Boom season in crabs draws reform calls ...

Commercial season for Dungeness crab, now in its final weeks, has turned into a dangerous "derby" that captures most of the succulent crustaceans in the first six weeks of a seven-month season, according to UC Davis marine fisheries specialist Christopher Dewees.

"In recent decades the increasing number of vessels and the intensity of fishing has led to a race for crabs," Dewees said. "Before 1980, the season was spread from December to July. Now, in some years, 80 percent of the landings are made by the end of December. This creates glutted markets, increased densities of crab traps on fishing grounds, and fishing in dangerous conditions that costs lives and sinks fishing boats."

However, when Dewees surveyed California crab fishermen, he found support for only two of 12 suggested management options to address those concerns — trap limits and daylight-only fishing. The majority of small vessel owners supported trap limits, but owners of vessels longer than 50 feet did not.

The California Legislature is currently considering a bill (AB 749) that would test a limit of 250 traps per vessel south of Mendocino for two years.

Dungeness crab ranges from Santa Barbara to Alaska. Despite highly variable harvests, most scientists and industry participants believe the crab resource is in good health. Catches in the 2003-04 and 2004-05 seasons have been among the highest ever, at about 25 million pounds landed, with a value of about $40 million.

Dewees is a member of the statewide California Sea Grant Extension Program, which is administered by the University of California system. Sea Grant is a network of 30 university-based programs.

Tobacco linked to deaths among African Americans

A new analysis links tobacco smoke to 63 percent of cancer deaths among African American men in the United States.

The smoke-related cancer death burden for African American men is highest in the South at 67 percent, with the lowest burden — 43 percent — in the Northeast. The percentage is 60 in the West and 63 in the Midwest.

The study, authored by Bruce Leistikow, associate professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the UC Davis School of Medicine and Medical Center, appears online now and will be published in the August issue of Preventative Medicine.

In research published last year, Leistikow estimated that more than 38 percent of cancer deaths for African American men were connected to tobacco smoke.

Leistikow notes one explanation for regional differences could be intervention disparities. Western and Northeastern states have some of the strongest tobacco control programs in the nation.

On the other hand, Southern and Midwestern states have been slower to initiate such increasingly common policies as higher cigarette taxes, smoke-free spaces, anti-smoking education programs and penalties for selling tobacco to minors.

Shining a brighter light

New lighting technology developed at UC Davis offers quality, cost and environmental benefits compared with existing types of lighting, according to Charles E. Hunt, professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Field emission lamps can match exactly the spectrum of natural daylight, Hunt said. They are up to five times more energy efficient than existing R- and PAR-type lamps and do not contain environmentally hazardous materials, such as the mercury vapor used in fluorescent tubes, he said. They are cheaper and can produce a wider variety of colors than light-emitting diodes.

The technology could be used for indoor and outdoor area lighting, specialty applications such as film and video production, and for illuminated displays, traffic signals or technical lighting.

Field emission lamps are based on the same principle as the luminescent phosphor materials used in TV sets. Light is emitted when electrons are driven into the material. Traditional TV sets use a thermal electron gun to fire electrons into a phosphor screen. The new field emission devices use a powerful electric field to extract electrons from the cathode and drive them into the phosphor, which are located close together. The process is dramatically more efficient than the filaments used in electron guns.

"It combines 70-year-old vacuum tube technology with the latest advances in carbon nanomaterials," said Andrei Chakhovskoi, co-inventor of the device.

The UC Davis laboratory has developed materials for field emission cathodes that are inexpensive and simple to make. Lamps based on the material should have a lifetime of up to 30,000 hours, Hunt estimates.

Hunt's group is working with the California Lighting Technology Center at UC Davis and the California Energy Commission on potential applications.

The technology is based on inventions at UC Davis and on a collection of patents and intellectual property donated to UC Davis in 2004 by DuPont Corp.

The university is currently negotiating agreements to license the technology for commercial development.