing and student housing could be available as early as fall 2010.

Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef applauded the announcement. "After years of planning, we are excited to be moving on to the design and construction phase of the project with our private development partners," Vanderhoef said. "We are confident that West Village Community Partnership will be delivering an exceptional neighborhood not only for our university community, but for our region, as well."

Ron Zeff, CEO of Carmel Partners, said: "This successful milestone represents our continued collaborative approach with the university to address UC Davis' long-term housing needs. West Village Community Partnership can now focus our full energies and resources to design and construct the West Village neighborhood that incorporates the values, and reflects the aspirations, of the university and the Davis community."

As currently planned, the 130-acre Phase 1 includes 343 single-family homes for faculty and staff, apartment housing for up to 1,980 students and a village square surrounded by ground-floor commercial space and the Los Rios Community College District's new Davis Center.

In all, the plan for West Village comprises two phases for a combined 475 new homes for faculty and staff, and housing for 3,000 students. Many of the faculty and staff homes will include small cottages, like those at the 37-unit Aggie Village project adjacent to campus. Cottages will increase the population density and provide more student-housing options.

When the final phase is completed, planners estimate that West Village will be home to about 4,350 people -- including 500 faculty and staff members and their families, plus students. The plan calls for a generous open-space network that offers integrated bike and pedestrian connections to the campus. UNITRANS will provide frequent bus service to the neighborhood.

The faculty-staff housing component is a principal reason for the project. University officials believe West Village will assist in recruiting and retaining top talent by enabling them to live locally and participate fully in the life of the campus and community.

West Village will make this possible by adding to the Davis housing supply and selling the homes at below-market prices for the Davis area. The homes will also have certain resale price limitations to maintain affordability over time.]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8741">
<title>Reckless Spending, Not Illness or Job Loss, Causes Most Bankruptcy</title>
<link>http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8741</link>
<description><![CDATA[Simple overspending has driven most personal bankruptcies in recent years, a change from previous decades when illness and unemployment were major factors, concludes a new study from the University of California, Davis, Graduate School of Management.

"The reasons people file for personal bankruptcy indeed have shifted during the past couple of decades," says Ning Zhu, the study's author and an associate professor of management at UC Davis. "Although our research supports the notion that adverse life events, like losing one's health or job, contribute to personal bankruptcy filings, excessive consumption contributes more to the recent increase in personal bankruptcy filing."

According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, 2,039,214 personal bankruptcies were filed in 2005, up nearly five-fold from the 412,510 bankruptcies filed in 1985. Indeed, personal bankruptcies jumped from 0.3 percent to 1.8 percent of all U.S. households during the same period.

The UC Davis study looked at all personal bankruptcy filings in Delaware in 2003, because the state was among the first to make its bankruptcy filings available through the Public Access to Court Electronic Record system and its demographics closely resemble those nationwide. The year 2003 was chosen because it allowed the study to follow cases to their conclusion, and permitted observation of filing patterns before 2005. (Filings may have been accelerated in the months leading up to October 2005, when the federal Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act took effect, by households wanting to avoid the new act's stricter requirements.)

So that he could compare bankrupt households with solvent ones, Zhu also collected information from the Federal Reserve Board's national Survey of Consumer Finance about households that had never declared bankruptcy.

Overall, Zhu concluded that debt accounted for more than 50 percent of recent bankruptcies, while medical problems caused just 5 percent and unemployment led to only 13 percent.

Zhu found that bankrupt households have bigger mortgages, car loans and credit card balances than solvent ones, but make less than half as much money.

Among bankrupt homeowners, mortgages were 3.21 times higher than annual household income, versus 1.73 times for solvent households. Auto loans were double the annual income for bankrupt households, versus 0.4 times for solvent households. And bankrupt households carried credit card balances that almost equaled their annual household income, while the average credit card balance for solvent households was 6 percent of annual income.

In addition, bankrupt households had a median annual income of $25,738, versus $43,341 for solvent ones. (The median is the midpoint in a set of values; a median income of $25,738 for bankrupt households means that half of the bankrupt households in the study made higher salaries and half made less).

