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Thursday, 27 August 2009
1. Chancellor: UC Berkeley to admit more out-of-staters
Contra Costa Times
August 26, 2009
BERKELEY -- Fewer California residents likely will be admitted to the University of California next year, but UC BERKELEY plans to admit more students from other states and countries in order to increase its fee revenue, CHANCELLOR ROBERT BIRGENEAU said Wednesday.
Faced with a $150 million deficit — and several thousand California students whose costs are not being covered by the state — Birgeneau said the campus would bring in more nonresident students next year. Unlike California residents, who pay significantly discounted fees, out-of-state and international students pay the entire cost of their educations.
Just 25 percent of the university's budget comes from state funds, down from a high of 70 percent.
"Actually, I hope for some pushback," Birgeneau told reporters. "This is connected to the state's failure to pay for the University of California...." Full Story
2. Bleak financial picture at UC Berkeley
San Francisco Chronicle
August 27, 2009
BERKELEY -- Forced to cut $150 million from his campus budget this year, CHANCELLOR ROBERT BIRGENEAU OF UC BERKELEY painted a grim picture of employee layoffs and pay cuts, fewer courses and likely fee increases as thousands of students returned to school on Wednesday.
"These are extraordinary times," Birgeneau said during his back-to-school remarks. "And for UC administration, these are less-than-inspiring times."
Funding from the state, he said, fails to cover about 9,000 of Berkeley's 35,000 students. Put another way, he said, state funding now covers about 25 percent of the school's budget, down from about 75 percent in earlier years....
Birgeneau said the school currently expects to lay off about 300 nonfaculty employees, and will reduce faculty positions by 100 through attrition. Employees at all 10 UC campuses will have their pay cut between 4 and 10 percent, depending on income level.
"Everyone is really angry and demoralized because we're doing more and being paid less," said one veteran English professor who declined to give his name for fear of reprisal. "And then we're given a little pious lollipop stuck in our mouth about how Berkeley can still be a great school...."
(Similar stories also appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, on KCBS Radio, and on the CBS 5 Newswire.) Full Story
3. Google Book Search? Try Google Library
CNET News
August 27, 2009
Is Google ready--or willing--to become a library?
Librarians, academics, and privacy advocates will gather Friday on the campus of the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY to discuss the implications of Google's proposed settlement with publishers that, if implemented, will allow it to bring millions of books online.
At issue are concerns over privacy, quality, and Google's intent with the project, the only one of its kind in the U.S. to receive the legal authority to scan books that are out of print but under copyright protection--estimated by the Internet Archive to comprise 50 percent to 70 percent of all books published since 1923....
And, as UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR GEOFFREY NUNBERG put it, "this is the last library."
It's going to be extremely difficult for anyone else to create a similar digital library in the future, at least under the current laws. Any other organization that wanted to scan a large percentage of the world's books would likely have to go through a similar legal process that Google has followed for four years to gain access to those so-called "orphan works," a weighty expense even before you start counting the exorbitant costs of scanning the books themselves....
TOM LEONARD, UNIVERSITY LIBRARIAN AT UC BERKELEY, agrees. "We want users who use public libraries to feel very comfortable that their identifies will be protected," he said.
Google has a practice of executing innovative ideas far before the implications are visible. But Leonard also sees the upside to the settlement, assuming all the concerns can be addressed.
"We're pretty excited about the fact that the world has changed, and that we can give access the way readers want it," he said. "They want to make full-text searches of everything we have in the libraries."
Universities do have an alternative in the HathiTrust, a digital library project that counts UC BERKELEY and the University of Michigan--also a close partner of Google's--among its partners. That service lacks the scope of what Google is potentially entitled to scan, but it curates the material in a fashion that's better suited to the needs of the academic community.... Full Story
4. U.S., Japanese governments investigate origins of human bones stored at UC Berkeley
Contra Costa Times
August 26, 2009
A collection of human bones stored at UC BERKELEY that could be those of Japanese soldiers who committed suicide on Saipan during the American invasion of 1944 is being investigated by U.S. and Japanese authorities, a university official said Wednesday....
The bones were donated 35 years ago to the PHOEBE A. HEARST MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY by a U.S. Navy physician....
Issues surrounding the bones and whether their collection violated the Geneva Conventions on war mysteriously sprang to life about a year ago when someone sent letters to the U.S. Department of Defense, the Japanese government and the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo that commemorates Japanese war dead.
The letters told of the existence of the remains and offered to give them back, UC BERKELEY SPOKESMAN DAN MOGULOF said.
"That was an unauthorized communication from a current or former employee of the museum to the shrine and other government agencies," he said....
Mogulof said that since the bones have so little documentation with them, the school cannot be certain they are indeed those of Japanese soldiers who committed suicide there during the American invasion.... Full Story
5. Op-Ed: Obama lucky to have Bernanke
August 27, 2009
William McChesney Martin, a Democrat, was twice reappointed chairman of the United States Federal Reserve by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Paul Volcker, a Democrat, was reappointed once by the Reagan administration (but not twice: there are persistent rumors that Reagan's treasury secretary, James Baker, thought Volcker too invested in monetary stability and not in producing strong economies to elect Republicans).
