This fall will mark 100 years since UC Davis first opened its doors, and the university is celebrating its centennial with a salute to its past and an enthusiastic look forward to its future.

UC Davis will kick off the centennial celebration at this year’s California State Fair in Sacramento, where it will unveil a 6,000 square foot pavilion dedicated to the university’s journey from a small agricultural school to one of the top public universities in the country. Fairgoers can visit the State Fair exhibit at Cal Expo starting Aug. 15 through Labor Day, Sept. 1.

“Our presence at the State Fair is to extend an invitation to [Californians],” said Mabel Salon, program director for the UC Davis Centennial Project. “We are bringing a slice of UC Davis to the people of California, giving them a glimpse of who we are, what we do, and why it matters to them.”

The theme for the centennial exhibit is “Dream Big,” according to the Davis Centennial website. It will feature UC Davis on the leading edge of innovation and will emphasize its contributions in food and agriculture, energy, environment, health, and community building and global understanding.

The Pavilion will feature a wide variety of attractions. Fairgoers can watch a biodigester convert food scraps to usable energy, take a tour to the center of the earth in a 3-D theater and even check out one of Unitran’s famous double decker buses, which will be on display outside of the tent.

Bob Segar, planning director for the UC Davis Centennial celebration, said the exhibit is an opportunity for UC Davis to showcase achievements that many people might not recognize.

“We hope that people leave saying, ‘Wow, I didn’t know UC Davis did that’,” he said in a statement on the UC Davis Centennial website.

Salon said that the decision to kick off the centennial at the State Fair is a tribute to the university’s inception.

“We found it appropriate given the ‘idea’ for UC Davis was born at the State Fair,” she said. “In 1858, the president of the California State Agriculture Society gave an opening address at the State Fair where he called for ‘an institution to teach … knowledge of agriculture as a science’. Fifty years later, the UC regents opened the University Farm in Davis.”

As part of the tribute to the University’s first 100 years, the exhibit will display photos of 100 UC Davis alumni representing the university’s wide spectrum of achievements.

“We are featuring a diverse group of alumni who have made contributions in their respective fields of expertise ranging from elementary school teachers to winemakers to a professional wrestler to the United States Treasurer,” Salon said.

The Centennial celebration will continue on campus from Oct. 10 to 15 with the Fall Festival, which will include an unveiling of the new centennial walk on the Quad.

To learn more about the state fair exhibit and the fall festival celebration, go to centennial.ucdavis.edu.

ERICA LEE can be reached at campus@californiaaggie.com.

Information and Educational Technology at University of California Davis announced that registration for the new campus Gmail accounts will begin in the second week of October. The entire student body should be switched over by the end of fall quarter.

“We plan on getting this process started right after the flurry of fall registration,” said Morna Mellor, director of IET Data Center and Client Services.

Under the direction of Gaston De Ferrari, the IET department has been planning the transition since March 2007.

“Most students coming into campus already have e-mail,” said De Ferrari, IET Project Manager for the Gmail transition. “So they come in with very high expectations of the service that should be provided by their e-mail account.”

“[Geckomail] is very simple and not up to par with the kind of service that is expected from an e-mail account, especially in terms of storage and collaboration tools,” he said.

The most noticeable improvements over the previous Geckomail will be a drastic increase in storage space to approximately 6 gigabytes – over 100 times greater than what is currently allotted – larger attachment file sizes, instant messenger and access to a constantly growing number of Google applications.

“The new e-mail will look like it is totally provided by the UC,” De Ferrari said. “And we will have complete authority over accounts.”

Students registering for the new e-mail will not have to change their e-mail address, as Geckomail will be fully integrated into Gmail.

Between January and March 2008, the IET department conducted a pilot test of Gmail, which involved over 300 undergraduate and graduate students.

“The pilot was very successful,” De Ferrari said. “We got feedback on the registration process and it was generally agreed that it was very simple.”

Since the conclusion of the pilot test in March, the Gmail project successfully navigated the process of securing the approval of a number of committees designated to ensure its compatibility with the campus. In July 2008, the Gmail switch received endorsement from the UC Davis Council of Deans and Vice Chancellors, which was followed by the official announcement and permission to proceed from Vice Provost Peter Siegel, according to an IET department press release.

UC Davis will be the first UC campus to use this enhanced e-mail system, which was first marketed by Microsoft and Google approximately two years ago and is seeing growing use in universities across the nation.

