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.
Thursday, 10 September 2009
1. UC launches immigrant health research center
Sacramento Bee
September 10, 2009
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RESEARCHERS FROM DAVIS AND BERKELEY on Wednesday unveiled a center dedicated to immigrant health issues.
The Migration and Health Research Center is the first academic organization to focus on the illnesses and injuries among immigrants, said Marc Schenker, the center's director and a UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences professor....
Immigrants worldwide are vulnerable to a host of health issues stemming from economic and cultural inequities, and improving their health plays a pivotal role in raising a region's overall quality of life, Schenker said....
The center will bring together professors from different academic areas. So far, about 50 professors from disciplines ranging from Chicano to legal studies have expressed interest in the center, Schenker said....
The center has received support from seven Latin American countries, including Mexico and Peru, said [UC BERKELEY'S] XÓCHITL CASTAÑEDA, the center's associate director. Currently, four students are working on theses with the center, including one about day laborers and heat stroke.... Full Story
2. Economics Lesson for Higher Ed
Inside Higher Ed
September 10, 2009
On Sunday talk shows of late, ROBERT REICH has been a vocal advocate of expanding access to health care for all Americans. It is perhaps fitting then that Reich, the former U.S. Labor Secretary turned public policy professor, has been advocating access of a different kind at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY.
Reich is one of Berkeley’s more widely known faculty members, and his “Wealth and Poverty” course quickly fills to capacity – and that’s a problem in California where capacity is rapidly shrinking. Indeed, as the GOLDMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY analyzed its budget this year, officials surmised that enrollment in Reich’s large lecture class would need to be reduced by 140 students -- or about 32 percent -- this spring.
“He said 'I’d really hate to do that; I don’t want to close people out,' ” recalls HENRY BRADY, THE SCHOOL’S DEAN.
Given budgetary constraints, the school was only going to be able to provide six teaching assistants for Reich’s class. When Reich previously taught a class of 440 students, he needed nine TA’s to help grade papers and run weekly break-out discussions of 25 students each. With just six TA’s, there would only be enough support to enroll 300 students, Brady said.
Call it third way politics if you like, but Reich, the former Clinton Cabinet member, suggested another option no one else had previously considered. What if the school could offer two different options for students, giving them some access to the popular class while still reducing the need for TA’s? In one class, worth four units, students would have the traditional lectures with Reich and break-out discussion groups with TA’s. In a second class, worth only two units, students would attend the Reich lectures without the additional break-out sessions or the same level of coursework. Students in the lecture-only class will still receive exams, which will be graded by less expensive readers, but they won't write essays graded by TA's.
Reich concedes the option is "not ideal," but says "I wouldn't be offering it to students lecture-only if I didn't think they would get a lot out of it. And it seems to me we've hit on a reasonable compromise."
Brady agrees.
“I think it’s a model for making sure we still give students access to lecturers like Bob Reich without breaking the bank,” he said.... Full Story
3. Pres. Obama's speech tries to bring clarity
KGO TV
September 10, 2009
Washington (KGO) -- In a prime time address to the nation and a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama outlined his goal of overhauling the nation's health care system. He gave more specifics than he has in the past and said he is willing to compromise. This speech was a critical one for the president as he told Congress the time for bickering is over....
"You lie!" yelled Republican Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina. This evening Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona called on Wilson to apologize.
"Totally disrespectful, no place for it in that setting or any other," said Senator McCain....
THE DEAN OF U.C. BERKELEY'S GOLDMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY, PROFESSOR HENRY BRADY, Ph.D., says the Republican response plays into the President's hand.
"They are so focused on the public option as the central problem with this, that it seems to me that eventually it's going to be a very good thing for the President to say 'Okay. If that's so important to you, we'll take that off the table' and then he'll get a lot of the other things that he cares about a lot, including making sure that we have a universal program that covers everybody," said Brady.
Brady also believes Democrats will push this through the Senate using a procedure known as a reconciliation -- which requires just a simple majority and cuts off the possibility of a Republican filibuster. If that happens, expect Republicans to howl.
