CNR Headlines

Olliff, CRS Major, Wins University's Top Honor

2012-05-09T20:42:19Z

Eric Olliff, who is earning a B.S. in conservation and resource studies and a B.A. in Chinese language and literature, is the University Medalist, the annual award bestowed on Berkeley’s top graduating senior for the last 150 years. The prestigious award comes with a $2,500 prize and the chance to address the campus-wide graduation, Commencement Convocation 2012, on Saturday (May 12) at Edwards Track Stadium.

A 10th-grade trip to Tibet underscored Olliff’s developing interest in foreign language and culture, as well as the outdoors. When he arrived on campus in spring 2008, he already had taken four years of high school Mandarin and decided to major at UC Berkeley in Chinese language and literature.

But after attending CNR’s eight-week Forestry Field Camp in the Sierra Nevada in the summer of ’09, he experienced a shift.

]]> There, he witnessed a 150-foot Ponderosa pine’s breathtaking crash to Earth and worked side-by-side with Distinguished Teaching Award winner Joe McBride, a professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning who researches the effects of urban forests on air pollution in China and fire’s role in the Sierra. Olliff also won the camp’s prize for the highest marks in plant-species recognition, and his “memorial chair” was placed 70 feet up in a towering Douglas fir.

Shortly after camp, Olliff decided to double major in conservation and resource studies — and he hasn’t looked back.

He went on to work on a Yunnan Province deforestation independent-research project while attending a six-month study abroad program in 2010. All courses were in Mandarin, and it was the only language spoken. At the program’s end, Olliff gave a 45-minute presentation on his project to others in the program — all in Mandarin.

Since China, he’s studied on the Polynesian island of Mo’orea, a field site closely associated with CNR research, and investigated the symbiotic relationship between the sea star shrimp and pin cushion sea star. In a memorable exchange, he discussed the project with George Roderick, UC Berkeley professor of population, chemical and molecular biology, while they sailed in a tropical lagoon.

Last summer, Olliff interned with the Waves of Hope nonprofit foundation in Northern Nicaragua, helping with sea turtle conservation, teaching English to local adults and children, and lending a hand in the community garden.

To qualify for the University Medal, students must have a GPA of at least 3.96 by the end of the semester before their graduation, and then submit an essay, a resume and several letters of recommendation if they wish to be considered. The medalist is chosen by the UC Berkeley Committee on Prizes.

Olliff, whose cumulative GPA was 3.99, credits his mother for teaching him time-management skills that help him work and play equally effectively and hard. But he says his soon-to-be alma mater, where he encountered a lifelong friend living a floor below him in the residence hall, gets its share of credit, too.

In the essay he submitted for University Medal consideration, Olliff wrote, “In my mind, Berkeley is synonymous with opportunity, and the students who take advantage of these opportunities represent the university’s highest ideals.”

Read the UC Berkeley Public Affairs story, from which this article is adapted.

CNR and the University Medal

University Medalists have come from across the campus, and CNR graduates appear six times in the distinguished roster.

2012: Eric Olliff, Conservation and Resource Studies & Chinese Language and Literature
1984: David Kin Cheung, Nutritional Sciences
1981: Joshua LaBaer, Nutritional Sciences
1979: Linda Spangler, Conservation & Natural Resources
1973: Kenneth Stumpf, Forestry
1950: Kenneth Leslie Babcock, College of Agriculture

Forestry Club Marks Centennial With New Benches

2012-05-08T00:57:17Z

Six new carved redwood benches, weighing 1,500-2,000 pounds each, made the journey from UC Russell Reservation, a research facility in the hills of Contra Costa County, to their new home adjacent to Mulford Hall today (May 7) to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the UC Berkeley Forestry Club. The new 10-foot-long benches were carved by current forestry students, fire science associate professor Scott Stephens, and Tom Klatt, the environmental projects manager with the Vice Provost’s office.

The Forestry Club commemorative benches, in place less than a day, are already an appealing resting spot.

]]> “This project has been in the works for two and half years,” said Stephens. “Maybe they will make it to the bicentennial of the Forestry Club." The historic club was created before the forestry major at UC Berkeley, and this early group was influential in the creation of the forestry major that is still in place today at the College of Natural Resources.

The new seating area replaces the now-decomposing benches that have been on campus since 1922, when "The Foresters' Circle" was placed in the eucalyptus grove by the then-fledgling Foresty Club. The benches later migrated to several campus locations, including Mulford Hall. The plaques from the original benches will be placed in a case in Mulford, where there is already an extensive wood exhibit on the first floor.

The logs for the new benches were donated by Humboldt Redwood Company and each bench has a plaque, some commemorating the centennial, and some bearing the same inscription as the original benches: “May the ideals fostered here play a worthy part in the conservation of the beauty and usefulness of our forests.”

The original Foresters' Circle was placed in the Eucalyptus Grove in 1922 and is now badly decomposed.

Heavy chains secured the load on its journey to campus.

