A daily selection of stories about UC Berkeley and higher education that have appeared in the local and national media.
Thursday, 2 July 2009
1. The UC Berkeley campus will be closed on July 3.
'Berkeley in the News' will resume publication on July 6.
2. East Bay Green Corridor Meeting Long on Talk, Short on Details
Berkeley Daily Planet
July 2, 2009
If it’s not easy being green, as Kermit the Frog famously sang, it’s getting easier in the East Bay—at least for businesses spawning clean, green tech and for programs that train workers how to use it.
But for Berkeley’s Tom Bates, the region’s first car-free mayor, “To me, greening is really the dollar bill”—a means, as Tom Lehrer famously sang, of doing well by doing good.
That was the underlying theme permeating a Friday morning gathering of mayors, university and college administrators, city officials and entrepreneurs at the Oakland Museum of California for the second annual meeting of the East Bay Green Corridor.
A collaborative effort created at the instigation of UC BERKELEY CHANCELLOR ROBERT BIRGENEAU, the corridor is designed to attract and hold green businesses—especially those created by the entrepreneurial scientists of UC Berkeley and its affiliated Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).
...[Via satellite feed] STEVE CHU, [FORMER UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR and] director of LBNL until Obama raised him to the cabinet with an appointment as secretary of energy, told the assembly that “the East Bay Green Corridor partnership can serve as a model of regional progress in green energy.”...
UCB Chancellor Robert Birgeneau rounded out the main panel, focusing on the $500 million, 10-year alternative-energy research grant funded by BP....
With the lab up and running, 170 graduate students, post-doctoral researchers and undergrads are “in training in the new science of biofuels,” Birgeneau said....
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3. Caltrans examines automated speed cams
KGO TV
June 30, 2009
Berkeley, CA (KGO) -- Many people are familiar with those cameras that snap pictures and send people tickets if they run a red light. Well, the same type of enforcement could be coming to a freeway near you....
"If you were to observe a freeway from a helicopter and see an officer parked, you'd see a bottleneck, congestion, slowing near the officer, and then speeding back up," says DR. SIMON WASHINGTON of Arizona State University [RECENTLY APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF THE UC BERKELEY TRAFFIC SAFETY CENTER, effective August 1].
Washington studied the impact of automated speed enforcement on a 6.5 mile stretch of highway in Scottsdale....
At Caltran's request, UC BERKELEY ENGINEERING PROFESSOR CHING-YAO CHAN is leading a study to see if a system like Arizona's might be a good idea here.
"I do believe when implemented properly at selected, certain locations, they will be beneficial," he told ABC7.
Like the red light cameras at San Francisco intersections, the freeway systems snap a picture and a ticket is sent to the offender. Chan tested a few different systems at three Bay Area freeway locations with cameras disabled. He says they are accurate enough at measuring speed and although the technology is easy, the public support will be hard.
A new law would be required to clear the way for their use....
UC Berkeley's report will be presented to state lawmakers in a couple months.
[Link to video]
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4. California crisis a threat to US economic recovery
Economists worry that the budget deficit could hurt the state just as it has begun showing signs of recovery.
Christian Science Monitor
July 1, 2009
San Francisco -- After lawmakers in Sacramento failed to meet a midnight deadline Tuesday to close the state’s $24 billion budget gap, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state fiscal emergency Wednesday. He hoped to prod politicians into coming to an agreement over spending cuts and keep the state’s financial crisis from deepening....
California is not the only state struggling to pass a budget, but the depth of its crisis and the size of its economy raises the financial problem to a level of national concern.
“It’s easy to make fun of all those greedy, flaky Californians, but the national economy can’t recover with an anchor the size of California holding it back,” says DAN SCHNUR, POLITICAL SCIENTIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IN BERKELEY and a former Republican strategist....
Economic stimulus money is available to states, but it is not nearly enough to fix California’s financial woes, Mr. Schnur says....