[Link to video] Full Story
4. Room for Debate Blog: What Was Missing in Obama’s Speech
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
September 10, 2009
President Obama’s address to Congress on health care, coming after an August marked by confused messages and partisan rhetoric, had to accomplish a lot. It had to show Democrats his firm commitment to pushing through comprehensive reform this year. It had to respond to the intensifying opposition among Republicans. And it had to reassure nervous voters that change won’t leave them with less choice and less coverage.
We asked some analysts of health care politics to tell us what was good about the speech and what was missing....
Too Little on What Controls Costs
Robert Reich
ROBERT REICH, A PROFESSOR AT THE GOLDMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, was secretary of labor in the Clinton administration. He is the author, most recently, of “Supercapitalism,” and he blogs at Robert Reich’s Blog.
The president’s rebuttal of the fear-mongers was strong and he made a compelling case for preventing insurers from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions or dropping coverage because of a serious illness and for requiring all Americans to have health insurance. He clarified his goal of full coverage and his support for a public insurance option.
But I thought he should have been clearer about how he intends to pay for the coverage of Americans who can’t otherwise afford it, and how he’ll contain future costs. A commission to look at health outcomes is a fine idea but how are its findings to be used and enforced?... Full Story
5. Op-Ed: Big Food vs. Big Insurance
New York Times (*requires registration)
September 10, 2009
Berkeley, Calif. -- To listen to President Obama’s speech on Wednesday night, or to just about anyone else in the health care debate, you would think that the biggest problem with health care in America is the system itself — perverse incentives, inefficiencies, unnecessary tests and procedures, lack of competition, and greed.
No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet.
That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry....
[This commentary also appeared in the International Herald Tribune] Full Story
6. Op-Ed: Opinion: Misinformation makes town hall meetings tough
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
September 8, 2009
Town hall meetings can be tough when they focus on the country's most controversial and contentious topics. But the difficulty with health care town halls is not the usual democratic challenge; I never shy away from a debate. These town halls are tough because, as we witnessed over the summer, a vast amount of misinformation has permeated parts of society. It's difficult to deconstruct this misinformation once people have already made up their minds....
Our bill does not take away anyone's insurance or force anyone into a public option. The public option will operate alongside private plans. Because it is not tied to employment status, it would be a net positive for those who might want or need to change jobs.
The reform bill cuts costs, saving roughly $500 billion, by including incentives to reduce hospital readmissions, investments in fraud detection and savings obtained from the pharmaceutical industry by locking in rebates for seniors.
This will have a big impact on California. Eighteen percent of Californians are uninsured, or 6.7 million, a rate higher than 42 states and 3 percent higher than the national average. Taxpayers now foot the bill for the uninsured through increased use of emergency and social services and decreased worker productivity. If health care reform is not adopted, California's uninsured will grow by an additional 600,000 by 2012, UC BERKELEY'S CENTER FOR LABOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION predicts, increasing public costs. Conversely, if we act now, we save every household $1,800 annually.... Full Story
7. Overcrowded and Going Broke: A Look Inside California’s Massive Prison System
Democracy Now [Radio Program]
September 9, 2009
California has the most prisoners in the nation with some 160,000 people behind bars. California jails hold more than double the designed capacity and are so overcrowded that a federal court last month ordered the state to reduce the prison population by more than 40,000 in the next two years. The ruling comes as California is in the midst of a severe budget crisis. We speak with UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY PROFESSOR JONATHAN SIMON, author of Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear....
Guest:
JONATHAN SIMON, ASSOCIATE DEAN OF JURISPRUDENCE AND SOCIAL POLICY AND PROFESSOR OF LAW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. He is author of the book Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear.
[This program airs on more than 700 radio stations worldwide. Link to audio and transcript. Professor Simon was also quoted in the New York Times Online] Full Story
8. Dickens' tale circa 1135 and other massive errors
Major errors prompt questions over Google Book Search's scholarly volume
Times Higher Education [UK]
September 10, 2009
It should be the world's greatest scholarly resource, but some claim that Google Book Search's many huge - and often hilarious - errors raise major questions about its value to serious researchers.
