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Friday, 6 November 2009
1. UC Berkeley faculty endorse cut in athletic aid
San Francisco Chronicle
November 6, 2009
UC BERKELEY PROFESSORS voted Thursday night to urge the school to stop subsidizing its money-losing athletics department as soon as it legally can.
The university is facing a $150 million deficit this year, but plans to pay $7.7 million to help the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics make ends meet, in addition to loaning the department an additional $5.8 million.
The university Faculty Senate voted 91-68 in favor of a resolution that calls for an immediate end to the loans and subsidies. But those payments are unlikely to stop any time soon, said CHANCELLOR ROBERT BIRGENEAU.
Contracts with the athletics department won't expire for several more years, and that means the university will continue to help the department stay afloat, Birgeneau told reporters at the Faculty Senate meeting....
However, Birgeneau said he and other university leaders would work to develop a plan toward self-sufficiency of the department. Indicating that this could include cuts to athletic teams, Birgeneau said "everything is on the table."...
"The university is about values of scholarship, teaching and the arts, not swimming, running and haute cuisine," said MICHAEL O'HARE, A PROFESSOR AT CAL'S GOLDMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY. "Our classrooms are a disgrace. They're the worst I've ever taught in."
[An Associated Press version of this story appeared in more than 100 sources nationwide, including the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Sacramento Bee. Other stories appeared in the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, and Chronicle of Higher Education Online (Link by subscription only)] Full Story
2. Forum with Michael Krasny: UC Berkeley's Sports Budget
KQED Radio
November 6, 2009
As California's universities face increasing budget shortfalls, some professors at UC BERKELEY insist that subsidizing intercollegiate athletics should be stopped immediately. Others argue that to do so would have drastic consequences for campus life. We discuss the issue, and options for resolving athletic and academic funding.
Guests:
* ALICE AGOGINO, PROFESSOR OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING AT UC BERKELEY and a leading voice in the 'Academics First' group
* Amy Perko, executive director of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics
* BRIAN BARSKY, PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND VISION SCIENCE AT UC BERKELEY and a leading voice in the 'Academics First' group
* DAN MOGULOF, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS FOR UC BERKELEY
* SANDY BARBOUR, DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS FOR UC BERKELEY
[Link to audio forthcoming. Other broadcast stories on this topic aired on KCBS Radio (link to audio) and KGO TV (link to video)] Full Story
3. UC Campuses Dominate Rankings
UCSB Scores Well by Many Measures
Santa Barbara Independent
November 5, 2009
While UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA STUDENTS AND FACULTY were worrying about budget cuts, The Institute for Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China was compiling its 2009 college rankings, which place UC Santa Barbara 35th in the world among both public and private universities. Seven UC campuses placed in the top 50. UC BERKELEY ranks third, with UCLA, UC San Diego, and UC San Francisco following at 13th, 14th and 18th, respectively. The others in the top 50 are UC Irvine and UC Davis.
University of California campuses hold strong positions in various other rankings as well. According to U.S. News and World Report, the medical centers at UCLA and UC San Francisco are among America’s top ten hospitals. UC Berkeley and UCLA are the top two best public universities in the country, respectively, according to the magazine’s 2010 Best Colleges: Public Schools rankings. UCSD, UC Davis, UCSB and UC Irvine all follow close behind, in the top 15.
The Washington Monthly selected UC Berkeley, UCSD, and UCLA as the top three universities nationwide. UCSB follows at number 21, among the seven UC campuses in the top 50. The Washington Monthly compiles its rankings with a primary emphasis on social mobility, research, and service – criteria they believe are good for the community and the country, not just the student.
The Arizona State University Center for Measuring University Performance’s Top American Research Universities ranks U.S. research universities based on nine specific measures. UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSF, UCSD, UC Davis and UCSB all ranked in the top 25 for at least one measure; UC Berkeley and UCLA hold the distinction of being ranked in the top 25 in all measures.
PayScale.com, a Seattle firm that compiles rankings based on how much alumni earn, placed six UC campuses among the top 20 U.S. colleges: UC Berkeley, UCSD, UCSB, UCLA, UC Davis, and UC Irvine produce alumni that earn the most.
...[While] financial turmoil slowly erodes University of California campuses from the inside out, at least to this point, in relation to colleges worldwide, UC has been thriving. Full Story
4. Supernova fits into a new class
San Francisco Chronicle
November 6, 2009
San Francisco -- A bizarre exploding star that left its embers glowing invisibly in the distant sky seemed just like one of hundreds that flash into existence all the time - until one sharp-eyed astronomer noticed its unusual spectral details.
