Through the first 38 games of the season,the Aggies have proven they’re far from being the last place team preseason polls picked them out to be. UC Davis has already surpassed its24winsfrom2007and currently sits third in the Big West Conference with a6-3league mark.Now it will have to prove its placeamongthe conference’s elite. Over the next eight games,the Aggies will take on four consecutive rankedopponentsin No.15Cal State Fullerton,No.5Stanford,No.25Long Beach State and No.7California.

Sports can entertain and excite fans. Sometimes, they can do more than that. On Saturday, the UC Davis softball team hosted the Fourth Annual Strike Out Cancer event and raised nearly $500 for the UC Davis Cancer Center. The teams also donned special pink uniforms in honor of the event. “We appreciate the community and everyone coming out to watch us [Saturday] and support a great cause,” said head coach Karen Yoder. “Having UC Riverside take part in Strike Out Cancer is a tribute to the class of their team.” UC Davis (20-30, 5-7) earned their second straight Big West Conference series, defeating UC Riverside (18-27, 4-8) in two of three games.

It was a pair of seniors that led the UC Davis women’s lacrosse team through its season, and Senior Day was no different. Midfielders Katie McGovern and Katie McMahon closed out their regular season careers with three goals each to lead UC Davis over St. Mary’s for its first Mountain Pacific Sports Federation win, 14-13. “They have made great contributions for four years,” said head coach Elaine Jones. “I am happy for both of them for closing out the regular season with a win.” “They are our leaders and they really command respect,” said senior goalie Hilary Harkins. “On the field they are complete leaders.”

The University of California Center for Entrepreneurship announced today that world renowned energy consultant and physicist Amory Lovins will be the keynote speaker for the second annual Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy (GTEA) held from July 7 to 11 at the Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences in Incline Village, Nev. Lovins, a founder, chairman and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), who is alsoan author and MacArthur Fellow, will be speaking on issues concerning marketing sustainable energy technologies for doctoral, post-docs and research faculty in the science and engineering fields.

Plant a tree and leave the car at home – it’s Earth Day. The ASUCD Environmental Policy and Planning Commission plans to teach UC Davis students about recycling, alternative power, sustainability and outdoor activities during Earth Weekbegan Monday and continues until Friday. “We all should love the environment around us,” said EPPC chair Jack Draper, a juniorwildlife, fish and conservation biology major. Draper said that this attitude led to this year’s Earth Week theme of “Enviromantic.”

But for the class of 2008, there is nothing gloomier than searching for jobs in a wobbling economy plagued by a rising unemployment rate. For more than 1 million graduating college students across the country who will join the labor force this year, the job prospects are ominous. It’s like looking for a stone in murky waters. Although there has been no official acknowledgment from the Bush Administration that the world’s most powerful economy has already slipped into a recession, the evidence of it is becoming increasingly obvious. According to the latest U.S. Department of Labor statistics, unemployment rose from 4.8 percent to 5.1 percent last March. For five months in a row now, the private sector has lost a monthly average of 80,000 jobs.

Kicking off Earth Week on Monday at the Memorial Union patio was Trashion Show 2008, presented by the ASUCD Environmental Policy and Planning Commission (EPPC) and the Student Fashion Association (SFA). Models sashayed down the runway in designs made entirely from recyclable or reused material. Sixteen looks were featured at the show, including a red mini-dress adorned with CDs found at the recycling center and accessorized with a bag made from a cereal box by junior design major Frankees Samad. A ballet-inspired dress made from trash bags by first-year Sarah Silva also took the stage. Prizes were given out to designs that were judged as the most sustainable. Rachel Aquino, a first-year political science major, won third place with a dress created from newspapers from the Cuarto Dining Commons. Senior textiles and clothing major Maureen Dougherty won second place with her refashioning of a shawl into a strapless dress and for a design made from a vintage dress from the ’80s.

THURSDAY Immelman’s swift decline A man was reported as “suspicious” for loitering around Hanover Drive, shirtless and carrying a golf club. Do. The. Dishes. A woman reported her roommates were trying to evict her and refused to let her into the apartment.

here are two ways a relationship can begin: attraction first, followed by some sort of relationship, or friendship first, followed by some sort of attraction. (Of course, there is a rare third way, wherein the guy kidnaps and holds you hostage at gunpoint for a month. As an unconscious survival tactic, you end up falling in love, get married, have two beautiful daughters and escape the law together for many years to come. Oh dad, thank you so much – if it weren’t for your gambling addiction that forced you to hold mom ransom, our family would have never been created!)

Tension is building between some residents and the Davis City Council over whether to start discussion on Measure J. The landmark Davis law requires voter approval for any urban development on land that is currently designated as agricultural or open-space. It was passed in 2000 and is set to expire in 2010. It has only been applied once. In 2005, the council approved Covell Village, a 1,864-unit housing development in North Davis. Because it would require annexing agricultural land into the city limits, voters were asked to approve the development. The vote failed 59.9 percent to 40 percent. So why the problem now?

The rabbits were bound to run out. After weeks of dramatic comebacks, the UC Davis baseball team (25-13, 6-3) ran out of its rally magic this weekend, hitting a wall of quality pitching from Cal Poly (17-19, 5-7), to drop its first series of the season. “Cal Poly always plays us tough, [so] it doesn’t surprise us,” saidhead coach Rex Peters. “It’s just a disappointment that we couldn’t win the series at home.”

Sacramento is not generally regarded as a sustainable region – it has grown in a sprawling pattern much like Los Angeles. However, Sacramento’s integration of more sustainable regional planning and small-scale improvements slowly reverses its previous reputation. The city was chosen from a 30-applicant pool as a “solar city” for its development of solar energy policies and received a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to use toward putting photovoltaic systems on buildings. Solar parking meters can already be found in some areas of inner Sacramento, but this additional funding helps color Sacramento’s reputation a deeper shade of green.