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The arboretum is a good place for making music, on guitars and drums and other easily transportable instruments — and, now, there’s even a piano for anyone to play, thanks to the city of Davis’ summertime public piano program. In photo above, Casey Davis, a student academic specialist in the Student Academic Success Center, takes a turn at the keyboard during the Folk Music Jam Session on July 1. The jam sessions, open to all (for playing or listening) are held during the noon hour every other Friday (the next one is July 15) on the , but the piano is there all time. The city program began last year, placing four painted pianos on city streets, and expanded this year to include the arboretum. Read about the program in this .

Students ace data analysis competition in Berlin

Here are the stats from this year’s Data Mining Cup, an international competition in data analysis, for students: 120 entries from 30 countries, 10 finalists, one winning team and €2,000 (about $2,220) as the grand prize. And who won that prize? This team from 51�ԹϺ��� Davis (pictured above, from left): Minjie Fan, Qi Gao, Hao Ji, Nana Wang, Jilei Yang and Chunzhe Zhang, all from the course “Statistical Practice and Data Analysis” (Statistics 260). Read more in this Dateline article.

Why do cochlear implants work better for some people?

But the implants don't always work well.

One theory among 51�ԹϺ��� Davis researchers is that when children are profoundly deaf, the parts of their brains that would usually be used for hearing sit dormant and then are taken over by other functions. When the child gets an implant, that part of the brain is no longer available to support hearing. 

Four-year-old William Wootton, at left, is among the children being studied.

He's among the fortunate, for whom the implants have given the ability to hear music and learn to speak.

Read more about the study in this news release.

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