The Daily Reveille
Thursday, January 19, 2012
ACADEMICS
page 5
LSU professor cracks the case of Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ Paul Braun Contributing Writer
What started as the aggressive behavior of sea birds captured the attention of Alfred Hitchcock and inspired the cult-classic film “The Birds” has now been scientifically explained by University professor Sibel Bargu and her colleagues. In the year’s first volume of the journal Nature Geoscience, Bargu published her findings linking a 1961 bird kill event in Monterey Bay to poisoned algae. On July 18, 1961, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that thousands of migrating sea birds, called sooty shearwaters, were seen regurgitating anchovies and dying in the streets. Hitchcock, who was visiting the area that summer, released “The Birds” two years later, after being inspired by the sooty shearwaters. At the time of the bird kill, Hitchcock was already working on the movie. He based his film on the 1954 novel “The Birds” by Daphne Du Maurier, Bargu said. “He had read the book and had already written the movie,” Bargu
said. “He called the newspaper and wanted to get extra information to use ‘his new thriller he was filming. He took details from Monterey Bay that he ended up using.” The original bird kill event had confused scientists and lay people for decades, until 1991 when a similar event occurred in the region with brown pelicans, Bargu said. After moving down the food chain, examining the stomach contents of the pelicans, fish consumed by the pelicans and the plankton consumed by the fish, scientists discovered that domoic acid was to blame for the 1991 event, she said. At that time, scientists saw similarities between the bird kill events in 1991 and the Monterey Bay event three decades prior, but had no way to scientifically prove such a connection scientifically. Bargu, who is a self-described movie geek, was conducting research on domoic acid in Monterey Bay for her thesis at University of California at Santa Cruz when she was approached with the opportunity to participate the study in 2003, she said. “It was of interest to me
because of my research topic, but also because it was about Alfred Hitchcock,” Bargu said. “I jumped on it. I was excited that those two subjects could be connected.” Bargu and her colleagues used a catalog of invertebrates compiled by the University of California at San Diego, she said. The catalog had stores of plankton from Monterey Bay dating back to 1949. “The zooplankton is basically a small, filter-feeding animal,” Bargu said. “It is like a trash can. Whatever is in the water, you will find in their stomach.” Bargu and her colleagues analyzed the stomach contents of the zooplankton using an electron microscope, she said. The article submitted to Nature Geoscience details the domoic acid neurotoxins were produced by the diatom pseudo-nitzchia. Bargu and her colleagues worked their way up the food chain to show that the pseudo-nitzchia were eaten by zooplankton, which were eaten by fish, which were subsequently eaten by the sooty shearwaters roosting in the area. Bargu’s team was comprised
STUDENT LIFE
LSU diversity showing increase Marylee Williams Contributing Writer
The University’s student population has gotten a little more diverse. The Office of Equity, Diversity and Community Outreach released the 2010-11 Annual Diversity Report in December, which showed an increase in minority University students. The following races saw a growing population on campus in 2010: -Black students made up 9.35 percent of the LSU student body, up from 8.82 percent in 2009. -Asian/Pacific Islander students made up 3.39 percent, up from 3.35 percent in 2009 -Hispanic students made up 3.79 percent, up from 3.41 percent in 2009 The diversity report also found increases in students of two or more races, who made up 0.65 percent of the student population in 2009 and jumped to 1.06 percent in 2010, and international students, who rose from 1.94 percent of the population to 1.99 percent. Despite the strides the University made in diversity during the fall 2010 semester, other SEC institutions are still ahead of the University in ethnic diversity. The University of Alabama has 12.17 percent black/AfricanAmerican undergraduate students, and the University of Georgia has about 7.8 percent Asian and about 1.2 percent multiracial undergraduate students. One of the University’s diversity projects is the Black Male Leadership Initiative, which
promotes enrollment and graduation for male African-American students with leadership training and academic support. In fall 2010, this project raised $9,232 through fees and foundation grants. Vilien Gomez, computer engineering sophomore and a member of the University Black Male Leadership Initiative, said he chose the University after attending SPRINGFEST Recruitment Weekend, a program held by the Office of Multicultural Affairs for ethnic minority high school students. Gomez said he was attracted to the University’s ethnically and culturally diverse population. He said the University encourages diversity, but there is always room for improvement, like more student involvement. “It’s called multicultural, meaning all people,” Gomez said. “Diversity programs aren’t
‘THE BIRDS’ movie poster
Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ was partly inspired by the filmmaker’s trip to Monterey Bay, Calif., where thousands of migrating seabirds died due to poisonous algae.
of researchers from University of California at Santa Cruz, University of California at San Diego and the University of South Carolina. The story has garnered media attention worldwide, including mentions in USA Today, the New Zealand Herald, The Australian, the Detroit Free Press and CNN’s The Marquee Blog. Overall, Bargu is pleased with the accurate media attention that her project has received. “Scientific media coverage is excellent outreach to educate the
public, as long as the media receive the information from the actual source,” Bargu wrote in an e-mail. “We hope people are now a little more aware of the facts of these strange natural events (toxic algal blooms and animal strandings) that are occurring worldwide and enjoy the link to that movie.”
Contact Paul Braun at pbraun@lsureveille.com
Diversity among LSU students
just for African-Americans.” Bruce Parker, a graduate assistant in the Office of Multicultural Affairs who leads the LGBTQ Project, said diversity projects add to education because students interact and learn from others who are different.
Contact Marylee Williams at mwilliams@lsureveille.com
graphic by BRITTANY GAY
/ The Daily Reveille