Canine distemper, one of the most serious viral diseases affecting dogs, appears to have caused the deaths in recent months of a large number of skunks, foxes and raccoons in Northern California, report veterinary scientists at UC Davis.

Since mid-February, 83 skunks, 13 foxes and 12 raccoons were reported to have died of unexplained causes in Shasta County.

“Early molecular tests were negative for canine distemper and rabies, which are both contagious viruses that can infect many species of domestic and wild carnivorous animals,” said Mourad Gabriel, a comparative pathology graduate student in the laboratory of veterinary professor Janet Foley. “Postmortem exams, however, revealed typical changes associated with canine distemper infection.”

Canine distemper is a potentially fatal disease primarily causing inflammation in the nervous and respiratory systems. While the virus does not pose a threat to human health, dog owners are urged to protect the health of their animals by having them vaccinated against distemper and keeping them away from wild animals, which might be carrying the disease. Unfortunately, the outbreak is continuing with ongoing reports of deaths, including animals from more distant locations.

Gabriel, Foley and veterinary pathology professor Linda Munson, have been investigating the unexplained wildlife deaths in collaboration with the California Department of Fish and Game. Munson performed the postmortem exams that identified canine distemper as the cause.

“The animals we examined had tissue damage that is characteristic of canine distemper viral infection,” Munson said. “We confirmed the presence of the distemper virus in the tissues and now plan to isolate it in laboratory cultures.”

She added that more of the animals that died during the recent outbreak will also be examined.

“The Fish and Game office in Redding has been diligent in collecting fresh samples for us in order to more thoroughly investigate this die-off,” said Gabriel, noting that anyone who finds dead or dying wildlife should refrain from touching the carcasses and, instead, report the finding to the local animal control agency or California Department of Fish and Game.

As this week’s disaster in China shows, earthquakes are some of the most destructive of all natural disasters. Exactly how earthquakes cause such damage, how it can be simulated in the lab and what can be done about it is the topic of a conference next week in Sacramento. Experts on earthquake engineering and simulation will meet at the Sacramento Convention Center May 18-22 for the fourth decennial Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics conference, organized by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Conference topics will address how soils and the structures built on them behave during earthquakes, and how dams, levees, bridges, tunnels and other structures can be engineered to withstand earthquake damage. Sessions will range from basic research to specific case histories and new technologies for preventing earthquake damage.

Plenary speakers include Professor Thomas O’Rourke, Cornell University, on “Earthquake Engineering for Complex Geotechnical and Lifeline Systems”; Professor Raymond Seed, UC Berkeley, on “Seismic Evaluation of Levees”; and Bruce Kutter, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis, who will discuss modeling studies of the Bay Area’s BART tube tunnel.

There will also be demonstrations of equipment for earthquake engineering research, including ground-shaking trucks and UC Davis’ large geotechnical centrifuge. The equipment show will be held on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 20, at the UC Davis Center for Geotechnical Modeling, part of the George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) funded by the National Science Foundation.

The meeting is organized by the Geo-Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Ross Boulanger, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis, is chair of the conference organizing committee.

Conference registration is available online at http://www.geesd.org.

The National Security Agency has once again designated the Computer Security Laboratory at UC Davis as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Research. The designation runs through 2013. The lab was one of the first to be recognized as a national Center of Excellence when the NSA began this program in 1999.

Some previous articles about computer security research at UC Davis: “Protecting a World Online,” from 2002, and my magazine article on malware from Fall, 2005.

It’s not just about computer networks: with more data moving over wireless networks, Professor Hao Chen has been finding vulnerabilities in cell phones, too.

In recent years, Professor Matt Bishop has been looking at security problems with electronic voting machines, including testing voting systems for the California Secretary of State.

Two recent grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will support research on next-generation optical communications technology at UC Davis. These all-optical networks promise enormously faster rates of data transfer, as well as networks that can be rapidly reconfigured to meet changing needs.

Professor S. J. Ben Yoo and his laboratory at the UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is a part of the CORONET project lead by BBN Technologies, Cambridge, Mass., with other industry partners and consultants. DARPA recently funded the project with a grant of $5.7 million over 20 months.

The technology developed through CORONET would replace electronic network switches with systems based on pulses of light. The new networks would have a higher capacity, for example for carrying video services, and be more flexible and better able to react to local surges in demand, for example during natural disasters.

Yoo’s lab is developing architecture and controls for the CORONET, and building simulations of next generation networks. The other partners are: RTI International, Research Triangle Park, N.C.; the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), Chapel Hill, N.C.; Verizon Federal Network Systems, Ashburn, Va.; Photon Futures, LLC, a private consulting firm; Optoelectronic Consulting, LLC; and LabN Consulting, LLC.

