It may save paper, but that online textbook may be lowering students’ grades.

In an Arizona State University study, “To Scroll or Not to Scroll: Scrolling, Working Memory Capacity, and Comprehending Complex Texts,” co-author Christopher Sanchez, assistant professor of applied psychology at ASU, found that certain students are not retaining as much information when scrolling through online documents.

The study found that students had higher comprehension scores on essays they wrote after reading material in a print-like medium. Students with higher memory capacities comprehended material equally well in both print and non-print conditions, while students with low-working memory capacities had more trouble remembering information while scrolling.

Working memory capacity is not a measure of intelligence, but how well someone can multi-task. Someone with low-working memory capacity gets more distracted and cannot focus on many different things at once, Sanchez said.

“For [low-working memory capacity] people, scrolling produces significant problems for them,” Sanchez said. “It poses additional cognitive demands on the reader themselves. For reading comprehension, scrolling was a deficit for those types of people.”

Being one of the first studies in this area, these findings have implications for how students are learning in this technological age. With the recent release of Apple’s iPad and the Kindle e-book, more and more reading may switch to screens from books.

“We really need to understand how people learn, but also how the technology we are using can impact the learner,” Sanchez said. “We should have this technology and be able to use it and access it. And it should not affect the learning process.”

Sanchez’s own interest in the topic began when he was having difficulty remembering information from PDFs. His next project will look at how people retain information from smaller mobile devices, such as smart phones like the iPhone and Blackberry.

UC Davis sophomores John Conway, a physics major, and Kevin Dunn, a history major, both prefer to read homework assignments on a printed sheet of paper rather than scrolling through an online document.

Conway said in his physics classes that all papers are printed out, which works better for him.

“I remember better if I print it out,” Conway said. This follows Sanchez’s reasoning that scrolling through an online document strips memory cues from the reader. Scrolling the cursor through the text removes additional spatial and reference cues, Sanchez said.

Dunn does not look forward to reading articles online.

“I hate reading on a computer – it’s not right,” he said. “I’m very comfortable holding something in my hands.”

SASHA LEKACH can be reached at city@theaggie.org.

With the passage of the health care reform bill come changes that boost funding for higher education.

The Education Reconciliation: Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, found within the health care bill, eliminates the current practice of providing federal subsidies to private student loans, cutting out banks as the middleman. Instead, the government will supply loans to students directly.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the act will save $61 billion over 10 years. A large portion of this money will be fed back into the educational system.

The Federal Pell Grant Program, which supplies need-based and low-income grants to higher education students, will receive $36 billion over a 10-year period. California is poised to see more than $1.5 billion in extra Pell Grant scholarships alone. From 2013 to 2017, the maximum grant will increase from $5,550 to $5,975.

Although the awards will be enhanced by over $400, some question whether the amplification will be enough to cover the discrepancy in inflated tuition costs.

“The increase in Pell [Grant] funds approved in the bill will definitely benefit our most needy student population and help subsidize some of the increasing cost,” said Trina Wiggins, UC Davis associate director of student services. “But it does not match the increasing tuition and fees at most institutions.”

In addition to Pell Grants, the College Access Challenge Grant Program, designed to cultivate relations among federal, state and local governments and philanthropic organizations by providing grants for low-income students entering higher education, will receive $750 million – $150 million each year until 2014. The Income-Based Repayment program will receive $1.5 billion, which caps monthly federal student loan payments at 10 percent of their income, as opposed to the present 15 percent, beginning 2014.

Community colleges, which currently enroll more than six million students, are reaping the benefits of the student aid initiative as well. The Community College and Career Training Grant Program, created to develop and bolster educational and training programs, will receive $2 billion. The act will provide $500 million to the program each year from 2011 until 2014.

UC Davis professor of law emeritus Martha West, who specializes in higher education, regarded the act’s allotment of funds as a wise choice.

“Community colleges have turned away lots of students because they don’t have enough classes to offer,” West said. “I think the government chose wisely. They did a pretty good job at targeting the sectors of higher education that need the money the most.”

Another such sector includes minority-serving institutions, which, over the course of 10 years, will see $2.55 billion from the Education Reconciliation Act. The money will be apportioned to various establishments, such as $100 million to Hispanic serving institutions, $85 million to historically Black colleges and universities and $30 million to Tribal colleges and universities.

UC Davis School of Education assistant professor Michal Kurlaender said the allotment of funds to community colleges and minority-serving institutions has much to do with the socio-economic status of many students enrolled in these institutions.