Interestingly, more than 5 percent of bankrupt households owned at least one luxury automobile (average age of the car was 7 years), compared with 8 percent of solvent households (average age was 8 years).

The study also suggests that some Americans deliberately spend beyond their means with the intention of using the bankruptcy system to erase some or all of their debt, and recommends reforms to discourage such abuse.

"Our results emphasize that bankruptcy law reform should aim to address the issue," Zhu writes. "Current means test focusing on income, rather than consumption patterns or adverse events, may not set the best criteria for sorting out the households who truly need bankruptcy protection from those that consume beyond their means to take advantage of the system."

The research has been presented at Boston College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UCLA and Yale, and will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Legal Studies, a publication of the University of Chicago Law School. The working paper is online at: http://www.gsm.ucdavis.edu/Faculty/Zhu/PersonalBankruptcy.

Zhu earned his doctorate in finance from Yale in 2003. He specializes in individual behavior in financial markets, bankruptcy and distress, and investments.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8742">
<title>&#x22;Strip-down&#x22; Could Ease Subprime Mortgage Crisis</title>
<link>http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8742</link>
<description><![CDATA[Nearly all debtors who file for bankruptcy under Chapter 13 are homeowners, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis, Graduate School of Management and UC San Diego. 
Ning Zhu,  an associate professor of management at UC Davis, and Michelle White, a professor of economics at UC San Diego, report their findings in a working paper, "Saving Your Home in Chapter 13 Bankruptcy," available online at http://www.gsm.ucdavis.edu/Faculty/Zhu/Chapter13.

The researchers argue that even more debtors would save their homes rather than default if Chapter 13 permitted filers who owe more on their homes than the homes are worth to "strip-down" their mortgage obligation using a formula tied to the home's current fair market value and mortgage principal. The study examined all bankruptcies filed in Delaware in 2006.

The authors argue that even more debtors would save their homes rather than default if Chapter 13 permitted filers who owe more on their homes than the homes are worth to "strip-down" the mortgage obligation using a formula tied to the home's current fair market value and mortgage principal.

"Overall, introducing strip-down could save an addition 109,000 homes from default each year," Zhu says. "While that's a small number relative to the volume of foreclosures that may occur in the next year or two, introducing strip-down nonetheless could make an important contribution to solving the subprime mortgage crisis by providing a mechanism for saving homes from foreclosure when debtors wish to save their homes, even when lenders are unwilling to renegotiate or to consent to a refinancing."

Zhu notes that foreclosures are costly not just to borrowers and lenders but to neighborhoods, because foreclosed homes tend to deteriorate and cause blight that pushes down housing prices and makes it difficult for other homeowners to refinance. This in turn leads to additional defaults by homeowners whose mortgages are "underwater" -- where the amount owed is higher than the value of the house. And as housing values drop, property tax revenues shrink, squeezing local government budgets.

]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8769">
<title>How Temporary Help Agencies Impact the Labor Market</title>
<link>http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8769</link>
<description><![CDATA[Temporary help agencies place nearly 3 million Americans in jobs each day -- but the temp industry's very success may embolden some managers to view all workers as impermanent, jobs scholar Vicki Smith argues in her latest book, "The Good Temp."

"Labor Day is an opportunity to remind ourselves that we have a long way to go to address the risks and vulnerabilities that workers face in today's global economy," says Smith, a professor and chair of sociology at the University of California, Davis.

In the "The Good Temp," Smith and her co-author, Esther B. Neuwirth, trace how temporary employment relationships have become mainstream in recent decades, and in some ways have contributed to the unraveling of the worker-employer contract.

At the same time, the authors argue that temporary help agencies have also had positive impacts, including providing training to temps and offering opportunities that may lead to permanent jobs.

"The Good Temp" is based on field work carried out in a temporary help agency in Silicon Valley.

Understanding the temporary help industry, its rise and the "good temp" worker it produces is important to understanding today's economy, according to Smith. She notes that only about 30 percent of American workers today have one permanent, Monday-through-Friday, 40-hour-a-week job, and that the underemployment rate -- the proportion of workers who are over-qualified for their jobs or are working fewer hours than they prefer -- has reached nearly 10 percent.