Tom Klatt drives the forklift as Scott Stephens makes adjustments.

Tom Klatt drives the forklift as Tim Pine (top) and Scott Stephens steady the load.

The nearly 2,000 pound log bench is hoisted above the narrow entryway.

The first bench is placed in a shady corner.

The inscription on the new plaque is the same as on the original 1922 benches.

Story and photos by Ann Brody Guy

Steelhead trout lose out when wine country water is low

2012-05-07T19:18:52Z

By Sarah Yang, Public Affairs

The competition between farmers and fish for precious water in California is intensifying in wine country, suggests a new study by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.

The findings, published in the May issue of the journal Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, link higher death rates for threatened juvenile steelhead trout with low water levels in the summer and the amount of vineyard acreage upstream.

Juvenile steelhead trout, shown here in a small stream pool, are hit hard when water levels are low. (Ted Grantham photo)

The researchers found that juvenile steelhead trout are particularly at risk during the dry summer season typical of California's Mediterranean climate. Of the juvenile steelhead trout present in June, on average only 30 percent survived to the late summer. In years with higher rainfall and in watersheds with less vineyard land use, the survival of juvenile trout over the summer was significantly higher.

The researchers pointed out that summer stream flow has been inadequately addressed in salmon and trout conservation efforts. Previous studies have highlighted other limiting factors such as habitat degradation and water quality, but here researchers documented the importance of water quantity for restoring threatened populations.

"Nearly all of California's salmon and trout populations are on the path to extinction and if we're going to bring these fish back to healthy levels, we have to change the way we manage our water," said lead author Theodore Grantham, a recent Ph.D. graduate from UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management (ESPM). "Water withdrawals for agricultural uses can reduce or eliminate the limited amount of habitat available to sustain these cold-water fish through the summer. I don't suggest we get rid of vineyards, but we do need to focus our attention on water management strategies that reduce summer water use. I believe we can protect flows for fish and still have our glass of wine."

Read the full story at the source.

Fatty-Liver Disease Discovery Promises New Treatments, Has Cal Researchers Shouting “Go Bears!”

2012-05-02T01:38:34Z

Two types of naturally produced substances—one of them a bear bile acid—reduce the uptake of fat by the liver, opening the door to the development of new treatments for fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, published online last week (April 24) in the journal Hepatology.

“Fatty liver disease goes hand in hand with the obesity epidemic and it exacerbates insulin resistance in people with type 2 diabetes,” said Andreas Stahl, professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology and the senior author on the study. “The discovery that these compounds are effective in slowing or blocking the disease creates new potential prevention and treatment approaches for these obesity-related conditions.”

One in three adults and a growing number of children in developed countries are estimated to suffer from fatty liver disease, according to the widely cited Dallas Heart Study, and it is frequently underdiagnosed. But beyond the potential medical significance of the finding, Stahl said, the study had some fascinating surprises for the research team. The most common bear bile acid, ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), was one of only two substances out of more than 30 tested that researchers found to be effective.

]]> “Naturally, as good Cal citizens we let loose a few ‘Go Bears!’ shouts when we saw the results,” he said. In addition, UDCA is also the main ingredient in a traditional Chinese medicine used to treat liver disorders. “With traditional remedies, it’s usually difficult for scientists to verify if they work, and if they do work, how they work,” Stahl said. “Our findings shed new light on how a centuries-old remedy might be effective in treating liver disease.”

The second effective compound, deoxycholic acid (DCA), a common human bile acid, opens up another significant new avenue for treatment options. “Our bodies already make DCA, and this findings indicates that manipulating our levels of it, through diet or drugs, can lower the amount of fat the liver absorbs,” said the study’s lead author Biao Nie, who was a postdoctoral researcher in Stahl’s lab at the time of the study and is now at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

One fatty liver, many causes

Fat accumulation in the liver, an organ central to the body’s metabolism, can have detrimental effects throughout the body, including increased cardiovascular disease risk and the development of insulin resistance, the hallmark of pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes. A fatty liver can lead to life-threatening conditions such as liver failure or cancer if combined with a second hit—alcohol abuse, infections, or certain drugs, for example.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease can result from the excessive uptake and storage of dietary fat by the liver, or from the liver converting carbohydrates into fat. Thus, blocking the liver from absorbing fat—with UDCA, for example—would mainly help people on a high-fat rather than high-carb diet. In fact, UDCA previously had been tested as a treatment for fatty liver disease, with mixed results. But these studies may have not seen the effectiveness of UDCA, Stahl said, because it will only be effective on the specific subgroup of people whose condition is caused mainly by a high-fat diet—which in the United States is frequently the case.

“I hope that our result will prompt a re-evaluation of UDCA for clinical use in treating fatty liver disease and potentially type 2 diabetes,” Stahl said. UDCA, produced synthetically, is already used in Western medicine to treat gallstone and related diseases and is known to be safe, even at high doses.

