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Tuesday, 20 October 2009
1. Haas School to offer green tech program
San Francisco Chronicle
October 20, 2009
UC BERKELEY has created an institute within its HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS to tap the growing student interest in green tech, bringing together research on clean-energy technology, policy and economics.
THE ENERGY INSTITUTE AT HAAS combines the efforts of several existing programs at the university, which has moved aggressively in recent years to expand its research and course offerings in alternative energy. The university announced the institute's creation Monday.
"I think this really helps put forward to the world just how good Berkeley is in this space, and it helps attract students who are interested in clean tech," said CATHERINE WOLFRAM, CO-DIRECTOR OF THE NEW INSTITUTE. "It also helps us grow."
The institute melds pieces of the UC ENERGY INSTITUTE, known for its research into energy economics, and Haas' CENTER FOR ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL INNOVATION, which offers classes in topics such as energy-project financing. The new institute has a broad mission, from commercializing new technologies to teaching students how energy markets work.
"This is a strength that Haas really has," said CO-DIRECTOR SEVERIN BORENSTEIN. "In some ways, people would say it's luck, because we were doing this when it wasn't hot. ... Now, we're trying to solidify that in a way that's more appealing to students and faculty."...
Berkeley already has its ENERGY BIOSCIENCES INSTITUTE, founded two years ago to develop advanced biofuels. ...
Rising student interest in the field provided some of the motivation for creating the Energy Institute at Haas, or EI @ Haas, for short. Back in 1999, only three students signed up for a Berkeley class on energy markets, Borenstein recalls. Now roughly 20 percent of incoming Haas students say they intend to study some aspect of energy, he said.... Full Story
2. BJFEZA Hosts Technical Tour for Diplomats
Korea Times
October 20, 2009
The Busan-Jinhae Free Economic Zone Authority (BJFEZA) recently organized a technical tour for foreign diplomats and staff of chambers of commerce in Korea to showcase its industrial infrastructure....
Meanwhile, Kim Moon-hee, the commissioner of the BJFEZ Authority, and ROBERT J. BIRGENEAU, THE CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, last week entered into an agreement jointly moving into shipbuilding and offshore R&D projects.
Under a memorandum of understanding, Pusan National University and UC at Berkeley will conduct the joint operation of educational and research institutions, exchange of scientific and technical knowledge and materials and joint research institutions. Full Story
3. College tuitions rise again
USA Today
October 20, 2009
Average tuition prices rose sharply again this fall as colleges passed much of the burden of their own financial problems on to recession-battered students and parents.
Average tuition at four-year public colleges rose 6.5%, or $429, to $7,020 this fall, according to the College Board's annual "Trends in College Pricing" report, released Tuesday. At private colleges, the average list price for a year of coursework rose 4.4% to $26,273....
Worst hit is California, whose giant public university and community college systems educate about one in six American college students. Facing unprecedented state funding cuts, public colleges have boosted fees, raised class sizes, furloughed faculty and turned away students. On top of the current year's 9-percent fee increase, the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SYSTEM is considering increases of more than 30% by next year....
[A photograph with the following caption accompanies this article. "UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY STUDENTS carry signs during a demonstration on campus in front of Sproul Hall protesting proposed fee hikes and service cuts at 10 University of California campuses. California's public university and community college systems educate about one in six American college students and is hardest hit during this recession."] Full Story
4. Cal Libraries Reopen on Saturdays
East Bay Express
October 20, 2009
The budget crisis for UC campuses including BERKELEY is in full swing as of early October. Students were warned midsummer that come July 1, certain libraries across the Cal campus would no longer be open on Saturdays and 24-hour study halls during finals week would be abolished. The news infuriated and worried some nail-biting Cal students. A couple students calling themselves community organizers staged a sit-in last Saturday, which they rebranded a "study-in." The event took place in the Anthropology Library and included spoken word poetry and student discussions. Attendees brought pillows and snacks to wage the budget war threatening many Cal student services. Apparently their plan was successful, as Saturday closures have been staved off thanks to a few mysterious private donors. Full Story
5. State's GOP House members oppose public option
San Francisco Chronicle
October 18, 2009
Washington -- Not a single House Republican from California intends to vote for a health care bill that contains a government-run insurance option, a survey of the state's 53 members of Congress shows, an ominous sign for congressional leaders trying to fashion a bipartisan compromise.
All 19 of the state's House Republicans oppose a public option, with most indicating there are no circumstances under which they would vote in favor of a bill that included one, according to the survey by California News Service, a project of the University of California's Washington Center and the UC BERKELEY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM.
