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Friday, 14 August 2009
1. UC awarded grant to research solar energy
Modesto Bee
August 13, 2009
As the world's hunger for energy grows and fossil fuel supplies become less certain, scientists are looking for ways to develop alternative renewable energy sources.
The most abundant source of renewable energy is the sun, but current technology used to convert sunlight into electricity still is relatively costly for wide-scale use. That's why researchers at the University of California at Merced are looking for ways to make solar energy more efficient and cheaper.
The university, along with UC BERKELEY and UC Santa Cruz, was awarded a five-year $2.25 million grant that will fund a solar energy research program. Some of the categories researchers will cover include development of novel photovoltaic devices, which convert sunlight into electricity, and thermal energy for cooling buildings and other applications. Full Story
2. 2004 Cal Fire report called area near Lockheed county's worst fire hazard
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
August 14, 2009
Santa Cruz -- In 2004, a Cal Fire report called land where the Lockheed Fire appears to have started the worst wildfire hazard in Santa Cruz County....
"It kind of shocks us, but fire is a real big part of that ecosystem," said SCOTT STEPHENS, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF FIRE SCIENCE AT UC BERKELEY who has studied fire patterns in Central Coast forests.
The chaparral, manzanita and knobcone pine fueling the current blaze require very hot, severe blazes to activate their seeds, Stephens said. Manzanita seeds can spend up to 60 years in the soil, waiting for a wildfire. Knobcone pine cones require fire to open and release their seeds. Cones can hold seeds for 20 to 30 years before they are released.
As a result, "Every five or six decades, if it burns, it does very well," Stephens said. Not coincidentally, he said, the last time the land in the Cal Fire report burned was 1948, 61 years ago....
Stephens said he typically supports efforts to remove fire fuels from forests near homes to lessen or prevent future wildfires. But in an ecosystem this flammable, land owners are better off ensuring they have proper clearance around their homes and building with fire-resistant materials.
"A lot of the houses are more flammable than knobcone pine," Stephens said.
[This story also appeared in the Contra Costa Times] Full Story
3. Santa Cruz blaze proves it's too early to declare a mild fire year, officials say
Sacramento Bee
August 14, 2009
A tame fire season so far should not lure Northern Californians into complacency, officials warned Thursday, as a new blaze – a reminder – tore through the Santa Cruz Mountains....
"I can't say if we are in a mild fire year. So much of it is still ahead," SCOTT STEPHENS, A UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR OF FIRE SCIENCE, said in an e-mail. "Most years in California have the potential to be big fire years, simply because of the way we have managed our forests and the population of the state."... Full Story
4. Dial “D” For Diagnosis
Berkeley engineers invent a cell-phone microscope
Newsweek Online
August 12, 2009
What the world needs now—besides love, of course—is a new technology for diagnosing infectious disease that's inexpensive and portable yet highly effective. The World Health Organization estimates that there were about 247 million cases of malaria in 2006 and more than 9 million new cases of tuberculosis in 2007, with African countries bearing most of the burden in both cases. Fortunately, a group of ENGINEERS AT UC BERKELEY may have come up with the very thing, a device they call the CellScope, a simple attachment that clips onto the back of an ordinary camera phone and turns it into a portable and easy-to-use microscope capable of visualizing single-celled pathogens like malaria parasites or tuberculosis bacteria—no laboratory required.
That's a good thing, because well-outfitted labs are often hard to come by in the developing world. The conditions are usually hot, and electricity may be spotty at best. Put simply, the best medical technologies require clean, air-conditioned labs stocked with bulky machines and endless shelves of reagents—not what a public-health worker is likely to find in places like sub-Saharan Africa and the jungles of Southeast Asia....
The CellScope's engineers and the public-health groups that will help test it are optimistic that the device could be a solution. It all began in a Berkeley bioengineering class taught by DANIEL FLETCHER. To make things interesting, Fletcher presented his students with a challenge: if you were hiking in a remote village where an unknown infectious disease was spreading, what could you build with only a camera cell phone and a backpack of lenses that might help identify the disease? In response, his students developed a prototype CellScope, and the research seemed promising enough that some of the students continued working on it with Fletcher after the course ended (the research was described in this report, recently published in the journal PLoS ONE).
