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Thursday, 8 October 2009
1. Editorial: Ardi, Humans and Primates
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
October 8, 2009
Between present humans and our earliest prehuman ancestor, there is a direct genetic and evolutionary link, a clear map of descent that includes the earliest common ancestors we share with other primates. We just don’t know what it looks like yet. Whether paleontologists will ever be able to fill in all the details on that map depends on discoveries like one made by a team of scientists led by TIM D. WHITE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY — the fossils of a species called Ardipithecus ramidus, or Ardi for short.
According to a report in the journal Science, Ardi pushes the hominid story back to 4.4 million years ago and to a site in the Afar Rift region of Ethiopia. She (the most complete skeleton is probably female) also pushes the human story into a different ecosystem than Australopithecus, the grassland ancestor who lived, in various subspecies, as long as 3.7 million years ago. Ardi, who was discovered in 1992, lived in a “woodland with small patches of forest,” a discovery that downplays the importance of open grassland to human evolution....
Paleontologists are not looking for a “missing link” between humans and present-day primates closest to us — gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos. What they’re hoping to find is the earliest common ancestor from which the separate lines of development leading to humans and modern great apes emerged. Ardi is not that common ancestor. If anything, this find helps demonstrate how quickly early hominids moved down a separate path of evolution. It also suggests that living primates do not represent some primitive stage of a shared ancestry but are, as the scientists write, “highly specialized, but through very different evolutionary pathways.”
These are tremendously important discoveries, recasting the story of hominid evolution and making us eager for the next chapter. Full Story
2. U.S. Decline or a Flawed Measure?
Inside Higher Ed
October 8, 2009
Most higher education leaders say that institutional rankings are highly questionable, given the many intangibles in what make a college or university “best” for a given person or course of study. But what about national trends? Can international rankings of universities provide a picture of the relative rise and fall of nation’s universities?
The Times Higher Education/QS rankings, out today, suggest that there are national patterns that can be discerned – and the picture is one of decline for American institutions. Since narratives about American decline always attract attention, these rankings are likely to cause a stir....
ROBERT M. BERDAHL, president of the Association of American Universities, said that at his association (which includes research universities in the United States and Canada), "we don’t generally place a great deal of stock in the public rankings of universities, but we don’t ignore them either. They are important to the extent that shape public perceptions of the qualitative hierarchy of institutions, but they all have flaws and biases."...
But BERDAHL, A FORMER CHANCELLOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, said he just can't buy the numbers in the Times Higher's survey. "While I think that there has been some relative slippage as a result of a decline in funding in the U.S. and the investment elsewhere, the rankings indicated by the Times seem to me to be wildly off the mark," he said. "No one I know would rank Berkeley anywhere near as low as 39th in the world. I admit I’m biased; but this is too far from the mark to be taken terribly seriously." Full Story
3. Global News Blog: World’s top 200 colleges: an educated guess?
Global News Blog: World’s top 200 colleges: an educated guess?
Christian Science Monitor Online
October 8, 2009
Harvard is still No. 1. But the United States? It better look over its shoulder – both East and West.
OK. The US still leads the global pack in top-notch universities – according to the London-based Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings. From sea (CalTech) to shining sea (Harvard, Yale, M.I.T, Princeton – you choose), Americans still have the high-quality teaching, top-flight research labs, and, most likely, the iconic ivy-draped quads that beckon like glittering gold to young scholars around the globe.
That explains why the US holds 54 of the top 200 universities in the Times/QS survey (32 in the top 100). But Britain, Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea, among others, are stealing precious turf....
Sniping is already well under way with the Times report: Too Western-biased? Tipped toward English-language schools? Wrong criteria?
As one commenter on the Times/QS website noted:
“Let’s see: U.C. BERKELEY is: 2nd in engineering and IT; 5th in life sciences; 3rd in natural sciences; 2nd in social sciences; 4th in arts and humanities; and 39th overall. Hmmm. They must have a really lousy football team.”...
[Link to the rankings at Times Higher Ed] Full Story
4. Editorial: Wanted: Partners to save higher ed
Sacramento Bee
October 8, 2009
Public colleges and universities educate 80 percent of students in the United States. They remain an engine of opportunity for students from all backgrounds.
But they are slipping....
So what should public colleges and universities do in this era of declining state support? University of California President Mark Yudof has produced a 10-page conversation starter that is worth pursuing.
