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Thursday, 20 August 2009
1. In the Latest 'U.S. News' Survey, a Higher Response Rate and the Usual Winners
Harvard and Princeton Universities again tied for the No. 1 spot among national universities in the annual rankings released by U.S. News. The two have traded the top rank or tied for it every year for the last 10 years.
Chronicle of Higher Education (*requires registration)
August 19, 2009
College participation in U.S. News & World Report's annual rankings increased this year, after reaching its lowest level ever last year. Forty-eight percent of college leaders who were sent the peer-assessment survey responded this year, up from 46 percent.
The peer survey—the most controversial part of the rankings formula—asks presidents, provosts, and admissions deans to rate institutions on a scale of 1 to 5. The response rate has dropped from 68 percent in 1999, amid a steady drumbeat of anti-rankings rhetoric....
As for the results of this year's rankings, Harvard and Princeton Universities again tied for the No. 1 spot among national universities. The two have traded the top rank or tied for it every year for the last 10 years....
Williams College got the top spot among liberal-arts colleges, and THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY was the highest-ranked public institution.
U.S. News touts the consistency of the rankings as a sign of quality, while critics say the year-to-year similarities show that the list simply mirrors colleges' longstanding reputations....
[Link by subscription only. To view the rankings, visit U.S. News & World Report] Full Story
2. Harvard, Princeton Top U.S. News List
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
August 20, 2009
Harvard University and Princeton University again topped the annual ranking of U.S. universities published by U.S. News & World Report magazine, reflecting a year of little change on the influential list....
The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School was rated the best undergraduate business program in the country, followed by a tie between MIT and the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY....
The U.S. News rankings are set to be released Thursday on the magazine's Web site and at newsstands. On the Web, on forums such as collegeconfidential.com, commentators were already discussing the rankings Wednesday, based on copies of the magazine purchased from newsstands. The Wall Street Journal purchased a copy Wednesday at a Boston-area retailer.
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
3. Group Offers Alternative Rankings Based on Curricula
Chronicle of Higher Education (*requires registration)
August 19, 2009
Leaders of the University of Arkansas might or might not be pleased with how they fared in the new college rankings by U.S. News & World Report. But they can certainly take cheer from a report released on Wednesday by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, an advocacy group with a traditionalist bent. The council rated 100 colleges according to the rigor of their course requirements for undergraduates—and Arkansas was one of only a handful of institutions to earn an A.
The report, "What Will They Learn? A Report on General Education Requirements at 100 of the Nation's Leading Colleges and Universities," gives colleges credit if they require all students to take courses in seven realms: composition, literature, foreign languages, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics, and natural or physical science....
MURRAY A. SPERBER, A VISITING PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY who has written widely about college athletics and what he sees as the decline of the curriculum, said in an e-mail message on Wednesday that the council's report "documents higher education's dirty little secret: Schools are charging more each year and requiring many fewer traditional education courses. ... This results in a legion of students with spotty educations and meaningless degrees."
[Link by subscription only. To view the report, visit the American Council of Trustees and Alumni] Full Story
4. Green Inc. Blog: Ranking Universities by ‘Greenness’
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
August 20, 2009
Universities these days are scrambling to burnish their sustainability credentials, with efforts that include wind power, organic food and competitions to save energy.
They are also adding courses related to sustainability and energy — including, as I report today, in the field of continuing education.
But which university is the greenest?
Several ranking systems have emerged to offer their take. The Princeton Review, best known as a test-preparation firm, recently came out with its second annual green ratings. Fifteen colleges earned the highest possible score — including Harvard, Yale and the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.
Another group, the Sustainable Endowment Institute’s GreenReportCard.org, rates colleges on several different areas of green compliance, such as recycling, student involvement and green building. Its top grade for overall excellence, an A-, was earned by 15 schools....
[To view the discussed reports, visit the Princeton Review and Sustainable Endowment Institute] Full Story
5. Sustainability Field Booms on Campus
New York Times (*requires registration)
August 20, 2009
After 25 years in the high-technology industry, BOB GRESSENS sensed a growing excitement over environmental issues — and a new business opportunity. He followed his instinct, quit his job and went back to school.
“I want to give the next 15 years or whatever to sustainability,” he said. “To give back.”
In May, Mr. Gressens, who lives in San Francisco, began taking courses on topics as diverse as green building and sustainability management at the EXTENSION SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. He also signed up for additional coursework at a continuing studies program run by Stanford. If all goes well, he will find a job with an electrical utility, or elsewhere in the clean-technology field, after finishing his courses.
