Eisen Lab Blog

East Quad Farmers Market

Another nice thing for the fall and spring on Campus at UC Davis – Wednesday from 10-2 or so there is a Farmer’s Market in the quad. It is not huge, but if you want some fresh/local produce – this is a good place to get something. See here for more detail: East Quad Farmers Market

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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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Follow #UCDavis Geology Prof. Dawn Sumner in Antarctica

UC Davis Geology Professor Dawn Sumner is heading to Antarctica for a research trip of ~ 2.5 months. And you can follow her journey/work on her blog “Dawn in Antarctica”

Dawn does some cool work at the interface of evolution, geology and microbiology so this could be something worth watching …

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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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Some #UCDavis students running ‘Operation DeGeneres’ trying to bring @TheEllenShow to town

Strange, funny, and true. Some UC Davis students are working to bring Ellen Degeneres to town.

From their site:

Operation DeGeneres was founded by UC Davis students and is an effort to have Ellen DeGeneres grace us with her presence at UC Davis–in either a speech to the campus or as keynote speaker at the 2010 graduation ceremony. She’s funny, she’s inspirational, and she probably has many words of wisdom.

For more information see:
Operation DeGeneres – Home

I note- my kids (4.5 and 2.5 yrs old) would like this – as Ellen is one of the voices in Finding Nemo …

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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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More on #UCDavis Prof. Emeritus Bernie Alder’s National Medal of Science

More information on UC Davis professor emeritus Bernie Alder’s National Medal of Science Award can be found here: UC Davis News & Information :: Prestigious National Medal of Science goes to physicist

Among his many achievements was pioneering work in the field of Molecular Dynamics. He also was one of the founders of the UC Davis Department of Applied Science. Oh, and my wife is good friends with his daughter Janet — and Alder and his whole family are simply amazing.

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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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#UCDavis expands programs to support alternative modes of commuting

UC Davis has started an enhanced program to encourage people to not drive to work. It is called “goClub” and includes programs for walkers, bikers, carpoolers, etc. For bikers, like me, see goBike
for more information.

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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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Against faculty walking out but sympathetic to student protests

I have already written extensively about why I think faculty should not walk out of classes today on this day of protests on UC campuses. Mainly this is because I think it is unfair to students for me to impose my will on their classes and that I think if faculty were to impose their will on students classes it would be a bad political move. (I note, I think the best response to this issue I have seen was an commentary in the LA Times by UC Riverside Professor Susan Straight, who is going to let her students decide what she should do with her classes today).

I am also not enthusiastic about the faculty walkout because I think that energy should be focused on changing public opinion and Sacramento opinion and not on the UC administration. That being said, I think the UC administration has not handled the budget crisis in an ideal manner. And I completely understand why many faculty, staff, students, and unions are not pleased with how things are going.
Thus, even though I do not support faculty walking out of class today, I am sympathetic to the protests and in particular to the student side of the protests. Students at UC and CSU are getting pummeled in many ways – from higher fees, to bigger classes to less access to education. They deserve our respect today and through all of these rough times …

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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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Why I do not endorse the UC Faculty Walkout —

Today I have an Editorial in the Sacramento Bee, co-written with UC Davis Prof. of German Winder McConnell, regarding the proposed UC Faculty Walkout for Thursday 9/24/09 .
In the Editorial (My View: UC Davis strike: Teaching is more than just about being paid) we discuss why we do not support the idea of stopping teaching.
Some quotes:

And so it’s painful to us that much of the basis for the proposed walkout is literally that many faculty wanted to “spread the pain” to students to make a political point about the effects of furloughs on education. This is an unacceptable use of students as pawns in this high-stakes game, especially those students and their families who are already shouldering a heavy financial burden that is soon likely to get much heavier.

……

We accept that the entire UC system could do a better job of communicating to Sacramento’s policymakers about the “pain” and “consequences” of budget cuts, and that teaching less would be a way to show that the cuts have a real impact on education. But abandoning the classroom is the wrong way to go. It would be a horrible political move right now. California’s budget could still go down next year and there could be more cuts. If UC works to build political capital in the coming year, then perhaps we will avoid some cuts next time around. But if we slash instructional time as a way to spread the pain, it will come back to bite us.

The Editorial does not capture all my feelings about the walkout but does capture some of them. I would like to add a few things here that relate to what led me to want to write more about this issue
One thing that really bugs me about some aspects of the proposed walkout is the suggestion that there is some sort of conspiracy by the UC Administration to do harm to UC — For example, consider this from web site from the pro walkout group:

Under the cover of the summer months, UC administration has pushed through a program of tuition hikes, enrollment cuts, layoffs, furloughs, and increased class sizes that harms students and jeopardizes the livelihoods of the most vulnerable university employees. These decisions fundamentally compromise the mission of the University of California. They are complicit with the privatization of public education, and they have been made in a manner that flouts the principle of shared governance at the core of the UC faculty’s capacity to guide the future of the University in accordance with its mission.

