Campus Ranks High in Affordability
UCSD is ranked among the top 10 public colleges in the United States for best value, according to the September 2006 issue of Kiplinger Personal Finance. Selected from over 500 schools, UCSD ranked eighth overall and first in California public schools, ahead of UCLA and UC Berkeley. The measures of academic criteria include the percentage of 2005-06 freshmen scoring 600 or higher on the verbal and math components of the SAT, the number of ACT scores of 24 or higher, admission rates, freshman retention rates and student-faculty ratios. According to Kiplinger Personal Finance, UCSD allows students to receive a “grade-A education” without accumulating significant debt.
UC Davis to Rescue Wild Cheetahs
Two veterinary specialists from UC Davis recently embarked on a journey to Africa this summer to help save wild cheetahs from extinction.
Autumn Davidson and Tomas Baker worked in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institute for a three-week conservation project at the Cheetah Conservation Fund International Research and Education Centre in Namibia. The world’s largest cheetah reserve is committed to ensuring the survival of the cheetah, whose future is threatened by disease and natural disasters because of its small gene pool. The UC Davis research team focused its efforts on better understanding the reproductive biology of captive female cheetahs in order to identify the best time to harvest eggs, and to understand why the females’ fertility declines after eight years of age, according to Davidson. Captive cheetahs, amounting to about 1,400 in some 65 countries, comprise approximately 10 percent of the world’s remaining cheetah population.
Hawaiian Crickets Lose Sexual Song
In fewer than 20 generations, male crickets on Kauai, Hawaii, underwent a mutation that disabled their use of song to attract female crickets, UC Riverside evolutionary biologists found in a recent study.
Although 90 percent of male crickets in Kauai lost their ability to produce sexual signals, the males were still able to reproduce successfully, suggesting that compensatory behaviors can overcome harmful mutations. The observations remained consistent with evolutionary theory, which suggests that mutations can occur to improve the fitness of the species. Researchers concluded that the loss of song occurred to protect crickets from parasitic flies that used the songs to locate hosts. In addition, they noticed that the mutated, flat-winged flies behave like “satellites” to the few crickets that can call. By congregating near the callers, the flatwings help other crickets’ reproductive success.