"Compared with the World War II era, when it was a marginal labor practice, temporary employment is today an entrenched feature of jobs and labor markets," Smith says.

Smith's previous book is "Crossing the Great Divide: Worker Risk and Opportunity in the New Economy." She is a past chair of the American Sociological Association's Organizations, Occupations and Work Section and of the Society for the Study of Social Problems' Labor Studies Division. She earned her doctorate in sociology at UC Berkeley.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8648">
<title>Feats of Strength Begin a Lizard&#x27;s Day</title>
<link>http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8648</link>
<description><![CDATA[Male Jamaican anole lizards begin and end the day with displays of reptilian strength -- push-ups, head bobs and extensions of a colorful neck flap, or dewlap -- to defend their territory, according to a new study.

"Anoles are highly visual species, so in that sense it is not surprising that they would use visual displays to mark territory," said Terry J. Ord, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis and at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. The lizards are the first animals known to mark dawn and dusk through visual displays, rather than the much better known chirping, tweeting, and other sounding off by birds, frogs, geckos and primates.

Ord studied four species of Jamaican forest lizard: Anolis lineatopus, Anolis sagrei, Anolis grahami, and Anolis opalinus. Females establish small territories allowing access to food and other resources, while males stake out larger territories allowing them access to several females. The males spend much of the day sitting on tree trunks and displaying head motions, push-ups, and dewlap extensions, all to warn other males away from their territory.

These displays of strength help avert actual physical confrontations between male lizards, which can be very fierce and destructive, Ord said.

Ord videotaped individual males at different times of day, from before dawn to dusk. In all four species, he found distinct peaks of activity at daybreak and for about two hours afterward, and again just before dark. Anoles leave their daytime perches at night to find safe shelter from nocturnal predators.

Scientists disagree on why birds chorus at dawn and dusk: competing ideas range from territorial defense to manifestations of circadian rhythms (the animal's internal clock). Ord said his work suggests male anoles use their morning displays primarily to mark territory.

"The dawn chorus may be a way of communicating having survived the night," Ord said. "If in the morning a bird doesn't hear its neighbor, or an anole doesn't see its neighbor, it may be an opportunity for the animal to expand its territory."

The research was funded by the National Geographic Society and National Science Foundation, and is published online by the journal American Naturalist.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8766">
<title>Memory Trick Shows Brain Organization</title>
<link>http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8766</link>
<description><![CDATA[A simple memory trick has helped show UC Davis researchers how an area of the brain called the perirhinal cortex can contribute to forming memories. The finding expands our understanding of how those brain areas that form memories are organized.

The brain puts together different items -- the what, who, where and when -- to form a complete memory. It was previously thought that this association process occurred entirely in a brain structure called the hippocampus, but this appears not to be the case, said Charan Ranganath, a professor at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience and the Department of Psychology who led the research.

"We want to know how the brain areas that encode memory are organized," Ranganath said. "If your memory is affected by aging or Alzheimer's disease, is there a way to learn that can capitalize on the brain structures that may still be working well?"

Ranganath, along with graduate student Andrew Logan Haskins, Andrew Yonelinas, a UC Davis psychology professor and associate director of the Center for Mind and Brain, and Joel Quamme, a former UC Davis graduate student now at Princeton University, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see which parts of the brain were active when volunteers memorized pairs of words such as "motor/bear" or "liver/tree." In this experiment, the volunteers either learned the pairs as separate words that could be fitted into a sentence, or as a new compound word, for example "motorbear," defined as a motorized stuffed toy.

"It's a sort of memory trick," Ranganath said.

When volunteers memorized word pairs as a compound word, the perirhinal cortex lit up, and this activity predicted whether the volunteers would be able to successfully remember the pairs in the future. The results suggest that the perirhinal cortex probably can form simple associations, such as between the parts of a complex object. This information is probably passed up to the hippocampus, which may create more complex memories, such as the place and time a specific object was seen.

