Updated 5 p.m. Jan. 20 with an announcement from the UC Office of the President that it is now accepting applications for the staff adviser program.

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Applications to be staff adviser to the UC Board of Regents are now being accepted.

The staff adviser program allows for two staff or academic employees (non-Academic Senate members) to participate in open sessions of the Board of Regents as well as designated committees of the board. The staff advisers bring the voice and perspective of staff and nonsenate academic employees to board deliberations.

Staff advisers serve for two years, the first as staff adviser-designate and the next as staff adviser.

"Serving as staff adviser is an opportunity to ensure staff input is considered in decision-making at the highest level,” said Donna Coyne, associate director of admissions at UC Santa Barbara, whose term as adviser concludes in June.

Then, UC Merced Ombuds Deidre “De” Acker moves up to staff adviser for 2015-16.

More information is available on the staff adviser website. Questions about the staff adviser position or the application process should be directed to Juliann Martinez, UCOP Employee Relations, by phone, (510) 287-3331, or email.

The application period runs from Jan. 20 to March 6.

Police Accountability Board to meet Jan. 28

The next meeting of the Police Accountability Board will be the first to be held on the Sacramento campus. The public meeting is scheduled from 7 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 28, in the auditorium of the Comprehensive Cancer Center, 45th and X streets.

The newly established board meets quarterly. The fall 2014 meeting took place on the Davis campus and the spring 2015 meeting will also be in Davis.

At each session, the board gives an update on its activities and invites public comment.

Cold, now fog hampers butterfly hunt

Professor Art Shapiro's annual hunt for the first cabbage white butterfly of the year continues to be hampered by weather, first the cold and now the unusually dense fog.

Shapiro, who has tracked the cabbage white’s first flight in Yolo, Sacramento or Solano counties for more than 40 years, promises a pitcher of beer to anyone who can find a specimen before he does. He uses the data to track biological responses to climate change, and has won his contest all but three times.

The butterfly needs a stretch of 60-degree weather, so cold temperatures delayed Shapiro’s search earlier in the month. Now he says tule fog, a dense ground fog he hasn’t seen in a few years, is keeping the butterflies from flying.

After searching Monday (Jan. 19) in West Sacramento, he said the fog there kept the temperature low until shadows were too long for the butterflies to emerge. “In short, nothing at all was flying,” he said by email.

That’s been a common refrain so far, when Shapiro has been in the field every day but has yet to find a specimen. Others have reported sightings, but without a photo or a live capture, it doesn’t count for his contest.

His Jan. 19 email continued: “A friend who had a (cabbage white) larva feeding in his garden as of Jan. 10 allowed it to pupate and tells me the adult emerged yesterday. So the hour of truth is near. … Unfortunately, today's weather could easily repeat every day through Thursday.”

And despite his coming up empty-netted every day so far, Shapiro said it isn’t at all unusual for the butterfly to wait until after Jan. 20 to emerge.

See the contest rules in this story. Check back with Dateline on how the search is progressing.

Aggie Stadium No. 1 again in waste diversion

UC Davis is a champion again in a national recycling competition that strives for zero waste at college football games.

Recently released results show UC Davis in first place in two out of five categories — waste diversion and waste minimization —among NCAA Football Championship Subdivision schools that competed in the 2014 Gameday Recycling Challenge.

In winning the diversion title, UC Davis kept 93.4 percent of all waste from Aggie Stadium out of the landfill, after the Oct. 11 game against Montana State

UC Davis previously won waste diversion titles in 2010 (89.83 percent) and 2011 (93.6 percent), among all participants, regardless of their status as Division I (Football Bowl Subdivision or Football Championship Subdivision) or Division II or III; and 2012 (96.8 percent), among Football Championship Subdivision schools, after the organizers split the competitition into three divisions (FBS, FCS and Divisions II-III).

By breaking the 90 percent mark in 2012, UC Davis made the Gameday Recycling Challenge Wall of Fame, which, as of the 2014 season, comprises only six schools: UC Davis, University of Akron, University of Colorado (Boulder), University of Nevada (Las Vegas), Ohio State University and Rutgers University.

After sitting out the 2013 challenge, UC Davis came back strong in 2014. “We had a season-high diversion rate of 93.4 percent and a season average of 91.7 percent,” said Michelle La, coordinator of the Waste Reduction and Recycling Program, part of the Office of Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability.

“Recycling and compost bins were visible all throughout the stadium, and attendees actively used the bins,” said La, noting how she observed people “actively thinking” in front of the bins, to be sure everything went where it was supposed to go.

“We’ve definitely gone a long way at the stadium from having to staff each and every single bin a few seasons ago. Now, we just do spot-checking occasionally throughout the games.”

La credited the stadium operations crew, Grounds and Landscaping Services, Dining Services-Sodexo and the fans for making Aggie Stadium “a beaming zero-waste venue.”

Besides the waste diversion title, UC Davis achieved the following in 2014:

• Waste minimization — 0.010 pounds to the landfill, per person, first place (Oct. 11, Montana State)
• Organics per capita reduction — 0.131 pounds per person, third place (Nov. 22, Sacramento State)
• Recycling per capita — 0.200 pounds per person, eighth place (Nov. 22, Sacramento State)
• Greenhouse gas reduction — 0.000190 MTCO2e (metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent) per person, 10th place (Nov. 22, Sacramento State)

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