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July 2019. A big welcome to Akshra Paimagam from North Carolina who will be working in the lab this summer as a participant in the UCDavis Young Scholar’s Program, bringing some of the best young minds in US High Schools to UCDavis! |
Author Archives: Russ Hovey
Welcome Alessia!
Welcome to Alessia Morato, from the Veterinary Sciences for Animal Health and Food Safety at the University of Turin, who is joining the lab for several months as part of her PhD project – even if the Costco version of pasta sauce is big, but not so convincingly genuine…
One big duct!
Lab outing to the biggest duct of all – the glory hole spillway at Lake Berryessa west of Davis – a once in a rare-rainfall lifetime chance to see overtopping. This sucker is big – 22 meters diameter at the inlet behind us!! Yet, eerily quiet…..
From Wikipedia: Near the dam on the southeast side of the reservoir is an open bell-mouth spillway, 72 feet (22 m) in diameter, which is known as the Glory Hole. The pipe has a straight drop of 200 feet (61 m),[3] and the diameter shrinks down to about 28 feet (8.5 m). The spillway has a maximum capacity of 48,000 cfs (1360 m³/s). The spillway operates when there is excess water in the reservoir; in 2017 after heavy rains it started flowing, for the first time since 2006.[4] In 1997 a woman was killed after being pulled inside the spillway.[3]
Lab group gets locked up – in the name of team building!
What do you do when you want to find out what each other’s personal strengths are – in the name of improving teamwork and to capitalize on a lab retreat on personal styles and strengths? You head off as a lab group to an Escape room. And – we did it – beat the buzzer, solved the mystery and lived to tell the tale!!
Cleanest team in town!
Alice and Natanya giving some of our girls a good old sudsing! (for the unacquainted, this is a standard practice to ensure that as few microbes as possible enter the farrowing room where pigs give birth and raise their litters). For the humans it is all just bubbles!
Congratulations Amber!
Congratulations Amber on submission of her Master’s thesis – culminating a tour of force in the lab as an undergraduate intern, Honors student, and Master’s candidate in Animal Biology!
Sharing the wonders of lactation biology Down Under!
As part of a recent collaborative exchange with Dr Yani Garcia’s Dairy Science Group at The University of Sydney, Russ gave a guest lecture to students in the Dairy Production class on all things milk, including a hands-on udder dissection practical lab.
Did you know – not all mammary glands are made the same way!
Work from our lab just published in Endocrinology
The transcriptome of estrogen-independent mammary growth in female mice reveals that not all mammary glands are created equally
Thesis congratulations!
Congratulations to Grace Berryhill, recent lab alum and now technical scientist at Jackson Laboratories – on May 22nd, Grace received not one, but 2 major awards!
a) the Kinsella Memorial Prize awarded within the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences for outstanding PhD research, AND
b) the Max Kleiber Memorial Prize awarded for an outstanding dissertation in nutrition and metabolism (for the unacquainted, Dr Kleiber was a former faculty member at UCDavis who is considered to be one of the historical leaders in the field of biochemistry and metabolism: http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/alumni/memorial/kleiber-max.html)
Grace’s accomplishments were recognized on May 22nd at a Graduate Studies reception. Congratulations Grace!!
Ever wondered if all fats are just fats?
Not according to Grace Berryhill’s recent publication showing that only some fats have the ability to make the mammary glands grow!
Berryhill GE, Miszewski SG, Trott JF, Kraft J, Lock AL, Hovey RC.
Lipids. 2017 Jan 10. doi: 10.1007/s11745-016-4221-2.