Do you have a project you care about that you would like to see funded? If so, Kickstarter is an option to be considered when it comes to project funding. Kickstarter is a website that helps creators of projects attain the funds required to complete their projects. Whether it is film, games, music or many other creative products, Kickstarter lets its users find interesting ideas they’d like to support and provides a way to fund them.

So how does it work?

The creators of a project post their ideas for what they want to create and how much financial backing they’ll need to make sure their ideas come to fruition. The users can then decide whether they want to pledge money to the project. If the creators are successful in receiving enough pledges to satisfy their financial requirement, they then receive the money pledged from the users to create their product.

What do I get in return?

Creators set pledge tiers for varying amounts of money pledged. These are at the creators’ discretion and range from the creators’ thanks — usually for $1 pledges — to receiving their product for higher pledges, and many other things like getting autographed editions of products and behind-the-scenes looks at the creation process.

Is there a risk involved?

That’s one of the great features of Kickstarter: not worrying about funding a project that never gets created. This comes down to Kickstarter working with the “all or nothing” model, meaning that a project must reach its required funding or none of the money pledged is processed — translating to users keeping their money if the creators don’t reach their goal.

Yeah, but does this really happen?

Definitely. One great example of the possibilities of Kickstarter comes from a game development studio called Double Fine. Double Fine started asking for funding for a passion game project with a goal of $400,000, and are now at over $2.2 million dollars with time still left in their deadline — a project that might never have existed without the Kickstarter community.

ERIC C. LIPSKY can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

It is not every day that an individual can look back on their work and see how it has changed the world. But this rare privilege is bestowed on scores of professors and researchers from the UC Davis College of Engineering. This year, the College of Engineering will be celebrating its 50th anniversary and looking back on the countless accomplishments made during that time.

The College of Engineering has eight departments and 15 undergraduate majors totalling 3,460 current undergraduate students and over 21,000 alumni. It has been ranked in the top 20 public university engineering programs and ranked third among all engineering programs for percentage of female faculty. Of the 201 faculty in the College of Engineering, 46 have received the National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award, the NSF’s highest honor. It is awarded only to those who have demonstrated outstanding teaching and scholarly abilities, excellent research and solid integration of their research and teaching.

Enrique Lavernia, the dean of the College of Engineering since 2002, is incredibly proud of the accomplishments of the faculty working in his college.

“The single most significant accomplishment in the last 10 years is the hiring of over 90 faculty members, nearly half the faculty body,” Lavernia said. “The 46 NSF career awards are a reflection on the quality of our college; no other engineering college has been awarded 46 NSF career awards.”

The College of Engineering includes the departments of applied science, biomedical engineering, chemical engineering and materials science, civil and environmental engineering, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, mechanical and aerospace engineering and the department of biological and agricultural engineering.

The department of biological and agricultural engineering is also part of the College of Agricultural Sciences. UC Davis is a university known for agriculture and some of the most notable advancements in worldwide agricultural have come out of this department.

“This is a unique department,” said Raul Piedrahita, professor and chair of the department. “There are many projects that will affect the general public very directly.”

There are many current projects in the department of biological and agricultural engineering: a Bio-Digester that takes food waste and converts it to bio energy, a new method to store and deliver large quantities of algae for bio-fuel production, a system for electronically controlling agricultural spraying to dramatically reduce the amount of chemicals used and even a Human Gastric Simulator that can determine how certain foods will break down in the stomach.

Many of the faculty and emeriti in the College of Engineering have played major roles in the advancement of modern science. Their careers encompass everyday practical applications, such as Diane Bryant, the corporate vice president of Intel, and Bernie Alder, who has received the National Medal of Science from President Barack Obama after his work on computational physics.

The College of Engineering also does work on the cutting edge, such as Ralph Algazi creating the first three-dimensional sound experience. Steve Robinson, an astronaut for NASA, has made four shuttle trips including one to the International Space Station.

Researchers are also developing technologies that will soon be available to the general public. Ming Kuang has his name on 40 of the 461 patents on hybrid vehicle technology by Ford Motor Company.

“[Engineers] can make a living at the same time as doing something for society,” Kuang said. “Future engineers at UC Davis shouldn’t take it for granted that they are at UC Davis … it is a great school.”

The college creates a $290 million impact in Northern California alone and put over $90 million into research in the 2010-11 academic year.

HUDSON LOFCHIE can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

Patient satisfaction, as well as good doctor-patient relationships, have long been indicators of quality health care. Doctors place emphasis on this relationship with the belief that, if a patient likes and trusts their doctor, they are more inclined to follow orders and thus get better. But a team of UC Davis researchers found this might not always be true.

In a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine on Feb. 13 of this year, researchers found that the patients who are most satisfied with their doctors are the ones more likely to have increased prescription drug expenditures and increased mortality.

