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Thursday, 1 October 2009
1. Fossil Skeleton From Africa Predates Lucy
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
October 2, 2009
Lucy, meet Ardi.
Ardi, short for Ardipithecus ramidus, is the newest fossil skeleton out of Africa to take its place in the gallery of human origins. At an age of 4.4 million years, it lived well before and was much more primitive than the famous 3.2-million-year-old Lucy, of the species Australopithecus afarensis.
Since finding fragments of the older hominid in 1992, an international team of scientists has been searching for more specimens and on Thursday presented a fairly complete skeleton and their first full analysis. By replacing Lucy as the earliest known skeleton from the human branch of the primate family tree, the scientists said, Ardi opened a window to “the early evolutionary steps that our ancestors took after we diverged from our common ancestor with chimpanzees.”...
TIM D. WHITE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, a leader of the team, said in an interview this week that the genus Ardipithecus appeared to resolve many uncertainties about “the initial stage of evolutionary adaptation” after the hominid lineage split from that of the chimpanzees. No fossil trace of the last common ancestor, which lived some time before six million years ago, according to genetic studies, has yet come to light....
Scientists not involved in the new research hailed its importance, placing the Ardi skeleton on a pedestal alongside notable figures of hominid evolution like Lucy and the 1.6-million-year-old Turkana Boy from Kenya, an almost complete specimen of Homo erectus with anatomy remarkably similar to modern Homo sapiens....
The first comprehensive reports describing the skeleton and related findings, the result of 17 years of study, are being published Friday in the journal Science. Eleven papers by 47 authors from 10 countries describe the analysis of more than 110 Ardipithecus specimens from a minimum of 36 different individuals, including Ardi....
[Stories on this topic appeared in hundreds of sources worldwide, including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, Associated Press, Sacramento Bee, Wall Street Journal (link by subscription only), and NPR's "All Things Considered" (link to audio forthcoming)] Full Story
2. A Growing Passion: From students to Regents, Cal colors the campus green
East Bay Monthly
October 2009
Raise your hand if you loved the food in your college dining hall. Nobody? No fans of complementary medley—that high-toned euphemism for leftovers? Then you wouldn’t recognize the menu in U.C. BERKELEY’S DINING FACILITIES today: After a breakfast of eggs, corn tortillas, and jasmine rice, there are grilled chicken quesadillas for lunch; maybe couscous with sweet potatoes, Tunisian vegetable stew, or organic sesame noodles for dinner. Tasty organic food on the table is just part of sweeping environmentally-related change over the past five years that netted U.C. Berkeley a spot on The Princeton Review’s “Green Honor Roll” this summer. Only 14 other colleges in the country made the grade.
As you might expect at the university that launched the Free Speech movement of the Sixties, many of the innovations—campus-wide composting, organic cafeteria food, and energy-efficient construction—stem in large part from the outspoken demand of organized students.
“I came in as a pre-med, and then I got super-involved,” says SENIOR IRENE SELIVERSTOV, seated at an outside table at the Free Speech Café, the always-crowded coffeehouse on the first floor of Moffitt Library. Seliverstov’s newfound passion led her to switch to a society and environment major. Today, she intends to pursue a career related to sustainability issues; she also serves as STUDENT CO-CHAIR OF THE CHANCELLOR’S ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON SUSTAINABILITY, oversees students who “green” campus and building operations, and is helping to craft a water conservation policy for U.C. Berkeley. “I never thought a student could get so involved and be so embraced by staff,” she says. “You could come to a university and not leave a mark, but this has been transforming.”
Sharing Seliverstov’s cafe table today is friend and colleague SARAH COWAN, A THIRD-YEAR ART HISTORY MAJOR WHO RUNS THE CAMPUS’S ReUSE PROGRAM, which finds new homes for the university’s discarded office equipment. “I get a lot of satisfaction from doing this,” says Cowan. “It allows me to work on a problem—overconsumption—that I really care about. Even when I’m schlepping heavy stuff and getting dirty, I feel like I’m doing something meaningful.”
