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UC to study effects of low water levels

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gray Davis delayed a plan to collect water from North Coast rivers in giant bags and float them south for sale in San Diego.

Davis signed a bill, written by Assemblywoman Patricia Wiggins, D-Santa Rosa, requiring fish habitat studies before the water can be collected and towed away.

Alaska Water Exports’ has asked the state Water Resources Control board to let it pump 14,000 acre-feet of winter and spring runoff each year from the Gualala and Albion rivers in Mendocino County. The water would be piped out to sea to fill fiberpoly bags the length of three football fields, and tugboats would then tow them to Southern California.

The bill Davis signed Friday delays those plans, requiring the University of California to study how reduced water flow would affect salmon and steelhead. Some of those species are protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Wiggins said the studies could take at least five years to complete, but Alaska Water Exports president Ric Davidge said they could be done in two.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered Southern California to reduce its reliance on water from the Colorado River, so the region is seeking other sources.

UCR team studies human ancestors

RIVERSIDE — The traces left behind by ancient animals may hold the key to determining when macroscopic bilaterians -- animals that are symmetric about a central axis, with a body divided into equivalent right and left halves, and with an anterior-posterior polarity (e.g., this includes worms, ants, and ranges up to humans) -- first appeared.

A team led by Dr. Mary Droser, professor of geology at the University of California, Riverside, studied “trace” fossils, e.g., burrows, trails and tracks left behind by the earliest bilaterian animals. Results from their study suggest that bilaterian animals did not appear until approximately 555 million years ago.

Grant to help fight bioterrorism

BERKELEY — A new $2.8 million federal grant will help University of California, Berkeley, researchers battle bioterrorism, infectious disease outbreaks and other emergent public health threats through a new Center for Infectious Disease Preparedness.

The three-year grant, announced Thursday, Sept. 26, establishes UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health as the site of one of four new academic centers for public health preparedness. The academic centers are funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in collaboration with the Association of Schools of Public Health.

UC Berkeley and the other three new centers – at the University of Michigan, University of Oklahoma and University of South Carolina – will join 15 others funded last February as part of the $2.9 billion bioterrorism initiative launched by President George W. Bush earlier this year.

Children may be riding unsafely

BERKELEY — A new study of adult drivers and child passengers by the University of California, Berkeley, found that most of the children were not properly restrained in child safety seats. Moreover, it reveals that a significant number of children were not secured at all.

The study, released Tuesday, Sept. 24 by the campus’s Traffic Safety Center, was conducted to collect baseline data on child safety-seat use as part of a larger child passenger safety initiative at California's public hospitals and health care systems.

Researchers surveyed 515 adults who were leaving a public hospital or clinic in California for the first time with a new baby, or who were coming to the hospital or clinic for routine pediatric exams for children ages six and under. They then accompanied the adults to the cars to observe how they secured the children in child safety seats. In all, researchers observed 463 children from October 2001 to June 2002.

Briefs compiled from Daily Bruin wire reports

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