Joshua Fenton, assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Family and Community Medicine and lead author of the study said that the results do not surprise him.

“We conducted this study because prior research had shown that in certain groups, health care intensity varies widely, despite correcting for illness burden,” Fenton said.

Fenton explained that patient satisfaction is currently a widely used indicator of quality health care. But the results of the study question whether this indicator is appropriate. He explained many of the reasons for these tests are often not to rule out diseases, but rather to reassure patients.

“Doctors may order tests or certain procedures because they think it will satisfy and reassure their patients, rather than because they believe the test is necessary,” Fenton said.

Fenton noted that this research is important as unnecessary and inappropriate use of health care has been a well-known fact in the United States for a long time but no research has been done about it.

“Ideally, patients should be satisfied with their doctors but that is because they are providing them with the most appropriate care,” Fenton said.

The study was conducted by evaluating data collected from a national survey of the U.S. that looked at the use and costs of medical services from 2000 to 2007. The survey asked patients about their health status as well as their personal experiences with health care. This survey was then compared alongside the national death certificate registry.

The study indicated that most satisfied patients had about 9 percent higher total health care costs and 9 percent higher prescription drug expenditures. Most surprising to the researchers was the difference in death rates. The most satisfied patients had a 26 percent greater mortality risk than the least satisfied patients.

Fenton explained that the other implication of the study is to find ways to maintain patient satisfaction without risking patient health and well-being.

“We are trying to do research on how to build doctor’s skills in counseling patients. We believe that there are some relatively straightforward communication skills to reassure patients and maintain satisfaction and avoid possibly hazardous tests,” Fenton said.

The study also found that the most satisfied patients are often hospitalized for elective reasons. Fenton said in the future, he and his colleagues hope to analyze what these reasons were in in order to shed light on the current situation.

“We want to evaluate exactly what those hospitalizations are for and what the costs and benefits are to each of those patients,” Fenton said.

Fenton noted that an observational study such as this one only suggest correlation and cannot prove causation. However, he feels this study will shed light on how the patient-doctor relationship can affect health care.

“We hope these studies will improve patient satisfaction and ultimately patient care,” Fenton said.

CLAIRE MALDARELLI can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

Several UC Davis students are working to set up a new student organization on campus which would be a chapter of an international organization called The Triple Helix.

The Triple Helix was formed in 2004 at Cornell University. According to the organization’s mission statement, the purpose of The Triple Helix is to educate the public about the dynamic relationship between the fields of science, society, business, ethics and law.

Two UC Davis students have been taking the lead in getting the chapter established. Jeff Chen, a senior environmental toxicology major and Andy Iskandar, a sophomore biochemistry major who is pursuing a double minor in economics and writing, hosted an informational meeting last Thursday about the effort to set up the new student organization on campus.

“It was great,” Chen said. “We got around 35 people or so. A lot of people were enthusiastic after the meeting, so we’re off to a good start.”

“There is great interdisciplinary interest in the community, as exemplified by the many double majors and people with mixed minors,” Iskandar added.

The new chapter would create opportunities for UC Davis students to get together to share their experiences.

“You’ve probably been in a situation where you had a really interesting thought after reading something or just being struck by a eureka moment,” Iskandar said. “Of course, you want to talk about it. Maybe it’s about philosophy or a really interesting find in science or perhaps about recent political events.”

The Triple Helix journal, The Science in Society in Review, is published by each chapter and contains articles written by members that are specially selected to appear in all chapters’ editions. Each chapter’s specific edition also contains additional articles written by members of that specific chapter.

Gary Sue Goodman, the assistant director for Writing Across the Curriculum for the UC Davis University Writing Program, is helping to set up the new chapter on campus.

“It’s deliberately set up as an interdisciplinary journal, to look at developments in science and technology from a social, economic and humanistic perspective,” Goodman said.

Jennifer Ong, a recent graduate of UC San Diego, is the chief executive officer of The Triple Helix International.

“The definition of science itself is expanding,” Ong said. “We, as citizen scientists, must recognize that the ‘hard sciences’ — such as biology, chemistry, physics or engineering–need to be placed into a practical context that cannot be separated from the social sciences.”

The Triple Helix website explains that the organization’s name refers to the molecular structure of the protein collagen. Collagen is a connective tissue that maintains the structural integrity of organs and between organ systems.

According to their website, “This interconnecting characteristic of collagen is analogous to the interdisciplinary focus of our organization, as we work to bridge scientific development with its greater role in science policy and society.”

Albert Young, who is a junior communication major at UC Davis, attended last week’s planning meeting for the proposed UC Davis chapter.

“I had no idea what to expect,” Young said, “but it definitely exceeded my expectations of being a lot better than just another club.”

According to Chen, the first event after the chapter becomes established could be held as early as this coming Fall quarter.

BRIAN RILEY can be reached at science@theaggie.org.