my hella article brought 64,000 hits to the California Aggie website on Saturday and is spread all over the web!
Google search "hella petition davis" to see!
Monday, February 22, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
UC Davis student gives 'hella' new meaning
Petition aims to bring northern California slang to the sciences
Written by Gabrielle Grow
Aggie News Writer
Published on Feb 18, 2010
The Southern versus Northern California slang rivalry may soon be put to rest thanks to the help of UC Davis physics student Austin Sendek.
"Hella," the popular NorCal slang word meaning "a lot" or "very" is commonly contested among Northern and Southern Californians and until this point has not been associated with any specific measurement.
Now, Sendek hopes to give hella new meaning - representing 10 to the 27th power to be exact.
After joking about "hella volts" in an electric field in an in-class experiment, Sendek created the Facebook group "The Official Petition to Establish 'Hella-' as the SI Prefix for 10^27." Within one week, group membership grew to over 8,000, with people hailing from all over the United States.
"I made it a group on Facebook as a joke," Sendek said. "But when a professor from Rhode Island signed the petition I realized that we might actually be on to something."
Currently, the International System of Units has prefixes up to 10^24, and because the system increases by increments of three, 10^27 is the next in line. Measurements for the universe could be indicated with the prefix at 1.4 hellameters, and the sun's energy, at 0.3 hellawatts.
"Hella" is typically used by Northern Californians and tends to be unpopular among Southern Californians, creating a colloquial war between the two.
There are currently nine anti-hella groups on Facebook, and fifteen pro-hella groups including two fan pages with between 86,000 and 100,000 fans on each.
"If you use the term 'hella' you will be sent back to the north where you belong," threatened one anti-hella Facebook group.
A student from CalTech suggested renaming 10^27 after Southern California slang, arguing that Southern California has more influence than Northern California.
Northern California has more schools that are dedicated to science - UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Stanford, Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories - and using "hella" honors their achievements, Sendek argues.
According to the petition statement, Sendek's proposal offers "the chance for the SI system to use nomenclature to honor a constantly overlooked scientific contributor: Northern California."
The SI committee last approved a prefix addition in 1991. If the SI committee doesn't take Sendek's petition seriously, he plans to submit it to Google for its conversion units.
"I think it has the right meaning to get the idea across, but I think it's unlikely to get chosen because they usually use Latin or Greek, it has a taboo associated with it and it's an ordinary word," said UC Davis linguistics professor Patrick Farrell. "In some sense it would be like saying 'lots-a-kilometers.'"
The "hella" petition made its way into Farrell's Linguistics 1 class, in which students have the option of writing a paper on the legitimacy of using "hella" as an SI prefix.
"Hella" is thought to originate from "helluva" during the 1990s in San Francisco. "Helluva," however, does not have the grammatical flexibility of "hella;" as describing someone as "helluva smart" could not work, but "hella smart" could.
Farrell also uses "hella" in his classes to illustrate points about the grammar of English, because "hella" has its own set of unique grammar rules.
Sendek hopes to get the support of his science professors who may carry more weight towards influencing the scientific community.
For more information visit makehellaofficial.blogspot.com.
GABRIELLE GROW can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.
Written by Gabrielle Grow
Aggie News Writer
Published on Feb 18, 2010
The Southern versus Northern California slang rivalry may soon be put to rest thanks to the help of UC Davis physics student Austin Sendek.
"Hella," the popular NorCal slang word meaning "a lot" or "very" is commonly contested among Northern and Southern Californians and until this point has not been associated with any specific measurement.
Now, Sendek hopes to give hella new meaning - representing 10 to the 27th power to be exact.
After joking about "hella volts" in an electric field in an in-class experiment, Sendek created the Facebook group "The Official Petition to Establish 'Hella-' as the SI Prefix for 10^27." Within one week, group membership grew to over 8,000, with people hailing from all over the United States.
"I made it a group on Facebook as a joke," Sendek said. "But when a professor from Rhode Island signed the petition I realized that we might actually be on to something."
Currently, the International System of Units has prefixes up to 10^24, and because the system increases by increments of three, 10^27 is the next in line. Measurements for the universe could be indicated with the prefix at 1.4 hellameters, and the sun's energy, at 0.3 hellawatts.