Between staff, faculty, and students, there’s no dearth of folks at Cal who are interested in sustainability. But sometimes it’s hard for young people to figure out how to harness their energy to the cause. Both Seliverstov and Cowan credit one Cal employee in particular as a source of inspiration and practical advice: LISA BAUER, MANAGER OF CAMPUS RECYCLING AND REFUSE SERVICES. Bauer, a tall, ebullient woman with graying blond hair whose small, oddly shaped office is under the bleachers at Edwards Track, takes more than a perfunctory interest in her work. In 2001, she helped launch a program to establish student sustainability coordinators in campus residence halls. She also worked to create dorm rooms and apartments temporarily outfitted, at Cal’s expense, with environmentally sound bedding, bean bag chairs, carpets, and hygiene products, along with small informational signs about energy and water usage.
For her vision and commitment, Bauer was named the University of California’s 2009 Sustainability Champion, and specifically recognized for “the education, mentoring, and friendship she has given to countless current and future sustainability leaders.” ... Full Story
3. Strong earthquakes may weaken distant fault lines
Reuters
September 30, 2009
Chicago (Reuters) - Powerful earthquakes may be a trigger for weakening geologic faults a half a world away, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday in a study that points to new ways to predict earthquakes.
"Earthquakes are caused when a fault fails, either because of the build-up of stress or because of a weakening of the fault," said EARTHQUAKE RESEARCHER TAKA'AKI TAIRA, formerly of the Carnegie Institution in Washington and NOW OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY.
Taira's team analyzed 20 years of seismic data from the Parkfield area of California's San Andreas fault.
They noticed areas of fluid-filled cracks along the fault appeared to shift from time to time -- often after large, far-away earthquakes, such as the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake.
"We speculate that changes we see at Parkfield could be happening in many places in the world," Taira said in a telephone interview.
He said his team plans to gather data from other fault zones to see if they detect the same pattern of changes....
"Our result opens up exciting possibilities for monitoring seismic risk and understanding the causes of earthquakes," Taira said. Full Story
4. Health: Clock Turned Back on Aging Muscles, Researchers Claim
LiveScience
September 30, 2009
Scientists have found and manipulated body chemistry linked to the aging of muscles and were able to turn back the clock on old human muscle, restoring its ability to repair and rebuild itself, they said today.
The study involved a small number of participants, however. And the news is not all rosy.
Importantly, the research also found evidence that aging muscles need to be kept in shape, because long periods of atrophy are more challenging to overcome....
The findings are detailed today in the European journal EMBO Molecular Medicine.
"Our study shows that the ability of old human muscle to be maintained and repaired by muscle stem cells can be restored to youthful vigor given the right mix of biochemical signals," said STUDY LEADER IRINA CONBOY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. "This provides promising new targets for forestalling the debilitating muscle atrophy that accompanies aging, and perhaps other tissue degenerative disorders as well." ...
"Two weeks of immobilization only mildly affected young muscle, in terms of tissue maintenance and functionality, whereas old muscle began to atrophy and manifest signs of rapid tissue deterioration," said MORGAN CARLSON, ANOTHER UC BERKELEY RESEARCHER and the study's lead author. ...
The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, the Danish Medical Research Council and the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research.
[Other stories on this topic appeared on and the Press Association (UK)] Full Story
5. Free-flying cyborg insects steered from a distance
New Scientist
October 1, 2009
It's tempting to call them lords of the flies. For the first time, researchers have controlled the movements of free-flying insects from afar, as if they were tiny remote-controlled aircraft.
By connecting electrodes and radio antennas to the nervous systems of beetles, the researchers were able to make them take off, dive and turn on command. The cyborg insects were created at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, BY ENGINEERS LED BY HIROTAKA SATO and MICHEL MAHARBIZ as part of a programme funded by the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The project's goal is to create fully remote-controlled insects able to perform tasks such as looking for survivors after a disaster, or acting as the ultimate spy.... Full Story
6. Column One: A smooth idea for the 710 Freeway
Caltrans is thickly layering different mixes of asphalt atop the damaged old concrete to resurface the bone- (and coffee-) jangling roadway.
Los Angeles Times
September 30, 2009
The sensation is palpable, if not slightly remarkable.
There you are hurtling southbound in the No. 3 lane on the Long Beach Freeway. Your car is rattling, your tailbone jumping to the rhythm of a concrete washboard abused by years of heavy trucks and piecemeal repairs.