Alan Greenspan, a Republican, was reappointed twice by Bill Clinton. And now Barack Obama has announced his intention to renominate Republican appointee Ben Bernanke to the post.
The Fed chairmanship is the only position in the US government for which this is so: it is a mark of its unique status as a non or not-very-partisan technocratic position of immense power and freedom of action - nearly a fourth branch of government, as David Wessel's recent book "In Fed We Trust" puts it.
The reason American presidents are so willing to reappoint Fed chairmen from the opposite party is closely linked to one of the things a president seeks: The confidence of financial markets that the Fed will pursue non-inflationary policies...
6. Where to find the world's best wages
Financial Post
August 26, 2009
Residents of Swiss financial centre Zurich know that their country has more to offer than world-class chocolate and precision watches. They can now brag that, on the whole, they earn more than anyone in the world. Zurich-dwellers rake in US$22.60 per hour in average net pay, according to a wage survey released Aug. 19. The runner-up city is less than 200 miles southwest: Geneva, where jobs pay US$20.40 per hour....
UBS arrived at its rankings by studying the wages, taxes and working hours of 14 occupations across 73 world cities. Schoolteachers have a very different lifestyle in Berlin, where they earn an average of US$35,800 per year after taxes, than they do in Bucharest, where the same work nets them only US$4,100. A female factory worker brings in US$18,200 in Chicago, but less than a tenth of that--US$1,800--in Cairo....
To determine how far citizens could stretch this amount, they then calculated the cost of a generic shopping basket, comprising 154 commonly consumed products and services in each city. The basket was priciest in Oslo, at US$112.
"The prices of goods are higher in Oslo because it's relatively remote, it's expensive for companies to operate there, and because taxes are high," says ROBERT HELSLEY, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY'S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS.... Full Story
7. Zipcar - The best new idea in business
Zipcar has already persuaded young urbanites to share wheels. Now the movement is going mainstream - and players like Hertz and Ford want in.
CNNMoney.com
August 27, 2009
Scott Griffith enters the parking lot outside his office in Cambridge, Mass., pulls out his iPhone, and taps a button on the screen. Suddenly a yellow Mini Cooper starts honking like a crazed goose.
Griffith approaches the vehicle and taps the screen again. The doors magically unlock, and under the steering wheel the key dangles from a cord. He starts up the car -- nicknamed "Meneus" -- and drives away at a rate of $11.25 an hour.
Griffith is the 50-year-old CEO of the car-sharing service Zipcar, but he's also just one of the 325,000 members who rely on the company's handy, gassed-up cars to get around....
For drivers who already share movies via Netflix and stream music rather than buying CDs, the idea of sharing a car is the natural extension of a hip, financially smart, and environmentally conscious urban lifestyle.
After all, drivers who give up their cars and switch to Zipcar say they save an average of $600 per month. Car sharers report reducing their vehicle miles traveled by 44%, according to SUSAN SHAHEEN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, and surveys in Europe show CO2 emissions are being cut by up to 50% per user.... Full Story
8. What’s Next in Lithium Batteries?
Researchers are looking into improving the safety and performance of lithium-ion batteries, even as they examine next-generation lithium-based battery chemistries.
Greentech Media
August 27, 2009
Current lithium-ion batteries are like democracy: They are the worst option, except for all of the other ones.
But next-generation technologies like lithium-sulfur and lithium-air batteries still have a long way to go before they're ready for laptops and cars, as researchers speaking Wednesday at IBM's annual Almaden Institute at its Almaden labs near San Jose, Calif. made clear.
So for now, lithium-ion is the chemistry of choice for automakers going hybrid and electric, from Toyota, which will use it in its next generation Prius hybrid, to General Motors, which has settled on it for its upcoming Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid....
ELTON CAIRNS, A CHEMICAL ENGINEERING PROFESSOR WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY, said that lithium-sulfur batteries could offer a next step forward. Lithium-sulfur cells have a theoretical potential to deliver about 2,600 watt-hours per kilogram, versus lithium-ion's potential of 585 watt-hours per kilogram, he said.
Using sulfur has another advantage, he noted – it's cheap, about 57 cents per kilogram versus $44 per kilogram for cobalt, or $2,25 per kilogram for manganese, to name a few alternative materials.
Research so far has yielded better energy densities than lithium-ion chemistries, but work still continues to increase cycle life and better utilize the sulfur within the battery, he said.... Full Story
9. “America’s Got Talent”: Berkeley dance group gets bounced
San Jose Mercury News (Blog)
August 27, 2009
We’re down to 20 semifinalists on “America’s Got Talent.” Unfortunately, Ishaara isn’t among them.
The dazzling BOLLYWOOD DANCE GROUP FROM UC BERKELEY reached the end of the line last night when it was eliminated from contention in the results show. This despite receiving plenty of love from the live audience and the judges. Piers Morgan, in particular, has been a big fan, raving about how fresh and exciting the group is and calling them the best dancers on the show this season.... Full Story