During a lobbying
trip to Washington, D.C., in late November, the chancellor walked into
the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum and decided UC Davis had
been framed. That is, framed and sculpted. The capital gallery and its
archives are filled with Thiebauds, Arnesons, DeForests, Wileys and
other work by our art faculty and alums. Larry Vanderhoef wonders if
the predominance of UC Davis art has anything to do with the fact that
the Hirshhorn curator is UC Davis alum Neal Benezra (an Arneson
expert), the public affairs director is alum Sidney Lawrence, and
museum director Jim Demetrion--although not exactly a UC Davis
graduate--is close enough: he taught high school in Yuba City before
proceeding eastward....We've been having strange vibes in the News Service office ever since breaking the news about statistics prof Jessica Utts' evaluation of the 20-year, $20 million basic research program on "psychic spying" conducted by various U.S. intelligence agencies. Not only did our office receive daily calls from psychics wanting to be included in discontinued secret experiments, but Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., called senior public information rep Carol Cruzan Morton one day just to ask her what she personally thought about statistical evidence for paranormal abilities. She offered to send him the press release....
Among the tales of far-flung faculty work, we find that not only are people traveling there, they're coming here. Physicians Gerald and Sally DeNardo are hosting a VIP from Seoul in their radiodiagnosis and therapy lab. Thanks to a fellowship from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Sang-Moo Lim, chief of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the Korea Cancer Center, will be spending six months in Sacramento studying radiolabeled antibodies in mice bearing implanted human cancers. Meanwhile, our mountain-hiking geographer in Asia, Jack Ives, spent nine weeks in south and Southeast Asia this fall, doing high-altitude research and talking about the dilemmas of global expansion into the Asian highlands at conferences in Pakistan, China and Thailand. He's also put together a 1996 calendar of his photos as part of the United Nations University's Project on Mountain Ecology and Sustainable Development, available, of course, at the UCD Bookstore....
Robert MacNeil may be gone but Jim Lehrer will be in good company later this month when Sacramento public television station KVIE launches its own news magazine program. Several UC Davis folks will serve as guest experts on "Express," the Monday-Friday half-hour program that airs at 6:30 and leads into the Lehrer news hour. Locked in as recurring on-air experts are nutrition professor Judy Stern, Graduate School of Management Dean Bob Smiley, and veterinary medical experts yet to be named....
Finally, ideas are bubbling up on ways to improve the rather stagnant water quality in the arboretum waterway, says Facility Planning Director Rick Keller. The idea is to pipe water into the waterway from our state-of-the-art waste-water treatment plant when it's built on the west side of 113. Then the water would be directed to South Putah Creek....
UC Davis folks who have news to share are invited to contact Susanne Rockwell by mail at Dateline, 334 Mrak Hall; e-mail at sgrockwell@ucdavis.edu; or by phone at 752-1932.
