UC Davis web application works to increase comfort, reduce energy waste

Since the fall of 2014, the Energy Conservation Office at UC Davis has had a tile on the myUCDavis site for its web application TherMOOstat. Students, faculty, staff and guests are able to submit comments through TherMOOstat about how rooms on campus feel — hot, warm, perfect, chilly, or cold — in order to help the ECO crowdsource comfort on campus while keeping energy costs down.

When submitting a comment through TherMOOstat, the ECO asks about the building, room number, current comfort, level of clothing and amount of physical activity performed in the last 10 minutes.The team’s mascot, Joules the Cow, is eager to assist.

“We’re excited to be able to use all of this great crowdsourced data that everyone is submitting and put it to good use,” said Kiernan Salmon, a data analyst and product developer at the ECO. “We’re able to tailor the project that we’re doing in this office to what people need.”

Managing the temperatures of a large campus is like managing a city, said John Coon, the energy project manager at the ECO. Some of the challenges are due to the diverse accomodations found in a university. Undergraduate students might be most familiar with lecture halls and classrooms, but full-time staff members may work all day in an office, while graduate students could be spending long days in a specialized laboratory. Each room has unique ventilation requirements

“We’ve got over 1,000 buildings on campus,” Coon said. “Some of the buildings have temperature control systems, so that we can see what the major equipment and what the major conditions are inside the buildings.”

Some buildings, due to age or design, are not completely visible with the remote tools used by the staff at the ECO or Facilities Management, the group which responds to submitted work orders. Haring Hall and the Memorial Union are two such structures, receiving the most comments so far this quarter, at 74 and 67, respectively. Most comments claim the buildings are too hot, but in previous quarters, most felt the buildings were too cold.

“We receive, on average, about 300 [comments] a month,” Salmon said. “One of the trends that we see is, when the seasons are changing, the number of votes we get goes way up. For us, March and April, our big months, could have 500 to 600 [comments]. October and November, when it starts to get colder outside, those are big months for us, 500 to 600 again. It fluctuates a lot in the summer, when students aren’t here.”

Every comment submitted through the TherMOOstat system is manually reviewed and investigated.

“When we get a comment, or feedback, in from TherMOOstat, I’ll take a look at it,” Coon said. “I’ll take a look at the timestamp and the building and which room they’re in, and first determine whether or not I can see anything because there are buildings on campus I can’t see at all.”

Coon is able to see what most buildings and rooms are being used for on campus at a given time. A single complaint of chilly temperature in a lecture hall of 300 students may not set off alarm bells or send a team in to rush a work order, but will be considered for historical trends.

“We take the feedback and we use it to inform future decisions,” Coon said. “There’s not much relief we can offer immediately.”

Properly controlling temperatures in campus buildings can help reduce the energy usage and expenditures on campus, as detailed in a short educational program created by the ECO.

“We have a Trim the Waste program, a four-part series where people learn a bit about how the campus uses energy,” Salmon said. “Then we show them the factors that influence how much energy each building uses.”

Energy usage, as well as the type of energy used, can have important economic impacts at UC Davis. Carrie Chung is a fourth-year communication major serving as a communications intern at the ECO. One of her roles involves crafting blog posts to share new insights to the public — including how much energy and money UC Davis saved by changing heating and cooling tendencies over breaks.

“Over the holidays, when there’s nobody here in certain buildings, we just shut those buildings off completely and turn off all heating, cooling, and lighting,” Chung said. “This saves us thousands of dollars.”

The TherMOOstat system may not be an automatic temperature control system for the thousands of students, faculty, staff and guests who work together as campus “roommates”, but by collecting information about how people feel in their rooms and buildings, the ECO is able to help increase personal comfort, reduce energy costs and educate the public about energy usage.

“We try and let people know how their building works, so they get a better idea of what they can do on their end and what we can do on our end,” Salmon said. “It’s more of a discussion that way.”