According to Fletcher, CellScope users will be able to take diagnostic images of blood or sputum samples and then either send them off for further analysis using the phone's wireless connectivity, or analyze them independently using image-analysis software that could be installed on the cell phone. In addition to being more portable, the CellScope may prove to be more valuable for diagnosis than basic compound microscopes. That's because the device is capable of fluorescence microscopy, which produces images that are much easier for a layperson to decipher. It's like picking out bright stars from a dark sky, says DAVID BRESLAUER, A BIOENGINEERING GRADUATE STUDENT AT BERKELEY and member of the CellScope team....
[Link to video] Full Story
5. Bottom Line: July data recall risk of recession's double-dip
San Francisco Chronicle
August 14, 2009
We don't wish to be alarmist, and one set of data points does not a trend make. But the latest first-time unemployment numbers (up), July retail sales (down) and foreclosure filings (the highest since RealtyTrac started publishing figures four years ago) can't help but bring to mind thoughts of "double-dip." As in recession redux.
UC BERKELEY ECONOMIST BARRY EICHENGREEN raised the specter in Sunday's column. "I'm not a professional forecaster," Eichengreen - wisely for an economist - reminded me in an e-mail Thursday. "But I do remember the two double-dip risks I emphasized were the likelihood of weaker retail sales and higher foreclosures."
You might remember Obama adviser and HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS PROFESSOR LAURA TYSON saying last month that a second stimulus package might be needed to help cure a "sicker patient" than, she said, the administration had anticipated. Tyson took that back three days later on CNBC. Whether the people she was advising didn't take kindly to her initial recommendation, we can only speculate.
However, while reiterating her come-to-Jesus reassessment in a speech in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Sunday - "We may have hit stability, we may be in the beginning of an upturn" - Tyson also spoke of "lots of downside risks." As in a double-dip recession? "There is always a possibility," Tyson told Dow Jones news service.... Full Story
6. Judges’ Dissents for Death Row Inmates Are Rising
New York Times (*requires registration)
August 14, 2009
It took just 80 words for a federal appeals court to deny Kevin Cooper’s most recent plea to avoid execution. But attached to that order was a forceful 101-page dissent by a judge, all but pleading to spare Mr. Cooper’s life....
The judge who wrote the dissent, William A. Fletcher of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, argued that the police and prosecutors had withheld and tampered with evidence in the case for decades; Judge Fletcher even accused the district court of having sabotaged the case....
JESSE H. CHOPER, A LAW PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, said the judge was hardly a fierce opponent of capital punishment. “I don’t see him as someone who is unexceptionally opposed,” Mr. Choper said....
ELISABETH A. SEMEL, DIRECTOR OF THE DEATH PENALTY CLINIC AT BERKELEY, which trains lawyers to defend people facing the death penalty, said many jurists had been shaken by the rise of exonerations due to DNA evidence. “I think it’s been shattering to judges who had a fair amount of confidence in the system,” she said....
[This story also appeared in the International Herald Tribune] Full Story
7. Obama Westward Bound With Healthcare Message
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
August 14, 2009
Washington (Reuters) - President Barack Obama is taking his healthcare reform message out west this weekend with two more public meetings seeking to overcome vociferous opposition to the $1 trillion overhaul scheme....
"The Obama campaign was almost perfect on message," said GEORGE LAKOFF, A LINGUISTICS PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, and author of "The Political Mind," on how politicians frame their debates.
"How could the same people make this mess of things?" he asked. Lakoff, who has advised Democrats on communications, said the White House had mis-framed its argument by focusing too much on policy details.
For example, "'Public option' doesn't resonate," he said, referring to plans for a government-run insurance program that would compete with private firms.
"It's very simple, you call it 'the American plan.'"...
[This story also appeared in the Washington Post] Full Story
8. Economy tests media’s diversity
Newsrooms struggle to look more like the audience
Boston Globe
August 14, 2009
While hundreds of minority journalists are in Boston for a conference this week, industry leaders are trying to tackle a growing concern: how to preserve diversity in the nation’s newsrooms....
The struggle to increase diversity in newsrooms is decades old. More than a half-century ago, Time magazine founder Henry Luce and his former Yale classmate Robert Hutchins formed a group, most of them academics, to analyze the responsibility of the press amid growing criticism of “big business media’’ as elitist and noninclusive....
The demand was echoed in 1968 by the Kerner Commission, appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the widespread rioting that broke out in the black sections of major US cities, such as Los Angeles and Detroit....
At that time, many media companies vowed to diversify their staffs, said NEIL HENRY, DEAN OF THE BERKELEY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM IN CALIFORNIA.