Mr. Gressens’s trajectory will sound familiar at educational institutions across the country, whose continuing education arms have seen a striking influx of students interested in the relatively new field of sustainability....
Berkeley recorded a similar surge: three years ago, the sustainability studies office offered just five courses; today it includes 60 courses over a wide-ranging curriculum. Since 2006, enrollment has grown to more than 400 students per semester, from 55.
“In spite of the recession, we’re seeing strong interest in subject areas such as sustainable buildings, transportation, energy, economic policies and, of course, LEED,” said PAT ROSE, THE MEDIA RELATIONS MANAGER OF THE BERKELEY EXTENSION SCHOOL, referring to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a certification system established by the United States Green Building Council. Being “LEED certified” has become important for professionals in fields including architecture and law; Mr. Gressens will be taking the LEED exam this fall....
Mr. Gressens, 53, said he was happy with what he was learning at Berkeley and Stanford. And he cited another advantage of the courses: the students.
At Berkeley, “you have people whose passion is to save the planet,” he said. “There are others who are just looking to make a buck. So that makes things interesting.”
[This story also appeared in the International Herald Tribune] Full Story
6. For Outsiders, Opening Doors to Health Care
New York Times (*requires registration)
August 20, 2009
Health care may be a costly drag on the economy, but it’s still a great place to find a job.
Midcareer managers and other workers have been migrating to health care jobs for years, of course. Now, with the recession, the lure is even stronger....
The industry trade association, known as Himss for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, offers an array of online courses that can help technology workers move into health care....
JAMES PLATTS, 30, chose a more formal academic setting for his training in health care management and completed the joint master’s program in business and public health at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. He now works on health-related projects in the San Francisco office of the Boston Consulting Group.
He came to Berkeley in 2006 from the White House, where he was a junior-level staff member at the National Economic Council for two years. A Harvard graduate in economics, he also put in two years at Nasdaq, studying financial and economic data....
Graduates of the Berkeley program are hired at an “average salary somewhat over $100,000,” said KRISTI RAUBE, DIRECTOR OF THE JOINT HEALTH MANAGEMENT PROGRAM there. Tuition has tripled since 2007, to $35,893 for California residents and $45,093 for out-of-state students pursuing the joint master’s degree....
[This story also appeared in the International Herald Tribune] Full Story
7. Tiny tracks reveal pterosaur landed like a duck
San Francisco Chronicle
August 20, 2009
They flew like ducks and they landed like ducks, but they were never like ducks at all.
They were flying reptiles called pterosaurs with long, sharp beaks and wings for soaring. They lived in the days of their distant cousins, the dinosaurs, but evolved separately until they went extinct 65 million years ago - along with the dinosaurs and most other creatures of the time.
For the first time, a team of scientists, including a noted UC BERKELEY PALEONTOLOGIST, has discovered the tracks that one small pterosaur made as it landed on the muddy shore of an ancient sea sometime between 150 million and 115 million years ago.
That gently sloping shore is now a broad stretch of flat rock known as Pterosaur Beach in a limestone quarry near the tiny village of Crayssac in southwestern France. It's so far off the tourist routes that it has no hotel or inn, so KEVIN PADIAN, the Berkeley scientist who has studied pterosaur fossils for more than 25 years, and his French and Swiss colleagues slept at the local school while there to investigate the newfound tracks....
Although the discovery reveals much about the evolution of flight in the first vertebrate animals to reach the air, the scientists conclude that nothing in the tracks they have studied so far "provides any indication how these animals took off."...
[Another story on this topic appeared in Science Magazine Online] Full Story
8. Stimulus Remains Unpopular Even as It Boosts Growth
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
August 20, 2009
Six months ago, as the U.S. economy was sinking, President Barack Obama and Congress prescribed a $787-billion dose of tax cuts and spending increases.
Today, the economy, though far from healthy, is better. The fiscal stimulus, however, is increasingly unpopular....
The case that fiscal stimulus was a mistake altogether is weak. A decade ago, economists counseled that politicians should leave recession-fighting to the Federal Reserve and its interest-rate cuts. With the average length of a post-World War II recession at 10 months, downturns usually ended before Congress acted.
This time was, truly, different. The recession was more than a year old when Mr. Obama took office, the Fed already had cut interest rates to zero and the economy was still in free fall. "If ever there was a case for a fiscal stimulus, this was it," says ALAN AUERBACH, A UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, ECONOMIST who will kick off an appraisal of the stimulus at this weekend's Fed retreat at Jackson Hole, Wyo....
