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Davis faculty member survives Taipei crash

A family member has confirmed that a member of the UC Davis faculty, Kevin Rice, was injured in the crash Tuesday of a Singapore Airlines jet bound from Taipei to Los Angeles.

Kevin Rice’s brother, Barry Meyers-Rice, said late Tuesday that Kevin Rice had telephoned him at his Davis home Tuesday and left a message saying that he was hospitalized with burns but “generally all right.”

Meyers-Rice said his brother had traveled from Davis to Indonesia about three weeks ago to visit his wife, who is a doctoral candidate at UC Davis and doing field research in Indonesia. He was expected to return to Sacramento International Airport tonight.

Kevin Rice, 47, is a professor of agronomy and range science. He joined the UC Davis faculty in 1986 after completing his doctorate here in 1984.

His research specialty is restoration ecology; he studies native species in efforts to restore disturbed lands and damaged ecosystems.

Singapore Airlines said late Tuesday that 66 people were confirmed dead after the accident at Taipei’s Chiang Kai Shek Airport. The airline said 159 passengers were on board Flight SQ 006.

Quick school districts get funding advantage

Needy, fast-growing school districts are missing out on state construction money that instead is going to districts that can build quickly, a newspaper’s analysis has found.

More than 100 of the state’s fastest growing district received none of the $6.8 billion in state school construction funds handed out over the last decade, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The money has gone instead to the districts that have most quickly obtained land and prepared construction plans.

For instance, the Indian Diggings Elementary School District east of Sacramento received $538,000 to build a multipurpose room and kitchen, even though enrollment in its only school fell from 32 to 25 over the last decade.

Meanwhile, Downey Unified School District in southeast L.A. County has been unable to get state construction money despite a 43 percent enrollment increase in the last decade, the Times said in Sunday editions. An inability to acquire land has prevented the 21,000-student district from getting state money to build at least two more schools.

L.A. civil rights attorneys sued over the distribution system earlier this year, contending it hurts urban school districts the most. A judge has ordered state officials to come up with a better method.

State officials acknowledge that the system has flaws, but added that not all rapidly growing districts need construction money.

In other cases, state officials said, many districts choose not to use the state program for reasons that include misunderstanding of the rules and distaste for paperwork.

Study examines conflicts of interest

While private industry involvement in academic research continues to grow rapidly, universities struggle to prevent potential conflicts of interest without clear guidelines for defining or managing financial conflicts, according to a new study by a University of California, San Francisco researcher.

Even the level of financial interest held in a sponsoring company that researchers must disclose varies widely. In California, for example, the state requires the reporting of financial interests of as little as $250 in companies that support a researchers work. The federal government, on the other hand, requires the disclosure of a $10,000 interest or more.

“Without clear guidelines, the universities themselves must decide what represents a potential conflict and figure out how to manage it,” said study author Dr. Lisa A. Bero.

Compiled from Daily Bruin wire services.