Life Sciences News

NEW FACULTY MEMBER!
     Dr. Valerie R.J. Narey joins our full time faculty as our new Microbiology and Cellular Biology (Bio21) instructor.  Dr. Narey notes that pronouncing her name can be a puzzle.  She says it sounds like Nair-ee (like the hair removal product with a long e) or Mary with an N.
     That solved, her academic journey began at Diablo Valley College in Northern California, where she was born and raised.  She transplanted to southern California to earn her bachelor's at CSUN and her doctorate at UCIrvine.  Her doctoral work is a mouthful, but she worked on the anatomical mapping of a novel G protein-coupled receptor system named the NPB/NPW system in addition to preliminary behavior analysis of this system.  With the rat as her model organism, she used in situ hybridization to localize mRNA in the adult and developing brain for both the receptor of this system, GPR7, and the two ligands, NPB and NPW.  She finished off her doctorate exploring aspects of this system's role in allodynia.  Whoa!
     While completing her doctorate, she became involved in the Community College Internship Program at UCI and mentored with a professor at Santa Ana College.  She found her true calling, and after a brief post-doc, she became a freeway instructor at Orange Coast College, Mt. San Antonio College, and Citrus College.
     She says she is a newly wed, but that was two years ago.  Her husband Tom is a contract 3-D artist.  You may have seen some of his work on Disney and Sony.  No kids, but two tabby cats and lots of aquaria.  She also enjoys gardening and propagating succulents, reading and camping.  New passions of Tom and Valerie are microbreweries and wine tasting, both of which will undoubtedly be topics in her microbiology course.
     We all welcome her.  Her office is SCI 277.

Audrey Cramer, an adjunct professor in Biology 2 and 3 left Los Angeles (and her job as Director of Undergraduate Research at UCLA) to begin a new career at the University of Oregon in Eugene.  Her new position starts in January 2009, where she will be the Director of the Office of Multicultural Academic Support.  There she will supervise a staff of advisors and teacher/tutors that provide academic enrichment of UO's self-identified students of color.  She indicated that she really enjoyed teaching at SMC and missed the chance to give a personal goodby, except for a few people whom she saw in December.  She will truly miss the SMC students and the members of our department.

Walter Sakai (Biology 3 and 23 professor) recently published some of the 15 years of bird banding research in the North American Bird Bander.  The paper, "Is Morning Mist Netting More Effective than Afternoon Mist Netting?" comes from the work of dozens and dozens of colleagues, students, former students, and the public who helped him capture and band close to 9000 birds in Zuma Canyon.

Any teacher who has not see Randy Pausch's lecture "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," or read The Last Lecture... should view his lecture.. Randy Pausch was a dynamic computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University.  When diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, he gave a lecture as part of a series by notables with the theme of what wisdom would you impart to the world if you had one last lecture to give.  The lecture in its entirety can be seen on U-Tube.  Among his quotes were "Don't complain; just work harder."  "Do you want to be Tigger or Eeyore" (from Winnie the Po).  "Don't Bail. The best gold is at the bottom of the barrel of crap."  You will learn to whom the lecture was really given.

NATURE NOTES:  
If Darwin’s theory of evolution was correct, cats would be able to operate a can opener by now.  Larry Wright

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.  Charles Darwin
“There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties.... The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”

“An American Monkey after getting drunk on Brandy would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.”

The Year is 1809 - There are a number of other illustrious individuals born in 1809.  The English writer & poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, probably most famous for The Charge of the Light Brigade was born on August 6, 1809.  The American write Edgar Allen Poe, who wrote The Raven and The Tell-tale Heart was born on January 19, 1809.  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was born in this year.  Though considered one of the great American poets of the 19th century, his son Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. is better known to most of us as a Justice of the Supreme Court in the first part of the 20th Century.  The composer Felix Mendelssohn was born on February 3, 1809.  Louis Braille, the creator of the encoding system that allows blind people to read, was born on January 4, 1809.  Kit Carson, the famous frontiersman and early explorer of California, almost did not make the list, as he was born on December 24, 1809.  Cyrus McCormick who invented the grain harvester, was born on February 15, 1809.  These are a few names better known to Americans; the list is longer.  Historians apparently consider this to be one of the "better" years.

More Darwin Goodies (click on name for picture)
Down House - this is where Charles Darwin lived with his family after returning to England from his voyage on the HMS Beagle.  It is now a museum.  You can see his study where he wrote the Origin of Species and the gardens where he pondered earthworms and carnivorous plants.

Sandwalk - this is the path that Charles Darwin walked each day to cogitate over evolution and natural selection.