A daily selection of stories about UC Berkeley and higher education that have appeared in the local and national media.
Thursday, 3 July 2008
1. Science News
UPI
July 3, 2008
...NASA begins new type of astronomy
Berkeley, Calif., July 2 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency says its Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories, or STEREO, have detected particles from the edge of the solar system.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced last year's event Monday, saying it marked the beginning of a new type of astronomy.
"The two STEREO spacecraft were launched in 2006 into Earth's orbit around the sun to obtain stereo pictures of the sun's surface and measure magnetic fields and ion fluxes associated with solar explosions," NASA said. "From June to October 2007, sensors aboard both STEREO spacecraft detected energetic neutral atoms originating from the same spot in the sky, where the sun plunges through the interstellar medium."
Mapping the region by means of neutral, or uncharged, atoms instead of light "heralds a new kind of astronomy using neutral atoms," said UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY PROFESSOR ROBERT LIN, lead scientist for the suprathermal electron sensors aboard the STEREO spacecraft.
"This is the first mapping of energetic neutral particles from the edge of the heliosphere," Lin said. The heliosphere is a bubble in space produced by the solar wind. It stretches from the sun to beyond the orbit of Pluto....
[Stories on this topic appeared in dozens of sources worldwide]
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2. 4 Berkeley tree-sitters end protest
San Francisco Chronicle
July 3, 2008
Berkeley -- Four of the Memorial Stadium tree-sitters left their perches Wednesday and late Tuesday, leaving only three protesters making a stand against UC's plans to build an athletic training center in the grove, UC BERKELEY OFFICIALS said....
Three of the protesters came down to preserve more food and water for those who remain, Eisenberg said, while the fourth - Amanda "Dumpster Muffin" Tierney, 21 - came down because she was suffering from an undisclosed medical condition, CAMPUS SPOKESMAN DAN MOGULOF said....
"We're getting very close to ending this long and difficult occupation," Mogulof said. "We want a safe end.... There's nothing here worth getting hurt over."...
[Another story on this topic appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, and Oakland Tribune]
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3. The Struggles of Detroit Ensnare Its Workers
New York Times (*requires registration)
July 3, 2008
Detroit — Their pickups and sport utility vehicles are not selling, and now General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler have to pay thousands of auto workers not to make them.
With more than 15 of their assembly plants across the country set to be idled or slowed because of shift cutbacks, the Detroit automakers will temporarily lay off upward of 25,000 auto workers this summer and fall....
So while some G.M. and Ford factories are scrambling to build more cars, even paying workers overtime to meet demand, other assembly lines are shutting down.
“It’s an unprecedented situation,” said HARLEY SHAIKEN, A LABOR PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. “Despite enormous reductions in total employment, the market is forcing massive temporary layoffs.”...
“It is a very expensive issue, but it’s not the critical one for Detroit,” said Mr. Shaiken. “The reason these plants are going down is that some catastrophic decisions were made in the past to continue building so many trucks.”...
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4. SEC’s effort to ease reliance on credit raters is limited by host of other government rules
Financial Week
July 3, 2008
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s plan to ease requirements that credit ratings be used for debt securities will have only a limited impact on the $5 billion rating industry because dozens of other government agencies continue to require the Wall Street grades, observers said....
“The SEC is nibbling around the periphery,” Christopher Whalen, managing director of the Institutional Risk Analytics consulting firm, said in an interview. “While it’s a good first step, it doesn’t go nearly far enough.”
Among the federal agencies that require credit ratings on certain debt are the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and other banking regulators, the Labor Department, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., said New York University economics professor Lawrence White....
Mr. Whalen’s comments were echoed in interviews with Mr. White, Duke University law professor James Cox, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY LAW PROFESSOR ERIC TALLEY and Berkeley legal research director John Hunt.
Apart from the SEC’s proposal, there has been little movement by government agencies to ease the reliance on ratings, said Messrs. Talley and Hunt. The agencies’ reluctance to act may stem from inertia or uncertainty as to who or what would fill the void left by rating firms in assessing investment risk....