DARPA has also awarded another $4.2 million over two years for phase two of a project begun in 2006 to develop thumb-sized chips that can encode data as infrared light at rates up to 10,000 times faster than current devices.

The research group includes Yoo, Professor Anh-Vu Pham and Professor Jonathan Heritage, all at the UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; a group at the Massachussets Institute of Technology, lead by Professor Erich Ippen; and commercial partners Inphi Inc. of Westlake Village, Calif.; Multiplex Inc. and Inplane Photonics, Inc. both of South Plainfield, N.J.

New technology to link cartridge cases to guns by engraving microscopic codes on the firing pin is feasible, but did not work equally well for all guns and ammunition tested in a pilot study by researchers from the forensic science program at the University of California, Davis. More testing in a wider range of firearms is needed, the researchers said.

Microstamping technology uses a laser to cut a pattern or code into the head of a firing pin or another internal surface. The method is similar to that used to engrave codes on computer chips. When the trigger is pulled, the firing pin hits the cartridge case or primer and stamps the code onto it. In principle, the spent cartridge can then be matched to a specific gun.

In October 2007, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law AB 1471, requiring that all new models of semiautomatic pistols sold in California on or after Jan. 1, 2010, be engraved in two or more places with an identifying code that is transferred to the cartridge case on firing. Similar legislation has been proposed in other states and at the federal level.

In March 2008, a report from the National Research Council, part of the National Academies of Science, described microstamping as a “promising” approach and called for more in-depth studies on the durability of microstamped marks under different firing conditions.

“Our study confirms the NRC position that more research should be conducted on this technology,” said Fred Tulleners, director of the forensic science graduate program at UC Davis. Tulleners is former director of the California Department of Justice crime labs in Sacramento and Santa Rosa.

If successfully implemented, microstamping would be one additional piece of evidence for investigators to link various shooting events, Tulleners said.

UC Davis graduate student Michael Beddow looked at the performance of microstamped marks in one location, the firing pin. He tested firing pins from six different brands of semi-automatic handguns, two semi-automatic rifles and a shotgun. The firing pins were engraved with three different types of code: a letter/number code on the face of the firing pin; a pattern of dots or gears around the pin; and a radial bar code down the side of the pin. The engraved firing pins were purchased from ID Dynamics of Londonderry, N.H.

To test the effects of repeated firing, Beddow fitted engraved firing pins into six Smith and Wesson .40-caliber handguns that were issued to California Highway Patrol cadets for use in weapons training. After firing about 2,500 rounds, the letter/number codes on the face of the firing pins were still legible with some signs of wear. But the bar codes and dot codes around the edge of the pins were badly worn.

“They were hammered flat,” Beddow said.

Tests on other guns, including .22-, .380- and .40-caliber handguns, two semi-automatic rifles and a pump-action shotgun, showed a wide range of results depending on the weapon, the ammunition used and the type of code examined, Beddow found. Generally, the letter/number codes on the face of the firing pin and the gear codes transferred well to cartridge cases, but the bar codes on the sides of the firing pin performed more poorly. Microstamping worked particularly poorly for the one rimfire handgun tested.

The researchers did not have access to patented information allowing them to read the bar- or gear-codes, and so could not determine if these remained legible enough to be useful.

Codes engraved on the face of the firing pin could easily be removed with household tools, Beddow found.

The researchers estimated that setting up a facility to engrave alphanumeric codes on firing pins would cost about $7 to $8 per firing pin in the first year, assuming that such marks would be required on all handguns sold in California, and based on the efficiencies associated with high-volume production costs, Tulleners said.

Tulleners said that a larger test of about 3,000 firing pins, from a wider range of guns, would allow for a more “real-world” test of the technology, as called for by the National Research Council report. About 2,000 makes and models of handguns are sold in California, compared with the nine tested, Beddow estimated in the study. A larger study would also help show how useful this technology might be in detecting and preventing crime.

AB1471 also requires at least one other internal location for microstamping a number. Microstamping on areas other than the firing pin was not tested in this study. Based on the study’s preliminary results with a .22-caliber pistol, where the code on the firing pin was transferred to the brass of the cartridge rather than the softer primer, the effectiveness of such a requirement needs further assessment, Tulleners said.

David Howitt, professor of chemical engineering and materials science at UC Davis, supervised the project.

The study was funded by a grant from the California Policy Research Center, part of the University of California Office of the President. The report has completed peer review by experts selected by the center, and a paper describing the results has been accepted and scheduled for publication in an upcoming issue of the Association of Firearm and Toolmark Examiners (AFTE) Journal.