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
9. Dust-Up Blog: Is Obama's stimulus working?
Edward E. Leamer says we were overdue for a recession. Brad DeLong says the Obama administration got the most it could.
Los Angeles Times
August 19, 2009
Today's topic: Would the economy be worse off without the Obama administration's stimulus? Or does the fact that we're still deep in a recession suggest that it would have been better simply to let the economy bottom out as quickly as possible?
...Keynes: right during the Great Depression, right now
Counterpoint: Brad DeLong
BRAD DELONG IS A UC BERKELEY ECONOMICS PROFESSOR who served in the U.S. Treasury Department during the Clinton administration. His blog is "Grasping Reality with Both Hands."
Back at the start of October, when it became clear that the recession was not going to be a mild "rolling readjustment" and when it began to become clear just how frozen the financial system was and how much damage it was about to do to investment and spending, economists began talking about how it would be a very good thing to pass a fiscal stimulus....
By the end of December, it was clear that the recession was going to be at least twice as big as the early October forecasts....
Turns out that we have (a) a recession not twice but three times as large as forecast in October, (b) a stimulus package of about $600 billion in real and semi-real stimulus, and (c) a stimulus package passed in February rather than October, four months later than it should have been.... Full Story
10. Dust-Up: 'Cash for clunkers': a clunker?
Brad DeLong and Edward E. Leamer agree that the program, though effective in the short term, represents a missed opportunity.
Los Angeles Times
August 20, 2009
Today's topic: Is "cash for clunkers" a Keynesian success story, or did it produce nothing more than a blip in car sales?
What good are we doing by destroying the clunkers?
Point: Brad DeLong
BRAD DELONG IS A UC BERKELEY ECONOMICS PROFESSOR who served in the U.S. Treasury Department during the Clinton administration. His blog is "Grasping Reality with Both Hands."
I find it hard to imagine that you and I will find much to disagree on today, Ed. Yes, there are lots of unemployed autoworkers who will be doing nothing if we don't boost auto demand....
I suspect that you and I could immediately get behind a plan to tax gasoline more, issue bonds now to be amortized by the gasoline tax far into the future and return the money to consumers by using the funds from the bonds to give cash back to people who buy high-mileage cars. That would provide a good short-run Keynesian stimulus to get autoworkers back to work; it would also be a good long-run environmental policy. Since it would be budget-neutral (or budget-positive), spend money now and lock in the tax increases to pay off the bonds later, it would be a win-win-win.
But that's not what "cash for clunkers" is. We are destroying the clunkers, which could be very useful things in Africa or the poorer parts of Latin America or Asia; it would be cheap to load the cars onto some of the idle container ships off Long Beach and send them off. What we're doing instead is simply a waste....
But we could have done so much better, as far as environmentally friendly stimulus proposals are concerned. It really does make me cry. Full Story
11. The New Information Goldmine
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
August 19, 2009
Suppose you could find all the socks you ever lost. Now suppose getting those socks back enabled you to earn a better living, or work faster and smarter. Wouldn't you be willing to pay someone to locate those socks on a worldwide sock exchange? That's the crux of a business category that some entrepreneurs and investors find pregnant with opportunity. "We think this is the next hot thing," says Jeanne Sullivan, an executive at StarVest Partners, a New York venture-capital firm developing a specialty in this area....
What do all these ventures have in common? Lemons. GEORGE AKERLOF's lemons, to be precise. In the late 1960s the Nobel Prize–winning UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, ECONOMIST sought to answer the age-old question of why buying used cars favored the seller over the buyer. The buyer couldn't know whether the seller was selling because he needed the cash, or because the junker had unseen repair and maintenance issues. Akerlof proved that the buyer's inability to discern the difference between a good car and a lemon drove down the prices of all used cars. Buyers don't like uncertainty, so many would simply walk away from the transaction. Fewer buyers means lower prices—hence the canyon-like price differential between new cars versus those driven even slightly. (And here we thought consumers were willing to pay thousands more for that fresh-car smell.) In financial markets, investors unable to distinguish between a great business and a loser will put their money into cash and leave start-ups without funding. Under Akerlof's logic, providing more information, with a level playing field for buyer and seller, creates business opportunity....
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
12. In NYC, Cash and Connections Can Get You a Kidney
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
August 20, 2009
New York (AP) -- For most of the thousands of Americans who need a new kidney, there are only two ways to go: persuade a friend or relative to donate, or get on the transplant waiting list.