The record examined by DOVI POZNANSKI, A UC BERKELEY RESEARCHER, revealed that the short-lived but violent cosmic explosion in a far-off galaxy 135 million light-years away could be an entirely new class of supernovae - briefly flaring blasts that first astonished ancient Chinese astronomers with their startling brilliance in 135 A.D. and have remained an object of astronomical wonder ever since.
This unique supernova, dubbed SN2002bj, was the first one found that was apparently caused when helium gas flowed from one tiny but immensely massive white dwarf star to another dwarf star orbiting close by. The result was a true thermonuclear explosion that died away in days rather than months, the Berkeley astronomers said, and its formation differed sharply from standard supernova models.
POZNANSKI, A POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER, was reviewing supernova records six months ago when he spotted the unusual nature of SN2002bj and realized it was no run-of-the-mill cosmic blast. He and his colleagues reported the details of the blast's peculiarities in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science....
[UPI, Space.com, Scientific Computing, ABC (Australia), and the Jerusalem Post also issued stories on this topic] Full Story
5. Research: Searching for Answers
New York Times (*requires registration)
November 6, 2009
Among the hundreds of current research projects in the Bay Area, some may solve problems crucial to local industries, like clean tech and bio-tech. Others focus on possible disaster, like the collapse of the Sacramento Delta levees in an earthquake....
LEVEES
From Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to the flood that inundated the Midwest last year, ROBERT BEA, A CIVIL ENGINEER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, has crossed the country to study levee failures. But when he looked closer to home he found the signs of a looming disaster.
“When I look at New Orleans and then turn and look at the Sacramento Delta, it’s eerie,” Professor Bea told an environmental journal last year. “The delta, with jury-rigged levees, is on the verge of collapse.”
The professor and a team studying the Sacramento Delta’s decades-old levees warn that one devastating earthquake could cause a chain reaction of breaches that would flood huge swaths of Central Valley farmland and knock out the Bay Area’s water supply.
In January, the team got $2 million from the National Science Foundation for a four-year study of the delta’s infrastructure. Full Story
6. Unemployment rate rises above 10% ; Obama signs jobless benefit extension
The jobless rate rose to 10.2% in October from 9.8% in September -- first time in the double digits since 1983. Employers cut 190,000 jobs last month, although the pace of job losses continues to slow
Los Angeles Times
November 6, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- As the nation's unemployment rate surged to 10.2% in October, reaching double digits for the first time in 26 years, President Obama signed a measure today providing additional aid for the jobless as well as expanding and extending a home buyer tax credit to help spur economic growth....
"It's an important political threshold," said ROBERT REICH, the former Labor secretary in the Clinton administration who now TEACHES AT THE UC BERKELEY. With the midterm elections looming next year, he said, "the 10% is going to give Republicans more ammunition to criticize the [Obama] administration and force the hand of the administration to at least appear to be taking additional steps to remedy the situation."... Full Story
7. Economix Blog: Jobs Report: Economists React
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
November 6, 2009
...The American unemployment rate rose to 10.2 percent in October, the highest level in more than 26 years, according to a report by the Labor Department on Friday. Here is how economists and other analysts reacted:
“If you had told everyone last Election Day what would happen, economically, in 2009, what policies would they have adopted then to stem this disaster? And why aren’t we implementing those policies now?” — BRAD DELONG, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY... Full Story
8. Op-Ed: New Business, Not Small Business, Is What Creates Jobs
Nearly all net job creation since 1980 occurred in firms less than five years old.
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
November 6, 2009
While a slight improvement over last month's numbers, today's employment update from the Bureau of Labor Statistics presents a dismal picture for American workers. As policy makers search for the best remedies to strengthen our economic performance, they can't afford to overlook new firms and young firms....
There are countless new businesses sparking job creation throughout the U.S. economy. But countless other young companies never expand or even get off the ground because of regulatory and economic barriers.
Policy makers should be eliminating these barriers and creating incentives to foster the creation and growth of new businesses. Four measures to do so stand out:
• Welcome immigrants seeking scientific training at our universities. Researchers at Duke University and the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, found that between 1995 and 2005 immigrants founded or co-founded 25% of all U.S. high-tech firms and accounted for 24% of international patent applications from the U.S. in 2006....
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
9. World’s Central Banks Signal End to Policy ‘Largesse’
Bloomberg
November 6, 2009
The world’s biggest central banks are starting to unwind emergency measures introduced earlier this year to stave off a second Great Depression....
The moves suggest that investors and executives will soon have to do without the flood of liquidity that propped up the economy earlier this year, as concerns about new asset bubbles start to mount. The danger is that mistiming the withdrawal of support could spark swings in currencies and spoil a recovery before it has taken root....
