The links to the stories summarized on this page are time sensitive, so stories might no longer be online at that URL. We also include links to the original source publication itself.
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
1. Berkeley Tops College Rankings From 'Washington Monthly'
Chronicle of Higher Education
September 2, 2009
The UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY was the nation's No.1 university, and Amherst College was the top liberal-arts college, in The Washington Monthly's new guide, published today, which aims to counter U.S. News & World Report's college rankings. The Washington magazine ranks colleges based on measures of how much social mobility, research, and public service they foster. Full Story
2. Report Lauds “Model” of School Diversity
Diverse Magazine, Issues in Higher Education
September 2, 2009
A school integration plan that takes into account the demographics of a student’s neighborhood rather than the student’s race when making school assignments has been endorsed by University of California researchers as a model for other school districts seeking to maintain diversity.
The elementary schools in the Berkeley (Calif.) Unified School District are well integrated, and the district’s integration plan is constitutionally sound, according to a report released Tuesday by THE WARREN INSTITUTE ON RACE, ETHNICITY AND DIVERSITY AT UC-BERKELEY’S SCHOOL OF LAW, and the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA....
Researchers examined the racial composition of each elementary school in the Berkeley district, comparing their findings to the district-wide racial makeup of the elementary school student population. The authors determined various ethnic groups to be over- or underrepresented in a school if their makeup deviated by more than 10 percent from the district-wide racial composition.... Full Story
3. Detained Hikers Hit One-Month Mark
Media Bistro
September 1, 2009
It's been one month since July 31 since the three Americans were detained by Iran while hiking along the Iraq-Iran border. And, according to their families and the State Department, Iran still has not permitted Swiss diplomats, who represent the United States' interest in that country, to meet with Cal grads Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 30, and Joshua Fattal, 27.
Yesterday, family members held a press conference at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. "Iran has confirmed that it is holding our children," said Shourd's mother, Nora Shourd. "But it is heartbreaking for us to have had no other news about them. We do not understand why Iran has still not allowed consular officials to visit our children."
Shourd also extended "peace and blessings" to the people of Iran "in this holy month of Ramadan." Full Story
4. GPS device maps show their age
CNET News
September 2, 2009
(Photo) The GPS chip in this phone transmits speed and location data to researchers at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY who are using algorithms that will provide the driver with up-to-the-minute traffic information. (Credit: Marguerite Reardon/CNET News)
User-generated data may be the answer to the GPS navigation industry's problem of outdated maps on user devices, say industry voices.
According to Ed Parsons, Google's geospatial technologist, the reason users encounter inaccurate road layouts and landmark placements on their GPS devices is that it takes a long time getting updated maps to users.
From the mapping of roads to getting the maps updated and onto distribution channels such as garages, people can expect their maps to be over two years old, even on new devices, Parsons said in an interview with ZDNet Asia.
Even buying maps online will only shorten the process by about a year, leaving users with maps that are about a year old, which is still not good enough for some users, he added.... Full Story
5. Forum: Child Abductions
KQED
September 2, 2009
The recent return of Jaycee Dugard to her family has focused media attention on child abductions as well as on the so-called Stockholm syndrome, or traumatic bonding. There's disagreement over whether or not the syndrome played a role in the Dugard case. We take up the issues.
Guests:
- Mardi Horowitz, professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF and president of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
- PAULA FASS, PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AT UC BERKELEY and author of "Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America"
- Suzanne Brown-McBride, executive director of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault and chair of the California State Sex Offender Management Board
6. Jaycee Dugard's daughters told: Your sister is really your mother
Telegraph UK
September 2, 2009
The two young girls - Starlet, 15, and Angel, 11 - grew up thinking that Miss Dugard, 29, was also a daughter of their father Philip Garrido, 58, and that there was just a large age gap.
They are believed to have thought that Garrido's wife Nancy, 54, was their mother.
"They thought Jaycee was their sister," Miss Dugard's stepfather Carl Probyn told People magazine. "People have to realise this will take years of therapy."
On their rare trips outside Garrido's back yard in Antioch, California the girls repeatedly talked about Miss Dugard as a sibling.
ALLISON JACOBS, THE POLICE OFFICER WHO RAISED THE ALARM ABOUT GARRIDO LAST WEEK AFTER SEEING HIM ACTING STRANGELY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, said the girls talked to her about their older "sister".
Angel told the officer their sister was 28 and Starlet then corrected her, saying she was 29, the officer said....
[Similar stories appeared in the Times Online and the San Jose Mercury News.] Full Story
7. How Google Is Leveraging Our Culture
MSNBC News
September 2, 2009
BERKELEY - With about six weeks to go before the crucial stage of the largest copyright settlement ever, we may be ignoring its most important dimension.
For the most part, the fighting over the $125 million settlement between Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over Google's initiative to digitize some 10 million books is about author, publisher and privacy rights for volumes under copyright. It is, in effect, a dispute over how we treat a digitized text, 10 million times over....
Dan Clancy, engineering director for Google Book Search, says Google has no objection to "non-consumptive research"--looking at bits and links in the corpus--but only by researchers. Even as Google presses for a final legal judgment that will grant it power of this corpus, he adds, "we still don't understand all the ramifications."
Legal scholars attending an all-day seminar on the settlement, held by the SCHOOL OF INFORMATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY on Friday, held out the prospect that Google's corpus might be viewed as private land that is purchased to become a national park. In those places, something is declared a national treasure and set aside, if necessary under the duress of eminent domain. That might ease some of the ramification concerns. With a decision so close, however, and Google able to gain so much, that is not likely. Full Story
8. Fire forces scientists to halt research at Mt. Wilson Observatory
L.A. Now, a Los Angeles Times blog
September 2, 2009
Researchers who have waited as long as a year to spend time at the Mt. Wilson Observatory have shut down their work or will have to reschedule their observing time because of the mammoth fire in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Hal McAlister, director of the observatory and head of an experiment that uses six telescopes to measure the shapes and sizes of stars, said his team had to shut down all its work. As many as 40 different projects were underway.
“Some people had waited a year to get observing time,” he said.
They will have to be rescheduled now, but McAlister was philosophical about the inconvenience.
“Losing observing time is a small problem compared to losing the observatory,” he said....
CHARLES TOWNES, A NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING ASTROPHYSICIST AT UC BERKELEY, said his team was also ordered off the grounds with the fire’s approach. They had been using three telescopes on obile trailers to watch changes in the star CIT 6, Townes said.... Full Story
9. This year, rankings don't rankle Tedford so much
San Francisco Chronicle
September 2, 2009
JEFF TEDFORD used to be such a Luddite when it came to CALIFORNIA FOOTBALL's national reputation. He hated grand expectations for his football team, and year after year he begged, cajoled, even occasionally ordered his players to ignore what other people said about them.
Yet every year, his wife brought home the college football magazines from the odd trip to the supermarket, bookstore and/or smoke shop. And while he said he read them mostly to learn about other teams, the tentacles were already winding about him, a hellish wisteria from the outside world to which everyone around him paid extraordinary attention.
So he gave up and embraced the guesswork, just in time to find out that the guesses for the '09 Ursines are all over the lot.
"I've had to take a different approach to all that," he said, half-resigned and half-intrigued by the half-informed world of college football. "I always told the players not to let anyone else put expectations on them, not to listen to what was said about them, that it was up to us and how we practice and prepare and execute, all that...." Full Story