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΢����Ƶ has hired a consultant to assess the campus's information security posture, look at its current risks and offer ideas for improvement.

"We hope to get a holistic view of where the campus and ΢����Ƶ Health System are, in terms of information security best practices," said Cheryl Washington, chief information security officer.

According to a , Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi and Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter commissioned the assessment. It comes in the wake of high-profile cyberattacks this year that have targeted UCLA Health, private businesses and federal government computer systems, but is not directly related to any individual event.

"The chancellor, provost, CIO and all senior leaders are firmly committed to enhancing ΢����Ƶ' strong security posture," Washington said.

No problems stemming from the UCLA incident have been discovered at ΢����Ƶ.

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Hay fire in shed at Cole Facility

Officials said there were no injuries to people or animals resulting from a hay fire the morning of Aug. 23 at the on La Rue Road in the southern part of the central campus.

The call came in at about 6:30 a.m., and campus and city fire crews quickly contained the flames in a shed next to a barn. A custodian alerted a student resident to the fire.

Officials said there was no apparent damage to other structures. The fire marshal determined that the fire had ignited by spontaneous combustion.

Mindfulness Meditation is back!

And so is the leader, Beth Cohen, former director of the Academic and Staff Assistance Program, or ASAP. She’s now a part-time consultant with Occupational Health Services’ WorkStrong Program.

Occupational Health is sponsoring Cohen’s meditation class to be held at lunchtime once a week for four weeks: Thursday, Sept. 10; Friday, Sept. 18; Thursday, Sept. 24; and Thursday, Oct. 1.

The free class will meet from noon to 1 p.m. in the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre at the .

During her time at ASAP, Cohen taught meditation to approximately 2,500 ΢����Ƶ faculty and staff.

The program includes meditation/mindfulness techniques; strategies to increase health, energy and focus; methods to manage pain and reduce stress; and discussions about meditation-related topics.

Beginner and advanced practitioners are welcome. Sign-ups are being taken online, at UC Learning Center (search for “Mindfulness Meditation”).

Santa Cruz professor earns 5-year term as head of UC Observatories

UC President Janet Napolitano this week appointed astronomy and astrophysics professor Claire Max of UC Santa Cruz to a five-year term as the director of , a multicampus research unit that serves eight UC campuses, including Davis.

With a starting date retroactive to July 1, Max’s term began a year after she assumed the director’s post on an interim basis.

Max joined UC Santa Cruz in 2001; she uses UC Observatories, and she co-founded and led the Santa Cruz campus’s Center for Adaptive Optics. She is best known for her contributions to laser guide star adaptive optics, a technology that removes the blurring effects of turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere.

Headquartered at UC Santa Cruz, UC Observatories operates the Lick Observatory as well as technical labs at UCLA and UC Santa Cruz. UC Observatories provides administrative and scientific support for UC’s partnership in the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and is the central coordinator for UC’s participation in the Thirty-Meter Telescope project.

$275,000 + $20,000 = $295,000 for children’s hospital

What a week for , thanks to two fundraisers: the Children’s Miracle Network Telethon and a Sacramento Republic soccer game.

Quite simply, it “was a day for miracles,” development director Jacquelyn Mills said about the Aug. 14 telethon. First, there were the stories of children who had been treated at the hospital, part of the Children’s Miracle Network. Television station News10 told those stories throughout the day, from 4:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.

Then there was the fundraising: $274,958 — 49 percent more than last year’s total — from viewers and telethon partners.

Like all Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals fundraisers, the money will stays local, for use by ΢����Ƶ Children’s Hospital.

Then, on Thursday (Aug. 20), Sac Republic announced that it had reached the 500-ticket mark for sales to people using the special promotion code “KIDS.” For each such sale for Sac Republic’s Aug. 22 game, the team had pledged $20 to the children’s hospital, up to $20,000.

The maximum donation would have required the sale of 1,000 tickets. But Sac Republic said, "Hold on! If we sell 500, we’ll double the donation automatically to the maximum!" And that’s what happened.

The game against Real Monarchs SLC (Salt Lake City), by the way, ended in a tie, 1-1.