In it, Yudof notes the national interest in producing engineers, doctors, teachers and ideas that become the new products of the future.
Then he points to historic federal support for higher education, beginning with the Morrill Act signed by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Essentially, Yudof is calling for a Morrill Act for the 21st century - building on the century-and-a-half-old national system of state-run colleges and universities....
Speaking at UC BERKELEY in 1962, President John F. Kennedy called the Morrill Act "the most extraordinary piece of legislation this country has ever adopted."
The Morrill Act, he said, created "through our national government, an entirely American kind of university" centered on the idea that "opportunity should be available to everyone and that education was the vehicle for that opportunity."... Full Story
5. Bottom Line ...
San Francisco Chronicle
October 8, 2009
...It's all relative: Courtesy of the Great Recession, even America's richest are losing out, as the recently released Forbes 400 list suggested. But that doesn't mean their grip on the nation's wealth is weakening, a UC BERKELEY ECONOMIST finds.
Based on an analysis of 2007 tax returns, the richest 1 percent - those earning more than $400,000 a year - commands 23.5 percent of the nation's wealth, according to EMMANUEL SAEZ and his Paris colleague, Thomas Piketty.
The income gap is within 0.4 percent of being the biggest since 1928, the two conclude in their recently released paper, "Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States," (links.sfgate.com/ZIIC).
In addition, the same 1 percent grabbed two-thirds of America's total increase in wealth in the five years leading up to 2007.
For his work on income inequality, Saez this year received the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal as the most promising economist under 40, as judged by the American Economic Association.
Congratulating his friend and one-time co-author on the award, President Obama's director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, wrote on his blog: "Emmanuel's work on income inequality has helped to point the way for the administration in its pledge to rebalance the tax code."
No doubt that's still on the list of presidential priorities somewhere. Full Story
6. California green push to staunch job losses -- study
Reuters
October 7, 2009
Sacramento, Calif., Oct 7 (Reuters) - California's plan to slow climate change will boost the state economy and save hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk from rising energy costs, a study by a University of California economist said on Wednesday....
Rising fossil fuel prices would cut state economic output by $84 billion and slash 626,000 jobs from state payrolls in 2020, if U.S. Department of Energy fuel forecasts are used instead of the outlook by the state energy commission, according to the study by ECONOMIST DAVID ROLAND-HOLST OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.
But the move to get a third of state electricity from renewables and become more efficient would reverse the decline, the study added. Instead, 2020 economic output would rise $20 billion from current projections and 112,000 jobs would be created.... Full Story
7. How to cut unemployment: tax credit for employers who hire?
A tax credit to spur hiring can help trim unemployment, say experts, but comes with a heavy price tag. The revenue loss for a 1977 scheme was $5.7 billion.
Christian Science Monitor
October 7, 2009
New York -- The last time the US gave business a tax credit to hire workers was 1977 when Congress became frustrated over the stubbornly high 6.4 percent unemployment rate.
Now, with the nation’s unemployment rate nearing 10 percent, there are reports that Congress might try a revamped version of what was then called the New Jobs Tax Credit (NJTC)....
It’s unclear what the program would cost in revenue losses to the government. According to a Congressional Research Service report in January, the government’s revenue loss for the 1977 program was about $5.7 billion.
The program “was faulted for its complexity among other things,” wrote report author Linda Levine.
That complexity resulted from an effort to prevent companies that were going to hire workers anyway from getting the tax credit, recalls JEFFREY PERLOFF, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, and co-author of a study on the NJTC.
His study concluded that firms that knew about the program hired 3 percent more workers than those who didn’t know about it. But most firms either didn’t know about the program or didn’t use it, the study said.
Looking back, it’s hard to say what the cost per job was, says Mr. Perloff. “If you subsidize jobs you are more likely to get more jobs, but the question is how many more will you get?” Full Story
8. Online ads: Big Brother or customer service?
Washington Post
October 7, 2009
New York (Reuters) - U.S. marketers and consumer advocates are preparing for battle over the rules governing online advertising tailored to individual browsing habits, often tracked and collected without notice or permission.
The U.S. Congress is due to intervene in the issue in the coming weeks, with a bill in the House of Representatives that would oblige websites to state explicitly how they use the information and allow those using the site to opt out....
RESEARCHERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, and the University of Pennsylvania who surveyed 1,000 Americans from June 18 to July 2 concluded there was a deep concern that tracking Internet habits for tailoring ads was wrong.