“Newsrooms dedicated themselves to that ideal that they should reflect society and all of its beautiful tapestry,’’ he said. “But the economic reality has undercut so much of that.’’
Now, the idea that “anybody can be a journalist’’ has opened new opportunities for ethnic media, and many sites are attracting significant donor support, Henry said. But part of the problem with online media is that readers tend to gravitate toward things they already know, instead of new information, he said.... Full Story
9. Hiring Women as Full Professors
Inside Higher Ed
August 14, 2009
When colleges and universities release reports about the state of gender equity on their faculties, administrators quickly follow up with a caveat: The numbers may look out of balance over all, they say, but that's because most of the senior professors are all men, and the greater share of women among junior professors provides reassurance that things will get better over time....
The University of Texas at Austin this week announced the results of faculty hiring for the coming academic year, showing notable gains for women....
The other women hired as full professors (whose appointments have been announced) are: JENNIFER JOHNSON-HANKS, AN ANTHROPOLOGIST WHO (ALONG WITH HER HUSBAND, WILLIAM HANKS, ALSO AN ANTHROPOLOGIST IN THE SAME DEPARTMENT) IS LEAVING THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY; and two linguists coming from Pennsylvania State University: Barbara Bullock and A. Jacqueline Toribio....
Johnson-Hanks, one of those who was, said that she had great students and colleagues at Berkeley, and wasn't so much looking as "willing to listen" when she and her husband were approached. On the whole, she said she was drawn by "an intellectual vision for where the university was going," and she said that the prime factor in moving was related to scholarship and the sense of vitality she found.
But to the extent money was a role, UT held the upper hand (and the decision was made prior to the most recent round of cuts at the University of California). She said Texas offered more money, and that while Berkeley matched the offer, other financial factors favored Texas. "We could buy a gorgeous house for what we got selling a tiny house in California," she said. "We will be living where there are great public schools, but in California, we couldn't afford a home in the areas with great public schools."... Full Story
10. Letters to the editor
San Francisco Chronicle
August 14, 2009
...Regents must rein in administrators' pay
Thanks for publishing the Open Forum piece by UC Regents Russell Gould and Bruce Varner ("UC must retain the best leaders," Aug. 12), which shows how tone-deaf the university leadership is....
The regents claim that these executives are "top talent," but no objective outside study has ever shown this. The students who enter UC have nationally competitive and objectively evaluated backgrounds, and the faculty ranks among the best in the world: No university anywhere has more top-ranked departments in research and teaching than BERKELEY.
The Chronicle's editorial is spot-on: Everyone is taking on additional duties in these times. Only the UC executives accompany this with rich bonuses and inflated titles. They deny themselves nothing, and their staff cuts are slight when made at all.
President Mark Yudof and his advisers need retraining, and the regents should spend much more time on campus - in the departments - before our whole system is ruined.
KEVIN PADIAN
Berkeley... Full Story
11. Paper Trail Blog: Hackers Breach Berkeley Journalism School's Server
U.S. News & World Report Online
August 13, 2009
Nearly 500 applicants to the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM might be at risk of identity theft after an online security breach, the Daily Californian reports.
Computer security experts realized in July that a hacker had entered a private segment of the school's Web server and might have accessed sensitive information, including the names and corresponding Social Security numbers of individuals who applied to the school between September 2007 and May 2009. Campus security officials say there is no indication that the sensitive information was stolen or misused.
"In an abundance of caution, we're going to be notifying those people that the potential exists that some of their information was exposed," says SHELTON WAGGENER, THE CAMPUS'S ASSOCIATE VICE CHANCELLOR FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER. "We could not find any indication that that had actually occurred."... Full Story
12. Google's Varian: Search scale is 'bogus'
CNet
August 14, 2009
Google's HAL VARIAN would likely have raised an eyebrow at a term paper submitted by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the search market.
VARIAN, CURRENTLY ON LEAVE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY to serve as Google's chief economist, thinks a lot of the arguments advanced by Microsoft in justifying its 10-year deal for Yahoo search are, in a word, "bogus." Microsoft has said that it needs "scale" to compete in the search market against Google, saying that larger amounts of traffic and data allow it to improve the quality of its search experience.
