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Wednesday, 26 August 2009
1. Brain changes may have led to Stone Age tools
San Francisco Chronicle
August 26, 2009
Once upon a time in the long evolution of Homo sapiens, a band of our African ancestors learned to use fire for more than cooking meat, lighting the dark or warding off attacking animals.
Those Stone Age people became the world's first engineers - they discovered that the intense heat of a fire's embers could make chunks of stone much easier to flake for making tools, and to make them much sharper too.
It was "a breakthrough adaptation in human evolution," reports an international group of archaeologists and anthropologists. And it may have come about because of changes in those early human's brains, other scientists say....
The knives, scrapers and hand axes were made of a widely used type of silicate rock called silcrete. Some of the scientists, reporting in the current issue of the journal Science, are themselves skilled at "knapping" - the art of chipping stones by hand to create sharp tools - and their tools demonstrated the clear improvements possible from heat treatment at fire temperatures of 450 Fahrenheit or more. …
At UC BERKELEY, ANTHROPOLOGIST STEVEN SHACKLEY noted that in California and elsewhere in the American Southwest, the people of the well-known Clovis culture who had migrated from Siberia across the Bering land bridge some 13,000 years ago also used fire to temper their stone tools - apparently their own age-old technology.
"So for those earlier Stone Age people of 100,000 years ago, this report suggests that something was going on in their brains and something was changing the forms of their hands to make that improvement in stone tools possible," Shackley said.... Full Story
2. Breakthrough Doubles Efficiency of Algae-to-Oil Production
Reuters
August 26, 2009
Aurora Biofuels said that it has succeeded in optimizing its base algae strains to more than double CO2 consumption and fuel production. The company has proven these results in an outdoor open system over the last several months.
Using tools developed in the fields of molecular biology and biochemistry, Aurora Biofuels scientists have developed a proprietary process which allows for the selection and breeding of non-transgenic algae....
"This is a major breakthrough showing that one can take algae with improved productivity from the research lab to the field. What Aurora scientists have achieved is an impressive milestone on the path to large-scale commercial algae production," said KRIS NIYOGI, A MEMBER OF THE COMPANY'S SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD AND PROFESSOR OF ALGAL BIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. Full Story
3. Israeli dig finds ancient gemstone
Israeli archaeologists say they have found a miniature precious stone carved with the image of Alexander the Great.
UPI
August 26, 2009
The stone, dating to the Hellenistic period, was found at the Tel Dor excavation site south of Haifa, the Israeli news Web site Arutz Sheva reported Wednesday.
The stone is less than a centimeter long (less than a half-inch) and less than a half-centimeter wide, Ayelet Gilboa, one of the archaeologists directing the work, told the news Web site. The type of gemstone wasn't described.
Gilboa said the carved image shows a young and energetic face, with a sharp chin, straight nose and long curly hair held in a crown, the Web site said.
The gemstone was found in the remains of a large public building dating to the period from the death of Alexander in 323 B.C. to the final conquest of Greece by the Romans in 146 B.C., and was authenticated by Jessica Nitschke of Georgetown University in Washington and ANDREW STEWART OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, the Web site said.
The conquering Greek king is believed to have passed through the area while making his way to Egypt.
Tel Dor , on the Mediterranean Sea, was an important international sea port in ancient times. Excavations began there in 1980. Full Story
4. This Week in Genome Biology
Genome Web
August 26, 2009
In Genome Biology this week, scientists at Maine's Jackson Lab have launched the MouseCyc database. …
A STUDY LED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY'S JILLIAN BANFIELD and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor's Gregory Dick looked for genome signatures in metagenomic datasets. Shared nucleotide sequences can help classify metagenomic sequence fragments, and in this work, the scientists analyzed metagenomic sequence data from two acidophilic biofilm communities. Genome signatures revealed previously unknown low-abundance organisms and a putative plasmid, they say.... Full Story
5. Small business owners fear new health care burden
Sacramento Bee
August 26, 2009
From afar, Nathan Carnahan has monitored the health care debate unfolding in Washington, D.C. He confesses uncertainty about how it will play out, and fears government mandates could add to his firm's cost of doing business....