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5. Marketplace Op-Ed: Congress's summer job: The economy
The economic stimulus was just a drop in the bucket. If Congress really wants to get the economy back on its feet, commentator Robert Reich has some summer homework for them.
NPR
June 2, 2008
...Robert Reich: The economy is failing, but it's now clear the Fed won't revive it. It figures if it cuts interest rates, global investors will move their money out of dollars, causing the dollar to drop further, meaning more inflation as the price of everything we buy from the rest of the world, including much of our oil, rises even faster.
Yet American consumers cannot stimulate the economy on their own because they don't have any money left. And exports can't make up the difference. So how to get back on track?
Blue Dog Democrats, Calvin Coolidge Republicans and Ross Perot Independents all must understand the critical importance of a fiscal stimulus right now. And it has to be on the right scale. Distributing those little stimulus checks last month was like dispensing aspirin for pneumonia: momentary relief for a whole system desperately sick....
In other words, now that the Fed's hands are tied, we need a bold fiscal policy, a stimulus large enough to get the economy moving again and a progressive tax system large enough to keep it moving. The question is how low the economy will have to sink before there's political will to do this.
[Link to audio]
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6. Is HPV Vaccine to Blame for a Teen's Paralysis?
U.S. News & World Report
July 2, 2008
About a month after being vaccinated against the cervical cancer-causing HPV virus, 13-year-old Jenny Tetlock missed the lowest hurdle in gym class, the first hint of the degenerative muscle disease that, 15 months later, has left the previously healthy teenager nearly completely paralyzed. Did the vaccine, Gardasil, cause her condition? Her father, PHILIP TETLOCK, A PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR AT UC-BERKELEY'S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, has embarked on an odyssey to find out whether the vaccine or random coincidence is to blame.
As father and scientist, Tetlock has contacted top medical experts, posted pleas on discussion boards looking for other teens who've experienced neurological problems post-vaccination and has been desperately trying to get the government to open an investigation into his daughter's case. "The weakening process is gradual so it may take months for parents to notice what is going on," he writes me in an E-mail. He started a blog a few weeks ago that shows photos of his sweet-faced teen and reveals his anger and frustration in the form of a box counting the days that he has yet to get a response from the government's Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment Network. As of today, it's 28.
He's not the only one to raise an alarm. The conservative public watchdog group Judicial Watch has been periodically obtaining adverse event reports on Gardasil from the Food and Drug Administration. I received the group's latest warning this week: of 10 deaths linked to Gardasil since September 2007 and 140 reports so far this year of serious effects such as miscarriage and Guillain-Barré syndrome, a nervous system disease that causes weakness and tingling in the arms and legs. (But these reports filed by patients or doctors with the government's vaccine adverse event reporting system may or may not reflect true vaccine risks. Some problems may be missed or underreported, while others, including sudden deaths, may have nothing to do with the vaccine itself.)...
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7. Leah Garchik:
San Francisco Chronicle
July 3, 2008
...Soon after he came here to oversee the study of magazines at UC BERKELEY'S GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM, editor CLAY FELKER and his writer wife, Gail Sheehy, hosted a party for journalist Shana Alexander, who was passing through the Bay Area on a book tour. Alan Dershowitz also happened to be in town, and was there, as was Jessica Mitford. I remember feeling pleasantly dwarfed by so many huge personalities and so much talent....
After Felker became ill and before he moved back east, he and Sheehy were out and about less often..
In the days just before he died, Sheehy sent friends an e-mail about her husband's last few weeks. On June 17, she said, a physician had informed him that his body was shutting down and that he had a week or a month to live.
That night, he and Sheehy decided to "do one great thing," as she describes it - to go out to a jazz show at Dizzy's Coca-Cola Club....
"Clay sat tall and straight in his wheelchair," listening to Mike Melvoin, who told the audience, "There's a lot of pessimism and feelings of futility out there. ... It's the job of music to dispel these feelings."
He returned home just before midnight, recalls Sheehy. "He was not the least tired. He wanted to talk. He gripped my hands and said clearly, with gusto, 'It was a wonderful evening.' "
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