“Bubbles, frothy stock markets and booming property prices are not a problem in the U.S., U.K. or continental Europe at the moment,” said BARRY EICHENGREEN, a former senior policy adviser at the International Monetary Fund who now TEACHES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY. “They are a problem for China and other emerging markets. It’s their central banks that need to tighten, not ours.”... Full Story
10. Look Who's Hiring Now: Inquire Within
Forbes Magazine
November 16, 2009
It's really bad out there. But, sensing opportunity, companies across America are starting to hire again....
Slowly signs of life are starting to sprout in the bleakest job market in a generation. No question, it's still awful out there and will probably get worse. ...
Worse--for those out of work, anyway--is the fact that productivity typically rises during a recession. The more employers can squeeze out of their existing staffs (and the harder employees work to keep their jobs), the less likely companies are to hire....
Then there are powerful psychological drags on hiring. "We're seeing a classic case of behavioral conservatism," says JONATHAN BURGSTONE, WHO RUNS UC, BERKELEY'S CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP & TECHNOLOGY. Most companies don't feel comfortable adding to their payrolls unless they see competitors doing the same, he reasons. "They require much more proof than is necessary to convince themselves that hiring is the right thing to do." Especially if, only months earlier, they've laid off people or shuttered factories.... Full Story
11. End State: Is California finished?
New Republic
October 26, 2009
California is a mess, but I love it all the same--especially the Bay Area, where I lived for 15 years. I went to Berkeley in 1962--a refugee from Amherst College, which at that time was dominated by frat boys with high SAT scores. I didn't go to Berkeley to go to school, but to be a bus ride away from North Beach and the Jazz Workshop. In a broader sense, I went to California for the same reason that other émigrés had been going since the 1840s. I was knocking on the Golden Door....
But could California's days as a politico-cultural vanguard and economic bellwether be coming to an end?...
Last month, California's unemployment rate hit 12.2 percent, ... And its educational system, which former University of California president Clark Kerr described as "bait to be dangled in front of industry," is riven by conflict and reeling from budget cuts. Is this déjà vu all over again, or has the California dream finally become a nightmare? There are troubling signs. ...
The bald, bespectacled Kerr, a labor economist, had a stormy tenure as university president--he was denounced by students as a technocrat who wanted to turn the university into a service center for the military-industrial complex, and by conservatives for refusing to crack down on the student rebels--but he turns out to have been one of the country's great educators. The Master Plan he devised in 1960 for California's higher education, which Brown got the legislature to adopt, represented a high-water mark of American progressivism and of the California dream. Kerr's idea was that every Californian who graduated from high school should be able to attend college. High school graduates in the top 12.5 percent of their class were to be admitted to the university system, headed by BERKELEY and ucla. Students in the top third could go to one of the state colleges, and any graduate could gain admission to a community college from which, after graduation, he or she could transfer easily to a four-year college. Community college was virtually free, and the state universities charged very modest fees--$80 per semester when I attended Berkeley. (We of the New Left objected to the tracking implicit in Kerr's system--we insisted, in effect, that everyone should be able to go to Berkeley--but we had a vision of America that bore no resemblance to existing reality.)... Full Story
12. Clinton Sees Families of Hikers Detained in Iran
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
November 5, 2009
Washington (AP) -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had an emotional meeting on Thursday with the families of three American hikers detained in Iran since late July and renewed appeals to Iranian authorities to release them.
Clinton met at the State Department with the families of SHANE BAUER, SARAH SHOURD and JOSH FATTAL and said afterward that as a parent herself, she sympathized with them. She said the U.S. government is doing everything it can to get the trio released and called on Iran to free them on humanitarian and compassionate grounds....
''I was impressed by their strength and fortitude and commitment. They are determined, as we are, to see these young people returned home,'' she said. ''As a mother, my heart went out to all of them. I cannot imagine what it would feel like to know that your child was imprisoned, for now 100 days, with very little contact between you and them.''...
Bauer, Shourd and Fattal were arrested July 31 after straying over the Iranian border while hiking in northern Iraq. ALL ARE GRADUATES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. The U.S. government and their families have said they were vacationing and did not mean to cross the border....
[This story appeared in more than 100 sources nationwide] Full Story
13. Currents: Virtual Classrooms Could Create a Marketplace for Knowledge
New York Times (*requires registration)
November 7, 2009
Cambridge, Massachusetts — In the autumn of 1963, the American magazine Popular Mechanics heralded an innovation that seemed bound to change the world: the “teacherless classroom.”...
Fate and technology have pummeled many professions since 1963, from bookseller to travel agent to auto worker. But teachers have resisted the powerful forces reorganizing industry. The dream of the teacherless classroom has remained just that.