The research, which was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, is published Aug. 28 in the journal Neuron.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8770">
<title>Robots Learn to Follow</title>
<link>http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8770</link>
<description><![CDATA[Whether driving on the highway or walking down the street, we pick up on both deliberate signals and unconscious cues to predict what other people are going to do and act accordingly. But robots have trouble following each other around, for example, when a leader turns a corner and disappears from sight. Researchers at UC Davis have come up with a control system that allows a robot to pick up on cues that the leader is about to turn, predict where it is going and follow it.

"The following problem is a quite fundamental problem in robotics," said Sanjay Joshi, associate professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering at UC Davis. Robots that are better at following could be easier for people to work with, he said. A hospital robot could follow a doctor around the wards.

Humans use signals and unconscious cues to build a model that predicts where other people are going. Behavioral studies show that people unconsciously turn their heads a fraction of a second before making a left or right turn. Joshi and his team of researchers developed a control system that could take such behavioral cues into account in making decisions about which way to move.

Joshi, graduate student Michael Chueh, and undergraduate students William Au Yeung and Calvin Lei tested the system using a small commercially available robot, the Evolution Robotics Scorpion. The robot's camera could identify a target on the lead robot, and the robot's onboard computer could combine the target information with behavioral cue information.

Rather than have the lead robot signal the follower directly, the research team sent "behavioral cues" to the follower via wireless link. Effectively, the cues told the robot, "the leader might be about to turn right" or "might be about to turn left."

To develop a decision on how to move, the follower robot was programmed to take into account the lead robot's behavioral cues and the follower's prediction of the lead robot's movement, based on the leader's current speed and direction. Robots that incorporated behavioral information into their decisions performed much better at following the leader around corners than others, the researchers found.

"We think that if we can embed these cues in control systems, we can make following more reliable," Joshi said.

A paper describing the work is published in the August 2008 issue of IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8730">
<title>Jared Diamond to Open International Genetic Diversity Symposium</title>
<link>http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8730</link>
<description><![CDATA[Evolutionary biologist and author Jared Diamond will present the opening keynote address for an international symposium on agricultural biodiversity, to be held Sept. 14-18 at the University of California, Davis.

The Harlan II International Symposium, the successor to a program held 11 years ago in Syria, is dedicated to the late crop evolutionist Jack R. Harlan. It will focus on the importance of using and conserving not just a diversity of species, but also genetic diversity within species.

In opening the symposium, Diamond will discuss whether environmental factors, rather than pure chance, led to the uneven distribution around the world of plant and animal species suitable for domestication and agricultural use. His public presentation on Sunday, Sept. 14, will begin at 6:15 p.m. in 123 Science Lecture Hall at UC Davis. Admission to the talk and the preceding reception will cost $50 per person.

Diamond maintains that the adoption of agriculture was "the most important event in the last 50,000 years of human history." As people developed the ability to cultivate crops and raise animals, they were able to produce a surplus of food, which fueled population growth and led to settled living, technology, social stratification and political centralization, he notes.

He points out that the societies with the greatest variety of plant species suitable for farming expanded earlier and farther than did societies in areas with the fewest farmable plant species -- and no animal species -- that were easily domesticated. For example, cultures in the Fertile Crescent, China, the Andes, and Meso-America -- the land between central Mexico and Nicaragua -- flourished, while cultures in areas such as Eastern North America and Highland New Guinea did not.

Diamond will question whether environmental factors in different regions predisposed wild animal and plant species in those areas to develop traits conducive to domestication.

A complete program for the Harlan II symposium is available online at: http://harlanii.ucdavis.edu/main/speakers_topics.htm. For fee information and a list of talks and tours, click on "registration" at the left of this page.

Among the speakers during the three-day symposium will be:

Monday, Sept. 15, 9 a.m. -- Robert Wayne, a UCLA biology professor and expert on canine genetics, will discuss what the analysis of the dog genome -- the entire collection of genes for the animal family that includes domestic dogs, wolves, foxes and coyotes -- tells about the evolutionary history of these animals and how the various species are related.

Monday, Sept. 15, 1:30 p.m. -- Doyle McKey, Universite de Montpellier II and the Center of Evolutionary and Functional Ecology, Montpellier, France, will discuss ecological approaches to crop domestication, using manioc, or cassava, as an example of how ecology can be integrated with genetics and ethnobiology -- the study of how people interact with the living environment -- to test plant-domestication scenarios.

