Youth Development

Tien Ferreira, 4, of Fairfield knew just what to do. She donned her special outfit, a blue butterfly cape, and headed over to the open house at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis, to see the blue butterflies. The event, held Saturday afternoon, Jan.

It was a "Science of a Day" at the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology open house last Saturday afternoon, Jan. 18. For three hours, six UC Davis doctoral students discussed their research and fielded questions from the 270-plus guests, ranging from pre-kindergarten students to senior citizens.

When you watch bats emerge at dusk in the summer from the Yolo Causeway, have you ever wondered what insects they eat? UC Davis doctoral candidate Ann Holmes has--and she's doing research on what's in their guano (feces).

How do fruit flies tell time? How do monarch butterflies know when to migrate? How can assassin flies overcome prey much larger than they are? How do bark beetles wreak havoc in our forests? What insects do bats eat?

Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) researchers published a new study suggesting childhood obesity prevention programs are not associated with unhealthy dieting in children and may in fact improve children's satisfaction with their body weight.

4-H is operated as a partnership of staff and volunteers (and many of those volunteers are youth members!). Volunteers are critical to the program and 4-H simply couldn't exist without them. The roles we take on as volunteers can vary widely in scope and in how concrete our objectives are.

I met with Bob and Sharon Yocum recently on a beautiful, clear Southern California winter morning at the Crafton Hills College garden in Yucaipa, California.

The Community Grants Fund is funded by a portion of the settlement between Pacific Gas & Electric Company and the City of San Bruno following a 2010 gas pipeline explosion that devastated San Bruno's Crestmoor neighborhood.

He says it well. Jefferson Wright, the eighth grader at Emerson Middle School, Davis, who is pictured on the UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day website, says: "I have always liked museum day and every year it gets better and better.

'Tis the season of giving, and the ninth annual UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day, set for Saturday, Feb. 15, needs donors. Make that "urgently needs donor pledges." The pledge deadline of Jan. 6 looms. The free, science-based public event drew more than 4,000 visitors in 2019.