The lines like “Under the cover of the summer months” and “sent at the opening of a late summer weekend, with unimpeachably cowardly timing” (from other material) are both non-helpful and unsatisfactory. The throwing of such accusations is really too bad, since there are some valid complaints to be made. If you skip over the conspiracy accusations, which I have a hard time doing, I think the main complaints by faculty can be divided into two categories: 1) The budget and furlough decisions are not wise or fair and 2) The process of making the decisions was not inclusive enough.

Some aspects of these complaints are sensible. But do they rise to the level of calling for a walkout? I confess, though I sympathize with many of the faculty concerns, I just do not see the justification for a walkout at this point.

For example, in regard to the #1 complaint above (the budget/furlough decisions being unwise and unfair), it is hard for me to imagine ANY decisions that would make people happy. Somehow, either people have to get laid off or their salaries slashed. And somehow fees have to get raised. Or possibly, just possibly, money could be scrounged from various sources such as cutting new building, digging into reserves, etc. But that to me just says “lets pass on the pain to future times.” From my perspective, the UC administration has been put in a horrible position. They get unpredictable, sudden, very large cuts in support the state government. And they are forced to balance the books somehow.
In regard to complaint #2 (that the process of making the decisions has not been inclusive enough) I can see why some faculty are not pleased with some of the decision making process. First UC solicited input about furloughs vs. pay cuts, then they announced that they would use furloughs as requested. Many faculty wanted this because they thought furloughs should happen on instructional days. But then UC did an end run around this by announcing that furloughs could not be taken on instructional days. This was no doubt a roundabout way to get to a policy and it was not handled very smoothly.
But in the end, as we discussed in the editorial, I think the decision to not allow furloughs to happen on instructional days was the right decision (See my previous blog about this here). One reason I support this decision is that I do not agree that we should spread the pain of furloughs to students as some have suggested. The logic here is that for Sacramento to understand the effects of the budget cuts they must see that education is truly affected and what better way to show this than to cut instruction? I agree this could work this way, but think much more likely this would backfire politically and the faculty would look spiteful.
I am not saying there are not things to complain about here. There are many. But I think the real complaints should be directed towards the State Government. The lack of support from the California government for UC and CSU and education in general is sad and mystifying given how important UC/CSU and public education is to the state. If the pro-walkout groups emphasized this in their language I might have supported the walkout. But with the way it is now, with suggestions of conspiracies in the UC administration and with nebulous complaints about budgets, it just does not make sense for faculty to walkout of classes. Mind you, I think the unions and students have some valid complaints of their own and I am not saying I object to their strikes/walkouts. I am just saying that the faculty walkout right now does not seem right.
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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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For all you brain dopers — read this —

Just a quick one here — Article in the Guardian by Margaret Talbot who also wrote a recent New Yorker article. Some interesting stuff in here on “brain doping”. See Can a daily pill really boost your brain power? | Science | The Observer

Lead in as follows:

In America, university students are taking illegally obtained prescription drugs to make them more intelligent. But would you pop a smart pill to improve your performance? Margaret Talbot investigates the brave new world of neuro enhancement

Would write more, but brain not doped right now —

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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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HHMI Focusing on Biodiversity ofr Holiday Lectures (in Dec2009)

Cool – UC Davis Alumni and brilliant microbiologist Bonnie Bassler will be giving one of the HHMI Holiday Lectures on Science as a WebCast. Anyone can watch Dec 3 and 4th. She will be talking with Baldomero Olivera and the topic(s) will be “Exploring Biodiversity: The Search for New Medicines”. See HHMI’s BioInteractive – Holiday Lectures on Science for more detail.

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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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Better measure of scientific impact;: #PLoS Introduces article level metrics —

This rocks – PLoS has introduced article level metrics for papers in PLoS journals (Article-level metrics at PLoS – addition of usage data | Public Library of Science). More detail can be found at this page which says

“The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is the first publisher to place transparent and comprehensive information about the usage and reach of published articles onto the articles themselves, so that the entire academic community can assess their value. We call these measures for evaluating articles ‘Article-Level Metrics‘, and they are distinct from the journal-level measures of research quality that have traditionally been made available until now.”

And of course, like most others, I went straight to some of my own papers to see how they were doing. But never mind that, one of the more interesting things in the comparison of different topic areas (see Summary Tables here).

Types of information they are collecting and providing include article usage statistics, citations from the scholarly literature, social bookmarks, comments, notes, blog posts and rating … and more is coming … a good step in the direction of measuring the impact of articles not journals ….

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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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