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Tuesday, 15 September 2009
1. Climate researcher among Heinz Award winners
Sacramento Bee
September 14, 2009
Pittsburgh -- A climate research scientist with the Carnegie Institution for Science and Stanford University is among 10 people being named Heinz Award winners on Tuesday.
In years past, the prize was awarded for notable contributions in the arts and humanities; the environment; the human condition; public policy; and technology; the economy; and employment. However, this year, the award focuses solely on the environment. It comes with a $100,000 individual prize....
Other recipients include:
...ASHOK GADGIL, OF BERKELEY, CALIF. FIELD, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, and a group leader at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was recognized for his work as a researcher, inventor and humanitarian. He is known for creating inventions to solve fundamental problems in developing countries, such as an inexpensive water purification system and an improved cook stove for use in the conflicted Darfur region of Sudan.
...KIRK R. SMITH, BERKELEY, CALIF. SMITH, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, was recognized for exposing the relationships among household air pollution, fuel use, climate and health.... Full Story
2. Birds move in response to climate change
KGO TV
September 14, 2009
Berkeley, CA (KGO) -- Long before the "climate change" became a part of the vernacular, a TEAM OF BIOLOGISTS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY were already in the process of documenting it.
[UC BERKELEY] ECOLOGIST JOSEPH GRINNELL could not have known that in 1911, or even in 1929, but the work he did in those years has provided a baseline for studies today.
Grinnell and his team methodically catalogued birds, reptiles and amphibians on hikes through California's Sierra Nevada. Generations later, new teams have visited the same locations, and documented changes....
Recent studies confirm that birds move in response to changes in climate. Of 53 species, 48 in the Sierra Nevada Mountains have adjusted to climate change over the last century by moving to sites with the temperature and precipitation conditions they favored.
The few species that did not move, including the Anna's Hummingbird and Western Scrub-Jay, were generally better able to exploit human-altered habitats, such as urban or suburban areas, the researchers said. ...
"This study shows the assumptions that underlie existing forecasts of how species will respond to climate change are valid, at least for most bird species in the mountains of California," said study co-author and CONSERVATION BIOLOGIST STEVE BEISSINGER. BEISSINGER IS A UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, POLICY AND MANAGEMENT. "This is alarming because forecasts suggest many species will go extinct with the climate warming that we expect to occur, but it also gives us confidence that costly conservation investments made now based on climate forecasts will have a valuable payoff in the future."
[Link to video. Other stories on this topic appeared in the Science News, Science Daily, Red Orbit, and PhysOrg] Full Story
3. Breakthrough on Open Access
Inside Higher Ed
September 15, 2009
For years, as more academics have embraced "open access" publishing -- in which journals are published online and free -- a constant refrain from many publishers has been that the model would deprive them of the revenue they need for high quality editing and peer review. That argument was at the center of a recent report on the economics of journal publishing commissioned by the National Humanities Alliance. That argument was also cited by the Association of American University Presses to oppose federal open access requirements -- over the objections of some of its members.
On Monday, five leading universities announced a new "Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity" in which they have pledged to develop systems to pay open access journals for the articles they publish by the institutions' scholars. In doing so, the institutions are attempting to put to rest the idea that only older publication models (paid and/or print) can support rigorous peer review and quality assurance. ...
In addition to MIT, the other institutions that issued the pledge are Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University and the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY....
THOMAS LEONARD, UNIVERSITY LIBRARIAN AT BERKELEY, stressed that the goal of this project is not to be an "add on" to what universities already pay publishers. Rather, he said that the goal is to be "transformative" in the relationship between universities and publishers. He stressed that he did not see traditional, paid circulation journal publishing as viable. "We think the system is going to fall apart of its own weight," he said.
He said that the quality of many traditionally published journals has "suffered," not because of open access but because of prohibitive prices that cut their work off from so many potential users. Leonard acknowledged that there are costs associated with running peer review, and he said that Monday's announcement represented a key shift in that universities were accepting responsibility for a share of those costs.
"In addition to talking the talk, we are putting money on the table," he said. In Berkeley's case, it is making an initial commitment of more than $100,000.