By contrast, all but two of California's 34 Democratic House members and both U.S. senators unequivocally support a public option, with most indicating there are no circumstances under which they would vote in favor of a bill without it....
The survey, which included interviews and a review of speeches and other public statements, provides fresh evidence of the partisan divide that has made consensus on health care difficult.... Full Story
6. Volunteering Computers for Science
Users Make Their Home PCs Available to Chase Medical Breakthroughs
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
October 20, 2009
The next cure for a major disease is as likely to be discovered on a computer as on a laboratory bench—and scientists are enlisting ordinary citizens to volunteer to help crunch the data....
Volunteer computing, as it's known, dates back to 1996, when a group of researchers enlisted participants in a search for ever-larger prime numbers, an effort that continues to break world records. Several years later, volunteers flocked to [UC BERKELEY-AFFILIATED] SETI@home, a project to sift through the static in radio telescope data for signs of extraterrestrial life.
In the last five years, biomedical researchers have caught on to the possibilities of volunteer computing, and so too have the volunteers. ...
Such volunteer computing projects are generally based on open-source software called the BERKELEY OPEN INFRASTRUCTURE OF NETWORK COMPUTING, or BOINC. Volunteers download the simple application from boinc.berkeley.edu, and sign up for the projects they want to support....
An open network of so many computers might seem a security risk, and it is. But DAVID ANDERSON, THE BERKELEY SCIENTIST who founded Boinc in 2004, says he has taken two key precautions. The first uses a system of digital signatures so that hackers cannot hijack an existing project's network. The second cordons off, or "sandboxes," all Boinc activity from the rest of a host computer, so that even if a bug or malicious code did slip into a project, it would cause minimal damage.
Still, volunteers should learn more about projects before joining them, Dr. Anderson suggests. Several sites, including Boinc's official page, host message boards where volunteers can discuss projects. After five years and more than 300,000,000 tasks performed by volunteers' computers, "there have been zero security incidents," according to Dr. Anderson....
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
7. Future Tech Doctor on-Call? Cell-Phone Cameras Can Diagnose Disease
Developing nations often have a lack of medical facilities but good cell phones. The CellScope turns the latter into the former.
Discover Magazine
October 2009
Many regions of the developing world exist in a strange technological limbo. Places that are well served by advanced cellular phone networks may lack the modern medical facilities necessary to diagnose and treat serious illness. As a result, a remote village in, say, South Africa—a region hard hit by malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS—might be able to contact top medical experts and yet have no way to apply their knowledge.
RESEARCHERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY are bridging the gap with the CellScope, a microscope that attaches to a camera-equipped cell phone and produces two kinds of imaging, called brightfield and fluorescence microscopy. The CellScope can snap magnified pictures of disease samples and transmit them to medical labs across the country or around the world. The goal is to use mobile communications networks as a cost-effective way for medical personnel to screen for hematologic and infectious diseases in areas that lack access to advanced microscopic equipment.
Scientists have demonstrated the CellScope’s potential in two types of test case. They have used white light to image the red blood cells of sickle-cell anemia and the parasite that causes malaria. They have also used an LED and fluorescent dye to identify tuberculosis bacteria in sputum samples. Fluorescence is increasingly being touted as the future of clinical imaging due to its selectivity. In fluorescence microscopy, certain specimens, such as TB bacteria, can be dyed so that they emit light when exposed to ultraviolet radiation. To date, only a few diseases have been examined using fluorescent dyes, but DAVID BRESLAUER, CO-LEAD AUTHOR OF THE STUDY AND A GRADUATE STUDENT IN THE UC SAN FRANCISCO/UC BERKELEY BIOENGINEERING GRADUATE GROUP, says that medical researchers are likely to target more and more pathogens this way as fluorescence microscopy becomes more widely adopted.... Full Story
8. Exclusive: UC Berkeley Researcher Updates on NASA THEMIS Mission
UC BERKELEY RESEARCHER JONATHAN EASTWOOD spoke with DailyTech regarding the current status of the NASA THEMIS mission
Daily Tech
October 20, 2009
The NASA THEMIS satellite mission, which launched in 2007, is designed to let researchers ... learn more about the causes of the aurora.
Using five identical satellites that are in orbit around Earth, researchers are able to successfully measure the local magnetic field and properties of the particles trapped in the magnetic field. The project, which was proposed to NASA by UC Berkeley -- with the satellites also built in Berkeley -- as UC Berkeley researchers maintain control of the satellites via radio satellite dish.