Yet some New Yorkers with the right connections and a pile of cash appear to have explored a third option....
The legal peril of getting involved in an international cash-for-kidney trade was highlighted in late July with the arrest of Brooklyn entrepreneur Levy Izhak Rosenbaum....
In the summer of 2007, police charged nine people with paying Israeli donors $30,000 each to give up a kidney....
NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES, A MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY who has been investigating organ trafficking since the mid-1990s, said the busts have made a difference.
''This network was really operating at its height a few years ago,'' she said. ''That's still going on, but it has been made much more difficult now.''
At one point, she said, the brokers had flourished in Israel, which became a home for such operations in part because it has among the lowest rates of organ donation in the western world....
[This story appeared in dozens of sources, including the Contra Costa Times and Sacramento Bee] Full Story
13. Law limits murder defendant's plea options
San Francisco Chronicle
August 20, 2009
Prosecutors may seek capital punishment for alleged toll plaza killer Nathaniel Burris, and they may ultimately send him to the death chamber.
But he can't beat them to the punch and request a swift execution....
"Death penalty cases are the most challenging, complex cases," said ELISABETH SEMEL, WHO DIRECTS THE DEATH PENALTY CLINIC AT THE UC BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW.
"In my experience," she said, "individuals who want to represent themselves are often lacking the legal skill to do so and have profound emotional problems."...
Burris may need a competency hearing, to see if he understands the proceedings and can participate in his defense, experts said. If he demands to act as his own attorney, another set of criteria kicks in....
"We do have this overarching constitutional rule," Semel said, "and that is that death is different because of its finality."... Full Story
14. BART report on Grant shooting not expected to influence Mehserle trial
The findings cannot be used as evidence in court, legal experts say
Oakland Tribune
August 20, 2009
Oakland — The BART-commissioned report that found grave errors in how the agency's Police Department reacted before and after Oscar Grant III was killed will have little to no impact on the murder case against former Officer Johannes Mehserle, legal experts and his attorney said....
DAVID SKLANSKY, A UC BERKELEY LAW PROFESSOR, said the report could help Mehserle with his central argument that he was, in part, a victim of organizational mismanagement and made a mistake during a chaotic situation.
"On the one hand, it makes what happened look even more horrible," Sklansky said. "On the other hand, it strengthens the argument by the officer that it was not entirely his fault."
Sklansky said the report could bolster testimony from defense experts who will be brought to the trial to describe the lack of training BART officers receive in using Tasers and dealing with large crowds....
[This story also appeared in the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times] Full Story
15. Debate heats up over whether residents should evacuate
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
August 20, 2009
When fire crews and sheriff's deputies began knocking on doors in the Santa Cruz Mountains last week, telling residents they had to get out, they were relying on a system of evacuating people that some of the state's leading fire scientists warn is badly outdated.
...But that evacuation strategy, which has become CalFire's first line of defense against loss of life, becomes exponentially more difficult — and dangerous — in the face of an exodus like the one San Diego attempted in 2007. During a week of wildfires, 350,000 Southern California households received automated calls telling them to get out of their houses, forcing 12,000 people to bivouac in Qualcomm Stadium.
As California's "urban interface" — the places where people live in the woods — has grown to more than 5 million homes, those vast migrations have grown increasingly difficult. "I don't know how you can continually move people out of harm's way and somehow think it's going to be sustainable," said SCOTT STEPHENS, CO-DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR FIRE RESEARCH AND OUTREACH AT UC BERKELEY. "It's just a nutty idea."
...Stephens and other fire scientists have urged the adoption of a system similar to one that's been used in Australia since the 1983 "Ash Wednesday" brush fires killed 75 people — many of whom died while attempting to run from the fire. Residents there receive training from fire crews — who endorse the plan, unlike many of their American counterparts — and are issued equipment, including radios to monitor the direction and speed of the fire....
Stephens said studies have shown losses in Australia have decreased by 70 percent under the plan. "And that includes lives," he said. "In this state, we lose houses, we lose neighborhoods, we lose lives, then we come back, rebuild and do it again."...
The problem, of course, is that many people already are ignoring evacuation orders, defending their homes with little training.
"Some people are going to stay," said FAITH KEARNS, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF BERKELEY'S FIRE RESEARCH CENTER. "When there were 2,000 fires burning across the state last year, a lot of communities felt abandoned because there weren't enough firefighters to go around. Given the reality of what it takes to completely suppress all fires, there are going to be more and more people who want to stay and defend their homes. Because they feel it's not going to happen otherwise."