The survey came at a time when the debate in Washington over privacy and online advertising is at a "roiling boil," said Mike Zaneis, vice president of public policy at the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an industry trade association....
"There's a battle for the online policy marketplace," Zaneis said, leading to "a paternalistic effort to restrict information online, even if it's anonymous."... Full Story
9. Google Gets Until Nov. 9 to Revise Book Pact
Critics Coalesce, Pressing for Alternatives to Internet Giant's Plan on Digital Use of Copyrighted Material
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
October 8, 2009
A U.S. district court judge gave Google Inc. and the authors and publishers who sued it until Nov. 9 to submit a revised version of their controversial pact, as the parties work to fix concerns that their agreement is anticompetitive....
Early this year, critics began crafting their game plans. PAMELA SAMUELSON, AN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, invited around two dozen people in February to a private conference to study the settlement in secret, says Ms. Samuelson. Instead of inviting Google, she invited class-action lawyers and others to provide "tutorials" on various aspects of the 141-page legal document, she said.
Thomas Rubin, Microsoft Corp.'s chief counsel for intellectual-property strategy, attended along with other competitors, such as Peter Brantley, of the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based nonprofit trying to create an archive of the Internet.
By spring, the Justice Department had requested information from the parties about the deal and began talking to several state attorneys generals and Amazon.com, which brought on well-knowncopyright lawyer David Nimmer to look into the settlement, according to people familiar with the matter. Amazon declined to comment....
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
10. Google to Revise a Book Pact by Nov. 9
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
October 8, 2009
The parties to a Google book settlement that would allow the creation of a vast digital library outlined on Wednesday an aggressive timeline for modifying the agreement to satisfy objections from the Justice Department and others.
After a hearing in Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York on Wednesday morning, Judge Denny Chin set Nov. 9 as the date by which Google and its partners must submit a revised settlement for the court’s preliminary approval....
PAMELA SAMUELSON, AN INTERNET AND COPYRIGHT EXPERT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, who has led a group of scholars objecting to the settlement, said she also had doubts about the timeline. “It’s hard to believe that so much could change that it would respond to all serious objections,” Ms. Samuelson wrote in an e-mail message. Full Story
11. Education Front Blog: Latinos and education: A report from the Pew Hispanic Center
Dallas Morning News Online
October 8, 2009
Dallas Morning News reporter Katherine Leal Unmuth just returned from a Pew Hispanic Center session on Latinos and education. She's blogged about this at her Irving community blog.
...These are a few highlights:
-- According to Pew, Latinos still have lower college enrollment rates than white or black students....
-- BRUCE FULLER FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY also shared research showing that while Hispanic babies on average start out at 9 months as developmentally equal to white and black babies, by the age of 2 they rapidly fall behind. The reason? Researchers noticed that Hispanic mothers less frequently sang and read to their child or participated in other learning activities. They also praised and encouraged their children less. Children spent most of their time playing, eating or watching TV. This is why many policymakers are pushing for expanded pre-school, in addition to parent education programs.... Full Story
12. Blog: Emerging markets, global financial reform
Project Syndicate
September 2009
Berkeley – It is fitting that the upcoming G-20 summit is being held in Pittsburg, an old industrial center of an advanced industrial country, for the advanced countries have been allowed to set the agenda for strengthening financial systems. Other than schadenfreude, emerging markets have brought little to the table.
The United States is emphasizing higher capital requirements. The Europeans are pushing for reform of compensation practices in the financial sector. While both proposals have merit, whether they will be enough to stabilize our dangerously unstable financial systems is at best dubious.
What emerging markets can add to this agenda is, to put it charitably, unclear. They have said little about how they would reform financial systems. They can argue that this is not their problem – that the crisis of the last two years has been centered in the advanced economies, and that it is these countries’ financial systems that need to be fixed.... Full Story
13. Trichet Faces ‘Trap’ as ECB Prods Leaders on Deficits
Bloomberg
October 8, 2009
Jean-Claude Trichet needs governments to walk through the emergency exit first if he’s going to be able to keep nurturing Europe’s recovery with record low interest rates and cash injections.
As an economic rebound allows policy makers to mull how they will withdraw stimulus measures, the European Central Bank President today demanded that lawmakers execute “ambitious” plans to reverse the region’s largest budget deficit since the euro began trading in 1999 “as soon as possible and at the latest when the recovery takes hold.”...