"Two of the five THEMIS probes are now on their way to the moon, for a new life studying the lunar environment!" exclaimed JONATHAN EASTWOOD, UC, BERKELEY SPACE SCIENCES LABORATORY ASSISTANT RESEARCH PHYSICIST. "Although the two-year 'prime mission phase' of THEMIS is now over, three of the THEMIS probes, closest to the Earth, will continue to operate (for many years) collecting scientific data about the solar wind interaction, space weather, geomagnetic storms, etc."... Full Story
9. Success is in her DNA
Greider wins the Nobel Prize in a field in which relatively few women thrive
Washington Post
October 20, 2009
Partway through an interview, CAROL GREIDER's cellphone emits the special ring she has set to indicate the caller is one of her two children. Greider, a molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins who this year became one of only 10 women to win the Nobel Prize in medicine, is at her phone in a split second. The caller is her 9-year-old daughter, Gwendolyn, who has gotten out of school.
"How was Spirit Day?" Greider asks. They chat -- a babysitter is at home -- then she rings off. Nearby is a pile of handmade cards from Gwendolyn's fourth-grade class, the members of which have different ideas about for what, exactly, Greider has won the prize.
Twenty-five years ago, as an exceptionally gifted GRADUATE STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, Greider, now 48, visited her lab to check an experiment, and discovered evidence of an enzyme called telomerase. The enzyme helps maintain telomeres, the caplike structures that protect the ends of chromosomes. The discovery was a breakthrough -- telomerase is implicated in cancer and genetic disease -- the import of which would become clearer over time, as possible therapies emerged.
The fourth-graders seem to have gotten the gist of this, sort of.
Their cards have pop-up components, many with illustrations of chromosomes and telomeres. One congratulates her for finding a "cure for telomerase." Another says her Nobel is "so cool I can't even think about stuff!" Greider loves them all, and is keeping them in a pile near a huge vase of roses. She has gotten so many flowers that she has had to give some away.
"I wonder if guys that win the Nobel Prize -- do they send flowers to guys? I didn't think to ask Jack," she wonders, referring to Jack Szostak, a Harvard scientist who, together with Greider's mentor, [FORMER UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR] ELIZABETH BLACKBURN, did groundbreaking work in telomeres; the two shared the Nobel with Greider. She'll ask him next time she sees him. In the meantime, she has sent an e-mail to Gwendolyn's teacher that says, "I want to come in and say thank you."...
Dyslexia arguably was responsible for the prize itself -- or at least, for the series of decisions that put Greider on the path to winning. Greider's mother, who died when she was 6, was a biologist; her father was a physicist who encouraged her to find work that engaged her. [BOTH PARENTS WERE GRADUATES OF UC BERKELEY] After college she decided to go to graduate school in molecular biology, but because of her disability she did not test well, and a number of schools rejected her because of poor GRE scores. Just two -- UC Berkeley and Cal Tech -- took note of her stellar grades and invited her for an interview. Accepted by both, she chose Berkeley in part because one of her interviewers was Blackburn.... Full Story
10. Op-Ed: In the World of Banks, Bigger Can Be Better
We can solve the too-big-to-fail problem without losing the benefits of a global financial system.
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
October 19, 2009
Legitimate concern about the risks to taxpayers and the economy posed by banks that are "too-big-to-fail" has prompted some observers, among them Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, to favor draconian limits on financial institution size. This is misguided. There are sizable gains from retaining large, complex, global financial institutions—and other ways to credibly protect taxpayers from the cost of government bailouts....
OLIVER WILLIAMSON, AN ECONOMIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, just won the Nobel Prize for his pathbreaking work on the "boundaries of the firm," specifically for arguing that it can be more efficient to extend the boundaries of a single firm than for independent firms to contract with each other in the market. That theory explains why nonbank corporations operate world-wide supply chains....
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
11. Bill Moyers Journal
PBS
October 16, 2009
Bill Moyers: Welcome to the Journal.
President Obama has been holding one meeting after another trying to decide whether to escalate the war in Afghanistan. He would do well to hold off another discussion until he has sent everyone home for the weekend to read this new book with the provocative title, Stripping Bare the Body, and a cover that holds the eye like a magnet.
The subject is politics, violence, and war, and running through it is an old truth often forgot: you start a war knowing what you are fighting, but in the end you find yourself fighting for things you had never thought of.
In the meantime, you make decisions that inflict on people in far-off places suffering you never imagined.
