IN BRIEF: From New Revenue to Butterflies

News
Cabbage white butterfly on purple flowers
File photo: This was not the “first” cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae) of 2023. Distinguished Professor Art Shapiro spotted two this week. (Kathy Keatley Garvey/UC Davis)
 

INDEX

  • Members sought for Revenue Generation Task Force
  • Look for eduroam’s new security certificate
  • The Big Shift’s next phase: Sprocket District
  • Professor Shapiro spots his cabbage white butterfly

Have revenue-generating ideas?

UC Davis is forming a Revenue Generation Task Force and seeks nominations, including self-nominations, of people to serve on the panel. Nominations are due by Friday, Feb. 4.

Members can include staff, faculty or friends of UC Davis with an entrepreneurial mindset and commitment to the university mission and strategic plan, to help identify and evaluate opportunities for increased net revenue generation that that can support UC Davis’ core mission, according to the announcement from Budget and Institutional Analysis.

The work of the task force is expected to occur over at least a year beginning this quarter. Read more and submit a nomination.

Eduroam security certificate

Information and Educational Technology plans to renew its security certificate for campus wireless network eduroam at 8 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 2, which means, if you use the network, your phone or other device will automatically accept the certificate, or you will be prompted to do so.

If you use the campus wireless network eduroam, a new security certificate is coming next week to your phone or other device — and may require you to take action, depending on device, model and software.

In some cases, the certificate will be accepted automatically. Or you will see a prompt asking you to accept it. Be sure the certificate is for eap.noc.ucdavis.edu and from InCommon. if you have If you have doubts, contact your department tech support or IT Express. See this campus reference article for more information.

This is the seventh certificate update to eduroam at UC Davis since fall 2012. Information and Educational Technology schedules certificate updates every year in February. 

If you have problems or questions, contact IT Express online or by phone, 530-754-HELP (4357).

Regents OK Big Shift funding

The Board of Regents last week approved funding for the development of the preliminary plans for the next phase of the Big Shift, the project that is switching the way the Davis campus heats its buildings, to use hot water instead of steam.

The next stage includes pipeline installation and building system conversions in the Sprocket District and making significant additions and improvements to the Thermal Energy Storage plant.

The Sprocket District encompasses the Segundo and Reagan residence halls, the Student Health and Wellness Center, the Activities and Recreation Center and the University Credit Union Center, in addition to a handful of classroom and lab buildings.

The preliminary design will be further developed in the coming year, with construction slated to begin in 2023 and continue into 2024.

Read more in this article on the Finance, Operations and Administration website.

51 consecutive years of butterfly data

In the end, Art Shapiro’s Beer for a Butterfly Contest is about the research. For his study of biological response to climate change. the distinguished professor of evolution and ecology has been recording the first flight of the cabbage white butterfly in Yolo, Solano or Sacramento counties every calendar year since 1972.

Photo: Professor Art Shapiro holds the cabbage white butterfly he netted on Jan. 26.
Professor Art Shapiro, shown in 2015 with the first cabbage white he netted that year. (Kathy Keatley Garvey/UC Davis)

In a normal year, he asks the public to join in, offering a pitcher of beer to whomever nets the “first” cabbage white. Unfortunately, the pandemic prompted him to cancel the contest the last two years.

But that did not mean he wasn’t out in the field to make his own first sightings — like he did on Jan. 16, 2021, and Jan. 19. 2022 (specifically, at 1:25 p.m. last Wednesday near a railroad embankment in West Sacramento).

Now, with 51 consecutive years of data, he can state the average day of the butterfly’s first flight in the tri-county area is around Jan. 20, about a week earlier than 30 years ago.

In the many years he’s held the contest, he’s been pretty hard to beat, losing only four times, always to students. Don’t despair about the free beer, though, because he’s always willing to share.

“Pop Goes the Pieris!” Kathy Keatley Garvey, communication specialist, Department of Entomology and Nematology, has more on Shapiro’s Jan. 19 sighting and how his colleague-collaborator Matt Forister predicted the date.

 

Media Resources

Dateline Staff: Dave Jones, editor, 530-752-6556, dateline@ucdavis.edu; Cody Kitaura, News and Media Relations specialist, 530-752-1932, kitaura@ucdavis.edu.

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