- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The event, free and open to the public, will take place from 6:30 to 9 p.m. It will be moderated by Anna Davidson, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Plant Sciences who is studying plant physiology. She has organized and moderated all the LASER events on the UC Davis campus.
The April 7th schedule includes:
6:30-7: Socializing/networking
7-7:25: Christina Cogdell, UC Davis associate professor of design, specializing in history, theory and criticism, will speak on “Growing Living Buildings.”
7:25-7:50: Jesse Drew, UC Davis associate professor of cinema and technocultural studies, will discuss “Who Owns Creativity? Collective Wisdom and Media Innovation”
7:50-8:10 Break. (During the break audience members currently working within the intersections of art and science will have 30 seconds to share their work (a teaser/commercial)
8:10-8:35: Piero Scaruffi, a Bay Area-based cognitive artist, will cover “A Brief History of Creativity from Cheops Pyramid to Silicon Valley: 500 Years of Art Science Misunderstandings.”
8:35-9 p.m.: Wendy Kuhn Silk, UC Davis professor emeritus and art/scientist in the Department of Land, Air, and Water Science, will speak on “Singing about Science.”
The UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program is co-directed by the founders Diane Ullman and Donna Billick. Ullman is a longtime professor of entomology at UC Davis and associate dean for undergraduate academic programs in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Billick, a self-described rock artist, is also science-based: she has a bachelor's degree in genetics as well as a her master's degree in fine arts from UC Davis.
More on the Speakers
Christina Cogdell, associate professor of design, specializing in history, theory and criticism, and a Chancellor's Fellow at UC Davis, is the author of Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s (2004), winner of the 2006 Edelstein Prize for outstanding book on the history of technology, and is co-editor of the anthology Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s (2006). Her work is included in the anthologies The Politics of Parametricism (forthcoming), Keywords in Disability Studies(forthcoming), Visual Culture and Evolution, I Have Seen the Future - Norman Bel Geddes Designs America, and Art, Sex, and Eugenics, and published in the journals American Art, Boom: A Journal of California, Design and Culture, Volume, Design Issues and American Quarterly.
Over the last few years, Cogdell has been researching her current book project on generative architecture and design in relation to recent scientific theories of self-organization and emergence, development and evolution, and complex adaptive systems. She has received research fellowships from the Mellon Foundation (New Directions Fellowship), the American Council of Learned Societies (Ryskamp Fellowship), the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, and the Penn Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania. At UC Davis, she teaches interdisciplinary classes in design history/theory/criticism, art history, cultural studies, and American studies. She previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania, College of Santa Fe, and California State University, Fullerton. Cogdell holds a doctorate in art history from the University of Texas at Austin (2001), a master's degree in American studies from the University of Notre Dame (1994), and a bachelor's degree in American studies from the University of Texas at Austin (1991).
Jesse Drew, associate professor of cinema and technocultural studies at UC Davis, teaches media archaeology, radio production, documentary studies, electronics for artists, and community media. He researches and practices alternative and community media and their impact on democratic societies, with a particular emphasis on the global working class. His audio-visual work, represented by Video Data Bank, has been exhibited at festivals and in galleries internationally, including ZKM (Germany), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), Museum of Contemporary Arts (Chicago), Barcelona Cultural Center (Spain), World Wide Video Festival (Amsterdam), Dallas Film and Video Festival. Open Country is his current film project, a feature documentary on the politics of American Country music. His writings have appeared in numerous publications, journals and anthologies, including Resisting the Virtual Life (City Lights Press), Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture (City Lights Press), At a Distance (MIT Press), Collectivism After Modernism (University of Minnesota), West of Eden (PM Press). His new book is A Social History of Contemporary Democratic Media (Routledge). Before joining the UC Davis faculty, he headed the Center for Digital Media and was associate dean at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Piero Scaruffi is a Bay Area-based cognitive scientist who has lectured in three continents, has published several books on artificial intelligence and cognitive science, the latest one being "The Nature of Consciousness" (2006). He pioneered internet applications in the early 1980s and the use of the worldwide web for cultural purposes in the mid 1990s. His poetry has won several national prizes in Italy and the United States. Scaruffi's latest book of poems and meditations is "Synthesis" (2009). As a music historian, he has published 10 books, the most recent: "A History of Rock and Dance Music" (2009), "A History of Jazz Music" (2007) and "A History of Silicon Valley" (2011). The first volume of his free ebook "A Visual History of the Visual Arts" appeared in 2012. He is also the author of "Demystifying Machine Intelligence" (2013) and has written extensively about cinema and literature.
Wendy Kuhn Silk, UC Davis professor emeritus and art/scientist in the Department of Land, Air, and Water Science works on plant-environment interactions, writes songs, and performs with several local bands. In her early work she introduced concepts and numerical methods from fluid dynamics to the analysis of plant development, a field now known as the kinematics of plant growth. Silk's current projects include several collaborations on problems of soil health. To understand the root-soil interactions, she imagines sitting on the growing root tip and hopping off onto neighboring soil particles.