Written by: George Ugartemendia — science@theaggie.org

Innovative use of tilapia skin helps heal wildlife with burned paws

Two female bears and a mountain lion cub were treated for severe burns on their paws after the Sonoma wildfire late last year with a new type of bandage — fish skins. The collaboration between a senior wildlife veterinarian at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and a companion veterinarian at UC Davis to heal these large carnivores started with a housecat.

Dr. Deana Clifford, the senior veterinarian at CDFW, had a cat named Craftsy, whose fractured leg did not heal properly. After looking at different options, Clifford went to Dr. Jamie Peyton, who practices integrative medicine. Clifford combines current medical practices with traditional ones, such as acupuncture.

“I’d been taking care of [Clifford’s] cat for the last year, and she was the one that talked to me and asked me if I would be interested in helping them with any pain or burn issues because I have an interest in wounds and wound healing — and I said of course,” Peyton said. “It just so happened that after we talked about that, a few weeks later they had a bear sent up for burns.”

Kirsten Macintyre, a communications manager with the CDFW, said the department mostly deals with orphaned animals or injured wildlife that does not have to be taken to a rehabilitation center.

“There are cases, like when a deer was tangled in a soccer net,” Macintryre said. “Burns are unusual. The last case was nine years ago.”

Injured wildlife is assessed by the department, and if the animals are in too much pain, they are euthanized. The three big carnivores were not the only victims of the fire, but the small animals that could be saved were sent to rehabilitation centers. However, most places for wildlife are not equipped to handle such large animals. Only a week after a bear was brought in, another bear and the mountain lion cub came in with similar injuries.

“Wildlife is a little different than treating a dog or a cat because you can’t hold them like a dog or a cat, actually to do anything with you them you have to anesthetized them,” Peyton said. “The other thing is that you can’t bandage their feet like you would [with a dog or a cat], because if they eat it, it’s a problem and if they tear it off, you can’t go into their pen and easily get it out. We had to figure it out, using traditional methods of burn care. So the creams that we use for pain control, cleaning the wounds, and then add other things.”

Peyton uses cold laser therapy, pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, acupuncture and chiropractic techniques in her work. Cold laser therapy and PEMF use infrared light or a magnetic current to help increase blood flow to injured areas to promote healing. Acupuncture and chiropractic therapy is used to help with pain management and boost the immune system. This still was not enough.

“After we started those things, we’d be watching her [the bear] and she still didn’t want to walk, because we can’t get her to take pain medication when we wanted to, and I thought we need to do something else,” Peyton said. “And that’s where the fish skin idea came in. I remembered seeing something about using fish skins to help people with burns down in Brazil. So we actually called down to Brazil […] and they said they’ve seen some really good results, but they couldn’t ship us any of the skins. So I thought to myself, well, I’m just going to make them myself, because this bear needed something. Life puts you in situations where you have to make a decision, you have to do something, because that animal needs more help than you are currently giving them.”

After getting tilapia from the local fish market, the team sterilized the skin and sutured it on the healthy skin still left on the paws. The process to make the fish skin bandage took several days, and by the time it was ready to use, it did not smell, and the animals were not able recognize the bandages were made of potential food. On both of the bears, the skins were further wrapped in rice paper and corn husks so the fish skin could not be easily taken off.

Clifford had predicted that the three animals would take three to four months to heal, but they were doing well only about a month and half later.

“Often we have to innovate, try new things with wildlife,” Clifford said. “Anything to improve their chances of getting back into the wild.”

The fish skins protected the damaged tissue, offered pain relief and helped the burned paws heal. Many scientists are excited about the possibility of expanding the use of fish skins, and Peyton wants to start clinical trials after the paper on their recent use is published. Peyton believes fish skin could help with chronic non-healing wounds and pressure sores in addition to burns.

“This holds a lot of promise,” Clifford said. “We’ve had a lot of inquiries from other rehabilitation centers.”

On Jan. 8, both bears were released after the researchers made them dens to keep the bears safe. Since they were tagged with GPS collars, the CDFW has been able to confirm that both bears are doing fine, although they have moved away from the human-made dens. One of the bears was pregnant when she was brought in, and those monitoring her are unable to tell if she has given birth.