Talk of such mandates doesn't sit well with Carnahan and small business advocates who don't want to be locked into specific obligations for health care.
"For business reasons, we need the flexibility," Carnahan said. "We don't want our hands tied."...
Advocates of health care overhaul agree that companies, particularly small businesses, are under increasing pressure in a tight economy. "We've seen health premiums rise dramatically, hurting businesses and hurting workers," said KEN JACOBS, A HEALTH CARE SPECIALIST AND CHAIRMAN OF UC BERKELEY'S LABOR CENTER.
"Overall, small businesses pay higher prices for health care coverage than do their large-business counterparts. They don't have the bargaining power that large companies do," Jacobs said.
But Jacobs argues that small businesses could reap benefits from the proposed legislation. He noted that small businesses would be provided subsidies to help provide health coverage to their employees. Full Story
6. Healthcare reform: We can pay for it now, or pay more later
Runaway costs and lack of universal coverage are intertwined problems, so we have to address them simultaneously -- and that'll cost some serious coin. But it's worth it.
Los Angeles Times
August 26, 2009
Sen. Joe Lieberman is wrong.
He said the other day that we should reconsider healthcare reform until we can get our economic house in order. "There's no reason we have to do it all now," he said.
That seems like a reasonable stance, particularly in light of a White House estimate Tuesday projecting $9 trillion in budget deficits over the next decade.
But Lieberman's play-it-safe strategy could cost us a heck of a lot more over the long run.
"Without reforms, there's no reason to think that healthcare costs won't continue to rise unabated," said Rick Curtis, president of the Institute for Health Policy Solutions, a Washington think tank. "The costs of these reforms will go up considerably."
This is a sentiment echoed by many in the business community, who worry that steady increases in healthcare costs will eat into profits and undermine competitiveness....
"I have problems with the way this whole reform thing is going," said ALAN AUERBACH, DIRECTOR OF THE ROBERT D. BURCH CENTER FOR TAX POLICY AND PUBLIC FINANCE AT UC BERKELEY. "I'd like to see a more explicit explanation of ways that medical costs are going to be controlled, and I'd like to see a more comprehensive way of paying for it.
"But if we don't do anything at all, we're clearly going to be worse off. The problems just get bigger if you don't do anything."... Full Story
7. Filling in the gaps of deficit projections
Marketplace
August 25, 2009
ALAN AUERBACH, ALAN AUERBACH, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND LAW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. (UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY)
The 10-year projections of the federal deficit by the Congressional Budget Office and the White House's Office of Management and Budget differ by $2 trillion. ECONOMICS AND LAW PROFESSOR {at UC Berkeley] ALAN AUERBACH explains why they're so far apart....
VIGELAND: So explain for us, if you would, why the CBO and White House numbers differ by over $2 trillion.
AUERBACH: There are two sources of the differences. One is differences in economic assumptions and economic modeling. For example, the administration is projecting higher interest rates over the next 10 years than the Congressional Budget Office is. And that means higher debt service.
A second source of the difference is that the administration forecast include proposals that the administration has made but have not yet been enacted. Whereas CBO adheres to a baseline based on actual policy. For example, the president's health care reform, the president's cap-and-trade proposal, are included in the administration's projections. They are not included in the CBO forecast.
[The full interview can be found at http://marketplace.publicradio.org/] Full Story
8. UC Berkeley Law Scholar Tells Google, 'I Don't Want The Money'
NPR
August 25, 2009
Today, I went and interviewed PROFESSOR PAMELA SAMUELSON AT UC BERKELEY'S LAW SCHOOL for a story on Google's effort to digitize all the world's books. She reminded me that scholarship remains a lofty pursuit. Samuelson is part of a growing group of people who object to a pending settlement between Google and the Author's Guild over how to divide the income Google makes from digitized books.
I confess to being completely surprised to hear Samuelson say that she doesn't want the money and neither do a whole group of other scholars.
"A lot of academic authors never really wrote those books for the money in the first place," says Samuelson. She says what many scholars want is for their ideas to reach a large number of people.