That's but one stark truth you will find in these pages. The wars we fight, and the violence that feeds them, reveal like nothing else the hidden structures of power in Washington: the personal rivalries, the in-fighting and deal-making, the ambitions that decide our policies and often our fate. Stripping Bare The Body, you will discover, is a moral history of American power over the past quarter century.
Its author is MARK DANNER, who throughout those 25 years reported from more mean places in the world than any journalist I know -- Iraq, the Balkans, Haiti, and Washington, among them. Despite more than one close brush with death, he keeps going back. He writes for some of our leading magazines and has produced a series of acclaimed books, winning awards left and right as well as receiving the MacArthur Fellowship. All the while MARK DANNER HAS BEEN TEACHING JOURNALISM AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS AT BOTH THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, and Bard College in upstate New York. He's been at this table before, and it's good to welcome you back. ...
[Link to video] Full Story
12. The World: Life after Gitmo
Public Radio International [PRI]
October 7, 2009
...Marco Werman: Guantanamo’s detainee population is now down to 223. In the past few years, several hundred men have already been released. A few more have been cleared for release, and are expected to be sent overseas soon for resettlement. For some former detainees, life after Guantanamo is a huge challenge. The World’s Katy Clark reports.
Katy Clark: It was quite a sight. Four former detainees frolicking in the Atlantic Ocean off the Coast of Bermuda this past summer. It gave the impression that life post-detention might be pretty sweet, but that’s not necessarily the norm. Take the case of Sami Al-Haj, who was on assignment as a cameraman with Al-Jazeera when he was captured in Pakistan in late 2001. He was held for more than six years as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo. During his detention he says he was beaten and sexually assaulted. Then May 2008, Al-Haj was released and returned to his native Sudan. He was never charged with a crime. Yet Al-Haj told Iranian-based Press T.V. that more than a year after his release he remains “A misfit” at home....
Clark: What Al-Haj is experiencing is part of what ERIC STOVER calls the Guantanamo Stigma, something that haunts some of the more than 500 freed detainees. STOVER IS A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY. He spent last year interviewing 62 men once held at Guantanamo. He says many of them said they were ostracized by their own families and communities after their release.
Eric Stover: We heard of cases in many countries where former detainees were trying to find work but unable to do so. You know, they were away, and a three or four years hole in resume, and if they said they were in US custody, they often didn’t get the jobs they were seeking. We found that in fact six of the 62 former detainees only six had actually found meaningful employment. ...
[Link to audio and transcript] Full Story
13. Saturday Today: Bay area 20 years after Loma Prieta earthquake
NBC
October 17, 2009
Lester Holt, cohost: Twenty years ago today, October 17th, 1989, was a warm, sunny fall day in San Francisco, perfect weather for game three of the World Series. But the millions who tuned in for the pregame show on television instead bore witness to disaster, a 6.9 earthquake that shook the entire Bay area. It killed 63 people, injured over a--3,000 and caused around $6 billion in damage. It was just 15 seconds, but a lifetime for some who survived it....
Holt: Manmade earthquakes happen regularly in this UC BERKELEY LAB, where researchers are in a race against time to design structures and bridge supports that can ride out major quakes.
[UC BERKELEY] PROFESSOR BOZIDAR STOJADINOVIC (PACIFIC EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING RESEARCH CENTER): This research is for the next generation of bridges, the ones that are--that are going to be built in 10 or 15 years from now. And that's what we are trying to figure out, if there is another way....
[Link to video unavailable online]
14. Measuring quakes, deep in sea canyon
Seismometer feeds data to undersea network
Monterey Herald
October 17, 2009
When the Loma Prieta earthquake shook Monterey Bay in 1989, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute was in its infancy.
Twenty years later, it can boast a unique feat of engineering: the only underwater broadband seismometer west of the San Andreas Fault.
The Monterey Ocean Bottom Broadband seismometer measures and records earthquakes. It is 3,000 feet beneath the ocean's surface on a rocky ridge in the Monterey Canyon, 25 miles west of Moss Landing.
Connected to an undersea computer network, the Monterey Accelerated Research System, it transmits information directly to the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY. Scientists there use the information to help determine the precise magnitude and location of earthquakes that occur west of both the San Andreas and San Gregorio faults.... Full Story
15. CBS Evening News
CBS
October 18, 2009
... Russ Mitchell: Of course, sunlight is free. But installing solar panels to heat your home is beyond the means of many Americans. But if you live in California, Oregon, or Arizona, and other states, beginning next year, a bright idea can save you a bundle. Bill Whitaker explains.