Tuesday, Sept. 16, 9:30 a.m. -- Anthropologist Melinda Zeder, director of the archaeobiology program for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, will discuss her latest research on when and where in the world animals were first domesticated.

Tuesday, Sept. 16, 6 p.m. -- Keynote speaker Gary Nabhan, an ecologist and pioneer in the local-food movement from the Southwest Center of the University of Arizona, will compare the crop diversity found by plant explorer N.I. Vavilov between 1916 and 1936, with the remaining diversity that Nabhan found in the same areas in nine countries on five continents three quarters of a century later. Nabhan says that an understanding of how biodiversity in local agricultural systems has changed may help predict how well farmers may be able to adapt to rapid climate change, globalization, water scarcity, and weed or pest invasions.

Wednesday, Sept. 17, 8 a.m. -- M. Kat Andersen, a plant ecologist in UC Davis' Department of Plant Sciences and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service, will discuss how Native Californians cultivated naturally occurring plants as sources of food even before the first Europeans arrived and how some of those practices are being applied in certain sectors of modern agriculture today.

Wednesday, Sept. 17, 9 a.m. -- Dennis Hedgecock, a fisheries ecologist at the University of Southern California, will discuss the importance of conserving genetic resources in aquaculture, which he says is now the fastest-growing sector of global food production. He will discuss the challenges in both conserving and utilizing the planet's imperiled aquatic biodiversity, when faced with the threat of overfishing, species introductions, interactions of wild and farmed stocks, ocean warming and ocean acidification.

Wednesday, Sept. 17, 11 a.m. -- Charles Bamforth, the Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Brewing Science at UC Davis, will discuss genetic resources of brewing yeast, which he says is the best example of the major advances that have been made in just a few decades in understanding the physiology, biochemistry and genetics of yeasts and other microorganisms.

Wednesday, Sept. 17, 11:30 a.m., -- James Lapsley, adjunct associate professor in the Department of Viticulture and Enology and chair of the Department of Science, Agriculture, and Natural Resources in UC Davis Extension, will talk about the introduction to California of Vitis vinifera, the grape species that includes most traditional European wine grapes. Lapsley is author of the book "Bottled Poetry," a history of California winemaking.

News media who would like to attend all or parts of the symposium free of charge should RSVP to Pat Bailey, News Service, (530) 752-9843, pjbailey@ucdavis.edu.]]></description>
</item>

<item rdf:about="http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8765">
<title>Troubled Children Hurt Peers&#x27; Test Scores, Behavior</title>
<link>http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8765</link>
<description><![CDATA[Troubled children hurt their classmates' math and reading scores and worsen their behavior, according to new research by economists at the University of California, Davis, and University of Pittsburgh.

The study, "Externalities in the Classroom: How Children Exposed to Domestic Violence Affect Everyone's Kids," was published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research and is available online at http://papers.nber.org/papers/w14246.

Scott Carrell, an assistant professor of economics at UC Davis, and co-author Mark Hoekstra, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh, cross-referenced standardized test results and school disciplinary records with court restraining order petitions filed in domestic violence cases for more than 40,000 students enrolled in public elementary schools in Florida's Alachua County for the years 1995 through 2003.

The researchers linked domestic violence cases to 4.6 percent of the elementary school students in their sample. These children scored nearly 4 percentile points lower on standardized reading and math scores than their peers whose parents were not involved in domestic violence cases. (A percentile score reflects the percentage of scores that fall below it; a student who scores in the 51st percentile on a test, for example, has scored higher than 51 percent of all students who took that test.) In addition, the children from households linked to domestic violence were 44 percent more likely to have been suspended from school and 28 percent more likely to have been disciplined for bad behavior. The impact was seen across genders, races and income levels.

Not only did children from troubled homes suffer, however: Test scores fell and behavior problems increased for their classmates as well.