Then it happens, between the 105 and Rosecrans. You hit a bump, and suddenly your tires purr, your coffee settles in its cup and the radio reception seems more crisp. You may not know why -- it is the nature of freeways that we seldom consider their mechanics -- but you are now experiencing the I-710 Long Life Pavement Project, as Caltrans calls it....
When John Harvey drove the freeway more than 10 years ago, his reaction was no different than most commuters'. It was so rough, he recalls, "that it hurt to drive it at 55 mph," and the number of trucks made the experience scary.
Harvey is one of the architects of the new roadway. In addition to teaching engineering at UC Davis, he is the principal investigator at the UC PAVEMENT RESEARCH CENTER, a little-known [UC BERKELEY-AFFILIATED] testing facility in Northern California. Working beside him is a team of engineers including [UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR EMERITUS] CARL MONISMITH, regarded in some circles as the dean of California pavements.
Monismith, 83, belongs to the generation of engineers who transformed California in the '50s and '60s. Their work was made easier by a Legislature that felt comfortable raising gasoline taxes and automobile registration fees, and they dreamed big.... Full Story
7. Medical research grants rain down upon Bay Area
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
October 1, 2009
Calling scientific research a job-creating engine, President Barack Obama heralded $5 billion in new government grants Wednesday to fight maladies such as cancer, autism and heart disease while boosting the economy.
Of that money, about $215.7 million is headed for the Bay Area, drawn mainly by research at the region's major universities.
Obama described the money as crucial to improving public health and helping add jobs to an economy that has seen unemployment surge. ...
Obama called it the "single largest boost to biomedical research in history."
Broken down by Congressional District, the Bay Area's big winner is the 14th District represented by Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto; $64,131,597 is on its way to support 169 projects, mostly at Stanford University.
The 12th District, represented by Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, is home to 181 projects — mostly at the UC San Francisco — receiving $60,974,934. And in the East Bay, the 9th District, represented by Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, is home to 107 projects — mostly at the UC BERKELEY — receiving $56,565,645....
[This story also appeared in the Contra Costa Times and Oakland Tribune] Full Story
8. SD joins landmark study of breast cancer
San Diego Union-Tribune
September 30, 2009
Researchers at the UCSD Moores Cancer Center in La Jolla and the four other UC campuses with medical schools [and UC BERKELEY'S SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH] yesterday launched what could become one of the nation's largest studies on breast cancer.
The Athena Breast Health Network will spend several decades looking at screening and treatment for 150,000 women in California. The coordinators hope to expand their project by enlisting participation from outside medical centers.
They aim to identify factors that lead to development of tumors, unlock new therapies for the disease and generate mountains of data that will take years for cancer experts worldwide to analyze.
“This is an attempt to take advantage of the large scientific, medical and patient resources that the University of California has,” said Dr. Barbara Parker, director of oncology services at the Moores center and the main investigator for the new network at the University of California San Diego.... Full Story
9. US Internet Users Are Opposed To Being Tracked - Study
Wall Street Journal Online (*requires registration)
September 30, 2009
Roughly two-thirds of Americans oppose being tracked on the Internet in exchange for receiving tailored advertising, according to a new study by scholars from the University of Pennsylvania and the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.
The findings are likely to be poorly received by Internet giants including Google Inc. (GOOG), Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) and others expected to depend increasingly on behavioral tracking and tailored online advertisements. Investors banking on companies' ability to sharpen their advertising capabilities may also take heed.
"Contrary to what many marketers claim, most adult Americans do not want marketers to tailor advertisements to their interests," the study says. When informed about the ways marketers gather data on them to tailor those advertisements, the portion saying they don't want to receive them reaches as high as 86%, according to the study....
[Link by subscription only. Another story on this topic appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle] Full Story
10. Summit takes hard look at future of journalism
San Francisco Chronicle
October 1, 2009
Rapidly advancing technology may be to blame for the news industry's present predicament, but the same digital tools promise a bright future if the sector can harness them to deliver customers the content they want in the manner they prefer.
That was the general message from panelists during the first day of the UC BERKELEY MEDIA TECHNOLOGY SUMMIT on Wednesday, sponsored by the GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM and hosted at Google Inc.'s headquarters in Mountain View. Such an approach requires a dramatic shift in thinking, however, and raises some troubling questions for journalists and publishers.