A focus on bile acids

Bile acids, produced by all mammals, are the product of the breakdown of cholesterol and in humans are stored in the gallbladder. They eliminate extra cholesterol, and, thanks to their soap-like properties, aid in the absorption of dietary fats.

The study tested the ability of various bile acids to impede transporter proteins that carry fat, in the form of fatty acid, into the liver. It followed up on previous research, also in Stahl’s lab, that first identified these liver-specific transporters as good targets for inhibiting fat uptake to the liver, and then found a bile acid to be the one compound, out of more than 1,000 various molecules tested, to inhibit the fatty liver–specific transporters. Building on that research, this new study tested more than 30 bile acids in an attempt to discover which ones were most effective in blocking the liver-specific transporters.

After identifying UDCA and DCA as the two most effective inhibitor compounds, researchers showed that mice that ate a high-fat diet and were treated with either bile acid had much lower fat accumulation in their livers than the ones on the same high-fat diet but treated with a control bile acid.

DCA also has significant implications for new treatments, researchers said. It is a secondary bile acid—one impacted by interaction with bacteria during the digestive cycle—that is the most common of its kind in humans, and naturally varies in quantity in our bodies based on the interplay of diet and genetics with intestinal microbes. Scientists already know that secondary bile acids like DCA play an important role in disease, Stahl said, “but we still don’t know how. This is a new connection between gut microbes and our health—making different amounts of DCA can influence how much dietary fat ends up in the liver. It opens up a whole new area of investigation.”

Stahl cautions that neither UDCA nor DCA is a silver bullet in the fight against obesity-related diseases; DCA, in particular, can become toxic in high doses. His lab will continue to look for other liver-specific transporter inhibitors, and also plans to test whether UDCA and DCA can protect animals against type 2 diabetes.

Researchers from the UC San Francisco Department of Medicine, the UCSF Liver Center and the City of Hope Diabetes Center contributed to the study. The research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Health and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

By Ann Brody Guy

Story of Stuff's Leonard to Keynote Environment “Gradfest”

2012-05-01T17:49:15Z

When a 20-minute lecture about the economic supply chain goes viral, spawning a stunning 12 million views, a non-profit organization with a slate of multimedia offerings, and a vibrant online community of hundreds of thousands of citizens eager to make the world a better place, one has to wonder: what secret force is behind it?

The Story Of Stuff creator Annie Leonard is quick to tell you that a staff of six full-time people create the magic mixture of cartoons and intelligently and wryly distilled information, but it started with just her deep knowledge and commitment to the issue, and an infectious fire in the belly that jumps through the camera.

Leonard will be on the UC Berkeley campus this Friday, May 4, to give the keynote address for the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management’s (ESPM’s) annual Gradfest event, where graduating Ph.D.’s show off the department’s depth and diversity with spirited mini-talks on their dissertation research, which this year include topics as wide-ranging as biodiversity in Caribbean coral, sudden oak death at Point Reyes National Seashore, and conservation policy in Bottswana.

]]> Leonard has been on campus a lot lately, for only-at-Berkeley intellectual swap. Her videos are shown in several different ESPM classes and are now so widely used by educators as teaching tools that a majority of students arrive at college already having seen them. But with all the travel and lectures since the video blew up in 2008, Leonard wanted to make sure her information was up to date. “Over the past four years I spend more time learning about social media, and less about the issues that really turn me on, which is how stuff is made and used and thrown away, and how we can do it better,” she said. “That’s what my passion is. “

So she signed up for professor Dara O’Rourke’s graduate seminar ESPM 260, Towards Sustainable Consumption and Production, which focuses on governance strategies for global supply chains—that is, where the opportunities for improvement lie along the supply chain of extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal.

Despite being a source for millions of people on these supply-chain issues, and having interviewed O’Rourke extensively as part of the research for her book, The Story of Stuff, Leonard is keenly aware of the need to keep learning. A lot of the learning came from her classmates, she said, whose various backgrounds included city and regional planning, business, and environmental science. “It helped me so much to think about how I frame my ideas, how other people are thinking and talking about these issues, most of which the Story of Stuff Project addresses every day.”

Stepping back from the work also helped her clarify a few issues she and her staff had been struggling with. “In many ways this class was like the grown-up academic explanation of my cartoon,” she said.

Lobbyists vs. taxpayers, from The Story of Broke

For example, learning the term “non-informational barriers to change” gave her and her staff the language to address an issue they’d identified, but didn’t really know how to talk about. The past 40 years, Leonard says, the environmental movement has been operating on the assumption that if you give people information about an issue, like climate change or waste, then they will change. “The theory of change was: give information; change will happen. It didn’t work.”

Leonard says she and her project had figured out that making change was more complex than just providing information, and the class helped her organization to ask: what are the non-information barriers to change? “Is it that people have forgotten how to engage as citizens? Is it that people have no hope because they think corporations have taken over democracy? Is it that people are working too many hours in this country so they don’t have the leisure time to engage in civil society?” Before O’Rourke’s class, The Story of Stuff Project had already put out videos addressing these deeper drivers of society’s consumption issues—on the Citizens United decision about “corporate personhood,” and on cracking the illusion that that the government is broke. But now they had a way to talk about it more directly.