Schwarzenegger has given lawmakers 45 days to come up with the necessary cuts to balance the state budget. Says Schnur: If lawmakers cannot find some common ground soon, this impasse “could end up leading to real fiscal and economic meltdown.”
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5. U.S. unemployment rate hits 9.5%, a 26-year high
In June, 467,000 jobs were lost; analysts had predicted 350,000. Despite positive signs for the economy in recent weeks, the report is evidence that the jobs market remains troubled.
Los Angeles Times
July 2, 2009
Reporting from Washington — The nation's unemployment rate edged up to a 26-year high of 9.5% in June as employers slashed nearly half a million jobs over the month across a wide spectrum of industries, the Labor Department reported today....
The unemployment rate for men reached 10%. The jobless figure for women was 7.6%. Since the recession began in December 2007, the ranks of the unemployed have doubled to 14.7 million. Of particular concern, the number of long-term unemployed -- those out of work for 27 weeks or more -- swelled by 433,000 last month to 4.4 million, the report said.
"This is going to be a bigger and bigger social problem going into next year," said DAVID CARD, A LABOR ECONOMIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. The Labor Department's survey of employers showed that nonfarm payrolls tumbled by 467,000 in June. Analysts had expected the economy to lose about 350,000 jobs last month....
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6. Marketplace Op-Ed: Put an X through visions of recovery
NPR
July 1, 2009
The V-shapers are the optimists who look back at prior recessions and conclude that the faster an economy drops, the faster it gets back on track. And because this economy fell off a cliff late last fall, they expect it to roar to life early next year. Hence the V shape.
Unfortunately, the V-shapers are looking back at the wrong recessions. Focus on those that started with the bursting of a giant speculative bubble, and you see slow recoveries because asset values at bottom are so low, investor confidence returns only gradually. That's where the more sober U-shapers come in.
Personally, I don't buy into either camp because in a recession this deep, recovery doesn't depend on investors. It depends on consumers who, after all, are 70 percent of the economy. And this time they got really whacked. Until consumers start spending again, you can forget any recovery, V or U shaped....
[Link to audio]
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7. New mortgage rules could help more borrowers
San Francisco Chronicle
July 2, 2009
The Obama administration on Wednesday broadened its refinance program for underwater borrowers, those who owe more than their homes are worth.
Now, borrowers whose loans are owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac and are current on their payments could be eligible for refinancing even if they owe as much as 125 percent of the home's current value.
Previously, the Home Affordable Refinance Program's loan-to-value limit was 105 percent....
KEN ROSEN, CHAIRMAN OF THE FISHER CENTER FOR REAL ESTATE AND URBAN ECONOMICS AT UC BERKELEY, agrees that the program "is a good thing for California and a good thing for the country."...
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8. Making Sense of 'Cash for Clunkers'
Is what's good for the car companies good for the consumer?
U.S. News & World Report
July 2, 2009
With new-car sales slumping, automotive companies have been looking for ways to get consumers back into showrooms. Washington checked one item off car companies' wish list last week when it passed the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act of 2009, tucked inside a large defense bill. Car companies love the program, popularly dubbed "cash for clunkers," because it gives consumers vouchers to buy new cars. The recession has led Americans to stick with the same cars longer, as "many consumers are finding repair costs much better than replacement costs," says David Portalatin, an automotive industry analyst at the market research firm NPD Group. Now, car companies are hoping that cash for clunkers will provide more incentive for consumers to replace their cars. Kevin Saito, president of American Suzuki, praised the bill as "extraordinary," saying that it would mean an increase in dealer traffic for Suzuki. But is what's good for the car companies good for the consumer?
..."Cash for clunkers" was coined by economists who wanted to create incentives for drivers to shift to more energy-efficient cars. "If designed well, [a cash for clunkers program] could wean us off SUVs," says LEE SCHIPPER, A TRANSPORTATION EXPERT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY and the Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency at Stanford University. But he says this version of the program is far from ideal. To make a serious dent in CO2 emissions, he says, the vouchers should go only to new vehicles that get at least 28.6 miles per gallon (28.6 is the average fuel economy for SUVs required by recently enacted Department of Transportation regulations.)