If the current settlement is approved, Samuelson says people will have to pay for access to digitized versions of work by scholars who feel it's more important for people to see their work and share their ideas than it is for them to make a few extra pennies. The problem with the settlement says Samuelson is that the Author's Guild doesn't genuinely represent all authors as a class.... Full Story
9. Heat Waves Getting Worse
Live Science
August 26 2009
Heat waves out West are getting worse as the climate changes, a new study finds....
Why it matters: Other studies show heat waves are deadlier than hurricanes or tornadoes, and they have been so throughout modern history. Climate experts have warned that the sort of serious heat wave that is now possible given current climate conditions, but which has not struck yet, could kill thousands of U.S. residents.
And there's some irony in the problem:
As heat waves worsen, more energy is used to run air conditioners. If the electricity is generated using fossil fuels, this could also mean even more emissions of heat-trapping gases that cause climate change, scientists wrote in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology last year.
"Electricity demand for industrial and home cooling increases near linearly with temperature," said the leader of that study, NORMAN MILLER, AN EARTH SCIENTIST AT LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY AND GEOGRAPHY PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.
"In the future, widespread climate warming across the western U.S. could further strain the electricity grid, making brownouts or even rolling blackouts more frequent," Miller said.... Full Story
10. Technology Review Magazine Names Three Berkeley Scientists
To Elite Group Of Young Innovators
Red Orbit
August 26, 2009
Three RESEARCHERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, are among an elite group of young scientists to watch, according to the national magazine Technology Review's just-released 2009 list of Top Young Innovators Under 35.
ALI JAVEY AND DAWN SONG, BOTH FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCES, AND CYRUS WADIA OF THE HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND THE LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY (LBNL), were among 35 researchers selected worldwide as top innovators under the age of 35.
They were chosen from more than 300 nominees in research fields spanning medicine, computing, communications, nanotechnology and more....
Below are descriptions of the UC Berkeley innovators and their research:
Ali Javey, ...is being honored for his work "painting" nanowires into electronic circuits. Javey combines electrical engineering, materials science, chemistry and physics to engineer nanomaterials for technological applications, including cheap solar cells and high-resolution displays....
Dawn Song, ...is being recognized for her work on defeating malicious software, or malware, through automated software analysis....
Cyrus Wadia, ...is recognized for his work in developing solar cell technology on a scale that could cost effectively meet global electricity demand....
This year's young innovators will be honored Sept. 22-24 at the 2009 Emerging Technologies Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. Full Story
11. Sierra Club's top 20 eco-friendly colleges include 3 in California
UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley and UCLA are seventh, eighth and ninth on the list.
Los Angeles Times (*requires registration)
August 26, 2009
These days "cool school" doesn't just mean that a university has laid-back drinking policies. A "cool school" is one that recycles waste, provides transit and saves energy, according to the Sierra Club's report card for eco-friendly universities
With about two-thirds of applicants reportedly taking eco-friendliness into account when choosing a college, three California schools that were among the Sierra Club's top 20 have something to brag about. The report, released Thursday, ranked UC Santa Cruz, UC BERKELEY and UCLA seventh, eighth and ninth, respectively....
[A full list of Sierra Club's 'Cool Schools' can be found at http://www.latimes.com/] Full Story
12. Cal offense is Andy Ludwig's baby, too
Oakland Tribune
August 26, 2009
Andy Ludwig isn't at Cal simply to baby-sit Jeff Tedford's offense. It's partly his offense, too.
LUDWIG, THE BEARS' NEW OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR, has spent much of his coaching career following around Tedford — and his offense....
Tedford always has allowed his coordinators to incorporate some of their own philosophies into the offense.
"Everybody adds wrinkles, with what you are comfortable with and the things you've had success with in the past," Tedford said. "We talk about things, but I give him total control of being able to add whatever he wants."
Ludwig, who is Cal's fifth offensive coordinator in five seasons, has infused a sense of excitement among Cal's players. Several offensive players have commented on the impact he has made, partly because he was the offensive coordinator for an undefeated team last season and partly because of what he is introducing to the playbook. Full Story