In addition to the classroom, Leonard thinks universities can play a role beyond just education, strengthening the ties between nonprofit organizations and communities. O’Rourke, who is known for his Good Guide website, is the model she thinks others should look to. He has made himself available to advocacy groups and organizations for 20 years, she said. “A lot of academics I know think their value is in the production of knowledge abstractly, and Dara really sees his value is in producing knowledge that then can be used to help make the world better.”

But scientists have to rise above partisanship and agendas for particular outcomes, and must adhere to the highest academic standards and peer review processes. Leonard agrees, but she thinks those reports and articles academics generate should then be placed in the hands of activists. “The activists can change policies that will make children healthier and the environment cleaner.

The Story Stuff Project, once just a single passionate individual’s lecture, has become one of those activist groups with the power and visibility to create change. “We absolutely believe we can turn things around in this country and globally," Leonard said. “And we absolutely believe that we can have an economy that is healthy and sustainable and fair. It’s totally possible—there is no technical reason we cannot have that.”

By Ann Brody Guy

Annie Leonard’s talk and Q&A take place Friday, May 4, from 11 a.m. to noon in East Pauley Ballroom. All Gradfest events are open to the campus community, but pre-registration is required, even if just attending Leonard’s talk.

VIDEO: Farm Bill Panel Packs Wheeler Auditorium

2012-04-30T21:26:27Z

The United States farm bill is up for renewal this year, and what goes into the $400 billion, 5,000-plus page piece of legislation will affect what tens of millions of Americans eat — and don’t eat — in the coming years.

On April 5, UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources fired off an enlightening salvo in the public discourse, with a panel of heavy hitters calling on the public to let their voices be heard in the quest to, as panelist Karen Ross, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, put it, “move farmers and eaters closer together.”

Read the summary, which includes video of the presentations and Q&A.

Watch the video.

Ned Birdsall, ERG Co-Founder, Dies at 86

2012-04-23T21:59:12Z

From The New York Times Classifieds Marketplace

Charles K. (Ned) Birdsall, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, died March 6, 2012. He was 86. Born in 1925 in Manhattan, Ned Birdsall graduated from the University of Michigan with bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering, and received his PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1951. His early work on microwave tubes led to 27 patents and election to Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) at the age of 36.

In 1959 Ned joined the Electrical Engineering Department at UC Berkeley. During his long academic career Ned became known as a pioneering inventor and educator whose contributions to plasma science have made lasting impacts on communications and other technologies. Among numerous awards, Ned was selected as the inaugural recipient for the IEEE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Award in 2011. At UC Berkeley Ned helped create two groups: the Plasma Theory and Simulation Group, and the Energy and Resources Group. Ned was awarded the Berkeley Citation in 1991.

Outside his professional life, Ned was known for his love of hiking, skiing and long-distance running. Ned is survived by Ginger, his wife of 30 years, daughter Barbara Hagen of Bend, OR, son Tom Birdsall of San Francisco, son John Birdsall of Yountville, CA; Ginger's daughter Michele Proffitt of Modesto, CA; son Andrew Pletcher of Capitola, CA and daughter Sandra Glendinning of Alameda, CA; along with eight grandchildren and one great- grandchild. He was preceded in death by daughters Anne and Beth.

]]> A celebration of Ned's life is planned for April 29 at 1pm at the Faculty Club at UC Berkeley. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be sent to: The Charles K. (Ned) Birdsall Graduate Research Fund at University Relations, 2080 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA, 94720. Checks should be made payable to U.C. Berkeley Foundation. Or donate via the web.

Read it at the source.

ESPM Faculty and Students Receive Notable Campus Awards

2012-04-20T15:14:01Z

ESPM faculty and students were included in major campus honors this spring in addition to recently announced Sarlo and Graduate Assembly mentoring honors.

The Chancellor’s Awards for Public Service

Each year, the Chancellor recognizes students, staff, faculty and community partnerships that embody UC Berkeley’s proud tradition of public service and commitment to improving our local and global community.

Two recipients of this year’s Chancellor’s Awards for Public Service are members of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management: Associate Professor Rachel Morello-Frosch for Research in the Public Interest, and PhD Candidate Lara Roman for the Graduate Student Award for Civic Engagement.

The Awards Ceremony will take place on April 30, 2012, 3-5:30pm in the Sibley Auditorium. More information can be found here.

Jenna Cavelle, CRS Major, Receives the Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize

Conservation and Resource Studies major Jenna Cavelle was named a recipient of the 2012 Judith Lee Stronach Prize. The prize supports intellectual and creative pursuits that heighten awareness of issues of social consciousness and the public good. The award gives bright, ambitious students the opportunity to extend and reflect upon their undergraduate work at Berkeley by undertaking a special project after their graduation. Winning projects are creative in the broadest sense, explore themes of significant interest to holders of the prize, and strive to further understanding of what constitutes humane and effective participation in our worldwide community.