Key to survival in the digital media age is rapidly responding to the preferences that consumers reveal every time they click a link, view an ad, read a story or post a comment, said MICHAEL FRANKLIN, PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AT UC BERKELEY. He is also the founder of Truviso, a San Mateo company that creates tools for analyzing consumer data.
Each online action represents clues that media companies can use to customize content, products and ads to particular consumers. That, in turn, can increase customers' engagement with the site and the likelihood of responding to marketing, he said....
"That will be driving how we get information and deal with customers and consumers in the future," he said to the audience of around 150. It's "necessary if you're going to create successful business models in the new world."
Pursuing such strategies, however, must be balanced against the traditional role and ethics of journalism, said NEIL HENRY, DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM.
He said tracking online behavior raises troubling privacy issues and delivering news based on consumer data rather than societal importance could mean favoring celebrity gossip over the vetting of political candidates.... Full Story
11. Live Blogging the UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit
San Francisco Chronicle Online
October 1, 2009
The second day of the UC BERKELEY MEDIA TECHNOLOGY SUMMIT on Thursday opened with a discussion on the future of advertising. The event, aimed broadly at exploring sustainable models for journalism in the digital age, is sponsored by the GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM and hosted at Google Inc.'s headquarters in Mountain View.
The panelists during the first session included Hilary Schneider, executive vice president with Yahoo Inc.; Jayant Kadambi, chief executive of YuMe; and Sean Finnegan, chief digital officer of Starcom MediaVest Group....
The second panel of the day explored various models emerging for journalism in the interactive era, including nonprofit ventures and paid online content. Speakers included Marshall Van Alstyne, professor of economics at Boston University; JEFFREY ULIN OF THE HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS; Fred Vogelstein, a writer for Wired Magazine; and Ellen Weiss, vice president for news at NPR.... Full Story
12. Plethora of reform proposals hit California
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
October 1, 2009
With California's golden reputation tarnished by layers of political dysfunction and policy paralysis, the call for reform is gaining momentum.
Ballot measures calling for a constitutional convention are in the pipeline. Hundreds of voters and elected officials have attended town hall meetings to discuss rewriting the state's 130-year-old constitution. ...
Colleges and universities are hosting conferences centered on reform. State lawmakers have introduced dozens of governance bills and have even formed a joint legislative committee to examine the plethora of reform proposals....
"History would suggest that it is a race between the conditions that make change possible and the time it takes to reach consensus on what you want to do," said BRUCE CAIN, DIRECTOR OF UC BERKELEY'S WASHINGTON, D.C., CENTER. "Usually, you don't get consensus in time. The economy improves and the sense of crisis dissipates."...
Cain attributes the near-shutdown of the constitutional convention as tool of reform to the influence of sophisticated powerful special interests who know how to mobilize and raise money to stop proposals they view as counter to their interests.
"I'm very skeptical that any of the tracks being talked about will do the serious things that need to be done," Cain said. "On the other hand, even if you end up with something that is more cautious, it is better to do those things than it is to do nothing."...
[This story also appeared in the Oakland Tribune] Full Story
13. Forum with Michael Krasny: Overhauling California's Tax System
KQED Radio
October 1, 2009
Governor Schwarzenegger says California's notoriously volatile boom and bust budget cycles could be brought under control if officials adopt the recommendations of his Commission on the 21st Century Economy. We look at the commission's long-awaited recommendations for changing the state's tax structure, and what it could mean for taxpayers.
Guests:
...CHRISTOPHER EDLEY JR., DEAN OF UC BERKELEY'S BOALT HALL SCHOOL OF LAW...
[Link to audio. A column quoting Dean Edley on this topic appeared in the Los Angeles Times] Full Story
14. Morning Edition: Olympic Caveats: Host Cities Risk Debt, Scandal
NPR
October 1, 2009
If making money were an Olympic event, no city hosting the games would win a gold medal. Or silver. Or bronze....
"No reasonable person thinks that the direct benefits of hosting the Olympic Games or any other mega event cover the costs," concludes ANDREW ROSE, AN ECONOMIST AT THE HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IN BERKELEY. Rose and his colleagues combed Olympic records and economic data for evidence of benefits and produced a study titled The Olympic Effect.
"You have to have some enormous indirect benefit, and that's what we've been focusing on in our research," Rose continues. His study did not find the kind of indirect benefits Olympic boosters promote, such as increased tourism or new industries. Instead, Olympic host cities, on average, experience a 30 percent increase in international trade....