“Partly [this additional money] will help because many of the most financially vulnerable students attending postsecondary schooling are at community colleges, and minority students are also more likely to be lower income,” Kurlaender said.

Despite the billions of dollars in savings cutting out banks as private lenders has created, the entire $61 billion will not be doled back into the U.S. educational system. Portions of the funding, including $9 billion for deficit-reduction savings, will be going to other programs and back into the government itself.

The original student aid bill, previously concocted in the summer, stood to issue $87 billion in savings. Expenditures were drastically scaled down, including provisions for community colleges’ dropping from $10 to $2 billion and cutting out more than $20 billion for early education initiatives.

Nonetheless, Scott Lay, UC Davis alumni and president and chief executive officer of the Community College League of California, asserts that the act is a progressive step forward in educational funding.

“President Obama put students ahead of bank profits and used the savings to invest in Pell Grants, community colleges and minority-serving institutions,” Lay said. “While trimming of the full package at the end of the reconciliation process was disappointing, we can’t ignore the fact that this was the largest federal investment in higher education in history.”

KELLEY REES can be reached at city@theaggie.org.

Californians will face a number of choices on the June 8 ballot. One is Proposition 15, an initiative which, if enacted, will impose fees on registered lobbyists in California and use the additional revenue to provide funding for political campaigns in the state.

Initially sponsored by Sen. Loni Hancock (D-Oakland), the proposal launches a pilot program that will only apply to political campaigns for the Office of Secretary of State in 2014 and 2018.

Hancock said the people of California will benefit from Prop. 15 as well as those considering running for secretary of state who do not want to spend years of their life “dialing for dollars.”

Currently lobbyists pay $12.50 annually for a registration fee. If passed, Prop. 15 would increase this fee to $350 annually per registered lobbyist and also for each of the lobbyist’s clients.

The new amount is considerably less than what several states assess on lobbyists and less than what the state of California charges lawyers and doctors to register every year, Hancock said.

Opponents of the proposition point to their belief that the legislation would incite a slippery slope of greater taxes in the future.

“Our position is that we don’t think the public should be compelled to pay for campaigns of anyone else,” said Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, an organization that opposes the proposed legislation. “This is going to result in people funding campaigns they don’t support.”

Prop. 15 would repeal the ban on public campaign financing which California voters enacted in 1988. Twice since then voters have rejected ballot measures that would lift that ban, said Richard Wiebe, a spokesperson for stopprop15.com.

“The legislature knew [it would repeal the ban] and that’s why they didn’t include that in the ballot label,” Wiebe said.

A judge later inserted the language into the ballot measure.

A source of contention between the two sides is a severability clause within the legislation that would be enacted if the courts were to decide that the assessed fee on lobbyists was unconstitutional.

If this were to happen, there would be public financing for campaigns but no money to finance them, Wiebe said. This would then allow the legislature to go to the General Fund or raise taxes to help pay for the public financing, he added.

Nancy Neff, the Northern California outreach coordinator for the “Yes on 15” campaign, said she does not see any reason to speculate on what might happen if lobbyist fees are overturned. Even if this were to happen, any tax must be approved by a two-thirds majority of the legislature, Neff said.

Hancock said she is working to change the rules but is living by the current rules, referencing her recent Sacramento-area fundraiser which required a minimum $1,000 sponsor contribution.

“If there were public financing of elections I would never have another fundraiser,” she said.

Neff said one of the main advantages of Prop. 15 is that voters will finally have people in office who are only beholden to them and not any special interests.

“If the candidate chooses to go on this program, they are not allowed to take any money from anybody except from the public fund. They can’t take any lobbyist money, labor union money, family’s money or their own money,” Neff said.

While proponents favor the idea of freeing up politicians’ time from raising money, there are some who would rather have a legislature with less free time.

“Our fear is that they’re going to extend this to policy driven offices, especially in the legislature, which spend too much time already working on legislation which is designed to support special interests or to aggrandize themselves,” Vosburgh said. “Politicians aren’t spending enough time working for the general good of the state.”

Wiebe is against the proposition because, due to the proposed fee on lobbyists, it shifts the burden of financing campaigns from politicians seeking office to the taxpayer.

“California has all kinds of problems and priorities,” Wiebe said. “Spending tax money on campaigns does not even register on the long list of needs this state has. If anyone would appreciate that it’s students at a state university.”