Ten ESPM Graduate Students Receive Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award

The Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award gives campus-wide recognition to those GSIs who have demonstrated excellence in teaching. In addition to certificates of distinction and a celebratory ceremony in the spring, award recipients will receive a $250 stipend, sponsored by the Dean of the Graduate Division to applaud outstanding GSIs.

Congratulations to ESPM’s Outstanding GSIs:
Laura Dane
Virginia Emery
Shasta Ferranto (Discovery Course Program)
Ted Grudin
Matt Hughes
Alice Kelly
Ellen Kersten
Misha Leong
Albie Miles
Seth Shonkoff

The awards ceremony and reception will take place on Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at the International House, Chevron Auditorium, 3:30- 5:00 pm.

Read it at the source.

History is Key Factor in Plant Disease, Study Finds

2012-04-18T21:00:00Z

By Ann Brody Guy

The virulence of plant-borne diseases depends on not just the particular strain of a pathogen, but on where the pathogen has been before landing in its host, according to a new study from researchers at the University of California and the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA ARS).

The sudden oak death pathogen infects a bay leaf tree. Photo: Doug Schmidt, Garbelotto Lab, UC Berkeley.

The study demonstrates that the pattern of gene regulation—how a cell determines which genes it will express and how it will express them—rather than gene make-up alone affects how aggressively a microbe will behave in a plant host. The pattern of gene regulation is formed by past environments, or by an original host plant from which the pathogen is transmitted.

“If confirmed, this finding could add a key new dimension to how we look at microbes because their history is going to matter and their history may be hard to reconstruct,” said Matteo Garbelotto, an adjunct professor of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley and corresponding author of the study.

]]> Epigenetic factors—for example, gene regulation mechanisms controlled by diet or exposure to extreme environments—are well known to affect the susceptibility of humans to some diseases. The new study, published in the journal PLoS ONE on April 18, is the first to show a similar process for plant pathogens. Garbelotto said other scientists have hypothesized that gene regulation has an effect on plant pathogens, based on the evolutionary rates of portions of the genome that are known to have an effect on gene regulation. “Our work provides the concrete evidence those hypotheses were correct,” he said.

Researchers showed that genetically identical strains of the sudden oak death pathogen isolated from different plant hosts were strikingly different in their virulence and their ability to proliferate, and showed that these traits were maintained long after they had been isolated from their hosts.

“We show that an identical strain placed in two different plant hosts will undergo distinct changes that will persistently affect the strain’s virulence and fitness,” said Takao Kasuga, a molecular geneticist with the USDA ARS, and the lead author on the study.

The implications for disease control are significant. Researchers say that it may not be enough to know what strain of pathogens they are dealing with in order to make treatment decisions; it also may be necessary to know how the pathogen’s genes are being regulated. This study shows that gene regulation may be the result of the environments the strain inhabited before being identified.

An oak recently killed by sudden oak death. Photo: Doug Schmidt, Garbelotto Lab, UC Berkeley.

Garbelotto used a parallel example of a well-known human pathogen: particular strains of the H1N1 flu virus have been identified as highly virulent, so a diagnosis of one of these strains indicates to doctors that they should treat that flu aggressively.

“But, hypothetically, if you caught one of these aggressive strains of H1N1 from a guy that went to, for example, Paris, it could be 10 times more dangerous, and you may never know from whom you got it, and it’s even less likely that you’ll be able to learn where your infector visited before passing the germ on to you,” Garbelotto said.

In plants, Garbelotto said, tracking a pathogen’s history may prove even more difficult, but correct information could give scientists a new weapon to use against virulent strains of diseases like sudden oak death, which can devastate forests and the ecosystems that depend on them.

The researchers also identified two groups of genes that are capable of affecting virulence and whose expression patterns are indicative of the previous host species they inhabited. Over-expression of transposons—mobile genetic elements—combined with under-expression of crinkler genes—genes involved in host-pathogen interactions—is consistently associated with lowered fitness of the pathogen. Understanding the regulation of these genes may provide scientists with some future approaches to control the disease, such as manipulating the gene expression to artificially reduce the aggressiveness of plant pathogens.

While Garbelotto stresses that more study is needed, he says if the paper’s findings are confirmed, it could influence not just treatment but policymaking as well. “Most countries impose regulations on microbes based on their genetic make up—which ones can and can’t cross state and international lines and how they must be transported,” he said. “Our findings suggest that when making regulatory policy, we may also need to identify gene expression levels and take into account the history of a microbe.”

Coauthors on the study include Melina Kozanitas and Daniel Huberli also of UC Berkeley, Mai Bui of the USDA ARS and David M. Rizzo, a professor of Plant Pathology at UC Davis. The National Science Foundation’s Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases program funded the study. The US Department of Agriculture-Forest Service's Pacific Southwestern Research Station Sudden Oak Death research program was also a funder.