Today the dream has returned. Thanks to broadening Internet access, advances in multimedia and the market potential of millions of historically underserved learners among the developing world’s youth and the rich world’s adults, modern versions of the doughnut building are flowering globally: systems through which chunks of teaching can be “scaled up,” in business jargon, and beamed to hundreds of thousands worldwide.
The Open Courseware Consortium, started by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has enlisted universities around the world, from the University of the Western Cape in South Africa to the University of Tokyo, to post courses online free, including professor’s notes, video and exams. The portal iTunes offers lectures from BERKELEY and Oxford and elsewhere.... Full Story
14. Money Builder Blog: Could You Afford a Home in Your College Town?
Forbes Online
November 6, 2009
In a new article from Forbes, Stephane Fitch identifies the most and least expensive college towns to own a home in. Those who go to school in the Midwest have the best chance of buying a home while still in college. College towns with cheap real estate include Akron, Ohio (where the average home costs $121,800) and Ann Arbor, Michigan (where the average home costs $148,000). If the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit is extended, some college students could use the credit to make up half of their down payment.
Those who go to school on the West Coast aren’t as lucky. Seattle is home to the University of Washington and to corporate giants like Starbucks and Microsoft, which may explain why the average home there costs $558,300. Students in the Bay Area can only dream of buying a home. The average home in Palo Alto, where Stanford University, Google, and Hewlett-Packard are located, costs $1,489,700. Across the Bay, the average home in BERKELEY is a relative bargain at $1,299,700.... Full Story
15. Steven Chu: The Nerd in the Cabinet
Reuters
November 6, 2009
Once a professor, always a professor.
STEVEN CHU, the energy secretary, winner of the Nobel Prize and FORMER PHYSICS TEACHER AT BERKELEY, spoke tonight at a Washington fundraising dinner for Conservation International, the global NGO.
Actually, he delivered a lecture, deploying a long, detailed PowerPoint presentation, with charts and graphs explaining temperature fluctuations over decades, rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere over the last 800,000 years, changes in sea levels, payback for investments in energy efficiency, even a diagram of a new battery technology that included this caption:
Battery about to charged: Positive Mg ions and negative Sb ions are dissolved in electrolyte (green)
Battery fully charged: Mg (blue) and SB (yellow) become the anode and cathode
It was another one of those all-too-frequent moments when I wish I had taken more science classes in college. And remembered why I hadn't.
By coincidence, Michele Obama visited the energy department earlier in the day and said, "My husband loves his Cabinet. He was extremely excited that he had a real nerd on his team. He talked about it for weeks on end."
It's easy to see why the cerebral president and his brainy energy secretary would bond.... Full Story
16. Blog: Scientific song and dance
The Scientist
November 5, 2009
What started as a creative idea for a video contest about nanotechnology is now growing into a full-fledged science music video production team. Composed of FOUR UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKLEY, STUDENTS AND ONE ALUMNUS, The Sounds of Science is making a quite a splash with its Broadway-style musical numbers, which enliven the realities of the laboratory through song, dance, and puppetry....
The group created their first video, "Nano Nano," as an entry to the American Chemical Society's (ACS) NanoTube Contest, which called for video submissions to answer the question, "What is 'nano?'" The contest offered $500 cash prizes to winners of the "Critic's Choice," judged by an ACS panel, and "People's Choice," determined by popular vote. Nano Nano won in both categories. Their second video, "The Safety Song," which made its YouTube premier last month, has already accumulated more than 30,000 hits. Both videos feature handmade puppets as hungry-minded students and GLORY LIU as their patient, and musically gifted, teacher.
Kirsten Sanford, a science communicator at the Science Channel, sees potential for these videos in the classroom. "I think that the songs are catchy, and they're definitely the type of thing that can increase kids' interest in science and make it look fun and not intimidating." ...
Indeed, while The Sounds of Science hopes to reach audiences of all ages, the group's motivation for making their music video about lab safety arose during a summer program for high schoolers. Three of the group members who worked at the camp were required to give a safety lecture to the kids. "We joked, 'Wouldn't it be funny if we had a song for this? We wouldn't have to give the lecture!'" recalls group member RYAN MIYAKAWA, A FIFTH-YEAR GRAD STUDENT IN THE APPLIED SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM AT UC, BERKLEY. "We had a lot of fun doing the nano song, so we thought, 'Well, we'll just give it a shot.'" ...
In addition to winning the ACS contest for which it was made, Nano Nano received 3rd place in Wired Science's Top 10 Scientific Music Videos and has been featured in a number of popular science news outlets, including a Nature blog and Scientific American. The group says they have ideas for future videos, and plans to use what's left of their ACS winnings to bring them to life. ...
[Link to videos] Full Story