...Bill Whitaker: Thanks to a hot idea sweeping the solar industry: leasing. Kathy Nalty gets solar panels free. The solar company charges her one hundred dollars a month for the fifteen-year lease, plus state and federal rebates for new solar systems, a couple of thousand dollars go to the company....
Jim Cahill (Solar City): Our biggest problem with customers was that they didn`t want to incur the upfront cost of solar....
PROFESSOR DANIEL KAMMEN (UC BERKELEY): Some of the deals out there right now allow you to essentially go solar right away and do so with a lower average utility bill than you got before, even though solar energy is actually still more expensive....
[Link to video unavailable online]
16. City Brights Blog: We did it before, let's do it again.
Here's how: California Dream 2.0
San Francisco Chronicle Online
October 19, 2009
Until 24 months ago, the furthest west I'd ever lived was Charlottesville, Va. In fact, I'd spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C., working in the Clinton Administration and, after that, at an organization called the Environmental Defense Fund. Then EDF sent me way out West....
Once viewed as the best of all possible worlds, California is often dismissed as a failed state -- locked in perpetual fiscal and political crisis, near the top in unemployment, near the bottom in education. ... Honestly, you'd think we're living through the death of the California Dream.
It sounds pretty grim, but there's potential great news hiding inside all the gloom. Californians' unhappiness with the status quo is precisely the fuel and spark we need to ignite California Dream 2.0 -- transformational environmental and economic change that can return California to its historic leadership in innovation, prosperity, upward mobility, opportunity and quality of life....
We've heard a lot about the "green jobs" created by good environmental policy. California's energy efficiency policies alone in the last 30 years helped create 1.5 million jobs, according to UC BERKELEY ECONOMIST DAVID ROLAND-HOLST.... Full Story
17. Concerns of jury influence helped move Mehserle case, experts say
Oakland Tribune
October 20, 2009
Oakland — Although changing venues for criminal trials has become a rarity in the state, a decision by an Alameda County judge last week to move the murder case against a former BART police officer was not a surprise, criminal law professors and attorneys in the field said Monday.
Professors and attorneys said community outrage against the Jan. 1. killing almost assured the trial would be moved.
"If there is ever a case you would expect a change of venue, it would be a case like this," said DAVID SKLANSKY, A PROFESSOR AT UC BERKELEY'S BOALT HALL SCHOOL OF LAW. "I don't think it was a shock."...
[This story also appeared in the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times] Full Story
18. What is the Age of Responsibility?
From sex to driving to juvenile justice to drinking, state and local laws send young people mixed messages about their own maturity. Is there a better way?
Governing
October 2009
Justin McNaull grew up in a hurry. By the time he was 23, McNaull had graduated from college, married and gone to work for his local police force in Virginia. But McNaull, now 36, still bristles at the memory of something he wasn’t allowed to do at 23: go down to the airport counter and rent a car. “I’d been involved in police pursuits at more than 100 mph,” he says, “and yet they still wouldn’t rent me a car.”...
While nearly every state recently has put new limits on teen drivers, no state has begun restricting—or even testing—elderly drivers, some of whom may, like teens, lack mastery of their vehicles. FRANKLIN ZIMRING, A UC BERKELEY LAW PROFESSOR, suggests that it’s easier to block youngsters from obtaining rights than it is to take away rights to which adults have grown accustomed. That’s because states aren’t really denying young people rights, Zimring says. They’re asking them to wait.... Full Story
19. Today: A Woman's Nation
Who does the housework?
MSNBC
October 20, 2009
[ANN O'LEARY, LAW PROFESSOR AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF UC BERKELEY'S CENTER FOR HEALTH, ECONOMIC & FAMILY SECURITY, appeared on this program. Link to video] Full Story
20. Corrections
San Francisco Chronicle
October 20, 2009
UC students defy slacker image with work to aid poor, Oct. 18, Insight
An Insight article about the BLUM CENTER ON POVERTY STUDIES AT UC BERKELEY misstated the hometown of PROFESSOR ANANYA ROY. She was born in Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta.
* * *
Flying high no more, Bears going by bus, Oct. 15, Sports, B2
A story saying that the CAL FOOTBALL TEAM would be traveling by bus to Los Angeles to save money gave an unfounded estimate for the cost savings. The actual savings have been requested of CAL'S ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT, which said it plans to announce the figure in the next week or two. Full Story