Troubled boys caused the bulk of the disruption, and the largest effects were on other boys. Indeed, Carrell and Hoekstra estimate that adding just one troubled boy to a class of 20 children reduces the standardized reading and math scores of other boys in the room by nearly two percentile points. And adding just one troubled boy to a class of 20 students increases the likelihood that another boy in the class will commit a disciplinary infraction by 17 percent.

Troubled girls, in contrast, had only a small and statistically insignificant impact on the test scores or behavior of their classmates. The study did not investigate the reasons for the gender differences.

Across all students, having a troubled student in a class reduced classmates' combined test scores by nearly 1 percentile point and increased their likelihood of getting into disciplinary trouble at school by 6 percent.

The researchers conducted sophisticated statistical tests to ensure that they were observing only the impacts of a troubled child on classrooms, not the impact of broader socioeconomic issues in the community. They compared classes from the same grade in the same school over time; some years the classes had troubled students, some years they did not. They also compared how siblings performed when one student was in a class with troubled classmates and another student from the same family was in a class with fewer troubled students.

"Our findings have important implications for both education and social policy," Carrell and Hoekstra write. "First, they suggest that policies that change a child's exposure to classmates from troubled families will have important consequences for his or her education outcomes. In addition, the results also help provide a more complete measure of the social costs of family conflict."

The research does not suggest that all disruptive schoolchildren come from families that experience domestic violence, nor are all children from domestic violence disruptive, Carrell emphasized.

"There are many reasons for disruptive classroom behavior; domestic violence is one particularly good indicator of a troubled child," Carrell said.]]></description>
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<title>Private Support for UC Davis Tops $216 Million</title>
<link>http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8764</link>
<description><![CDATA[More than 44,000 donors supported UC Davis with nearly $216.8 million in gifts, pledges and private grants last fiscal year, marking the sixth consecutive year that philanthropic support has grown and the first time that UC Davis has surpassed $200 million.

Almost half of the total -- $100 million -- came from a single philanthropic grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, directed to found a new nursing school in Sacramento. The foundation's philanthropic grant is the largest in the nation in support of nursing education.

In all, the nearly $216.8 million in support in 2007-08 represents a 114 percent jump compared with the previous fiscal year, when private support totaled more than $101 million. Even without the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant, giving increased 12 percent, year to year.

Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef expressed thanks for the generosity and pointed out how important philanthropic support is to UC Davis as the university enters its centennial year.

"We are grateful to each and every one of our donors who helps and believes in our mission at UC Davis," Vanderhoef said. "Their support and commitment provide new and better opportunities for our students and faculty as we look to address society's challenges of the next 100 years."

Vanderhoef noted that UC Davis has benefited from philanthropy since its founding, when members of the local chamber of commerce raised money to donate water rights for the proposed campus site. Many believe that gift made the difference in locating the university in what was then known as the town of Davisville.

"Even our early advocates understood that philanthropic support could provide an extra margin that can make all the difference," Vanderhoef said. "Philanthropy continues to be so very important to UC Davis. This year, the university has benefited in many ways, from unrestricted annual gifts that provide funding where it is always needed, to the magnificent grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to found a nursing school that is critically important to California and the nation."

Donors in 2007-08 included alumni, parents, faculty and friends, as well as corporations, foundations, and other organizations, according to Cheryl Brown Lohse, associate vice chancellor for University Development. In addition, UC Davis students made contributions, through a senior class gift effort.

Gifts and philanthropic grants provided a wide range of support for students, faculty and programs.

Consider the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's grant to establish the proposed Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing. The grant was inspired by UC Davis and the foundation's shared vision: highly skilled and well-prepared nurses will lead our national health-care system in assuring patient safety, improving quality of care and health outcomes, guiding policy decisions and discovering knowledge to advance health.