"Hella" is typically used by Northern Californians and tends to be unpopular among Southern Californians, creating a colloquial war between the two.
There are currently nine anti-hella groups on Facebook, and fifteen pro-hella groups including two fan pages with between 86,000 and 100,000 fans on each.
"If you use the term 'hella' you will be sent back to the north where you belong," threatened one anti-hella Facebook group.
A student from CalTech suggested renaming 10^27 after Southern California slang, arguing that Southern California has more influence than Northern California.
Northern California has more schools that are dedicated to science - UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Stanford, Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories - and using "hella" honors their achievements, Sendek argues.
According to the petition statement, Sendek's proposal offers "the chance for the SI system to use nomenclature to honor a constantly overlooked scientific contributor: Northern California."
The SI committee last approved a prefix addition in 1991. If the SI committee doesn't take Sendek's petition seriously, he plans to submit it to Google for its conversion units.
"I think it has the right meaning to get the idea across, but I think it's unlikely to get chosen because they usually use Latin or Greek, it has a taboo associated with it and it's an ordinary word," said UC Davis linguistics professor Patrick Farrell. "In some sense it would be like saying 'lots-a-kilometers.'"
The "hella" petition made its way into Farrell's Linguistics 1 class, in which students have the option of writing a paper on the legitimacy of using "hella" as an SI prefix.
"Hella" is thought to originate from "helluva" during the 1990s in San Francisco. "Helluva," however, does not have the grammatical flexibility of "hella;" as describing someone as "helluva smart" could not work, but "hella smart" could.
Farrell also uses "hella" in his classes to illustrate points about the grammar of English, because "hella" has its own set of unique grammar rules.
Sendek hopes to get the support of his science professors who may carry more weight towards influencing the scientific community.
For more information visit makehellaofficial.blogspot.com.
GABRIELLE GROW can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
UCD study shows abusive partners sabotage birth control
Reproductive coercion common in abusive relationships
Written by Gabrielle Grow
Aggie News Writer
Published on Feb 11, 2010
In the popular Lifetime movie, "The Pregnancy Pact," several high school girls consciously tamper with their birth control to facilitate conception. Results from a lesser known, but perhaps more realistic local study tell a different story, in which it is men who force pregnancy.
"Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy" led by Elizabeth Miller, UC Davis assistant professor of pediatrics in the School of Medicine, showed that abusive males often coerce their female partners into reproduction. Reproductive coercion efforts include flushing birth control down the toilet and damaging or removing condoms.
Approximately 1,300 English and Spanish speaking women ages 16 to 29 were surveyed about their experiences with relationships and pregnancy at five northern California reproductive health clinics from August 2008 to March 2009. Women in this age range are the most likely to experience physical or sexual violence.
Fifty-three percent of respondents reported physical or sexual violence from their partners, and 35 percent of those who reported violence also experienced reproductive coercion or birth control sabotage.
"We created the term reproductive coercion to describe a male partner trying to take control of a woman's reproductive autonomy," Miller said.
In an interview with the Davis Enterprise, the study's senior author Jay Silverman noted that the commonality of unintended pregnancies among abused women and teens is likely due to reproductive coercion. Reproductive coercion is another means for an abusive male to control his partner.
To combat this phenomenon, clinicians and teen pregnancy prevention groups can discuss how to prevent and avoid coercion with their patients.
Incorporating reproductive coercion into teen pregnancy education would be huge, Miller said.
Although none of the coordinators at the Women's Resource and Research Center (WRRC) on campus have encountered this type of abuse, counseling psychologist C. Jezzie Fulmen said UC Davis has several resources to help abuse victims.
The WRRC currently provides counseling without an appointment, and the Campus Violence Prevention Program provides medical and legal advocacy.
Students are often surprised to find out that legally, sexual assault within or outside of relationships is treated the same, Fulmen said.
Miller's goal in conducting research on the link between reproductive coercion, abusive relationships and unintended pregnancy was to reduce unintended pregnancies.
"We're trying to agree with anti-abortion groups on reducing unintended pregnancies," Miller said. "We are still struggling to get partner violence embedded in public health programs."
The five clinics surveyed were in impoverished neighborhoods with Latinas and African Americans comprising two-thirds of the respondents.
The results are expected to be applicable to reproductive health clinics in demographically poor areas. Researchers cannot estimate if surveys at private gynecologists would produce similar results.
Miller plans to focus her next research on the use of emergency contraception on college campuses and to determine the need for emergency contraception, for instance as a consequence of unwanted sex.
"In the past we focused on blaming the woman for unintended pregnancy, this shows that maybe we need to rethink that and consider other restraints on women's lives," Miller said.
GABRIELLE GROW can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.
Written by Gabrielle Grow
Aggie News Writer
Published on Feb 11, 2010
In the popular Lifetime movie, "The Pregnancy Pact," several high school girls consciously tamper with their birth control to facilitate conception. Results from a lesser known, but perhaps more realistic local study tell a different story, in which it is men who force pregnancy.
"Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy" led by Elizabeth Miller, UC Davis assistant professor of pediatrics in the School of Medicine, showed that abusive males often coerce their female partners into reproduction. Reproductive coercion efforts include flushing birth control down the toilet and damaging or removing condoms.
Approximately 1,300 English and Spanish speaking women ages 16 to 29 were surveyed about their experiences with relationships and pregnancy at five northern California reproductive health clinics from August 2008 to March 2009. Women in this age range are the most likely to experience physical or sexual violence.
Fifty-three percent of respondents reported physical or sexual violence from their partners, and 35 percent of those who reported violence also experienced reproductive coercion or birth control sabotage.
"We created the term reproductive coercion to describe a male partner trying to take control of a woman's reproductive autonomy," Miller said.
In an interview with the Davis Enterprise, the study's senior author Jay Silverman noted that the commonality of unintended pregnancies among abused women and teens is likely due to reproductive coercion. Reproductive coercion is another means for an abusive male to control his partner.
To combat this phenomenon, clinicians and teen pregnancy prevention groups can discuss how to prevent and avoid coercion with their patients.
Incorporating reproductive coercion into teen pregnancy education would be huge, Miller said.
Although none of the coordinators at the Women's Resource and Research Center (WRRC) on campus have encountered this type of abuse, counseling psychologist C. Jezzie Fulmen said UC Davis has several resources to help abuse victims.
The WRRC currently provides counseling without an appointment, and the Campus Violence Prevention Program provides medical and legal advocacy.
Students are often surprised to find out that legally, sexual assault within or outside of relationships is treated the same, Fulmen said.
Miller's goal in conducting research on the link between reproductive coercion, abusive relationships and unintended pregnancy was to reduce unintended pregnancies.
"We're trying to agree with anti-abortion groups on reducing unintended pregnancies," Miller said. "We are still struggling to get partner violence embedded in public health programs."
The five clinics surveyed were in impoverished neighborhoods with Latinas and African Americans comprising two-thirds of the respondents.
The results are expected to be applicable to reproductive health clinics in demographically poor areas. Researchers cannot estimate if surveys at private gynecologists would produce similar results.
Miller plans to focus her next research on the use of emergency contraception on college campuses and to determine the need for emergency contraception, for instance as a consequence of unwanted sex.
"In the past we focused on blaming the woman for unintended pregnancy, this shows that maybe we need to rethink that and consider other restraints on women's lives," Miller said.
GABRIELLE GROW can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Wine experts seek to make wine industry more consumer friendly
UCD researchers tip their glasses to role of taste buds
Written by Gabrielle Grow
Staff Writer
Published on Feb 9, 2010
For consumers around the world picking out a bottle of wine can be nearly as intimidating as the LSAT, but uncertainty may soon be put to rest with the help of research in tasting methodology.
Wine expert Tim Hanni has been on a 20-year long quest to make wine much simpler for consumers with mentors Dr. Michael O'Mahony and Dr. Rie Ishii from UC Davis's food science and technology department. Hanni was one of the first Americans to become a master of wine, the highest credential attainable in the wine industry - a title that only 279 people hold worldwide.
O'Mahony and Ishii's research shows that differences or changes in descriptive wording for food and wine can have an immense impact on how culinary judges rank taste during competitions.
The descriptive wording used in the wine industry and how the human brain works to describe metaphors for wine are not congruent, resulting in a lot of people pretending to know and recognize tastes, Hanni said.
Varying amounts of taste buds add more confusion to wine consumers. Ranging between 500 and 10,000 per person, the number of taste buds plays a critical role in personal taste preference.
Depending on the combination of a number of taste buds and personal preference for tastes such as salt and sugar, wine consumers can be divided into four categories: tolerant, sensitive, hyper-sensitive and sweet tasters.
"It's like you're at a store that sells hundreds of different styles of shoes, and no shoes fit you because no one has realized that people have different size feet," Hanni said about the importance of taste bud count.
"Tolerant" tasters have the fewest taste buds, and can typically handle stronger flavors or extreme tasting beers. "Sensitive" tasters are the most adventurous, and have the greatest ability to move from one taste to another.
People with the most taste buds, typically those who add salt to everything are "hyper-sensitive tasters" and those who stick to sweets and those who consider Heineken adventurous are "sweet tasters."
The upcoming Consumer Wine Awards in Lodi, now in its third year, uses the tasting methodology developed by O'Mahony, Ishii and Hanni. Rather than a panel of professional judges, consumers will decide the winners at the wine awards.
University of Wine founder and Consumer Wine Award co-founder G.M. "Pooch" Pucilowski suggests taking a wine class or swapping wine with fellow enthusiasts to learn more about wine.
"Finding the right wine bottle can be hard and intimidating," said UC Davis student Thomas Valdez. "My method every time I go down the wine aisle at CVS or World Market is to try something new, and if I like it, I tend to write down the name and year."
Unbeknownst to most consumers, the bottle shape is an indicator of taste.
"There are only four or five bottle shapes, and most wineries put the same style of wine in the same bottle," Pucilowski said. "If you learn little tricks [of the industry] you're off and running."
Hanni estimates that up to 80 percent of the potential wine market is discouraged from drinking wine because of wine intimidation and uncertainty.
"Our ignorance of taste physiology results in driving people away from wine and toward cocktails instead," Hanni said. "We're looking for new ways to train the industry to custom fit certain wines to certain people."
To find out what kind of taster you are, visit consumerwineawards.com
GABRIELLE GROW can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.
Written by Gabrielle Grow
Staff Writer
Published on Feb 9, 2010
For consumers around the world picking out a bottle of wine can be nearly as intimidating as the LSAT, but uncertainty may soon be put to rest with the help of research in tasting methodology.
Wine expert Tim Hanni has been on a 20-year long quest to make wine much simpler for consumers with mentors Dr. Michael O'Mahony and Dr. Rie Ishii from UC Davis's food science and technology department. Hanni was one of the first Americans to become a master of wine, the highest credential attainable in the wine industry - a title that only 279 people hold worldwide.
O'Mahony and Ishii's research shows that differences or changes in descriptive wording for food and wine can have an immense impact on how culinary judges rank taste during competitions.
The descriptive wording used in the wine industry and how the human brain works to describe metaphors for wine are not congruent, resulting in a lot of people pretending to know and recognize tastes, Hanni said.
Varying amounts of taste buds add more confusion to wine consumers. Ranging between 500 and 10,000 per person, the number of taste buds plays a critical role in personal taste preference.
Depending on the combination of a number of taste buds and personal preference for tastes such as salt and sugar, wine consumers can be divided into four categories: tolerant, sensitive, hyper-sensitive and sweet tasters.
"It's like you're at a store that sells hundreds of different styles of shoes, and no shoes fit you because no one has realized that people have different size feet," Hanni said about the importance of taste bud count.
"Tolerant" tasters have the fewest taste buds, and can typically handle stronger flavors or extreme tasting beers. "Sensitive" tasters are the most adventurous, and have the greatest ability to move from one taste to another.
People with the most taste buds, typically those who add salt to everything are "hyper-sensitive tasters" and those who stick to sweets and those who consider Heineken adventurous are "sweet tasters."
The upcoming Consumer Wine Awards in Lodi, now in its third year, uses the tasting methodology developed by O'Mahony, Ishii and Hanni. Rather than a panel of professional judges, consumers will decide the winners at the wine awards.
University of Wine founder and Consumer Wine Award co-founder G.M. "Pooch" Pucilowski suggests taking a wine class or swapping wine with fellow enthusiasts to learn more about wine.
"Finding the right wine bottle can be hard and intimidating," said UC Davis student Thomas Valdez. "My method every time I go down the wine aisle at CVS or World Market is to try something new, and if I like it, I tend to write down the name and year."
Unbeknownst to most consumers, the bottle shape is an indicator of taste.
"There are only four or five bottle shapes, and most wineries put the same style of wine in the same bottle," Pucilowski said. "If you learn little tricks [of the industry] you're off and running."
Hanni estimates that up to 80 percent of the potential wine market is discouraged from drinking wine because of wine intimidation and uncertainty.
"Our ignorance of taste physiology results in driving people away from wine and toward cocktails instead," Hanni said. "We're looking for new ways to train the industry to custom fit certain wines to certain people."
To find out what kind of taster you are, visit consumerwineawards.com
GABRIELLE GROW can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.
Friday, February 5, 2010
UC Davis earthquake survivor organizes Haiti relief efforts
UCD one of few UCs with no response to Haiti
Written by Gabrielle Grow
Staff Writer
Published on Jan 28, 2010
John Gunel knows how a 7.6 magnitude earthquake feels: like being on the end of a machine gun.
Gunel, a UC Davis post-baccalaureate and Davis local, was visiting in Turkey on Aug. 16, 1999 when a 37-second quake shook the northwest region of the country killing 17,000 people. Jolted from his sleep at 3:01 am, Gunel assumed his frequently promiscuous neighbors were the cause of the shaking, until he realized this time it was his bed that shook.
"When the victims were pulled from the rubble it was like they were newborn children - they were so vulnerable stretching out their hands for water and seeing light for the first time in days," Gunel said.
Shortly after the quake, Gunel flew back to the U.S., only to return to Turkey four months later for a family visit. Gunel was shocked by the apparent lack of improvement, as thousands of victims still lived in the squalor of refugee camps.
"It was like a black hole, where people were stuck in time not moving from the camps," Gunel said.
To boost morale at the camps, his family brought a carload of Nutella to distribute to the refugees.
Inspired to help the victims of the Turkey quake, he collected refugee children's art and sold them as post cards when he returned to Davis.
Now, Gunel hopes to sell the same cards to raise money for victims of the Haiti earthquake. He raised $1,000 at Davis Senior High for Turkish victims. Since Jan. 12, Gunel has raised $200 for Haiti, half of which came from his own wallet.
"I needed a new watch and wanted one with fancy gadgets, but then the earthquake in Haiti happened, so I bought a Timex and contributed the rest," Gunel said.
According to the UC Newsroom, UCLA and UCSF sent medical personnel to Haiti to help relief agencies and UCSD was the only university to raise money through a campus-wide relief effort.
By Jan. 15, three days after the Haiti quake struck, students at UCSD raised over $6,000 and 200,000 people attended a vigil held on the campus.
Although student groups have organized small events, UC Davis has not organized a campus-wide relief effort.
Three local television stations FOX 40, KOVR 1 and KCRA 3 caught wind of his postcard project and interviewed him for their broadcasts. The interviewers focused on the missing grad student in Haiti and the campus' reaction to it more than on the postcards, Gunel said.
He hopes to give packets of his postcards to student groups on campus, sell them at the beginning of lectures and to get UCD students to break the stereotype of belonging to what he calls an apathetic generation.
Phi Beta Sigma, a community service fraternity, organized a clothing drive for Haiti held in the Memorial Union from Jan. 13-23. "Clothing drives are pretty rare," said Damonde Hatfield, a fraternity member. "We wanted to do something different." The fraternity collected a total of three storage boxes and hopes to sell "Hope for Haiti" t-shirts.
While those who sell his cards are welcome to donate the money to a charity of their choosing, he plans to donate his portion to Oxfam and Partners in Health.
Oxfam is an international organization, present in Haiti prior to the earthquake, which aims to reduce poverty. Partners in Health provides health care for the poor with a community based approach.
"The Red Cross does a great job of healing the wounded, but after they leave there will still be 1.5 million homeless victims," Gunel said.
For more information visit aidconnection.com
GABRIELLE GROW can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.
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