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Tuesday, 18 September 2012
1. Women Seen Unfit for Football as Men Run 97% of College Sports
San Francisco Chronicle
A full forty years after Title IX was implemented to guarantee equal athletic opportunities for men and women, Cal's Sandy Barbour is one of just four females among 120 athletic directors in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's top football division. “The numbers are really, really small,” she says. “Frankly, we’ve actually gone backward. At one point, there were eight of us.” Barbour, who has been in her position since 2004, says her men’s and women’s basketball supervisors, chief financial officer, and director of development all are women, and the department had $65.2 million in operating revenue in fiscal 2011, showing that women can handle football and revenue-related jobs. Full Story
2. California Prop 30 puts new social influence website to the test
PC Advisor [UK]
A new website called the Proposition 30 Awareness Project has been launched by Berkeley's CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative and AMP Lab to measure the influence of social networking in spreading knowledge about California Proposition 30 — a tax initiative aimed at preventing further cuts to education budgets. Full Story
3. Prop. 35 gets tough on human traffickers
San Francisco Chronicle
Law professor Barry Krisberg, a criminal justice expert, comments on Proposition 35, which aims to crack down on human trafficking in California, saying the increased penalties could simply drive the trade further underground at a time when more aid for victims is what is needed. "This just escalates penalties. … We've tried that for years, and it doesn't do any good. … It may well pass because it sounds good. Everybody's against sex trafficking." Full Story
4. UCLA/UC Berkeley Law Schools Release Report on Actions Necessary for Long-Term Mass Adoption of Electric Vehicles
Clean Technica
The environmental law centers at UCLA and Berkeley have issued a new policy report on the federal, state, and local actions necessary to ensure that California adopts electric vehicles by 2025. Full Story
5. NewsHour: Climate Change Skeptic Says Global Warming Crowd Oversells Its Message
PBS
An interview with a prominent climate change skeptic mentions research by Berkeley physics professor — and former skeptic — Richard Muller. Link to video. Full Story
6. The Achilles Heel
Inside Higher Ed
An article about the resignation of Holden Thorp, chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, notes that he's just one of many public university leaders — including Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau — who have announced since 2010 that they would be stepping down. According to the author: "Higher education observers say the widespread turnover — and occasional panic by boards — is indicative of broader shifts in the higher education landscape that are making the role of public university president increasingly difficult and different from any other job." Full Story
7. Household Income: Slip Slidin' Away
California Progress Report
Economics professor Sylvia Allegretto writes about the nationwide plunge in median household income from 2007 to 2011. She concludes: "Even as the economy is well into the fourth year of recovery, the shortfall in jobs is still greater in percentage terms today (-3.5%) than at the worst point of the 1981 recession (-3.1%). Incomes for typical households will not recover until the labor market does." Full Story
8. East China Sea Islands Dispute Rooted In Natural Resources, Nationalism
Neon Tommy
Political science professor T.J. Pempel comments on the increasingly heated dispute in China over the Japanese government's announced purchase of the East China Sea islands, to which Japan, China, and Taiwan each claim ownership. He explains the various claims, in terms of who first saw the area, who first mapped it, and how it has been administered. Ultimately, he says: "[Okinawa and Senkaku-Diaoyu] were not subject to much challenge by any other country including China until folks discovered there might be natural resources underneath it including oil and gas. … And Deng Xiaoping, the former Chinese leader, said that basically, [China] didn’t care about these islands until it discovered that there was the possibility it could get rich by controlling them.” Full Story
9. Lower 9th Ward flooding during Katrina caused by construction near floodwall, engineer says
Times-Picayune [New Orleans]
Civil engineering professor Robert Bea provided several hours worth of testimony in the federal trial determining who is to blame for the flooding of the Lower 9th Ward and parts of St. Bernard Parish during Hurricane Katrina. According to the story's author, "While the question of precisely how the flooding occurred may seem academic seven years after the flood, hundreds of millions of dollars could be at stake in the answer." An Associated Press story on this topic appeared in The Republic. Full Story
10. Franklin-McKinley launches middle-school career academy
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
Susan Tidyman, of the education school's Career Academy Support Network, comments on the trend of opening career academies at middle schools. "Our kids are growing up faster," she explains. "We have to find a way to get kids engaged in school. There is so much competition for learning." The key to success, she says, is to make an academy's theme broad enough to encompass a variety of jobs. Full Story
11. Louis Simpson, Poet of Everyday Life, Dies at 89
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louis Simpson has died. He was a professor at UC Berkeley in the 1950s and ’60s before joining the faculty of the University of New York at Stony Brook in 1967. Full Story
12. Explore the Wonders of Mathematics with "Math Midway" at UC Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science
Berkeleyside
Math Midway, an exhibit opening at the Lawrence Hall of Science on September 22, offers parents and kids opportunities for mathematical discoveries as they explore such things as lasers, harmongraphs, and square-wheeled tricycles. Full Story
13. Coughlin too fast for Olympic relay?
San Francisco Chronicle
Cal swimming coach Teri McKeever moonlit over the summer as head coach of the U.S. Olympic women's swimming team, with her crew winning 14 medals in London. However, her most accomplished swimmer — Cal alum Natalie Coughlin — only won one: a bronze from the prelims of the 4x100 freestyle relay. Coach McKeever's decision to eliminate Coughlin from the team for the relay final has caused many to wonder about the status of their relationship and Coughlin's swimming career. Full Story