Nobel-winning physicist to discuss collider, string

UC Davis’ High Energy Frontier Theory Initiative, or HEFTI, and the Department of Physics are hosting Nobel Prize winner David Gross for a talk on elementary particle physics (what we know and what we are trying to find out), the Large Hadron Collider and string theory.

The UC Santa Barbara professor’s talk, “The Coming Revolutions in Fundamental Physics,” is scheduled for 8 p.m. April 7 in the AGR Room at the Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center.

Gross, David Politzer and Frank Wilczek shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 2004 for their discovery, some 31 years earlier, of asymptotic freedom. It holds that the closer quarks are to each other, the less the strong interaction (or color charge) between them; when quarks are in extreme proximity, the nuclear force between them is so weak that they behave almost as free particles.

Admission is $4, or free with student identification. Tickets can be purchased in advance at the UC Davis box office at Freeborn Hall, (530) 752-1915; free advance tickets for students also are available there. Tickets may be purchased at the door, subject to availability.

Public Health Week program a campus-state collaboration

The Department of Public Health Sciences is celebrating National Public Health Week and a new memorandum of understanding between the state and UC Davis to “promote each organizations’ mutual interests in public health practice, training and education and research.”

The memorandum is regarded as a milestone in UC Davis’ planning process for the establishment of a School of Public Health.

For Public Health Week, UC Davis’ Depart-ment of Public Health Sciences is presenting a forum, “The State of California’s Health,” starting at 5:30 p.m. April 6 in the auditorium of the Genome and Biomedical Sciences Facility. The forum is free and open to the public.

Organizers said Bonita Sorenson, chief deputy director of policy and programs at the state Department of Public Health, will discuss her department’s mission of keeping California’s diverse population healthy.

Responding to her address will be a panel comprising Professor Adela de la Torre, director, UC Davis’ Chicana/o Studies Program; Stuart Drown, chief executive officer of the Little Hoover Commission; and Deborah Ward, associate professor at UC Davis’ new Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing. Public comments also will be solicited, organizers said.

Public History Speakers Series

The University Library announced a Public History Speakers Series during spring quarter, exploring such questions as: How is knowledge about the past produced, preserved, exhibited, institutionalized and integrated into public memory? What role do public historians and communities play in history-making? And, how do libraries, policy, oral history, documentary and exhibits shape public engagement with local history?

The library is presenting the series in association with American Studies Program lecturer David Gray, who teaches Public History of Davis.

The series is scheduled to begin April 8 with Rick Prelinger, co-founder of San Francisco’s Prelinger Library, described on its Web site as “an appropriation-friendly, browsable collection” of some 40,000 books, periodicals, printed ephemera and government documents. His talk is titled “From Repository to Workshop — Reinventing the Library and Archives.”

The other speakers and their topics:

April 22 — David Takemoto-Weerts, UC Davis bicycle program coordinator: “Davis, City of Bicycles: a Brief Public History.”

April 29 — Danielle Fodor: “Public Storytelling in an Experimental Community: The Domes, 1971-2008.”

May 6 — Francisco Dominguez: “Activism Through Photography: Yolo County Farm Workers, Documentary and Public History.”

American Studies, Technocultural Studies and Chicana/o Studies are co-sponsoring one or more of the talks. All are scheduled to begin at 5:15 p.m. in the Shields Library Instruction Room (second floor). Admission is free and open to the public.

All about Education Abroad

Interested in learning more about Education Abroad? Come to the Education Abroad Center’s fifth annual Advisers Luncheon to hear from students and faculty about their experiences abroad. Light snacks provided. 11:30 a.m. April 8, MU II, Memorial Union.

All Seminars and Colloquia: calendar.ucdavis.edu