If the event were to occur that too many candidates ran for the office, limiting the amount of money in the fund from Prop. 15 for each candidate, the existing money in the fund would be distributed and the publicly funded candidates would be able to raise up to the base amount ($1.3 million for the general election and $1 million for the primary election).

There is also a provision which would allow for matching funds up to four times the base amount if the publicly funded candidate were to be out-raised by an independently financed candidate.

CHINTAN DESAI can be reached at city@theaggie.org.

Efforts to reform California’s primary election system have been resuscitated with Sen. Abel Maldonado’s (R-Santa Maria) Proposition 14, which will appear on the June 8 ballot.

Prop. 14, as detailed in the California Attorney General summary, overhauls state legislature primary elections by employing a single ballot wherein citizens vote for a candidate regardless of either the candidate’s or the voter’s political party affiliation.

Candidates also have the option of not listing their political party preference. The top two candidates with the most votes -both could potentially be of the same political party – then progress to the November general election.

“If such a proposition were passed, it would effectively eliminate the primary process,” said UC Davis political science professor Josephine Andrews in an e-mail interview. “It is no longer a primary, since by definition, a primary is a vote for a party’s nominee. If all candidates appear on the same ballot, the ‘primary’ becomes, in effect, the first round of a two-ballot contest.”

Under the current electoral system, voters only receive a ballot with candidates of the political party for which they are registered, barring them from voting for candidates affiliated with other parties.

Many, including Maldonado, intended the measure to generate more moderate candidates. Maldonado’s aid, Brian Collins, believes current primaries fail to accomplish that.

“Candidates end up [trying to appeal] to the extreme of the party where the ‘party-faithful’ reside,” Collins said. “Then during the general elections, they have to run back toward the middle. The people that end up winning are much more right or much more left.”

The new electoral reforms seek to put candidates in touch with a larger proportion of voters in a district, said Amanda Fulkerson, communications director for Californians for an Open Primary.

“In order to communicate to the entire electorate, they’re going to have to take positions that the majority of Californians agree with, not just the far right or far left,” she said.

Rep. Mariko Yamada (D-Davis), on the other hand, believes the proposition severely dims the prospects of smaller parties.

“There won’t be minor parties left standing if it passes, because what you will have is the two top vote-getters advancing from the primary to the general election,” Yamada said.

She added that smaller parties’ candidates cannot compete with larger parties’ campaign spending.

Fulkerson said Prop. 14 will grant greater exposure to minor parties as well as California’s 3.4 million independent voters by giving them a chance to appear on the same primary ballot as their big-party counterparts. She highlighted irony of how the two largest parties, Democrats and Republicans, criticize the proposition for its deficient representation of smaller parties.

“It’s surprising to me that all of a sudden [Democrats and Republicans] are worrying about third parties,” she said. “The goal is to get pragmatic people in the capitol who are able to make decisions [and] get things done.”

The means by which lawmakers secured Prop. 14 for consideration harkens back to the 2009 state budget bill, whose passage came to rest solely on Maldonado’s vote. Maldonado opposed the bill because of its tax hikes and cuts to education but promised his vote to Gov. Schwarzenegger in a quid pro quo for two propositions he had authored himself, Collins said. One of those was Prop. 14.

There has been some debate over whether the proposition was written too hastily.

“I don’t think any important policy change should find its way to the voters through extortion,” Yamada said.

Collins attested to the process behind the creation of Prop. 14, but said Maldonado had long dwelled on the measure before bringing it to the attention of key officials.

“He had been kicking this idea around for a while,” Collins said.

YARA ELMJOUIE can be reached at city@theaggie.org.

THURSDAY

It’s a bird, a plane…

A resident said something small came through her front window on Drexel Drive, possibly from a BB gun.

Got wheels?

Someone stole a bike seat and ran on foot through the bike path on Shasta Drive.

Mice in the attic

A resident heard something that sounded like someone was walking in the attic or roof of the apartment, and then heard people outside laughing and talking.

FRIDAY

Too desperate

A subject called, texted AND e-mailed a resident on Scripps Drive.

Short cut

A male was standing in the center divide on Sycamore Lane and West Covell Boulevard.

Not short enough

Later, someone was sitting in the median at Anderson Road and F Street.

Fast and Furious, Davis Drift

Vehicles were racing up and down J Street.

SATURDAY

Who let the dogs out?

A border collie mix and a Chihuahua and beagle mix were out and unattended on Chestnut Lane.

Bike gang

Juveniles with bandana masks were riding bikes on Drexel Drive.