Why does a link to a book on cosmology by a Napoleonic mathematician lead to a novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford? Could Sigmund Freud really be one of the authors of The Mosaic Navigator: The essential guide to the Internet Interface? And how did Barack Obama publish 29 books before he was born?...
Such grotesque mistakes were pointed out by the LINGUIST GEOFFREY NUNBERG, ADJUNCT FULL PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY'S SCHOOL OF INFORMATION, at its recent conference, "The Google Book Settlement and the Future of Information Access"....
Professor Nunberg was even more outspoken in a blog posted on 29 August. With Google likely to become "the universal library for a long time to come", scholars need good metadata. Unfortunately, Google's information is "a train wreck: a mish-mash wrapped in a muddle wrapped in a mess".
The posting led to a long reply by Jon Orwant, who has the unenviable task of "managing the Google Books metadata team"....
Nonetheless, Google is struggling to put things right. "Geoff's efforts will have singlehandedly improved nearly one million metadata records in our repository," Dr Orwant says.... Full Story
9. Letters
Economist [UK]
September 10, 2009
[Re: (“The baby bonanza”, August 29th)]:
...Sir – Africa will never escape from the threats of hunger, violence and environmental destruction spelt out so vividly in your briefing until economists understand why women have smaller families. The difference between the Asian economic miracle and African stagnation is that Asia set up highly effective family-planning programmes to meet the needs of women who wanted fewer children.
African women want fewer children, but contraception is practically non-existent and abortion laws are highly restrictive. In January 2009, a gathering of international experts at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, concluded that: “Meeting the unmet need in family planning has been highly successful in slowing rapid population growth. Ready access to contraception and safe abortion has decreased family size, even in illiterate communities living on less than a dollar a day.”
NDOLA PRATA
MARTHA CAMPBELL
MALCOM POTTS
BIXBY CENTRE FOR POPULATION, HEALTH AND SUSTAINABILITY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Full Story
10. Marketplace Op-Ed: No recovery with so many unemployed
NPR
September 10, 2009
...According to last Friday's jobs report, almost one out of six Americans who needs a full-time job either can't find one or is working part-time. Meanwhile, wage growth among people who have jobs has just about stopped. And the typical workweek is now so short, at just over 33 hours, that if and when companies need workers they'll just expand the hours of people already on payrolls rather than hire anyone new.
Bottom line: No net new private-sector jobs, probably for years.
Does this mean a jobless recovery? No. It means no recovery, at least none lasting beyond inventory corrections and the government stimulus. You see, with so many people unemployed or underemployed, there won't be enough demand to fuel a real recovery....
[Link to audio and transcript] Full Story
11. Income Gap Shrinks in Slump at the Expense of the Wealthy
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
September 10, 2009
The deepest downturn in the U.S. economy since the Great Depression may finally shrink the gap between the very best-off Americans and everyone else.
If so, it won't be by lifting up the bottom. It will be by pulling down the top.
Over the past 30 years, chief executives, Wall Street bankers and traders, law-firm partners and such amassed ever-greater incomes, while the incomes of factory workers, teachers, office managers and others in the middle grew much more slowly. In 2007, the top 1% of U.S. families accounted for 23.5% of all personal income in the U.S., according to ECONOMISTS EMMANUEL SAEZ OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics. That was a level not seen since the Roaring Twenties.
The top 1%'s share appears to be falling fast. Mr. Saez and other economists expect income going to the top 1% of taxpayers -- currently, those with about $400,000 a year -- will drop to somewhere between 15% and 19% of all income by 2010. That still would leave income distribution more top-heavy in the U.S. than in many other countries....
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
12. Best U.S. Cities To Earn A Living
Forbes.com
September 10, 2009
For the exasperated job-seeker to whom employment opportunities seem bleaker than ever, salvation may lie in the Lone Star State. Texas, home to dozens of energy heavyweights and nearly as many innovative small companies, has three of the best cities to earn a living: Dallas, Houston and Austin....
But you'd also have a few first-class employers to choose from in St. Louis, home to chemicals giant Monsanto Company and maker of batteries and other electronic equipment Energizer Holdings Inc., along with seven others that Forbes ranked the strongest in the country....