As might be expected, that's not exactly the way Varian sees it. He's perhaps best known for perfecting the ad auction system that generates the vast majority of Google's huge profits, having worked for Google since 2002. But he also holds forth over the array of statistical data and processes that Google uses to make just about any decision.... Full Story
13. Op-Ed: Fight Droughts with Science
Better crops could ease India's monsoon worries
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
August 12, 2009
News that India may suffer a weaker-than-normal monsoon this year is raising concerns about crop yields and food supply. As worrying as those reports are, however, this is only a short-term element of a much bigger problem with the availability of water there. Even when the rains do come, India's water usage still will be at unsustainable levels. Better crop plants that use water more efficiently could be a big part of the solution—if only bureaucrats and activists would get out of the way.
Irrigation for agriculture accounts for roughly 70% of the world's fresh water consumption, but that figure can be higher in some places, depending on crop types and local hydrological conditions. India, for instance, is the world's second-largest producer of cotton, the thirstiest of crops: It takes 11,000 liters of water to produce a single kilogram....
Meanwhile, governments interested in protecting their agricultural sectors from foreign competition are all too happy to use spurious fears over genetically modified crops to erect trade barriers. Witness the European Union's unscientific, protectionist restrictions on the import of genetically modified agricultural products. This, as much as any other U.N. regulation, effectively discourages the use of these technologies. A study by PROFESSOR DAVID ZILBERMAN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY dates the worldwide slowdown in the development pipeline to the EU's 1998 ban on genetically modified products....
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
14. Need for speed (bumps)
Some living outside Stockton city limits wonder why they can't get them
Stockton Record
August 14, 2009
Stockton - Residents in some neighborhoods look at the number of cars driving fast, faster and way-too fast and want to see something that will make those cars ...
Bump.
... stop. Or, at the very least, slow down....
Along with traffic circles, textured paving, curb extensions, islands and bike lanes, speed bumps are part of a group known as "traffic calming" devices.
"It can mean different things to different people, depending on their perspective," said JILL COOPER, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF THE TRAFFIC SAFETY CENTER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. For her, it means creating communities where pedestrians and bicyclists can safely travel.... Full Story
15. My wife is an investing wimp
Husbands and wives who disagree on investing strategies can still work together. In fact, you may even get a better return.
Money Magazine
August 13, 2009
New York (Money) -- Question: I'm 49 and my wife is 50. We agree on most things, except how much of our investment portfolio we should keep in cash. She is completely risk-averse and focuses only on the "spanking" we took in the market last year. I feel that by letting so much money sit in CDs earning 1% to 2% we're missing out on better opportunities. Currently, we've got about $500,000 in cash as part of an otherwise well diversified portfolio. Can you help me convince her to take half that money and buy into some dividend-paying blue chips? --Garry, Atlanta, Georgia
Answer: I'm shocked -- shocked! -- that you and your wife don't see eye to eye on risk and investments. I'm joking, of course, since there's tons of research showing that when it comes to investing, women are from Venus (whose denizens tend to trade less frequently and hold more conservative portfolios) and men are from Mars (where residents thrive more on pedal-to-the-metal investing strategies and focus more on an investment's reward potential than its risks).
Research by UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY FINANCE PROFESSOR TERRANCE ODEAN, for example, shows that men trade far more frequently than women -- and earn far lower returns. ... Full Story
16. 15 colleges honored for green practices
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
August 14, 2009
The Princeton Review has released its second annual "green ratings" for colleges and universities, and 15 campuses — including the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY — earned a perfect score.
The college-prep company ranked 697 schools on a scale from 60 to 99 based on data provided by the schools. A school's rankings are based on the health and sustainability of campus life, the preparation the school offers for dealing with environmental challenges and "the school's overall commitment to environmental issues,"the review's announcement said....
So what makes these schools stand out?
...UC-BERKELEY offers organic salad bars at campus dining facilities, and its primary food vendor was the first such vendor in the nation to earn organic certification, the Princeton Review said.... Full Story
17. Thin Green Line Blog: What to do if BART strikes
San Francisco Chronicle Online
August 14, 2009
BART management and the union representing train operators and station agents are battling it out, with the union saying it may strike as soon as tomorrow. [Update: The union plans to strike Sunday at midnight.]...
So what can you do? AC Transit has a number of transbay lines which mainly leave San Francisco from the Transbay Terminal at Mission and 2nd Street. Route F goes to the UC CAMPUS; FS and J hit Berkeley proper. There are lines to El Cerrito and Alameda and, of course, Oakland.... Full Story