The mountain lion cub, named Charlie, was moved to the Sonoma Wildlife Rescue Center, where he will be joining a female mountain lion who just lost her companion. Charlie is too young to be released; mountain lion cubs typically stay with their mothers for 18 months and Charlie was only 5 months old when he was brought in during December.

“I’ve been asked, why spend the money and time on this?” Macintyre said. “Peyton volunteered her time, as did two other doctors. They collected a body of knowledge and it has a  wide range of applications. It had never been done before, and I’m really excited about this.”

Written by: Rachel Paul — science@theaggie.org

How Native Americans can reverse injustices of past

Beth Rose Middleton, a professor in the Native American Studies Department at UC Davis, recently gave a talk about the history of the sale of Native American land in California and how modern tribes can use environmental policy to help take back what is rightfully theirs. The talk was put on by the Feminist Research Institute in association with the Women’s Resource Center. The groups are working together to bring awareness to the research being done by women, especially to inform undergraduates about their work.

“Professor Middleton’s research addresses the historical origins and ongoing environmental impacts of the dispossession of California’s Indigenous peoples,” said Justin Spence, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Native American Studies Department. “Her research program engages contemporary Native American people in the process of finding creative policy solutions to a legacy of environmental injustice that has eroded their land base (both literally and figuratively). Her work provides a model of community-engaged scholarship that researchers in many fields can aspire to emulate — one where theory and praxis inform each other in support of historically underserved communities’ efforts to maintain their political and cultural autonomy.”

Middleton’s research is at the intersection of her identity as a black-multiracial woman. Her research highlights discontinuities in the treatment of Native Americans in an effort to affect policy change. For example, in 1850 and 1851, the California state government and the Native American tribes of California mutually recognized each other’s nationhood and signed treaties to establish their sovereignty. However, those treaties were never ratified by the state and were left unenforced, which allowed the state to continue selling Native American lands to companies who harm the California state ecology by flooding valleys, destroying the homes of wildlife and wasting natural resources.

The original land grants that were given to Native Americans were withheld from non-white and female citizens. Middleton’s research has uncovered documentation that showed how difficult the state government made it for women to pursue and protect rights to their lands. The government forced Native American women to be living on the land that was granted to them, which would have required them to evacuate their homes and families. Once enough time had passed without anyone living on the property, the government seized the land and sold it to power companies who created dams that flooded valleys and destroyed ecosystems. One dire effect on the ecosystem has been the systematic annihilation of salmon populations which cannot travel up the dams and are instead directed into fish hatcheries.

Tribal people of California were first displaced by the seizure of their lands and were later displaced again by the urbanization that occurred thanks to the seizure of their lands, said Middleton. She also mentioned the ‘stairway of power,’ which is a series of dams and hydropower-generation facilities in the Feather River Canyon. Not only did Native American land allow for the growth of cities in which they could not afford to live, they continue to pay these companies for power generated on the land that they bought from the government’s unlawful seizure.

Middleton’s soon-to-be-published book, “Upstream: Trust Lands and Power on the Feather River,” includes a ‘how to’ chapter for modern California tribes on what it will take to use the laws that are in effect to take back their land in a way that grants them the capacity to be the land’s caretakers. This would give them the power to stop and reverse the creation of dams, intentional flooding of valleys, and more.

“Professor Middleton’s collaboration with Native California tribes and the relevant research that she conducts are prime examples of engaged and responsible academic work,” said Zoila Mendoza, the department chair and a professor of Native American Studies at UC Davis. “She brings this commitment to her undergraduate and graduate teaching and mentoring developing an exemplary method of active learning. We are very fortunate to have Profesor Middleton as a faculty member and proud that she is the holder of the Yocha Dehe Endowed Chair for California Indian Studies.”

Written by: Jason Kelly — science@theaggie.org

Corrections (updated 2/27/18 at 7:30 p.m.)

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Middleton was a black-Native American woman. The article also stated that the “stairway of power” is a series of mountain valleys. This is incorrect. The “stairway of power” instead refers to a series of dams and hydropower-generation facilities located in the Feather River Canyon.