"When a country submits a serious bid to host the Olympics," Rose says, "what they're really doing is saying that they're open for business and they're going to become internationally integrated and a serious member of the international community."
Rose found significant exceptions — wealthy countries like the United States and nations that have hosted multiple Olympics....
[Link to audio] Full Story
15. Palaeontology and conservation: Avoiding the heffalump trap
Economist [UK]
October 1, 2009
The Earth is heating up—and, if a study presented by Britain’s Meteorological Office to a meeting in Oxford this week is anything to go by, it may soon be hotter than it has been for more than a million years. Even if the 4ºC rise this century that the Met Office predicts does not come to pass, climate change is still going to be awkward. Because people are able to adjust their surroundings to meet their needs, Homo sapiens will no doubt survive. Other species, though, cannot make such adjustments. Instead, they deal with changing climates by moving their ranges. Or, at least, they have done so in the past....
Creating whole new ecosystems that mix natives with transplanted exotics might be risky. But on September 23rd, at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology, held in Bristol, England, ANTHONY BARNOSKY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, and Elizabeth Hadly of Stanford University suggested a way to minimise this risk. Their proposal was to learn from the flora and fauna living in past environments that went through climatic changes similar in scale to those happening today—namely the ones that accompanied the ice ages of the Pleistocene epoch, which ran from 2.6m years ago to 10,000 years ago....
Dr Barnosky is not quite so gung-ho about transcontinental transplants, but he thinks that understanding the ebb and flow of species in response to previous climate change within a continent may help conservationists by pointing out places where species that are endangered in their present ranges have done well in the past. In previous periods of warming, for example, many types of animals have displayed reliable trends. Ground squirrels spread rapidly as the temperature ameliorates. Vole populations contract. Gophers move west, while simultaneously becoming physically smaller.
His work in a place called Porcupine Cave in Colorado, shows that cheetahs, camels, horses and peccaries were present 800,000 years ago, yet none of these species survives there today.... Full Story
16. Nobel Fever: Place Your Bets
Who'll be tapped for a trip to Stockholm this year?
Newsweek Online
September 30, 2009
Science would be much more popular if you could bet on it. ... So until we can get Las Vegas to make book on the mass of the Higgs boson, Thomson Reuters is offering the next best thing: voting on the winners of this year's Nobel Prizes in science, which will be announced on Oct. 5 (medicine), Oct. 6 (physics), Oct. 7 (chemistry), and Oct. 12 (economics).
Thomson Reuters, whose ISI Web of Knowledge offers databases of, among other things, the scientists whose research has had the greatest impact on their field, has come up its own predictions. They're based on how influential scientists have been, as measured by how often their work is cited by others. Since 2002, 15 of these "Citation Laureates" have gone on to win Nobel Prizes. "We choose our Citation Laureates by assessing citation counts and the number of high-impact papers they have produced while identifying discoveries or themes that may be considered worthy of recognition by the Nobel Committee," said David Pendlebury of Thomson Reuters....
Pendlebury rounds out his medicine list with cell biologist James Rothman of Yale. Rothman figured out how cells secrete the proteins they make and move those proteins around within the cell (isn't the Golgi apparatus everyone's favorite organelle?), but that work was done so long ago you have to suspect that if the mandarins at the Karolinska Institute (who choose the medicine Nobel) were going to honor Rothman, they would have done so already. That also goes for RANDY SCHEKMAN OF UC BERKELEY, another pioneer in cellular transport whose trip to Stockholm is overdue. ...
No disrespect to chemistry, but for my money it's the economics prize that really bears watching this year. ... The crowd favorites with 25 percent of the online votes are Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich and MATTHEW RABIN OF UC BERKELEY, two of the leading lights in this arena. Their work has demystified everything from the effect of sin taxes and the hot-hand fallacy to the evolution of in-group favoritism (preferring people like yourself) and the origins and neural basis of altruistic punishment, in which you punish someone who cheats or otherwise breaks social norms but at some cost or risk to yourself. If they share 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.4 million), it will be an important recognition that economic science is about more than options pricing.... Full Story
17. Appearance tips off strangers to self-esteem, religion, openness: Study
Canada.com
September 30, 2009
Turns out we can judge some books by their covers and we're pretty good at it most of the time.