“Other campuses have been looking into to it,” De Ferrari said. “But their infrastructure is not ready for it yet, they’ll be learning from our example.”

The university has signed a seven-year contract with Google, to provide this free service, and it reserves the right to terminate the contract at any time.

“Currently this will be just for students,” Mellor said. “There is still a lot of discussion that has to take place before we can consider implementing it on a faculty and staff level, there are issues of privacy and e-discovery.”

CHARLES HINRIKSSON can be reached at campus@californiaaggie.com.

Aging veterans exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War now have more reason to worry about prostate cancer, according to a UC Davis study.

UC Davis Cancer Center physicians announced the results last week of the largest study to date that shows Agent Orange exposure is a high risk factor for developing the disease in veterans.

Agent Orange is a mixture of chemicals that contains TCDD, which is classified as a known human carcinogen, according to the American Cancer Society website. U.S. forces sprayed large quantities of the substance on Vietnam during the war to kill plants that enemies used for cover.

Research has linked the now-banned herbicide with varying extent to many different types of cancer.

“There is limited evidence so far associating [Agent Orange] with prostate cancer,” said Karim Chamie, lead author of the study, in an online briefing.

He and other physicians at the department of urology analyzed medical reports for over 13,000 veterans enrolled in the Department of Veteran Affairs Northern California Health Care System. Roughly half of the veterans were exposed to Agent Orange and the rest had no documented exposure while stationed in Vietnam during the years it was widely sprayed.

Several shortcomings in previous studies – small sample size and young age of patients – were not a factor in the current study, Chamie said. By examining a large population, the authors compared other prostate cancer risk factors between the exposed and non-exposed groups with statistical confidence. The study examined medical reports from 1998 – 2006, reflecting the tendency for the disease to develop in men later in life.

Analysis showed that twice as many veterans in the exposed group had prostate cancer, while other risk factors – race, body-mass index and smoking – did not differ significantly between the two groups. Exposed veterans were also more likely to be diagnosed with the most aggressive form of the disease and at a younger age compared to non-exposed veterans.

“Just as those with a family history of prostate cancer or who are of African American heritage are screened more frequently, so too should men with Agent Orange exposure be given priority consideration for all the screening and diagnostic tools we have at our disposal in the hopes of early detection and treatment of this disease,” said Ralph deVere White, a study co-author and UC Davis Cancer Center director, in an online briefing.

Like other high-risk groups, Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange during the war are advised to screen yearly for prostate cancer, said Robert Owen, chief of environmental medicine at San Francisco VA Medical Center, who is not connected to the study. They are eligible for monetary compensation and medical treatment for the disease from VA.

“The VA has been following these veterans as high risk [for prostate cancer] for years,” Owen said. “The additional attention this study brings to the issue should be helpful in reaching veterans who are not already aware of this association and their need for active surveillance.“

The National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine has established a committee of experts to evaluate evidence of health effects from exposure to herbicides, including Agent Orange, and to advise the Secretary of Veteran Affairs on related policy issues. The Institute currently designates prostate cancer as having limited suggestive evidence of association with Agent Orange exposure.

“[This] study will be reviewed for the next update along with all of the other relevant information on prostate cancer that has been developed,” said David Butler, senior program officer at the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, in an e-mail interview. “The committee will weigh the strengths and weaknesses of these studies and make its determination [for the designation] based on all of the available evidence.“

The study will be published in the Sept. 15 issue of the journal Cancer.

ELAINE HSIA can be reached at campus@californiaaggie.com.

Representatives from the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges gathered in San Louis Obispo at the beginning of August for the seventh annual California University Sustainability Conference.

Over 850 students, faculty, staff and administrators attended the four-day conference to discuss energy-efficient, cost-efficient and environmentally sustainable solutions for the future of California higher education under the theme “Putting sustainability to work.“

The conference included 13 different topic tracks – including energy, food systems, transportation, waste-reduction and recycling, as well as water, agriculture and landscaping, said Katie Maynard, a conference organizer.

Sessions on the food systems track, for example, focused on such issues as what it really means to be organic and local, looking for pesticide-free food and how to create a sustainable food system like those of UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz.

“There are different things to consider when talking about food on campus,” Maynard said.

The conference was purely peer-to-peer and focused on bringing real solutions, she said.