Nomura Named Searle Scholar

2012-04-13T19:14:04Z

Daniel Nomura, an assistant professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology, is one of only 15 United States researchers in the chemical and biological sciences to be named a 2012 Searle Scholar. Each will be awarded $300,000 to support his or her work during the next three years.

Nomura's research focuses on understanding how influencing metabolic pathways can treat disease; he has already published results in treating brain inflammation and cancer.

This year, 186 applications were considered from recently appointed assistant professors, nominated by 125 universities and research institutions. The final selection of scholars was based on recommendations made by the program’s Scientific Advisory Board consisting of 12 scientists distinguished for their research and leadership across a wide range of fields.

In selecting the Scholars, the Scientific Advisory Board looked for scientists who have already demonstrated innovative research with the potential for making significant contributions to chemical and biological research over an extended period of time.

Read the Searle Scholars Program press release.

Photo: Paul Kirchner Studios

California Advocates For Healthy Food in U.S. Farm Bill

2012-04-12T16:07:44Z

Katrina Schwartz, KQED State of Health blog

The U.S. Farm Bill is up for reauthorization in Congress this year and California food and health advocates are eager to use the opportunity to shift national policy towards healthier eating, which would also benefit California farmers.

A panel of food experts that included Michael Pollan, author of bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Karen Ross, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture packed an auditorium at U.C. Berkeley Thursday evening.

Budget cuts in Washington D.C. emerged as a big theme. Every panelist recognized the need to play defense in order to keep money in the bill for important programs such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. Currently, 77 percent of the money in the Farm Bill goes to support food and nutrition programs like SNAP. “One in five of our citizens find themselves food insecure in a month or a year,” said Karen Ross referring to California specifically. “And it’s ironic that we have that need in a state that’s the number one producer of so many of those crops,” she continued.

]]> The problem is that California produces mostly “specialty crops” like fruits, vegetables, nuts and grapes. Those crops don’t carry as much weight in Congress as the heavy hitting commodity crops like corn, soy and cotton that have long received cash subsidies from the government and are often the focus of the Farm Bill.

“It has a lot to do with the kind of food that’s in your supermarket and the kind of food that’s not in your supermarket,” Michael Pollan explained his interest in the Farm Bill to me. “It really is the rules of the whole food game. And unfortunately it’s decided by a small group of people who may not have an eater’s interest firmly in view,” he added. Pollan is concerned about access to fresh fruits and vegetables and wants to limit the amount of foods that have highly processed ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup in them. “We should seriously consider a federal definition of food,” he said to the hundreds of people who attended. “There are many things that we are supporting that are not food.”

While the Farm Bill doesn’t put a lot of money into programs that support healthy eating, it could do a lot more, the panelists urged. Pollan wants to see more money go to support farmers’ markets, to make it easier to get healthy food into school lunch programs and to help farmers transition to organic agriculture. He calls these efforts “crumbs” in the big money picture in D.C. and sees these programs as real ways to help avoid some of the chronic illnesses endemic to the U.S., most of which are diet related.

“We should seriously consider a federal definition of food.”
Karen Ross is in charge of determining a unified message that California’s congressional delegation could offer up in the Farm Bill debate. She says the three top priorities that have emerged from talks with 80 stakeholders up and down the state and five public listening sessions are:

-Protecting the state’s agricultural assets from invasive species
-Conservation practices
-Access to healthy food

“We’re hopeful that because we were able to bring together all the agencies within state government that have an interest that we can communicate in a way that will help our delegation vote collectively on some of the issues we care about,” said Ross. The 2008 Farm Bill was a step in the right direction for California, she said, because a specialty crop title was inserted into the bill that allocates money to programs that more directly affect California specialty crop farmers, who currently get no subsidies from the government for their crops

Read it at the source.

Peluso and Iles Honored for Mentoring

2012-04-05T18:19:20Z

Nancy Peluso, a professor in the Department of Environment Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM), has won the Graduate Division’s 2012 Sarlo Graduate Student Mentoring Award for Senior Faculty.

Alastair Iles, also of ESPM, has won the Graduate Assembly’s Distinguished Faculty Mentor Award.

“Nominated by inspired colleagues and graduate students, the award recipients have excelled both at encouraging UC Berkeley graduate students to pursue new ideas creatively and at helping them to succeed academically and professionally,” said an email signed by  faculty vice provost Janet Broughton,  Graduate Division dean Andrew Szeri, and Graduate Assembly president Bahar Navab.

A full list of the winners can be found here. They will be honored at a public awards ceremony from 4 to 6 p.m. April 18 in Tan Hall.

The Sarlo Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Awards recognize UC Berkeley faculty for their vital role in mentoring graduate students and training future faculty. The awards are sponsored by a grant from The Sarlo Foundation, a supporting foundation of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties.

The UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly Faculty Mentor Award, now in its eighth year, honors members of the Berkeley faculty and teaching staff who have shown an outstanding commitment to mentoring, advising, and generally supporting graduate students.