[This story also appeared in the Contra Costa Times and Oakland Tribune] Full Story
16. Failure predicted for plan to sell California workers' comp insurer
Sacramento Bee
August 20, 2009
In a state budget revision full of desperate solutions, the most questionable may be a $1 billion partial sale of California's quasi-public workers' compensation insurer.
Mere mention of the State Compensation Insurance Fund plan draws snickers around the Capitol, a reflection of how flimsy it is....
"This isn't going to happen any time in the next three to four years because there would be one court case, if not many," said FRANK NEUHAUSER, A UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, RESEARCHER and expert on workers' compensation. "There's no money coming from this in the short term that would resolve a budget problem. I think it's no better than smoke and mirrors."... Full Story
17. Across an Ocean: Can U.S., Chinese Unions Find Common Ground?
In These Times
August 20, 2009
This summer, steel has been melting down on both sides of the globe.
In China’s Henan Province, protests flared at the Linzhou Iron and Steel Co. after workers learned their state-owned plant was to be sold to a private corporation....
While Chinese steelworkers revolted, a steelworkers union across the Pacific was blasting China’s encroachment on its own labor force....
...KATIE QUAN, ASSOCIATE CHAIR OF THE CENTER FOR LABOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY, said that measured international engagement is critical for advancing Chinese workers’ rights. She told In These Times:
It is important for American unions to establish formal relationships with Chinese unions. However, I think that these relationships should be formed with agreement on labor and human rights principles (not just unconditional engagement). ... The worldwide labor movement’s refusal to deal with China was designed to force China to improve labor rights, but that strategy has failed.”... Full Story
18. Palm rejected Jobs's 'no poaching' Applers offer
The Register [UK]
August 20, 2009
Two years ago, Apple chief exec Steve Jobs suggested to Palm's then-CEO Ed Colligan that the two companies agree not to hire each other's employees. Colligan reportedly refused, saying such a deal would be "likely illegal".
These revelations come in a report by Bloomberg on Thursday, less than two weeks after a similar agreement was reported between Apple and Google....
The Bloomberg report quotes DANIEL RUBINFELD, a former deputy assistant attorney general for antitrust and CURRENTLY A UC BERKELEY LAW PROFESSOR, as saying: "If I were at DoJ, I would definitely be interested.”... Full Story
19. Independent Postdocs, Part 2: On-the-Ground Experiences
Science Magazine
August 21, 2009
Last month in " Independent Postdocs, Part 1: Gaining Early Autonomy," we got some tips from group leaders and career advisers on how to negotiate more autonomy with your principal investigator (PI) while you are still a postdoc. ...
But how does this play out on the ground? To find out, we asked some other experts: three postdocs, all at different stages on their way to independence....
NICCOLÒ BUCCIANTINI
In recent years, a small but steadily increasing number of funding programs have been put in place to help postdocs pursue their own research projects while remaining in someone else's lab. One such program--the Hubble Fellowships offered by NASA--has given Italian astronomer Niccolò Bucciantini unprecedented independence.
Astronomy is a field that gives its young scientists an unusual amount of autonomy, and "in the places where I have been, ... I'd always been quite free to pursue my own research," says Bucciantini, who JOINED JONATHAN ARONS'S LAB AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, in 2004 after earning a Ph.D. from the University of Florence . But a Hubble Fellowship brings you closer to peer-level with your PI, he adds. "It's a step in between just being a postdoc who ... collaborate[s] on a project to being a professor or someone who has his own research group."...
The Hubble Fellowship has provided Bucciantini with a stipend and health insurance for 3 years, as well as some research funding, which amounted to about $16,000 in his 1st year, start-up funds included. In a theoretical field like his, "it was enough to buy basically everything I needed," he says. Bucciantini still needs to get his PI to authorize his expenses, but he says, "I know exactly how much I'm going to have, and I can budget and plan based on that."...
The greatest benefit of such a fellowship, Bucciantini says, is the self-esteem and encouragement it gives you: "It's a recognition from the community that you can put forward interesting research." The fellowship has also given him a head start on developing grant-writing and administrative skills he will later need as a PI, he adds. ... Full Story
20. Working Blog: Freelancers: the New Working Class?
In These Times
August 19, 2009
Those who graduated college last May have had to make some economic adjustments. The recession changed their job market and opportunities, so they think. They have been forced to make do, many with part-time or temp work....