"Midwestern cities in general tend to have a relatively low cost of living, as compared to high-amenity cities like Boston, New York, San Francisco and coastal cities in general," says ROBERT HELSLEY, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY'S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS. The location of a city raises its appeal and drives up its cost of living, he believes. "The last time I checked, St. Louis wasn't on the coast."... Full Story
13. Trees could be the ultimate in green power
New Scientist
September 10, 2009
Shoving electrodes into tree trunks to harvest electricity may sound like the stuff of dreams, but the idea is increasingly attracting interest. If we can make it work, forests could power their own sensor networks to monitor the health of the ecosystem or provide early warning of forest fires.
Children the world over who have tried the potato battery experiment know that plant material can be a source of electricity. In this case, the energy comes from reduction and oxidation reactions eating into the electrodes, which are made of two different metals – usually copper and zinc....
Devices that lose water the way trees transpire through their leaves could also be used to supply power, according to MICHEL MAHARBIZ AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. His team recently showed that evaporation from simulated leaves can act like a mechanical pump, and that the effect can be harnessed to provide power.... Full Story
14. Small developing countries like Pakistan benefit from 2009 Innovation Forum
Associated Press of Pakistan
September 10, 2009
Beijing, Sept 10 (APP) -- Small developing countries including Pakistan can benefit by participating in the international innovation Forum to be held in Shanghai next month. This was stated by Mr. Mei Yonghong, Director of Department of Policy, Regulations and Reform of the Ministry of Science and Technology while responding to a question at a press conference here Wednesday.
Briefing the foreign and domestic media persons alongwith Ms. Xu Meihua, Secretary --General of the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality and Mr. Hu Yu, Director of Theory Department of Science and Technology Mei said that the second edition of the Pujiang Innovation Forum 2009 will be held on the 24th - 25th of October in Shanghai.
This times speakers included ... ANNALEE SAXENIAN, DEAN AND PROFESSOR IN THE SCHOOL OF INFORMATION AND PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.... Full Story
15. After Hubble Repair, New Images From Space
New York Times (*requires registration)
September 10, 2009
The cosmic postcards are back.
Astronomers on Wednesday unveiled new pictures and observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. With the exception of a picture last month of the bruise on Jupiter caused by a comet, they were the first data obtained with the telescope since a crew spent 13 days in orbit last May replacing, refurbishing and rebuilding its vital components.
...In May, a crew from the shuttle Atlantis installed a new camera and spectrograph and repaired the other spectrograph and the telescope’s prime camera, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, among other tasks.
The job was almost a complete success. The exception was that the astronauts were unable to restore a high-resolution capability on the survey camera. It is mostly used in a wide-field mode, astronomers say, but one of the more exciting Hubble pictures recently was a high-resolution image of a planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut obtained by PAUL G. KALAS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, AND HIS COLLEAGUES....
[This story also appeared in the International Herald Tribune] Full Story
16. Commentary: The Orange Grove: Keep UC out of Capitol's clutches
Legislation would put university system under political control.
Orange County Register
September 10, 2009
If I were graduating high school today, I wonder if I would have the same opportunity to reap the educational benefits of the University of California system that I did nearly 20 years ago.
Our public university network, often lauded as the best in the world, led me from the Central Valley, where I picked crops in the summer, toward a post-secondary education at Harvard University and the halls of the state Capitol. Four years at UC Irvine shaped my adult life and commitment to public service. It was on this campus that I learned about government.
California's public university system has had a similar impact on millions of other students, making our state an international envy. Its campuses are home to distinguished faculty in almost every field. According to U.S. News and World Report, eight of its undergraduate campuses are among the top 100 in the United States.
But this year, UC will admit 2,500 fewer students than the previous year, levy a 9.3 percent tuition hike, freeze employee wages and increase classroom sizes. Recently, UC Chairman Russell S. Gould wrote me with a troubling update: some world-class faculty and graduate students are abandoning their careers in our public university system, UC faculty salaries presently lag 19 percent below the national rate, UC BERKELEY could only afford to conduct 10 new faculty searches in 2009 – about one-tenth of its usual load, and 55 faculty positions at UC Santa Cruz have been cut....