In addition to that foundation's philanthropic grant, 18 donors made gifts of $1 million or more, including:


$10 million of an expected $12.5 million gift from the Louise Rossi Estate, benefitting the Department of Viticulture and Enology. The gift will support high priority research in many ways, including the purchase of equipment for the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science and the future establishment of endowed chairs to support faculty positions in winemaking and grape growing. This gift will also augment the previously established Rossi Prize endowment, which supports viticulture and enology students.
$10 million from alumnus Maurice J. Gallagher Jr. and his wife, Marcia, toward the construction of the new three-story, 40,000-square-foot home for the Graduate School of Management. In addition, it established an endowment to provide for faculty and student support, and program expansion and development. This is the largest gift UC Davis has ever received from an alumnus.
$1 million from the Bernard Osher Foundation to endow the Osher Reentry Scholarship Program. Last year, the Osher Foundation gave the campus $1 million to endow the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UC Davis.


Each of UC Davis' four colleges and five professional schools received private support. The Health System, which includes the proposed Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing as well as the School of Medicine, recorded the highest amount at $120.3 million. It was followed by the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, at $29.2 million, and the Graduate School of Management, at $12.1 million.

Of the philanthropic total, 26 percent was directed toward research, while department/faculty support and student support received a combined 58 percent. Campus improvement and other program support received the remaining 16 percent.

Of the nearly $216.8 million, donors committed a total of $31 million to invested funds -- or endowments -- to provide ongoing support for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, research and other university programs. Donors directed $23.1 million to endowment support through the UC Davis Foundation. The foundation, established in 1959, receives private gifts to benefit UC Davis, invests its endowed gift funds and other private assets, and advises university leaders in areas related to public trust and support. UC Davis alumna Pam Fair '80 currently chairs the foundation board of trustees, which also includes 40 other volunteer leaders.

More than 16,000 donors supported the Annual Fund in 2007-08, giving nearly $1.8 million. The chancellor allocates Annual Fund gifts to areas of greatest need, including student and faculty support.

UC Davis receives about 21 percent of its total budget from the state, and receives additional support from a variety of funding sources, including donors. UC Davis has crossed the $100 million threshold twice before, in the 2001-02 fiscal year, when the university raised $110 million, including a gift of $35 million from Robert and Margrit Mondavi, and last year, with $101 million.

"We are very grateful to all of our donors who have been so generous to UC Davis this year," said Beverly Sandeen, vice chancellor for University Relations, which includes University Development. "We are honored and inspired by these donors, who have seen what UC Davis can accomplish through philanthropic support."]]></description>
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<item rdf:about="http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8732">
<title>Biracial Asian Americans and Mental Health</title>
<link>http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8732</link>
<description><![CDATA[A new study of Chinese-Caucasian, Filipino-Caucasian, Japanese-Caucasian and Vietnamese-Caucasian individuals concludes that biracial Asian Americans are twice as likely as monoracial Asian Americans to be diagnosed with a psychological disorder.

The study by researchers at the Asian American Center on Disparities Research at the University of California, Davis, was reported Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in Boston.

"Up to 2.4 percent of the U.S. population self-identifies as mixed race, and most of these individuals describe themselves as biracial," said Nolan Zane, a professor of psychology and Asian American studies at UC Davis. "We cannot underestimate the importance of understanding the social, psychological and experiential differences that may increase the likelihood of psychological disorders among this fast-growing segment of the population."

Zane and his co-investigator, UC Davis psychology graduate student Lauren Berger, found that 34 percent of biracial individuals in a national survey had been diagnosed with a psychological disorder, such as anxiety, depression or substance abuse, versus 17 percent of monoracial individuals. The higher rate held up even after the researchers controlled for differences between the groups in age, gender and life stress, among other factors.

The study included information from 125 biracial Asian Americans from across the U.S., including 55 Filipino-Caucasians, 33 Chinese-Caucasians, 23 Japanese-Caucasians and 14 Vietnamese-Caucasians.

The information was obtained from the 2002-2003 National Latino and Asian American Study, the largest nationally representative survey ever conducted of Asian Americans. Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the landmark survey involved in-person interviews with more than 2,000 Asian Americans nationwide. The survey yielded a wealth of raw data for researchers to analyze for insights into Asian American mental health.

Zane and Berger did not look at the mental health of non-Asian Americans.

Future research should investigate the factors that explain the higher rate of diagnosed psychological disorders among biracial Asian Americans, Zane said. Possibilities include influences of ethnic identification and experiences of ethnic discrimination.]]></description>
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