But under the CARS act, the new vehicle doesn't have to be much more efficient than the clunker that's being traded. For example, a customer with a large SUV that gets only 18 miles per gallon would receive a $4,500 voucher to replace a "clunker" that got 13 miles per gallon. That's not a major difference, says Schipper, and the gap between the newer, "greener" vehicle and the clunker must be large because clunkers aren't driven as much anyway. "A clunker in its last two years [of life] might only go 3,000 miles a year. You're only eliminating 10 percent of its life [by getting rid of it]," says Schipper....
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9. Marin Voice: Electric cars are a good fit here
Marin Independent Journal
July 1, 2009
Electric vehicles are the answer to solving two major environmental problems in Marin: Production of greenhouse gases and air pollution from transportation....
There are currently many choices for electric two-wheel vehicles, but the number of electric cars and trucks on the market is limited. Although nearly every major auto manufacturer in the world is developing at least one plug-in model that will be available in the next year or two, some concerned Bay Area residents have decided not to wait, but to build or convert their own electric cars.
Several of these cars, along with three production electric vehicles, are featured in The Electric Wheels Car Show at the 2009 Marin County Fair....
One car in the show does not use any grid electricity, but gets its power from built-in solar panels. The UC BERKELEY SOLAR VEHICLE TEAM will be displaying that car. Although not yet practical for a daily commute, this car provides a platform for learning new ways of using the energy from the sun for transportation....
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10. Fledgling Website Hopes to Open Journalism to All
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
July 1, 2009
San Francisco - A year-old website, inspired by the use of Twitter and Internet media reporting out of Iran, hopes to become the go-to forum for citizen journalists everywhere as traditional media pulls back.
Allvoices.com, a fledgling social networking-cum-news aggregator site launched in 2008, uses algorithms to help it sort news from around the world in a manner akin to what Google Inc does.
Its twist is that it encourages and enables anyone to be a reporter and uses an in-house system to rate would-be journalists on popularity and credibility....
SUSAN RASKY, A SENIOR LECTURER AT THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, was unfamiliar with Allvoices, but said many sites she had seen experimenting with citizen reporting had a place.
"We have to acknowledge that there are voices outside we need to use as sources," Rasky added.
[This story also appeared in the Washington Post]
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11. Editorial: Judging John Yoo
A federal judge has set a risky precedent by allowing convicted terror conspirator Jose Padilla to sue one of the authors of the controversial 'torture memo.'
Los Angeles Times
July 2, 2009
In their notorious August 2002 "torture memo," Justice Department officials Jay S. Bybee and JOHN C. YOO defined torture narrowly as pain associated with "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." It was a strained and selective reading of the law, and it was rescinded in 2004 by Jack Goldsmith, Bybee's successor as head of the Office of Legal Counsel.
But can YOO, NOW A PROFESSOR AT UC BERKELEY, be held responsible for the actions of others who relied on his legal reasoning? A federal judge in San Francisco seems to think so, but we have our doubts. As much as we were outraged by Yoo's opinions, we worry that equating legal analysis with the acts of policymakers would set a poisonous precedent. Only if Yoo exceeded his role as a lawyer, which he may well have done, should he be subject to civil recriminations for his work....
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12. Huston Smith — at 90, still saying 'yes' to life's possibilities
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
July 2, 2009
HUSTON SMITH — Bay Area eminence, grand communicator about religion and its mysteries, friend to Huxley, Merton and the Dalai Lama — may be stooped by osteoporosis at age 90. Yes, he rises with studied effort from the chair in his one-room apartment in an assisted living facility in Berkeley. He uses a walker. Life's physical machinery has grown creaky.
But that is all so beside the point.