UC Davis offers a research-based master’s degree in forensic science administered as a self-supporting program through UC Davis Extension. Courses are taught by an interdisciplinary group of UC Davis faculty and outside experts. The program currently has an enrollment of about 70 students.

2008 is the UN’s International Year of Planet Earth (actually, the “year” is supposed to run from 2007-2009, making it even more flexible than the UC Davis Centennial).

The Geology department has a handy calendar to keep you up-dated on your planetary knowledge. For example:

• March 1, 1872: Yellowstone National Park proclaimed
• Feb. 19, 1473: Copernicus born
• May 14, 1804: Lewis & Clark set out for the Pacific coast
• May 1, 196o: TV pilot of “the Flintstones” introduces “a generation of kids to a scientifically inaccurate Stone Age world of car-driving cavemen and domesticated dinosaurs.”

So far the dates only run up to May 18. Let’s hope that whoever is putting this together can keep it going…if you have suggestions, send them in.

Curious minds want to know if we can expect another corpse flower bloom this year. Sources in the greenhouse say no: Ted the Titan Arum is “resting” this year, storing up its energies for a possible bloom in 2009.

Relive the 2007 bloom with this time-lapse video, which gives an interesting perspective on plant time versus people time. For fun, calculate the maximum hours of sleep Ernesto Sandoval could have had over those 48 hours.

Web sites and wikis that trade information, rumors and gossip about academic jobs have become popular with physicists and mathematicians. Science magazine’s Careers site has an article about them — featuring Greg Kuperberg, a UC Davis math professor who runs the Mathematics Jobs Wiki, and Moon Duchin, a UC Davis postdoc who deliberately kept herself off the job rumor mills.

Whether these websites help or hurt job seekers seems to be up in the air. Duchin calls them an “echo chamber for perceived wisdom.” Kuperberg says that they could help people at less well-connected departments get information, although institutions “higher on the totem pole” could also game the system. Hiring committees that see a candidate listed for positions at other universities might change their thinking about the candidate — perhaps unfairly.

UC Davis also hosts the Theoretical Physics Job Rumor Mill, run by John Terning, a professor in the Department of Physics. Terning and Michael Dugan started the site in 1995, when they were job-hunting postdocs at Boston University.

In an article on the site, Terning describes the idea behind it as “knowledge is power:” the site helps job seekers by providing more information about jobs and the hiring process, and shows up departments that are sloppy about hiring.

… rather than being part of a rebellious counter-culture, the rumor mill has become part of the establishment. Physics departments often send job advertisements directly to the rumor mill, and some even send in their short lists in order to avoid any misunderstandings. Hiring practices have changed as well, although whether this has anything to do with the rumor mill is impossible to say. Faddishness remains unchecked, but the “old-boys-network” seems to play a smaller role, and some of the “old-boys” are now women.

Perhaps Terning and Kuperberg should team up, set up a joint website and start selling ads on it.

A draft sequence of the platypus genome is published today in Nature. Much as a platypus looks like an odd mix of bird, mammal and reptile parts, its DNA turns out to contain some sets of genes related to birds and reptiles — such as most of those for egglaying — with others that are more closely related to other mammals, such as those for making milk proteins.

Male platypus have poisonous spurs on their hind legs, and it had been thought that the ability to make toxins came from reptile ancestry. But it turns out that venom production is a recent innovation that platypus ancestors came up with independently.

“There is nothing quite as enigmatic as a platypus,” says Richard Gibbs, who directs the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. “You have got these reptilian repeat patterns and these more recently evolved milk genes and independent evolution of the venom. It all points to how idiosyncratic evolution is.”

Nature’s news story is here. New York Times story here.

UC Davis has been awarded a $20 million grant from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, the state’s stem cell research agency, towards renovating an existing building to house the rapidly growing stem cell research program.

The building will eventually have 100,000 square feet of space. It will include research labs and support facilities, as well as a “Good Manufacturing Practice” (GMP) facility for the development of FDA-approved cellular therapies.

“Our entire building is being built with an eye toward clinical trails and discovering cures for patients in need,” said Jan Nolta, director of the stem cell program at UC Davis. “In the coming year, our stem cell research facility will house what we’re calling ‘disease teams,’ groups of scientists and clinicians who will work together to develop treatments and cures for patients. We’re planning to begin clinical trials using adult stem cell treatments almost as soon as the doors are opened in the summer of 2009.”

The initial phase of the renovations will provide about 54,000 square feet of space and cost $62 million. Matching funds will come from the university, individuals and foundation grants.