Leonard noted that Berkeley is already conducting an experiment along these lines -- the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative. Fees paid to open access publishers range from $500 to $3,000, based on various criteria, he said. To receive funds, Berkeley professors must demonstrate that they are in fact on the faculty, and that the work is being published in a legitimate scholarly journal, he said. There are systems in place for situations such as co-authors....
[Other stories on this topic appeared in Library Journal Online and the Chronicle of Higher Education Online] Full Story
4. Health Blog: San Francisco Test-Drives A Public Option
NPR Online
September 15, 2009
Could a public health option, down but not completely out in Washington, actually work?
Take a look at San Francisco for a clue. An experiment there in universal coverage is bearing fruit, KQED's Sarah Varney reports on Tuesday's Morning Edition.
Called Healthy San Francisco, the program for the uninsured isn't health insurance but instead offers care in clinics and covers admissions to hospitals located in the city.
How are the results? Hospital admissions of plan members have dropped, and the average stay for those who wind up in the hospital has been cut almost in half, Varney reports. Those changes suggest chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, asthma and hypertension, are being managed better, reducing the need for crisis care....
"The San Francisco experiment is working, and it's working well," KEN JACOBS, CHAIR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY LABOR CENTER, said last month, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "There's no evidence of any impact of the ordinance on employment in San Francisco."
[The story on NPR's Morning Edition mentioned here includes an interview with ASSOCIATE PUBLIC HEALTH PROFESSOR WILLIAM DOW; link to audio] Full Story
5. Forum with Michael Krasny: Lehman Anniversary
KQED Radio
September 15, 2009
One year ago today, the global financial services firm Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Yesterday, President Obama spoke of the economic crisis and the need for new, smarter financial regulation. We discuss the financial crisis and the government's response with a panel of experts.
Guests:
...NANCY WALLACE, PROFESSOR AT UC BERKELEY'S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS....
[Link to audio] Full Story
6. No Easy Exit for Government as Housing Market's Savior
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
September 15, 2009
Washington -- After a year of extraordinary interventions in the economy, the federal government is starting to pare its support for the private sector. It doesn't look that way to Peter Lansing, president of mortgage firm Universal Lending.
The Denver home lender sees every day how dependent the housing market has become on the government....
"At least for the next two years, and possibly longer, it is not possible that the government would say: 'The U.S. mortgage market no longer needs our support,'" says DWIGHT JAFFEE, AN ECONOMICS PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY'S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS. "Were they to say that, the mortgage market and the housing market would almost surely crash."...
The tax credit's effectiveness depends largely on its longevity. That's because many of the home sales analysts think it has spurred have been stolen from the future, luring buyers into the market who might not otherwise have bought until next year or beyond. When the credit expires, that demand will disappear, too.
"All it does is move demand forward in time," says KENNETH ROSEN, CHAIRMAN OF THE FISHER CENTER FOR REAL ESTATE AND URBAN ECONOMICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. "The last six months, we've seen signs of a housing bottom. We could easily see that disappear."...
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
7. Home prices' big role as crisis hit state hard
San Francisco Chronicle
September 15, 2009
The bankruptcy of Lehman Bros. reverberated with particular fury in California, where it helped deepen a recession already under way and sent the Bay Area into a spiral of job losses that has not yet ended....
"Lehman was a symptom of the bubble bursting in housing and credit in general, as much as it was a cause for the even worse consequences that followed," said KEN ROSEN, CHAIR OF THE FISHER CENTER FOR REAL ESTATE AND URBAN ECONOMICS AT UC BERKELEY.
"The housing market in California helped cause the crisis," Rosen added....
"There was a sharp drop in the demand for everything," Rosen said. "Consumers went into bunker mentality. Corporations cut back and started laying off. That created an unemployment crisis. Retail sales dropped further. All of this factored into the state's budget crisis because of the drop in sales and income taxes."... Full Story
8. California tax overhaul plan almost ready
Special commission's proposal, meant to solve the state's worsening budget crises, would shift the burden off the wealthy and change how businesses are levied. But the Legislature may not go for it.