People can judge the personality traits of strangers — right down to their self-esteem and religious faith — based solely on their appearance in photos, new research demonstrates.
"Appearance is just one of those things that's everywhere and people are very accustomed to using it," says LAURA NAUMANN, WHO CONDUCTED THE RESEARCH AS A GRADUATE STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. "Just the associations people know about themselves and how they behave, they use that in making judgments of others."... Full Story
18. End of the road for Saturn as Penske walks away
Globe & Mail [Canada]
October 1, 2009
General Motors Co. ... is killing off its Saturn brand, ending a two-decade-old experiment that involved GM using “a different kind of company” to fight off competition from Japan-based auto makers.
Saturn Corp., the brainchild of GM chairman Roger Smith during the 1980s, was set to be sold to Penske Automotive Group Inc., (PAG-N16.12-3.06-15.95%) but Penske walked away from the deal Wednesday....
“It's a national tragedy,” said DAVID AAKER, A PROFESSOR AT THE HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. In his book Building Strong Brands, Prof. Aaker discussed what made the Saturn brand so strong in the beginning. “It was the only organization in the U.S. that really had a quality culture to it,” he said. “A group of people committed to designing and building a quality car. It was unlike anything else any American car [maker] had done.”...
“But then [GM] made the decision not to invest in the car for 10 years,” he said, and from that point on, it was just a matter of time before the brand was phased out.... Full Story
19. Quest Means Business: ... Robert Reich Takes Global Economic Temperature ...
CNN
September 29, 2009
Max Foster, CNN International Anchor: The customer is always right, as American consumer confidence drops, Wall Street follows suit....
Well, from Wall Street to Capitol Hill in Washington, what happened on the markets a year ago was a shock and a fright to many.... Economist Robert Reich, the former U.S. secretary of labor, gave his thoughts immediately after the markets tanked.
For him, the explanation for the panic came down to old-fashioned supply and demand.
(Begin Video Clip)
ROBERT REICH, PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY, U.C. BERKELEY: A big part of the problem has to do with the demand side. Consumers in the United States and elsewhere around the world are simply not having enough money, enough purchasing power to buy all of the goods and services that they are producing as employees.
And one of the underlying problems that is not getting nearly enough attention, is that as wealth and income gets more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the middle class just simply doesn't have the buying power it had when wealth and income was not as concentrated....
[Link to transcript only] Full Story
20. A special report on the world economy: Industrial design
Economist [UK]
October 1, 2009
An economy's potential output depends on the amount of labour and capital available, and on the ingenuity with which those resources are put to use. Of these three factors ingenuity is by far the most important. It accounted for about 88% of the growth in output per man-hour between 1909 and 1949, according to a 1957 paper by Robert Solow which helped bag him a Nobel prize....
If central banks in emerging economies insist on buying dollar reserves, their purchases will prop up the greenback, denying America the devaluation it needs. America may find itself absorbing their surpluses by running large deficits of its own again. But instead of relapsing into the global imbalances that prevailed before the crisis, a new modus vivendi is possible: America could offset the inflow of capital from foreign central banks with an outflow of capital of its own. It can borrow “short” from emerging countries, satisfying their demand for safe, liquid securities, even as it invests “long” in riskier but more rewarding assets overseas....
To some extent it already does. It held $6.6 trillion-worth of foreign shares and direct investments at the end of 2008, even as foreigners held $4.1 trillion-worth of American government securities. Indeed, PIERRE-OLIVIER GOURINCHAS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, and Hélène Rey of the London Business School have described America as the world’s “venture capitalist”, issuing fixed-income liabilities and putting lots of money into shares and direct investments abroad. Its role as a venture capitalist is not merely a metaphor. The country accounts for the bulk of cross-border venture-capital deals. Between 2003 and 2007 the number of deals America carried out abroad exceeded the number that foreigners carried out in America by an average of 3,000 a year.... Full Story
21. Environmental Capital Blog: Boxer-Kerry Bill: It’s Still All About Jobs
Wall Street Journal Online (*requires registration)
September 30, 2009
At last, the definitive version of the Senate’s first stab at energy and climate legislation is out. Here’s a quick summary, a section-by-section breakdown, and the whole beast....
For co-sponsor Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the committee on environment and public works, the “Clean Energy Jobs and America Power Act” addresses the “major challenges” facing the country....