SUNDAY

Homesick and stranded

Someone was randomly crying on Second Street, while holding an Amtrak ticket with $37 written on it and asking for money to get home.

Trash collectors

A resident requested extra patrol for people moving trash cans and doorbell ditching late at night on Botticelli Place.

Suspicious satchel

An abandoned bag was just outside the main entrance on Russell Boulevard.

POLICE BRIEFS are compiled by POOJA KUMAR from the public logs of the Davis Police Department and represent the official version of what happened. View the crime blotter online at cityofdavis.org/police/log. This segment appears Tuesdays.

Teenagers may be night owls, but according to new research by a UC San Diego assistant professor, those hours out of bed each night may be turning more teens into weed users.

In her study, psychiatry assistant professor Sara Mednick examined over 8,000 adolescents and mapped how sleep and marijuana use was connected between their social groups. Instead of examining the effects of marijuana on sleep patterns, the researchers analyzed drug use in the opposite direction. They studied how sleep patterns affected drug use.

Overall, the study found teenagers whose friends sleep less than seven hours per night are 19 percent more likely to become marijuana users. Lack of sleep in conjunction with social pressures from friends together lead to an increased chance of marijuana use.

Social networks in general influence behavior: There is an 11 percent likelihood that one teen will sleep less because a friend does. Chances of using marijuana are increased 110 percent if a friend is using the drug, according to the study.

“One behavior can influence another both within and between individuals,” Mednick stated in her study entitled, “The Spread of Sleep Loss Influences Drug Use in Adolescent Social Networks.”

The research connecting sleep and marijuana use can have implications for anti-drug campaigns and policy targeted at teenagers. The study’s researchers suggest incorporating napping programs within school systems.

The issue of sleep is a main problem within adolescent development and subsequent behavior patterns, including drug use. Dr. Deborah Stewart, UC Davis Medical Center department of pediatrics section chief, has studied and taught how the adolescent brain is delicate between the ages of 11 and 22.

In two recent presentations, Stewart, who is the medical director of the Child and Adolescent Abuse, Resource, Evaluation (CAARE) Diagnostic and Treatment Center, covered the topic of sleep, the brain and adolescence. The 2006 National Sleep Foundation Study, “Sleep in America,” found older teens report sleeping only 6.9 hours per night.

According to Stewart, lack of sleep can add to teens’ already present impulsivity and risk-taking, sensation-seeking and erratic behavior. These behavior patterns make for a higher chance of drug experimentation and curiosity at this age.

“Some neuroscientists now warn that adolescence may be one of the worst times to expose a brain to drugs and alcohol, or even a steady dose of violent video games,” Stewart said.

Dubbed “The Health Paradox,” teenagers are physically strongest and most resilient health-wise, yet overall morbidity and mortality rates increase 200 to 300 percent from childhood to late adolescence, Stewart said.

“Primary causes of death and disability are related to problems with control of behavior and emotion,” according to her presentation about the teen brain. “[There are] increasing rates of accidents, suicide, homicide, depression, alcohol and substance use, violence, reckless behaviors, eating disorders [and] health problems related to risky sexual behaviors.”

Here in Yolo County, CommuniCare, a non-profit health organization for the under and uninsured and low-income population of Yolo County, deals with the consequences of teen marijuana use. Adolescent Services Supervisor Linda Ryan said she estimates approximately 90 percent of teens who attend CommuniCare’s drug program have abused marijuana.

“A lot of kids report anxiety and insomnia,” Ryan said. “And they do tend to use marijuana to self-medicate.”

With about 50 teenagers in the program, Ryan said she has seen the use of marijuana bring down grades, school attendance and interest in hobbies. The harm reduction program aims to limit teen drug use with group meetings, counseling sessions and random drug tests.

“Part of our goal is to get them more focused on things they enjoy,” Ryan said.

With Mednick’s new research, perhaps programs in the future will include more information and resources on healthy sleeping patterns along with current drug reduction methods.

At UC Davis, Student Health Services has a program for students with drug-related problems. Alcohol, Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment (ADAPT) Intervention Coordinator Stephanie Lake meets with students and gives students an assessment of their marijuana use. Students come voluntary, though some are mandated to join the program through the university. During the 2008-2009, Lake saw 49 students.

“Motivational training is helpful for students,” Lake said. “It helps with behavior change.”

Many students who have become dependent on marijuana have reported problems with “amotivation syndrome.” Lake also said that while under the influence of marijuana student are not going to get as good of a night’s sleep.

SASHA LEKACH can be reached at city@theaggie.org.