“It’s entirely peer-to-peer,” Maynard said. “That means that the manager of an organic farm can come and show us that everything they do is possible, that it actually works. We present solutions, not ideas.“

Maynard emphasized that conference organizers tried to bring in people who have been actively working sustainable solutions to show others that sustainability is possible.

Keynote speakers included Lieutenant Governor and UC Regent John Garamendi, President of the Apollo Alliance Jerome Ringo and President of the U.S. Partnership for Education and Sustainable Development Debra Rowe.

Representatives from over 30 community colleges, 20 out of the 23 CSUs, all the UCs and some private California colleges attended the conference.

“I think that the UC has laid out very aggressive sustainability goals,” said Sid England, environmental planner for the Office of Resource Management and Planning at UC Davis who attended the conference. “Meeting those goals is going to be challenging, and getting people to learn and strategize those goals are the most important aspects in participation in the conference.“

Networking with other universities and meeting different people for possible future resources was an important aspect of the conference, England said.

“To learn about the ideas of people and know that there are a whole network of people working on these things made me come back to Davis recharged and motivated,” he said. “It’s good to step back and instead of being caught up in the details, think about why we are working on these issues.“

UC Davis won an overall sustainable design award for the Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences, a research building in Incline Village, Nevada completed in 2006.

Bill Starr, the project manager for the Tahoe center, hopes the building will serve as an example for others.

“I think it’s always great to be able to show what you can do because it changes the goal sets for other campuses,” Starr said.

One of the key challenges designers of the Tahoe center faced was making a lab building – which typically uses four to six times more energy than an office building of the same size – environmentally friendly.

The building that resulted uses 60 percent less energy and 66 percent less water than a traditional structure of the same function. It features a system that uses rainwater collected on the roof to flush toilets in the building.

“I hope to see all our projects get better and better as we move along,” Starr said.

ANGELA RUGGIERO can be reached at campus@californiaaggie.com.

Construction crews are currently in the process of repaving the 100-year-old path that runs through the Quad as part of UC Davis‘ centennial celebration.

Construction began on the new path in the last week of Summer Session I, and will likely be completed at the start of fall quarter. It will not be unveiled, however, until Oct. 15, when it will be commemorated as part of the university‘s Centennial Fall Festival.

“The Quad is the historic and social heart of the campus,” said Bob Segar, assistant vice chancellor for campus planning at UC Davis. “It‘s the place alumni come see when they return to the campus. We hope Centennial Walk will add to the great pride that people feel for UC Davis.“

The new path is designed to emulate the style of the previous walk, but will be approximately twice the width at 12 feet.

It will also feature a border of one-foot wide granite paving stones and brass expansion joints.

“The main part will be concrete, banded and scored the same way as the old walk,” said Skip Mezger, senior landscape architect in charge of the project.

Other significant differences between the old and new path include the addition of a circular slab of concrete 54 feet in diameter near the middle of the path along with two semicircles 92 feet in diameter at either end of the path.

The circle in the middle of the path will be slightly elevated and is intended to be a replacement for a similar feature that was removed sometime in the latter half of the original path’s life.

The two semicircles at either end of the path will be engraved with bronze lettering that reads, “Centennial Walk, dedicated October 15, 2008.“

“The overall look of the walk will be very similar,” Mezger said. “We will be saving two pieces of the old walk to put on display somewhere on campus; we‘re not yet sure where, though.“

Planning for the walk was supervised by Segar and officially began over a year ago.

“[Segar] and [Mezger] had been kicking around the idea of renovating the path for a long time,” said Christina DeMartini Reyes, assistant landscape architect. “But it wasn‘t until this spring that we had professional landscape architects come in to consult with.“

“This is an important area of campus,” she said. “It‘s a high-profile section of campus and it deserves an upgrade.“

The total cost for construction of the new path comes in at approximately $350,000, Segar said.

“The funds come from a Road and Pathway Improvement fund managed by the Campus Planning Office in the Office of Resource Management and Planning,” Segar said.

The Centennial Walk is the only construction project on campus that will be dedicated for the centennial.

Additional planned improvements on the Quad that have not yet been funded include introducing markers at the four ends of the Quad, a plaza on the Quad side of Shields Library and upgrading the lighting on the south and west sides, Segar said.

CHARLES HINRIKSSON can be reached at campus@californiaaggie.com.