She teaches the course “Earth Water Science Song,” in which students hear lectures in environmental science and write, discuss and perform songs to communicate their understanding of natural history and scientific concepts.
LASER organizer and moderator Anna Davidson, makes bioart using fungus and other living materials as media. As a teacher for the UC Davis Art/cience Fusion Program, she leads the found object and sculpture studio section of the class, "Entomology 1, Art, Science, and the World of Insects." She specializes in curriculum development and teaching at the intersection of biology and the arts.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Then it was Thomas Sparks in 2012
Now it's Keith Wing in 2014.
They're all linked together not only because each received the prestigious International Award for Research in Agrochemicals, sponsored by the American Chemical Society, but because they all once worked together at the same time in the Hammock lab.
Hammock, distinguished professor of entomology with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and formerly a UC Riverside faculty member, was the first-ever recipient of the award, which is co-sponsored by BASF Corporation and DuPont Crop Protection.
"Keith got his Ph.D. in entomology from UC Riverside but did most of his Ph.D. work in the entomology department here (UC Davis) where he also was a postdoc," Hammock recalled. Wing worked in the Hammock lab from 1976 to 1980 at UC Riverside, and from 1980 to 1981 at UC Davis.
Sparks, who now lives in Greenfield, Ind., was Hammock's first graduate student at UC Riverside and later worked in his lab at UC Davis. “Tom was instrumental in the discovery and development of a new class of insecticides called spinosids,” Hammock said.
Wing, of the greater Philadelphia area, formed Keith D. Wing Consulting, LLC, in January 2012. He specializes in agriculture, renewable chemicals and life science clients, domestic or international, including biotechnology companies and the United Soybean Board (management of six renewable chemistry projects from soy residues).
Wing worked for E. I. DuPont, Wilmington, Del. from 1990-2011, advancing to team principal investigator and technical lead for Saccharification Enzymes. As a DuPoint employee, Wing received a number of the company's agricultural products global technology accomplishment awards in his search for safer pesticides.
Prior to joining DuPont, he was a senior insect physiologist of Rohm and Haas Co., Spring House, Pa., for seven years.
Wing studied at four UC institutions: UCLA, Berkeley, Riverside and Davis. He received his bachelor's degree in biology, specializing in entomology and physiology, from UCLA, summa cum laude, in 1976. He worked on his doctorate at UC Riverside and UC Davis from 1976 to 1981 with Professor Hammock, studying insect biochemistry/entomology and specializing in insect physiology and toxicology. Wing's dissertation: "Juvenile Hormone Esterases of Trichoplusia ni and other Lepidoptera: Characteristics, Site of Synthesis, Interaction with Other Proteins and Inhibition."
After receiving his doctorate, Wing worked at both UC Davis and UC Berkeley. His second postdoctoral research entomologist position was from 1981 to 1983 in Professor John E. Casida's pesticide chemistry and toxicology lab at UC Berkeley.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Lots of fun and educational activities revolving around insects are planned from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., according to forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey, coordinator of the activities at Briggs Hall, and Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology.
The Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, is home to nearly 8 million insect specimens. It also features a live “petting zoo” where visitors can hold Madagascar hissing cockroaches, a rose-haired tarantula and walking sticks.
What can visitors see at the Bohart Museum? "The world is changing. See insects that have been recently discovered and insects that are threatened and extinct," said Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator at the Bohart Museum.
At Briggs Hall, located off Kleiber Hall Drive, the popular events will include maggot art, termite trails, cockroach races and honey tasting, as well as displays featuring forensic, medical, aquatic, apiculture and forest entomology. Exhibits also will include such topics as fly fishing/fly-tying, insect pests of ornamentals, and pollinators of California. In addition, an exhibition of bug sampling equipment will be featured.
Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen is coordinating the honey tasting. He will share six varieties of honey: Almond, yellow starthistle, leatherwood, cultivated buckwheat, safflower and “wild oak.” Each person will be given six toothpicks to sample the varieties.
Visitors to Briggs can cheer for their favorite cockroach at the American cockroach races; watch a termite follow a line drawn with a Bic ink pen (they follow the line because the ink acts as a pheromone or attractant) and create a maggot art painting suitable for framing.
The UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM) will provide a display in front of Briggs Hall. Visitors can learn about managing pests in their homes and garden. In addition, live lady beetles (aka ladybugs) will be distributed to children.
Plans also call for a “Bug Doctor” to answer insect-related questions from the public.
Entomologists are saying "What a (buggy) ride!" the UC Davis Picnic Day promises to be.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Hishinuma, who is seeking her doctorate, studies the walnut twig beetle, Pityophthorus juglandis, which in association with a newly described fungus, Geosmithia morbida, causes thousand cankers disease (TCD) of walnut and butternut trees.
Hishinuma works with major professor Mary Louise Flint and is co-advised by chemical ecologist and forest entomologist Steve Seybold of the Pacific Southwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Davis, an affiliate of the department. Flint serves as an Extension specialist with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and as the associate director for urban and community IPM, UC Integrated Pest Management Program. Both Flint and Seybold plan to attend the conference.