Los Angeles Times
September 15, 2009
Reporting from Berkeley -- A government commission hammered out the final outlines Monday of revolutionary changes it will propose in the way Californians pay taxes, including a flattened income tax that would largely benefit the wealthy and a broad business levy to replace existing sales and corporate taxes.
The proposal by the Commission on the 21st Century Economy will soon head to the state Legislature, which is being prodded by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to embrace the overhaul this fall. It is unclear whether the Legislature will do his bidding, or even how many of the commission's 14 members will sign the report....
Most of the commissioners appeared ready to sign onto the report.
CHRISTOPHER EDLEY JR., DEAN AND PROFESSOR AT BERKELEY'S BOALT HALL SCHOOL OF LAW, acknowledged that the plan could be a difficult sell but said, "I do believe, in balance . . . it's good for California's future....
[Another story on this topic appeared in the Sacramento Bee] Full Story
9. Well: With Soap and Water or Sanitizer, a Cleaning That Can Stave Off the Flu
ew York Times (*requires registration)
September 15, 2009
It sounds so simple as to be innocuous, a throwaway line in public-health warnings about swine flu. But one of the most powerful weapons against the new H1N1 virus is summed up in a three-word phrase you first heard from your mother: wash your hands.
A host of recent studies have highlighted the importance and the scientific underpinning of this most basic hygiene measure. One of the most graphic was done at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, where researchers focused video cameras on 10 college students as they read and typed on their laptops.
The scientists counted the times the students touched their faces, documenting every lip scratch, eye rub and nose pick. On average, the students touched their eyes, noses and lips 47 times during a three-hour period, once every four minutes....
The eyes appear to be a particularly vulnerable port of entry for viral infections, said MARK NICAS, A PROFESSOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SCIENCES AT BERKELEY. Using mathematical models, Dr. Nicas and colleagues estimated that in homes, schools and dorms, hand-to-face contact appears to account for about one-third of the risk of flu infection, according to a report this month in the journal Risk Analysis.... Full Story
10. UCSD Scientists Want To Bottle Nuclear Fusion Goal is to Create Renewable Energy
KPBS [San Diego]
September 14, 2009
San Diego — Fusion is best known for powering the sun and stars. But UC San Diego researchers are studying ways to transform the process of nuclear fusion into renewable energy on Earth.
A team of researchers from UC San Diego, MIT and UC BERKELEY have received a $7 million research grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The researchers will use the five-year grant to study ways to replicate the sun on Earth and harness its energy....
[Link to audio] Full Story
11. California Report: Chemical Weapons at Sea
KQED Radio
September 15, 2009
After World War I, the U.S. and other nations around the world disposed of tons of chemical weapons in the ocean. For the most part, the dumps have not been monitored and the weapons lie untouched on the ocean floor. But now the U.S. Army and others are beginning to take at look at what's down there. As part of a collaboration with UC BERKELEY'S GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING FELLOWSHIP, Carrie Lozano has more on chemical weapons sea dumps off California's coast.
[Link to audio] Full Story
12. Brainstorm Blog: Falling Ducks
Chronicle of Higher Education Online (*requires registration)
September 15, 2009
It would be interesting to know how much specific damage the recession is doing to educational reform efforts. It is obvious that all colleges and universities are in a “cutting out the fat” mode, but the question is how they define “fat” – your “fat” may be my “muscle.” The problem was made concrete for me when my signature was solicited for a letter to the EXECUTIVE VICE CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, protesting the elimination of the position of VICE PROVOST FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING at that institution....
I am certainly not an expert on the Berkeley budget, and I know quite well how deeply financially challenged California public institutions are during this recession. I also know that none of us wants to play a negative sum game, but that is where we all find ourselves at the moment. Still, the symbolic impact of withdrawing support for undergraduate educational reform raises the question of what educational values (if any) are guiding the budget slashers? It seems crucially important for those of us who care deeply about sustaining the quality of undergraduate education to pay careful attention to the budgetary choices that administrators are making, and to raise our voices in defense of core values.