But the big selling point, Sen. Boxer said, is jobs. She cited a new study from the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY that concluded that energy and climate legislation could create as many as 1.9 million jobs by 2020 and increase—not shrink—national GDP by 0.2% to 0.7%.
(Granted, the Berkeley study analyzed the impact of the House climate bill, and most studies concur that the real economic pain from climate legislation will start after 2025.)...
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
22. Real Time Economics Blog: Out-of-the-Box Papers by New Minneapolis Fed President
Wall Street Journal Online (*requires registration)
October 1, 2009
The Minneapolis Fed has hired a very unconventional University of Minnesota professor to serve as its new president. Narayana Kocherlakota served as chairman of Minnesota’s economics department for three years. He’s written lots of out-of-the-box papers, including this one in which he argues that money is a primitive form of memory whose main purpose is to help individuals and businesses keep track of their transactions....
Most recently, Mr. Kocherlakota has joined an argument between “freshwater” economists (i.e. free market types residing at the University of Minnesota, University of Chicago and other Great Lakes locations) vs. “saltwater” economists (i.e. interventionist types on the nation’s coasts, like Princeton and BERKELEY). He fires back at Paul Krugman, who’s been eviscerating free market economics of late.
Here’s Kocherlakota’s response.
And here’s UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR BRAD DELONG'S response to Kocherlakota’s response....
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
23. Supporters hold vigils for US hikers held in Iran
Washington Post
October 1, 2009
Berkeley, Calif. -- Family and friends of three U.S. hikers held in Iran gathered for vigils around the country Wednesday, hoping for their quick release but buoyed by news that they're coping with detention.
"We do believe the light that burns tonight will travel to where they are being held in Tehran and that they will feel the love that comes to them," the families said in a statement released for the more than 14 planned candlelight vigils.
The events marked the two months SINCE JOSHUA FATTAL, SHANE BAUER and SARAH SHOURD were detained after straying over the border during a hike in northern Iraq.
Since the three's arrest, their families have had no contact with them.
On Tuesday, Iran allowed Swiss diplomats to meet with the three Americans, something viewed as a conciliatory gesture....
"What we've heard through the State Department is that the kids are in good shape. They look good. They look healthy," said Shourd's mother, Nora Shourd, who attended a vigil at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, FROM WHICH ALL THREE GRADUATED.... Full Story
24. College Football's Bad News Bears
Gaffes and Bad Breaks Prolong Cal's Epic Rose Bowl Drought; Coach Kapp's Tequila Bottle
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
October 1, 2009
When JOE KAPP TOOK OVER THE FOOTBALL TEAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY before the 1982 season, he wanted to impress upon his players the need to make sacrifices. So the coach made them a vow: He would forgo tequila until Cal won the Rose Bowl. Nearly three decades later, the 71-year-old is still waiting.
"I've got the bottle right here," he says.
Talk of curses is uncommon in college football. Most of the great historical jinxes—the "please-let-them-win-before-I-die" kind—haunt the fans of professional teams, where a rotten owner can cripple a team for generations. The nature of college sports is that the players come and go, so every four years, there's a chance for a fresh start. At some point, if the school commits itself to winning, the pieces will fall into place and the fans' feeling of collective hopelessness will be relieved.
But then there's Cal. This once-powerful football program, a member of the elite Pac-10 conference, hasn't reached the coveted Rose Bowl since the 1958 season. No other conference school has been absent that long. (Arizona has never made it, but it only joined the conference in 1978.) Every time Cal comes close, something goes horribly, inexplicably wrong....
If the Bears can't win Saturday at home against No. 7 Southern California, they'll effectively be out of the Rose Bowl running again. "You'd see the collective psyche of the fan base collapse inward into the fetal position," says Cal alum Erik Johannessen, who expects to lose Saturday....
What's bizarre about the drought is that Cal isn't a doormat. Unlike Vanderbilt in the Southeastern Conference or Duke in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Cal has been a serious challenger for titles in recent years. "It's not like we're Northwestern from the 1980s," says ATHLETIC DIRECTOR SANDY BARBOUR....
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25. Today in History
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
October 1, 2009
Today is Thursday, Oct. 1, the 274th day of 2009. There are 91 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
...In 1964, the Free Speech Movement was launched at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY.... Full Story