-Ann Brody Guy

Outbreak, the Game

2012-04-05T17:26:58Z

Sarah C.P. Williams, Science Now

You're sitting at lunch when your friend hands you a note with some bad news: You've been infected with Muizenberg Mathematical Fever (MMF). Are you going to get sick? Will you die? To find out, you visit a website that reveals the severity of your infection and how many people you'll infect. As the outbreak spreads among your colleagues, some report to the health clinic. Others go untreated. Fortunately for you, this is all a simulation. It's part of a new game designed to teach students the complexity of data generated by outbreaks.

MMF is the brainchild of Steve Bellan, an ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in the epidemiology of wildlife diseases like anthrax, and Juliet Pulliam of the University of Florida, Gainesville. The pair teaches at the annual Clinic on the Meaningful Modeling of Epidemiological Data (MMED) in South Africa, a 2-week program designed to provide mathematicians—mostly from around Africa—with broad lessons about epidemiology.

The mathematicians, Bellan says, are topnotch, but often don't have a lot of training in study design and infectious disease data analysis. Mathematical models of infectious diseases play an important role in informing public health policy. But modelers should consider questions like "How are patients who report symptoms different from those who hide them?" or "Were some people more likely to be included in the study than others?" Ignoring these aspects of the data can lead to major biases and misleading models. The program aims to teach these concepts along with mathematical modeling and, most importantly, how they both fit into the big picture of epidemiological research, Bellan says. The clinic has been going on for 4 years, and last year he and Pulliam developed the MMF simulation as a teaching tool.

]]> Here's how the simulation works. Most mathematicians in the workshop are "infected" by fellow attendees whom they interact with. Like a real disease, MMF spreads among the people who spend the most time together. When people receive their diagnosis, they go to a website that gives them more information. On the site, a random number generator determines whether they'll have symptoms and how many others they'll infect.

The students are also told to inform the instructors of their infection. But only some are also instructed to visit a makeshift health clinic. The result of the game is two data sets: The instructors have the omniscient data set that records every infected person, which would never exist in the case of a real disease outbreak. There's also a more realistic data set consisting of cases reported to the health clinic.

"When you have a real outbreak, you need to rely on whatever data you can get," Bellan says. "And our exercise helps show the difference between that data and the reality of the outbreak."

When MMF has run its course through the workshop, the mathematicians work with the data set from the health clinic to make predictions about how MMF spreads, what influences its severity, and why the outbreak burns out. They can see how far off their predictions are from reality by checking against the omniscient data set. The instructors can create different versions of MMF with different modes of transmission—environmental versus person-to-person, for example—or different rates of infectiousness. When the workshop moves into its second week, consisting of group projects on data analysis of any diseases, many groups choose to continue working with MMF. The students say that understanding how the data set was generated helps them mathematically model the data more effectively, says Bellan, who describes the details of the game today in PLoS Biology.

"The feedback we've gotten from those who have gone through this has been very positive," Bellan says. And instructors from the 2-week workshop are now taking it back to their home institutions, testing it out with different types of students, he says: "We think in large undergraduate classes, this would be very successful."

Gavin Hitchcock, a specialist in epidemiological pedagogy, or teaching, at the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis in Stellenbosch, South Africa, who was not involved in developing the MMF program, says that bringing together different methods of data analysis is a challenge in the classroom. The new simulation, he says, "brilliantly exemplifies how this integration may be achieved in a practical, hands-on, memorable way." It could be useful for students from high school through graduate school, he adds.

Bellan and other founders of the program plan to continue creating different versions of MMF and expanding it to cover more aspects of epidemiology. Some areas of investigation include figuring out what happens when two vastly different strains of a disease present with similar symptoms, and what to do when a disease is spreading by both person-to-person contact and a water or food-borne pathogen at the same time.

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Correction: This article has been amended to reflect the following: Juliet Pulliam and Steve Bellan contributed equally to the creation of the MMV simulation. In the last paragraph, the word "immunology" has been replaced with "epidemiology." Lastly, the second paragraph has been modified to reflect the fact that mathematicians who attend the 2-week MMED clinic are not doing incorrect work before they attend the clinic, nor do they have a gap in their knowledge that prevents their models from being accurate prior to the clinic; rather, they want to strengthen their models and their collaborations with epidemiologists.

Brian Wright Name AARES Distinguished Fellow

2012-02-23T19:30:38Z

In February 2012, Brian Wright, a professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics and the department's chair, was named a Distinguished Fellow of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society — the highest honor the society awards — in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field. Wright was one of only three people honored with the distinction this year.

Wright received a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics from the University of New England, Armidale, a master’s and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, and served on the faculty of Yale University’s economics department before coming to UC Berkeley in 1985. He is a Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association.
His research interests include economics of markets for storable commodities, market stabilization, agricultural policy, industrial organization, public finance, invention incentives, intellectual property rights, the economics of research and development, and the economics of conservation and innovation of genetic resources.