Not all ducks are created equal. Full Story
13. Idea of the Day Blog: Where Is Conservatism in Academe?
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
September 15, 2009
Today’s idea: “The unfortunate fact is that American academics have until recently shown little curiosity about conservative ideas,” a Columbia professor writes. So a new “right-wing” studies center in the liberal precincts of BERKELEY is a welcome development.
Education: Writing in the Chronicle Review, Mark Lilla of Columbia University says conservatives are so rare on campus faculties nowadays that when he tells colleagues he used to work for a neoconservative journal, they react as if he were something akin to a wife-beater.
Now an “ex-conservative” professor, Lilla is cautiously optimistic that things are changing. The newly opened CENTER FOR THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RIGHT-WING MOVEMENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, he says, augurs better days for a type of intellectual diversity that the humanities have long neglected:
A look at the online catalogs of our major universities confirms this: plenty of courses on identity politics and postcolonialism, nary a one on conservative political thought. Professors are expected to understand the subtle differences among gay, lesbian, and transgender studies, but I would wager that few can distinguish between the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute, three think tanks that have a greater impact on Washington politics than the entire Ivy League.... Full Story
14. Japan Strives to Balance Growth and Job Stability
New York Times (*requires registration)
September 15, 2009
Tokyo — Every day, the impeccably dressed “elevator girls” of Tokyo’s Odakyu department store greet customers, ushering them in and out of the cars. During breaks, they practice their greetings and meticulously reapply their makeup.
Critics see the women as the embodiment of this country’s productivity problem — squandering of one of the world’s best educated labor forces on banal jobs that do little to make the economy grow. But others, including the Democrats, Japan’s new ruling party, see them as beneficiaries of a more humane capitalism, a capitalism that values employment and stability over growth.
...Yukio Hatoyama, the leader of the ruling Democratic Party, bases his political philosophy on what he calls “fraternity,” meaning empathy with workers, rather than concern for corporate profits....
Mr. Hatoyama is especially critical of changes championed by the former prime minister, the pro-American, free-market Junichiro Koizumi. Among other things, Mr. Koizumi took aim at Japan’s stagnant labor market, lifting a ban on the use of temporary laborers at factories....
“People started to see high levels of economic inequality. The quality of jobs started going down, and there was a growing number of temporary workers,” said STEVEN K. VOGEL, A PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. “They associated that with Mr. Koizumi’s reforms. From an economic standpoint, it was wrong. But there was a big backlash.”... Full Story
15. France’s hot summer of labour unrest
French workers are resorting to kidnapping and violent threats
Maclean's [Canada]
September 15, 2009
More than one century ago, Alexis de Tocqueville described his mother country of France as “the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation in Europe and the best qualified in turn to become an object of admiration, hatred, pity or terror but never indifference.” Indeed, as other Western democracies have moved along quietly this summer, slowly recovering from the economic crisis, in quick succession France has shocked, exasperated and bemused. Over the past few months, there has been an increase in labour militancy, marking a significant deterioration in the already poor relations between the country’s trade unions and the French government....
While all those threats have since been lifted, deep and unresolved problems remain. Says JONAH LEVY, AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY: “There isn’t a tradition of regularized corporatist bargaining, but there is a tradition of citizens having a lot of expectations that the state will take care of them.” But at a time of global recession, the hands of the state—not to mention those of financially besieged corporations—are tied. And that may mean that growing extremism may continue to be an ever more troublesome part of France’s labour relations landscape. As one union representative said to Britain’s the Guardian, “People are desperate. Movements are going to only get more virulent, more violent.” Full Story
16. Panel: USDA right to call invasive moth major pest
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
September 15, 2009
Fresno, Calif.—Federal officials were right to term the light brown apple moth an invasive threat but didn't back up their findings about the pest with enough sound science, a panel of experts said Monday.
Scientists, politicians and environmentalists have been battling for months over the U.S. Department of Agriculture's methods to combat the moth, an unintended Australian import that has infested areas from Marin to Los Angeles.
A panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences released a report Monday saying the agency was technically right to classify the moth as an invasive pest whose mere presence could initiate quarantines, but needed to bolster its scientific conclusions.
"Of course, assessing the potential threat of an invasive species is a very difficult thing to do," said NICHOLAS MILLS, A UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY ENTOMOLOGIST who served on the panel of 10 scientists, economists and USDA employees. "We found that people in the agency were sometimes using their best guesses, relying sometimes on published literature or unpublished information, and sometimes on no information."...
[This story also appeared in the Contra Costa Times and Sacramento Bee] Full Story
17. Campus Life: A User's Guide
College Prowler rates the nation's universities on all aspects of campus life. How do BusinessWeek's Top 50 undergraduate business programs stack up?
Business Week
September 14, 2009
For each of the past four years, BusinessWeek has ranked the nation's best undergraduate business programs, asking business students their opinions on everything from professors and facilities to career services and work load. With this information, prospective students interested in studying business have a roadmap to where they might want to start their college search and what to look for in a business program.
But let's be honest, only a small amount of a business student's time in college is actually going to be spent within the walls of the B-school. It's important to understand what the universities that house the top business programs are really like. Are the dorms inhabitable? Is the campus safe? How's the social scene?...
In terms of diversity, Carnegie Mellon Carnegie Mellon Tepper Undergraduate Business Profile), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT Sloan Undergraduate Business Profile), and UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY (UC-Berkeley Haas Undergraduate Business Profile) all earn high marks for having noticeable percentages of ethnic minorities and international students, as well as students from various economic backgrounds and religious beliefs, as described by College Prowler.... Full Story
18. ASU creates K-12 charter schools
Arizona Republic
September 15, 2009
Wanting a research pipeline and college-prepared students, Arizona State University officials are creating their own K-12 schools....
The ASU charters are part of a growing national trend. Universities around the country are creating their own K-12 schools, and the University of California-Davis, UC BERKELEY, UC San Diego, Stanford, University of Chicago and others have started high schools in recent years.
All of them, including ASU, focus on steering disadvantaged kids toward the university gates.... Full Story
19. Opinion: Main Street
et's Grade Wall Street Like Colleges; The more rating agencies the better.
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
September 15, 2009
Is Harvard really the best?
It turns out that depends on who you ask—and what you ask. As students across America return to campus for the new school year, new editions of three prominent college guides variously rank Harvard at No. 1, No. 5, and No. 11. Therein lies a timely lesson for our system of credit ratings.
Some students know from their earliest days they want to go to Harvard, while others may want to follow mom or dad to East Carolina or Purdue. Many more rely on the annual college guides to help them make one of the most important financial decisions in their lives—in much the same way an investor might look to Moody's to tell them about the reliability of a corporate bond. The question with both is just how reliable those ratings are....
Different measures, of course, lead to different results. The latest U.S. News guide has Harvard and Princeton tied for No. 1, followed by Yale. Over at the Washington Monthly, by contrast—where editors measure colleges by how well they do at promoting social mobility, national service and research—Harvard falls to No. 11. And the top three slots are taken by public universities in the University of California system: UC BERKELEY, UC San Diego and UCLA....
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
20. Save Mount Diablo buys 165 acres to protect nature
Oakland Tribune
September 12, 2009
Young botanist MARY BOWERMAN found a treasure of rare plants high up Mount Diablo in the 1930s when she scoured the rugged peak on foot to explore and explain its unusual flora and fauna.
She never forgot the property owned by the Viera ranching family and kept it in mind decades later when she co-founded the conservation group Save Mount Diablo to preserve environmentally sensitive lands there.
Now, four years after Bowerman's death in 2005, her wishes are coming true.
Save Mount Diablo announced this week that it has bought 165 acres of the upper Viera ranch southeast of Clayton with a down payment from funds that the late botanist bequeathed to the organization....
Bowerman began studying plants on Mount Diablo in the 1930s as a STUDENT AT UC BERKELEY. Her doctoral thesis became the authoritative work on the rare plants there.... Full Story