In a commencement address last May to the graduates of the UC BERKELEY SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM, Barbara Ehrenreich welcomed the grads of one of the nation’s most prestigious J-Schools to the working class.
Ehrenreich told them, whether they knew it or not, that they shared much with autoworkers. They are working in a dying industry that has no jobs and a shaky future. “They’re got skills; they’re got experience,” she said. “They just don’t have jobs.”
“However there is a difference,” she stated. “Writers can write anywhere while autoworkers can’t build a car in their garage.” Those graduates can freelance, while autoworkers cannot. They have a chance, even if it is small, to eek out a living in their profession. Ehrenreich recognizes freelancers as working stiffs who struggle to make ends meet, even if they don’t.... Full Story
21. Editorial: UC must return the remains
San Francisco Chronicle
August 20, 2009
The fact that a UC BERKELEY MUSEUM ended up with the remains of Japanese war dead is a strange and grotesque mystery. But it's also an embarrassment that the campus can rectify by promptly returning the collection of skulls and bones to their homeland.
Campus authorities are getting the message via a string of pointed suggestions from elected officials and Berkeley faculty. The remains don't belong in the basement of an anthropology museum. By any reading of the rules of war or military conduct, the collection should never have left a World War II war zone.
A campus spokesman, in full damage control mode, said UC Berkeley is contacting both the Defense Department and the Japanese government. It may take time to sort out the right destination, but campus leaders seem intent on shipping the remains home.... Full Story
22. Arson destroys car outside UC president's home
San Francisco Chronicle
August 20, 2009
Oakland -- A car was set on fire early today near the Oakland hills home of University of California President Mark Yudof, in what investigators believe was arson.
Neighbors reported the blaze after hearing explosions at 1:50 a.m. on Woodmont Way in the Grizzly Peak Estates neighborhood of the Oakland hills, authorities said. The car was destroyed, said Alameda County sheriff's Sgt. J.D. Nelson....
UC BERKELEY and Oakland police are investigating the case, along with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the FBI.
Yudof has been the target of protests by UC employees upset about proposed budget cuts and employee furloughs in the 10-campus system. University employees have previously rallied outside Yudof's home and at locations where he has given speeches.... Full Story
23. Families: US hikers detained in Iran are harmless
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
August 20, 2009
New York — Three American hikers detained in Iran are "totally harmless" travelers who carefully planned a trip in Iraq but apparently accidentally ended up crossing the border, their relatives said today.
SHANE BAUER, JOSHUA FATTAL AND SARAH SHOURD have been held for three weeks, their exact whereabouts unknown. Their relatives are pressing for diplomats to gain access to the three to help arrange their release.
"Right now, I think all anyone can hope for is to be able to talk to them," Bauer's sister Shannon, of Boulder, Colo., said in an interview as the families unveiled a Web site with information about the case.
The three have been in custody since they entered Iran from Iraq without authorization on July 31. Their case has become the latest source of friction between the U.S. and Iran, with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appealing for their release....
ALL THREE ARE GRADUATES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.... Full Story
24. The Juggle Blog: What Your Baby Is (or Isn’t) Learning When You’re Not Around
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
August 20, 2009
What’s your baby doing all day?
We all want our kids to be engaged in activities that advance their intellectual growth. But parents who work outside the home often entrust their kids’ daily schedule to someone else. And in an effort to keep our children learning and engaged, many of us send our babies off to music or gym class with a nanny or look for child-care providers that offer learning environments. Others buy Baby Einstein DVDs or LeapFrog toys that teach the alphabet or words. If we can’t be there, we can still make sure they’re learning.
As a parent I’ve always kind of felt, on a gut level, that these efforts were somewhat misplaced. ... In the Dr. Seuss ABC book we usually get to the B page (barber, baby, bubbles and a bumblebee) and then he flits away to chase after the cat or bounce a ball around or stare off at something or flip ahead in another book. He’s pretty easily distracted.
This is a good thing, apparently, according to a well-read Op-Ed piece in the New York Times. ALISON GOPNIK A PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR AT BERKELEY and the author of a new book on how babies think, takes a fascinating look at new research on the way babies learn. Unlike adults, babies don’t learn through focused drills or flashcard exercises. They learn by paying attention to new stimuli....
“Babies and young children can learn about the world around them through all sorts of real-world objects and safe replicas, from dolls to cardboard boxes to mixing bowls, and even toy cellphones and computers,” Ms. Gopnik explains. “Babies can learn a great deal just by exploring the ways bowls fit together or by imitating a parent talking on the phone.”... Full Story