Previous recipients of the annual award have gone on to develop professional careers in forest entomology in academia or with the USDA Forest Service. UC Davis postdoctoral researcher Andrew Graves of Plant Pathology won the award in 2005 while a student at the University of Minnesota.
WFIWC is the core organization for forest entomologists in western North America with membership not only in the United States, but also in Canada and Mexico. The organization was founded in 1949 to provide an informal opportunity for forest entomologists to exchange new ideas and findings prior to each upcoming field season. It established the Memorial Scholarship Fund in 1990 to memorialize member Mark McGregor of the USDA Forest Service and later PheroTech Inc., who died in Idaho while working on research. Other contributions have since honored additional colleagues.
Hishinuma also received two scholarships from the California Garden Clubs, Inc. (CGCI) and a McBeth Memorial Scholarship to support her research on TCD.
The walnut twig beetle is believed to be native to Arizona, California, New Mexico and Mexico. In 2006, plant pathologist Ned Tisserat and entomologist Whitney Cranshaw of Colorado State University identified the pathogen in declining black walnut trees in central Colorado. The disease has now spread east of the Mississippi to at least five states in the heart of the valuable black walnut timberlands. Latest statistics show that the beetle and pathogen are now known from nine states in the western U.S. and four states in the eastern U.S. There is a fifth state (Maryland) where only the beetle has been found and a sixth state (North Carolina) where only the pathogen has been found.
Seybold's research group has led the effort to characterize the disease in California and to develop a nationwide detection program for the beetle. Scientists believe that TCD occurs only on walnut, butternut, and wingnut, but it is most damaging to native black walnuts, Juglans californica, J. hindsii, and J. nigra although the disease has been recorded on at least 10 species of walnuts or their hybrids in California. Often the first symptoms of TCD are flagging and yellowing leaves and branch dieback, Seybold said. Affected branches show sap staining and pinhole-sized beetle holes. Beneath the surface are dark stains caused by the fungus.
Related link:
UC IPM: Thousand Cankers Disease in California
USDA: Thousand Cankers Disease
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It is the work of entomologists Catherine and Maurice Tauber, visiting professors and affiliates of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, collaborating with their former Ph.D student Gilberto Albuquerque on an extensive review of the widely scattered literature on the topic, as well as an analysis of the habit's evolution in lacewings.
The abstract for "Debris-Carrying in Larval Chrysopidae: Unraveling Its Evolutionary History":
Larval debris-carrying, which occurs in many insect taxa, is a remarkable behavioral trait with substantial life history significance. For the Chrysopidae, information on the topic is scattered, and the habit's diversity and evolutionary history are unassessed. Here, we compile a comprehensive, annotated catalog on chrysopid debris-carrying and its associated larval morphology, and we identify emerging systematic patterns of variation, from larval nakedness to the construction of elaborate packets. Then, we examine these patterns in the context of available phylogenies with two objectives: 1) to begin unraveling the evolutionary history of chrysopid debris-carrying and 2) to evaluate the current and potential role of larval morphology (including debris-carrying modifications) in classification and phylogeny of this family. Debris-carrying: the literature revealed that debris-carrying occurs in the chrysopoid fossil record and in all three extant chrysopid subfamilies, including those proposed as basal (Nothochrysinae, Apochrysinae). Nevertheless, the family's ancestral state remains unresolved. The habit may have evolved at least once in Nothochrysinae or been lost several times. Larvae from only one genus of Apochrysinae are known, and they are debris-carriers. Each of the four tribes of the third subfamily, Chrysopinae, has distinctive debris-carrying characteristics. In ankylopterygine larvae, debris-carrying modifications seem relatively conserved. Among the ant-associated belonopterygine genera, debris-carrying is either highly evolved or, in one case, possibly absent. Within the large chrysopine tribe, nakedness and debris-carrying appear to have evolved independently numerous times; also, some reversals may have occurred. With one possible exception, leucochrysine genera have debris-carrying larvae. Larval morphology: scrutiny of the literature showed that all chrysopid genera whose larvae are known exhibit characteristic suites of anatomical structures related to carrying debris. Moreover, larval morphology provides strong (synapomorphic) evidence for the monophyly of four of the seven suprageneric chrysopid taxa: the subfamily Nothochrysinae and three of the four tribes of Chrysopinae (Ankylopterygini, Belonopterygini, and Leucochrysini). Larval morphological and debris-carrying characteristics appear to support some, but not all, previously proposed generic relationships within the tribe Chrysopini. Given the demonstrated potential advantages for including larval characters in chrysopid phylogenetic studies, it is essential to enhance the pool of available larval data. Therefore, we propose that citizen-scientists be involved in gathering verifiable data and that systematists develop comprehensive data matrices for comparative larval studies.
Publication
C. A. Tauber, M. J. Tauber, and G. S. Albuquerque. 2014. Debris-carrying in larval Chrysopidae: Unraveling its evolutionary history. Ann. Entomol. Soc. Am. 107: 295-314.