Urge the governor and the Legislature instead to work out their differences with their appointed members of the UC Board of Regents, instead of trying to take it over and subjecting it to more regulation. Full Story
17. Community college students feel the squeeze
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
September 10, 2009
Fifty years ago, in the pre-Proposition 13 era, many other states wished they could emulate California's public college system. Led by the flagship UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA CAMPUSES SUCH AS UC BERKELEY, they were buttressed by a second tier of more numerous state colleges. Even more numerous and ubiquitous were the hundred or so California community colleges, primarily run by local districts, which offered two-year associate degree programs ranging from trades such as police work, nursing and culinary arts to programs designed to prepare students to transition to the upper-tier, four-year colleges and universities....
In California's glory years, grads from all these colleges and universities provided the skills and brainpower to fuel its industrial and technology economy, staff its schools and hospitals, and run local and state government as well.
Now, in the words of San Mateo Community College District Chancellor Ron Galatolo, this shining example of egalitarian education for all is being dismantled by shrinking state funding, especially the community college tier.... Full Story
18. The (college) dropout shocker
Study concludes students should attend the best school they can get into.
Press-Telegram [Long Beach]
September 9, 2009
The focus of education reform in the last decade has been primarily on grades 1 to 12, and deservedly so. In some California school districts, nearly half of all students don't receive a high school diploma. School districts in which 20 percent of students drop out tout those numbers as exemplary. No one is fooled, least of all community college presidents whose resources are swamped with students who can't read, write or do math at acceptable levels.
Now comes a study by an impressive team of educators (one is a former Princeton University president, William G. Bowen) that focuses on graduation rates at public universities. They've put their findings in a book, "Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Public Universities," which was published Wednesday by Princeton University Press. It's as scary, in its own way, as a Stephen King novel....
The research team ... found that high school graduates with good grades and high test scores - who came from less-affluent homes, and whose parents did not attend college - tended to enroll in less-selective universities. At those schools, graduation rates hover around 60 percent, compared with graduation rates of nearly 90 percent for their more affluent peers who attend the most selective universities. As McPherson states, "Institutions that create a higher expectation of student success have higher graduation rates."
But it's not just affluence and parents' education. Nearly one-third of students who attend UC BERKELEY received federal Pell grants, yet Berkeley graduated 88 percent of its students, according to Washington Monthly's 2009 rankings. Students at UCLA and UC San Diego received Pell grants in the 35 percent rage, yet UCLA graduated 90 percent of its students, and UC San Diego graduated 84 percent. No one would accuse those two institutions of being diploma mills.... Full Story
19. UC Planners Envision “Bay Line” Park on the Old Bay Bridge Span
SF.StreetsBlog
September 9, 2009
When Joshua David formed Friends of the High Line in 1999 and started raising money to transform abandoned train tracks in mid-Manhattan into an elevated urban park, more than a few people thought him nuts. With the opening of the High Line in June and the warm reception it has received by the public, however, planners who have their eyes on other abandoned rail infrastructure are feeling emboldened and hopeful their projects will receive more serious consideration, including a new proposal to preserve the existing east span of the Bay Bridge for a park and development.
RONALD RAEL, Principal at Rael San Fratello Architects and PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE AT UC BERKELEY'S GRADUATE PROGRAM, has developed a plan that would preserve the existing cantilever and truss section of the Bay Bridge and transform the span into a park and mixed-use development. In homage to the High Line, Rael's project is dubbed The Bay Line (PDF).
Rael and Berkeley have submitted their proposal to a design competition sponsored by UCLA, but have not made a formal proposal to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) or Caltrans, both of which are not likely to support any more changes to construction of the Bay Bridge....
Rael, however, is quite serious about the project, pointing to many examples of re-purposing bridges and rail infrastructure to house dwellings and parks, including the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, the Promenade Plantee in Paris, and the Belt Line in Atlanta. Rael envisions the project as an important use of existing infrastructure to promote urban density and has a proposal to pay for the necessary seismic retrofits, which he points out, would be billions cheaper than the ballooned cost of the new self-anchored suspension bridge that is being built for cars.... Full Story