In addition to publishing in leading journals, he co-authored or co-edited several books, including Storage and Commodity Markets; Reforming Agricultural Commodity Policy, Saving Seeds: The Economics of Conserving Genetic Resources at the CGIAR Centers, and Accessing Biodiversity and Sharing the Benefits: Lessons from Implementing the Convention on Biodiversity.

]]> The Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society seeks to foster interest in and understanding of the economic issues affecting primary industries, resources, and the environment.

Western Bluebirds Provide Pest Control

2012-01-17T23:11:28Z

By Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan

The Bluebird of Happiness has a new gig. Now it's the Bluebird of Ecosystem Services.

That would be the western bluebird, a widespread California native. This colorful little thrush nests in tree cavities, often moving in after the original property developer, a woodpecker, has moved out. New research by UC Berkeley postdoctoral scholar Julie Jedlicka suggests that setting up bluebird nest boxes - surrogate cavities - in vineyards can help control insect pests. As the birds colonize urban areas in the East Bay and South Bay, they may be a boon to home gardeners, too.

In nesting season, a western bluebird pair stays busy catching insects - grasshoppers, caterpillars, beetles, bugs, ants, wasps, flies, termites and scale insects - for their voracious offspring. "Bluebirds have a wide general foraging style: on the ground, on vegetable matter, on leaves, in the air," Jedlicka explained. "They're targeting a lot of different spaces that insects inhabit." In a good year, the parents can rear two broods; with four to six eggs per clutch, that's a lot of hungry mouths to feed.

]]> To test bluebirds' pest control talents, Jedlicka set up redwood nest boxes in four Northern California organic vineyards managed by Fetzer in 2008. UC Santa Cruz interns built the boxes to North American Bluebird Society specs, with 1 1/2-inch entrances to exclude European starlings, notorious takeover artists. Western bluebirds quickly moved into about a third of the boxes.

Then she mimicked a pest outbreak, staking out beet armyworms near the bluebird nests. These caterpillars are known vineyard marauders and are about the size of the larvae of European grapevine moths, a new pest of concern. Eighty-three percent of the larvae near active nests were removed - presumably by the bluebirds, as only 24 percent disappeared at more distant control sites.

Prey besides the sacrificial caterpillars were too small for watchers to identify. Technology to the rescue! At Spring Mountain Vineyard near St. Helena, "We collect bird poop and scan it to see what they're eating," Jedlicka said, "comparing genetic bar-code sequences from the poop to known insect sequences in our database." This will show whether the bluebirds are feeding primarily in the vineyard or in native vegetation nearby.

Help on the vines

Spring Mountain owner Ron Rosenbrand says the vineyard has seen a dramatic drop in the number of blue-green sharpshooters, a vector for Pierce's disease, since the boxes were installed in 2007. Other growers are jumping on the bluebird bandwagon. John Schuster's Wild Wing Co. in Cotati sells nest boxes for bluebirds, barn owls and other beneficial birds to vineyards. A grower himself, Schuster is unconcerned about bluebirds' snacking on his grapes: "My vineyard crews eat more grapes than the birds do."

Jedlicka, who's studied bird-friendly coffee plantations in the Chiapas, Mexico, is brainstorming a bird-friendly certification for California wineries: "It would be difficult to find an agricultural system where this wouldn't work. We could expect they might be consuming pests in urban gardens."

Ideal housing

That's good news for the birds' neighbors in places like south Berkeley, where western bluebirds have been nesting since 2008. Birder Rusty Scalf found a pair using the hollow limb of an old sycamore at San Pablo Park that spring. When a city crew removed the limb, Scalf mounted a nest box on the tree; the birds adopted it right away. This year two more pairs nested in ash-tree cavities on nearby Parker Street. Scalf saw a Parker Street male with "a great big juicy lime green caterpillar as big as its head," probably a tomato hornworm.

San Francisco had its first bluebird nesting record in decades when a pair set up housekeeping in a cypress tree cavity in the Presidio in 2005 and fledged a brood in their second attempt. Bluebirds are now regular nesters there. Birder Josiah Clark says another pair recently investigated a nest box in Golden Gate Park but did not move in. They're also pioneering in urban Santa Clara County and in San Diego, where a range expansion by Nuttall's woodpeckers has created new nest sites.

For bluebird hosts, nest box placement is critical. Both Jedlicka and Schuster warn against south-facing entrances: too likely to overheat. "You should have the entrance hole looking right out into the garden," Jedlicka added. Schuster recommends an eastern exposure. Landlords should also be willing to clean out the box after nesting: a small price to pay for such entertaining pest-control services.

Resources

North American Bluebird Society, www.nabluebirdsociety.org

Wild Wing Company, www.wildwingco.com

Fetzer Vineyards, www.fetzer.com

Spring Mountain Vineyard, www.springmountainvineyard.com

Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan are naturalists and writers in Berkeley. E-mail comments to home@sfchronicle.com.

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This article appeared on page M - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle