Offices of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences on the first floor of Mrak Hall will be vacated this summer to allow for a renovation project.

The dean’s office and other units will be relocated this week as follows:

• Undergraduate Advising Program will move Thursday (June 18) to 1321 Haring Hall.
• All other units (including the dean’s office, executive support, business office, analysts, personnel, undergraduate outreach, and development and communications leadership) will move Wednesday (June 17) to the Hopkins Services Complex (Materiel Management), 3215 Apiary Drive, off Hopkins Road, west of Highway 113.

Phone numbers and email addresses will remain the same, but will be temporarily disconnected during the moves (expect short delays).

CA&ES computing resources will remain in the basement of Mrak Hall.

The other units are expected to return to 150 Mrak on Sept. 1.

TAPS lands grant for loaner bikes at airport

Flying in to University Airport and need some wheels to get to campus? Soon you will have the option of borrowing a bike for the four-mile round trip, courtesy of a $2,250 clean-air grant.

Transportation and Parking Services, or TAPS, which administers the UC Davis Bicycle Program and the airport, applied for the grant. It’s coming from the Yolo-Solano Air Quality Management District, which announced last week that it had funded the airport bike share program and 14 other clean-air projects in the district for a total of more than $400,000.

Bicycle Program coordinator David Takemoto-Weerts, who prepared the grant application, said he hopes to have four bikes in place at the airport by fall. They’ll be available free of charge through Cal Aggie Flying Farmers Inc., which offers flight instruction and airplane rentals at University Airport.

UC Davis bike commuters also may be interested in another of this year’s clean-air grants: $43,410 to the Solano County Department of Resource Management, for bicycle lane improvements along Putah Creek Road between Winters and Davis.

Student computer recommendations for 2015-16

Information and Educational Technology has updated its set of recommended minimum computer configurations for students for 2015-16. They cover such areas as screen size, operating systems and printers, as well as what defines an obsolete system.

IET consults with other departments each spring to refresh the guidelines. The specs describe machines that should support students’ basic needs for two to four years, and do not endorse specific brands or manufacturers.

The guidelines, first posted in 2001, have evolved with technology. Ten years ago, the guidelines recommended machines with RAM capacity of at least 512 MB, or about 6 percent of today’s minimum. Some things don’t change, of course — you still need antivirus and a screen large enough for the full range of work you’ll do at UC Davis.

— TechNews

Faster, more colorful turf at Aggie Stadium

New artificial turf has been installed at Aggie Stadium in its largest renovation since opening in 2007.

The new Shaw Sports Turf has shorter blades of “grass” and a different inlay (equal parts sand and rubber compared with the all-rubber inlay of the previous turf), allowing for faster play by Aggie football and women’s lacrosse and their opponents.

Other differences: alternating five-yard sections of light and dark green turf (except at midfield where the turf is dark green for 10 yards to accommodate the traditional Mustang C logo), and blue end zones. See photo gallery.

Stadium maintenance funds provided by the Facilities and Campus Enhancement Initiative, or FACE, approved by students in 1999, are paying for the new turf.

Grad student enters ‘Battlebots’ arena

A UC Davis graduate student, Travis Smith, is competing in the sixth season of “Battlebots,” debuting this weekend on ABC Television.

In the show, teams build armed robots that fight it out in an arena full of hazards. Think FIRST Robotics (held annually at UC Davis), only with chain saws and flame throwers.

Smith is working toward a Ph.D. in mechanical and aerospace engineering with Professor Jae Wan Park, studying the design of fuel cells.

“’Battlebots’ is why I switched from chemical to mechanical engineering,” said Smith, who specializes in machining and analysis for the TV competition’s “Machine Corps” team. “There are some interesting engineering problems; it’s very cool,” he said.

The show began shooting May 17 and the first of six episodes is scheduled for 9 p.m. PDT Sunday (June 21).

Read more in UC Davis’ Egghead blog.

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