ARSON: First witness takes the stand at trial

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Rumsey,” Figueroa said. Winds pushed the flames toward several buildings — including a barn, a workshop and Stevens’ outbuilding — all which burned to the ground despite residents’ efforts to protect them.

As the blaze did its damage, a neighbor reported seeing Stevens on her land, hiding behind a tree and “looking in the direction of the fire,” Figueroa said. The neighbor confronted Stevens and told him to go.

Three days after that, on June 12, 2021, two more fires broke out on neighboring land, and witnesses again reported seeing Stevens nearby, Figueroa said. Cal Fire and Yolo County Sheriff’s Office personnel searched the area and found several of Stevens’ belongings and the defendant himself, who allegedly had a lighter on him when authorities apprehended him.

“Once this case is concluded and you have all the facts, I’m going to ask you for a verdict of guilty on all the counts charged,” Figueroa said.

Martha Sequeira, Stevens’ public defender, conceded there’s no question that the fires occurred, and her client stands accused of lighting them.

The trial, she noted, is about two issues — “whether or not the fires were set by someone willingly, on purpose, and if so, who was that person? The government has the burden of proving that.”

As for the witnesses in the case, “credibility is always going to be an issue, and there is more to the story than what was told to investigators,” Sequeira said, adding that those statements may have been “motivated by biases and prejudices.”

“You’re going to have to make a decision about what facts you believe,” Sequeira concluded in her opening remarks. “The evidence may not shut down the prosecution’s theory in its entirety, but the evidence will also not

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The next Rotts of Friends adoption event is from 8 to 11 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 28, at 34505 County Road 29 in Woodland. Come by 10 a.m., as it takes at least an hour to meet and adopt a dog; everyone who will be living with the dog should come out to meet it.

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Staff is available to assist via phone during business hours at 530668-5287. Shelter hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. To meet any adoptable YCAS animals, visit friendsofycas.org. To volunteer, sign up at tinyurl. com/yolovolunteerapp.

Follow on at @ycas.shelter and Instagram at @ yoloanimalshelter.

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Croissant, the trial’s first witness, testified he’d lived in the Rumsey area for some 40 years, befriending Stevens for half that time. He’d gone to Clearlake on an errand on the day of the fire, which his girlfriend reported to him in a frantic phone call.

From his vehicle, “I could see a column of smoke and thought it was close to Rumsey,” Croissant said. He returned home to find the road packed with emergency vehicles and flames that burned several buildings, “and almost to the hills on the east side of the valley.”

Testimony in the case resumes Monday.

In addition to three felony arson counts, Stevens faces pending battery and vandalism cases for which he’ll be tried separately following his current trial.

— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@ davisenterprise.net. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene

UCD: Female, male hearts react differently to stress hormone

By Lisa Howard Enterprise staff writer

A new study published Jan. 20 in Science Advances shows female and male hearts respond differently to the stress hormone noradrenaline. The study in mice may have implications for human disorders like arrhythmias and heart failure and how different sexes respond to medications.

The team built a new type of fluorescence imaging system that allows them to use light to see how a mouse heart responds to hormones and neurotransmitters in real time. The mice were exposed to noradrenaline, also known as norepinephrine. Noradrenaline is both a neurotransmitter and hormone associated with the body’s “fight or flight” response.

The results reveal that male and female mouse hearts respond uniformly at first after exposure to noradrenaline. However, some areas of the female heart return to normal more quickly than the male heart, which produces differences in the heart’s electrical activity.

“The differences in electrical activity that we observed are called repolarization in the female hearts. Repolarization refers to how the heart resets between each heartbeat and is closely linked to some types of arrhythmias,” said Jessica L. Caldwell, first author of the study. Caldwell is a postdoctoral scholar in the UC Davis School of Medicine Department of Pharmacology. “We know that there are sex differences in the risk for certain types of arrhythmias. The study reveals a new factor that may contribute to different arrhythmia susceptibility between men and women,” Caldwell said.

Arrhythmias are a type of heart disorder where the electrical impulses that control heartbeats don’t function properly.

— UC Davis News