“Deficit spending and tight money mean much higher interest rates,” said BARRY EICHENGREEN, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY and author of a 2006 book on Europe’s economic history. “That’s a very unfriendly investment mix.”... Full Story
14. The Nobel science prizes: Winning ways
Prizes for optical fibres, charge-coupled devices, ribosomes and telomeres
Economist [UK]
October 8, 2009
How do you look through a window that is 100km thick? That, in essence, was the question facing Charles Kao in 1966. For working out the answer, Dr Kao has been awarded part of this year’s Nobel prize for physics. Besides being thick, the window was narrow: it was an optical fibre. Dr Kao’s prize is a belated recognition of his contribution to the telecommunications revolution of the past few decades. But better late than never.
The rest of the physics prize goes almost as belatedly to Willard Boyle and George Smith who, in 1969, ushered the charge-coupled device (CCD) into being, paving the way for the digital camera. The chemistry prize went to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath for working out the structure of ribosomes—the parts of living cells that translate genetic information into proteins. And the physiology prize went to ELIZABETH BLACKBURN, CAROL GREIDER and Jack Szostak for their work on telomeres, the DNA caps that stop the ends of chromosomes either unravelling or sticking to one another....
DR BLACKBURN, DR GREIDER and Dr Szostak also began their work in the early 1980s, the FIRST TWO AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, and Dr Szostak at Harvard Medical School, though all three collaborated over the years....
Between them, the three prize-winners worked out the composition of the telomere’s DNA, showed that a crucial element of that DNA is the same in all organisms that have telomeres (bacteria do not, because their chromosomes are circular) and discovered the existence of telomerase. A few visionaries think the discovery of telomerase might allow people’s organs to renew themselves ad infinitum, and thus let their owners live for ever. The more pragmatic will settle for its helping them avoid an unpleasant, tumorous death. Full Story
15. Real Time Economics Blog: Handicapping the 2009 Economics Nobel
Wall Street Journal Online (*requires registration)
October 8, 2009
Adherents of the efficient-markets hypothesis might say that University of Chicago Booth School of Business economist Eugene Fama has an excellent chance of winning the Nobel Prize in economics. Then again, recent events have thrown the idea that markets accurately reflect information available to investors — the efficient-markets hypothesis the Mr. Fama first proposed in the 1960s — into doubt.
Mr. Fama is once again the frontrunner for the Nobel — which is really “The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” — for British betting firm Ladbrokes, garnering two-to-one odds. ...
Thomson Reuters, meantime, makes predictions on who will win the Bank of Sweden Prize in the Science of Holding Several Conflicting Opinions at Once in Memory of Alfred Nobel based on paper citations. Mr. Fehr, who’s written nine of the most cited economics papers in the past decade, leads that tally. Next is BERKELEY’S MATTHEW RABIN, who’s made his mark in behavioral economics and finance. Just 45, Rabin would be young to earn the economics laureate. Yale’s William Nordhaus, best known for his work on environmental economics, follows.... Full Story
16. The California governor's race: Early and heated
Economist [UK]
October 8, 2009
Los Angeles -- With eight months until its primaries, California is drawing the stars
“This is a proud day for me,” beamed Gavin Newsom, the youthful mayor of San Francisco, as he stood among the bookshelves of a college in Los Angeles beside Bill Clinton, who had just endorsed him in his race to become governor of California next year. Former presidents don’t usually intervene in state primaries with eight months to go. But this is California, and the personalities and stakes are large.
On the Democratic side, Mr Newsom, known nationally mainly for his bold—though many say irresponsible—decision during the 2004 presidential campaign to recognise gay marriages in San Francisco, is running a distant second to California’s grand old man of politics, Jerry Brown. A former governor as well as the son of one, famous for his austerity in office and currently the attorney-general, Mr Brown has only just filed the paperwork to make his candidacy semi-formal. But in “matchup” polls Mr Brown is already ahead not only of Mr Newsom but of each of the three known Republican candidates. ...
Of these Republicans, the only one with the intellect and experience of government to match Mr Brown’s is TOM CAMPBELL. Mr Campbell got his economics doctorate from the University of Chicago when Milton Friedman was his faculty adviser. Since then, he has spent 17 years in government—in the state senate, as a congressman, in the Reagan administration and as finance director of California—and 15 years at Stanford, BERKELEY and Chapman University in southern California, where he now teaches [ON LEAVE FROM UC BERKELEY].
