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Friday, 22 February 2013
1. UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco, Stanford get $3.75M grant to spur innovation
San Francisco Business Times
A regional consortium of UC Berkeley, UCSF, and Stanford has been given a three-year, $3.75 million grant from the National Science Foundation to collaborate on the promotion and commercialization of innovative ideas. Dean Richard Lyons, of Berkeley's business school, will direct the program along with entrepreneurship lecturer Steve Blank. Another story on this topic appeared in Xconomy. Full Story
2. Morning Edition: Commission's Report Outlines Education Priorities
NPR
Dean Christopher Edley, of Berkeley's law school, joins a discussion of a new report on the growing achievement gap by the federally chartered Equity and Excellence Commission, of which Dean Edley is a member. Noting that only one in five American students is performing at the average level of other leading countries, he says: "What we tend to think of as good enough..." isn't good enough. Money matters, "but it's not only about money." It's about how it's spent and what we do with our resources. The US "can really catapult forward if we make equity -- and the narrowing of achievement discrepancies -- a guiding principle." Link to audio. Full Story
3. Schools of Thought Blog: Not all preschools are created equal
CNN Online
Public policy professor David Kirp, author of the forthcoming book Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America's Schools, writes: "Kudos to the president -- his call for preschool for every 4-year-old, in the State of the Union address, is a bold and visionary idea. It’s what those who understand the power of early education to unlock children’s minds have been urging for years. It’s what I promoted when I served on the 2008 presidential transition team. But -- and it’s a very big but -- whether universal prekindergarten really makes a difference in children’s lives or turns out to be a false hope depends entirely on the quality of what’s being offered." Full Story
4. Brown may forge alliance with GOP governors on health plan
Los Angeles Times
Governor Jerry Brown and some of his Republican counterparts around the country are finding themselves in unexpected agreement on the issue of President Obama's Affordable Care Act, seeing it as a potential solution to their states' healthcare woes. A recent Berkeley study projected that by 2019 California will add about 1.4 million people to its Medi-Cal program, and Brown has said: "The ultimate costs of expanding our healthcare system under the Affordable Care Act are unknown. Ignoring such known unknowns would be folly." Full Story
5. Harvard Freshman Applications for 2013-2014 Rise 2.1% to Record
San Francisco Chronicle
Harvard, like Berkeley and other selective universities, has seen a significant increase in freshman applications this year, stirred in part by growing interest from international students. Full Story
6. Bottom Line Blog: Students Converge for National Conference on Fossil-Fuel Divestment
Chronicle of Higher Education Online
Students at colleges and universities nationwide are urging divestment from fossil-fuel companies, and student organizers are meeting this weekend in Pennsylvania to try to unify the effort. At Berkeley, the student government passed a bill this month calling for divestment of its assets. According to Nolan Pack, a student senator and an author of the bill, the association has $3-million to $4-million in total assets, with just over $1-million in investments. The bill also calls for the campus and UC system to follow suit. Full Story
7. Negligence at heart of BP gulf spill trial
Financial Times (*requires registration)
BP and the other companies involved in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster are scheduled to appear in court in New Orleans on Monday for what this reporter calls the "largest and most complex trial this century." The first witness will be Berkeley civil engineering professor emeritus Bob Bea, an expert on the safety of marine equipment, who has been called by lawyers for the private sector plaintiffs. Full Story
8. Flame retardant-free furniture rare, costly
San Francisco Chronicle
Arlene Blum, a visiting chemistry professor and executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute, is a fan of Ekla Home and other cusom furniture-makers specializing in couches made without the flame retardants of mass market couches. Dr. Blum is on a mission to regulate flame retardants, since research, including her own, has shown that the chemicals are linked to various health hazards, including cancer, infertility, developmental delays, and lower IQs in children. The chemicals are ineffective at protecting against fire as well. Full Story
9. Watch This 'Sprawl-Tuned' Insect Bot Skitter All Over The Place
IEEE Spectrum
Berkeley's Biomimetic Millisystems Lab has posted a video of a new, six-legged robot called STAR, for Sprawl-Tuned Autonomous Robot. The tiny mechanism can adapt its limbs to scramble over and under obstacles and run along smooth and rough surfaces. It was developed by postdoctoral researcher David Zarrouk, graduate researchers Andrew Pullin and Nick Kohut, and associate electrical engineering professor Ronald Fearing, the lab's director. Link to video. Full Story
10. Quest Blog: The Animal Kingdom's Otherworldly Ancestors
KQED Online
A new book co-authored by Berkeley paleontology and paleobiology professor emeritus Jim Valentine and titled The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity explains how we're all descended from sea sponges. “The fauna has a very weird look to it,” Valentine says. “It looks like these things are from another planet. Some seem eerily familiar because they do belong to major categories of animals that are still with us.” Full Story
11. Rare octopus breeding in Alameda bedroom
San Francisco Chronicle
Along with an Academy of Sciences colleague, integrative biology professor Roy Caldwell, a specialist in aquatic evolution, is breeding and studying rare Larger Pacific Striped Octopuses, hoping someday to study them in the wild as well. Professor Caldwell calls them "the most beautiful octopuses I have ever seen" and unusually social. "They can cohabitate in pairs, the females can lay clutches of eggs again and again, and they sometimes share the same den, while groups of them are reported to live in colonies of 40 or more individuals. ... They are the only octopuses known to mate 'beak to beak' -- a position that may be viewed as dangerous considering their cannibalistic nature," he says, noting that female cephalopods often devour their mates after mating. "Even so, they seem to be rather pretty sexy," he said. Full Story