"I still have no troubles getting out of bed in the morning: 'Let me at it!' " he says, rubbing his hands together, gleefully, like a child. His eyes sparkle: "Life, let me at you."
Those eyes, the directness of the gaze; they tell it all. They bespeak mischief, curiosity, bluntness and wonder, attributes that anyone who has spoken to Smith over the years will recognize. In an age of generalized fear and "just say no," SMITH, WHO TAUGHT FOR YEARS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY, a venerated figure there, has said "yes" to life's possibilities.
Which probably explains much of his success as the author of 15 books, including "The World's Religions," a report from the front lines of the planet's major faiths, which helped fuel the American fascination with Eastern religions and has sold about 3 million copies since its publication in 1958....
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13. Book Review: Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship
Chronicle of Higher Education (*requires registration)
June 29, 2009
"Harder to kill than a vampire." That is what the sociologist Joel Best calls a bad statistic. But, as I have discovered over the years, among false statistics the hardest of all to slay are those promoted by feminist professors. Consider what happened recently when I sent an e-mail message to the BERKELEY LAW [LECTURER] NANCY K.D. LEMON pointing out that the highly praised textbook that she edited, Domestic Violence Law (second edition, Thomson/West, 2005), contained errors.
Her reply began:
"I appreciate and share your concern for veracity in all of our scholarship. However, I would expect a colleague who is genuinely concerned about such matters to contact me directly and give me a chance to respond before launching a public attack on me and my work, and then contacting me after the fact."...
Few students would guess that the Lemon book is anything less than reliable. The University of California at Berkeley's online faculty profile of Lemon hails it as the "premiere" text of the genre. It is part of a leading casebook series, published by Thomson/West, whose board of academic advisers, prominently listed next to the title page, includes many eminent law professors....
[Link by subscription only]
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14. Five slick search engines you should know about
Google, Yahoo and Bing get the press but Exalead, Scour, Hunch , Scirus and Indeed fill a void
PC World
July 2, 2009
With Microsoft's recent addition of Bing to the search landscape, the spotlight is again shining on who has the best engine for finding anything and everything on the Internet. The debate over who has the best search likely will go on into eternity with a focus on the big three: Google,Yahoo and Microsoft. But there are countless other search engines out there focused on zeroing users in on the data they want or need. Here is a look at five that are offering some slick service....
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY LIBRARY recommends a second opinion when searching the Internet, and Exalead is one of its top recommendations.
The search engine features a number of advanced options including phonetic search for those who are sometimes spelling challenged. Spell a word like it sounds and results will include words that sound like what was typed into the search field. There is also a proximity search feature with a "Near" operator that finds documents where the query terms are within 16 words of each other, and a "Next" operator where search terms are next to each other. Other options include searching in a specific language only, after or before a certain date, and a prefix search that looks for the beginning letters of a word. In the results, users see thumbnail pictures of Web pages, which can be pulled up and previewed without leaving the site. In addition, Exalead has enterprise search products available (desktop, network). Its Cloudview platform support 300 formats, including structured data (RDBMS, ERP, Lotus Notes, directories) and unstructured content (e-mail messages, PDFs, Office documents, Web pages)....
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15. Leah Garchik
San Francisco Chronicle
July 2, 2009
...In this, the week of Bernie Madoff's sentencing, private equity mogul Warren Hellman and venture capitalist Arthur Rock are revealing the fruit of a year's collaboration (with UC BERKELEY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM STUDENT BECCA MACLAREN and Pixelette Studios): the Con Artist Hall of Infamy.
The site (thehallofinfamy.org), about to go public, is a hit parade of more than 35 convicted bilkers, with histories of their dastardly deeds, profiles and more.
An advance peek revealed that three - Ebbers, Cornfeld, Madoff - are named Bernie (is this a criminality factor?) and there is not one woman. Suggestions are solicited, but just plain bad girls won't qualify; they've got to be con women....
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