If Mr Campbell is not the obvious Republican front-runner, this is mainly because he has much less money than his two billionaire challengers from Silicon Valley, Meg Whitman and Stephen Poizner.... Full Story
17. Blog: Sequoias in the Lassen National Forest?
Record Searchlight [Redding]
October 7, 2009
I confess I did not know that they were growing giant sequoias in our neck of the woods, but they are, and retired UC BERKELEY FORESTRY PROFESSOR BILL LIBBY will be talking about them tomorrow evening.
"Join us at Turtle Bay tomorrow, Thursday, October 8 @ 7 p.m. as special guest, Dr. Bill Libby, professor emeritus of Forestry at the University of California, Berkeley, presents: Climate, Fire, and Where Sequoias Are Not. Dr. Libby's informative presentation will focus on climate change and it's effects on California's Giant Sequoias....
Dr. Libby will be receiving the Francis Raymond award in Sacramento on Wednesday prior to his arrival in Redding. The award is California's highest forestry honor. ..." Full Story
18. No push to imprison former medical director of Sacramento jail
Sacramento Bee
October 8, 2009
Sacramento prosecutors say they will have no problem if the former medical director of the sheriff's jail system doesn't do any time on his felony conviction for writing unauthorized OxyContin prescriptions.
DR. PETER DIETRICH entered his no-contest plea last week to four felony counts with an agreement that he would not be sent to state prison....
"If the court was so inclined as to sentence the defendant to community service, as opposed to incarceration, the people - in view of Dr. Dietrich's service to society in the past, his ongoing efforts to rehabilitate himself, his current participation in the development of programs that will benefit the community at large as well as other medical providers, along with his recognized potential for future good works - would submit on the issue," Deputy District Attorney Dean Archibald wrote in an Aug. 6 memo contained in Dietrich's court file....
State Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement agents arrested the 52-year-old Dietrich on Jan. 14 after finding that he had been writing an unusually high number of prescriptions for OxyContin, a powerful, highly addictive painkiller. BNE agents suspected that Dietrich had been writing the illegal prescriptions for himself.
At the time, Dietrich had been in charge of medical operations at the downtown jail and the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center for a year and a half. Before that, HE HAD BEEN THE MEDICAL DIRECTOR IN CHARGE OF UNIVERSITY HEALTH SERVICES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, for 14 years.... Full Story
19. Barney: KQED's ambitious 'Saving the Bay' a must-see documentary
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
October 8, 2009
It might be hard to believe now, but the same San Francisco Bay that we cherish for its grandeur and beauty was once on its way to becoming a cesspool....
"Saving the Bay: The Story of San Francisco Bay," a handsomely crafted, four-part documentary presented by KQED, examines this dismal chapter in vivid detail. Fortunately, there's a happy ending. Thanks to a gutsy grass-roots effort that launched in the early 1960s, politicians and citizens began to treat one of the world's most fabled estuaries with the respect it deserves.
"We know how beautiful the Bay is. We know that it defines our region — that it's our identity," says executive producer RON BLATMAN. "But a lot of us don't know much beyond that. And we don't know that it could have been gone."...
Seven years in the making, "Saving the Bay" shares a few admirable traits with Ken Burn's recently concluded opus on the national parks. It is crammed with artful images of nature and wildlife. It deftly delves into a fascinating history via vintage footage and interviews with eloquent experts. And, most significantly, it celebrates the forward-thinking individuals who committed themselves to rescuing a natural resource they held so dear.
Chief among them were three idealistic Berkeley housewives who proved to be unlikely environmental heroes. CATHERINE KERR, SYLVIA MCLAUGHLIN AND ESTHER GULICK, ALL OF WHOM HAD TIES TO UC BERKELEY, read an Oakland Tribune story about how the Bay was falling victim to overzealous developers. They decided to dig in their heels and make a stand....
"It really shows the power of individuals. They didn't just throw up their hands and moan, 'We can't change anything,'" says BLATMAN, A GRADUATE OF CAL. "They went from serving tea and cookies to building a juggernaut. It's the stuff of made-for-TV movies."...
What: "Saving the Bay: The Story of San Francisco Bay"
When: 8 tonight
Where: Channel 9 (KQED)
[KQED Radio's "Forum with Michael Krasny" included a discussion of this program, with Ron Blatman and Sylvia McLaughlin as guests. Link to audio] Full Story