News briefs

03 April 2002 |

Host a student at ‘Take Our Children to Work Day’; registration deadline is April 12
At the campus’s annual Take Our Children to Work Day, sheduled this year for April 25, parents will get to show their children what they do at work and all faculty and staff will have the opportunity to serve as hosts to local middle school students.

From 9 am to noon, the campus will welcome children and students to visit its wide variety of workplaces. Volunteer faculty and staff, as well as parents, will let the young visitors “job shadow” them for the morning. In addition, many campus departments will offer special exhibits and activities to showcase various careers and provide stimulating learning experiences.

Visitors and hosts are invited to Memorial Glade from noon to 1 p.m. — for food, fun and a chance to meet Cal athletes and Oski.

To register as a host or for information, go to www.urel.berkeley.edu/children, call 643-6781 or e-mail dmoreno@uclink.berkeley.edu. The deadline for registering in April 12. Departments interested in hosting an event may contact Erica Taylor at e_taylor@uclink.berkeley.edu.

Feedback sought on proposed policy on resolving discrimination complaints
The campus community is invited to comment on proposed procedures for resolving informal discrimination complaints. The deadline for feedback is April 30.

The proposed model incorporates elements of Berkeley’s successful policy on sexual harassment complaint resolution and best practices at sister campuses. The new procedure is designed to help reduce administrative support, claim settlement and legal costs and minimize loss of productivity to departments and units.

The process is available to non-represented and non-senate academic employees, managers, supervisors and administrators who need assistance in resolving issues that could lead to the filing of a formal grievance.

To read the proposed language, see www.berkeley.edu:5027/attachments/020304aatt.doc.
Send comments via e-mail to idcr@uclink.berkeley.edu or via campus mail to 641 University Hall, MC 1130.

UC recalls Education Abroad students in Israel
The University of California announced Tuesday that it is recalling to the United States its Education Abroad Program students currently studying in Israel, in view of the dramatically escalating violence in the Middle East. The decision affects 27 students enrolled in programs in Israel, seven of them from Berkeley.

The fall 2002 academic program in Israel will be placed on hold, pending a re-evaluation of security there. UC plans to leave in place the infrastructure and staff for the Israel program, in order to prepare for the eventual return of UC students.

In the past, the Education Abroad Program halted its activities in China following the Tiananmen Square massacre, in the Middle East during the Gulf War, and in Indonesia during civil uprisings. More recently, it did not permit students in its India programs at Delhi and Hyderabad to extend their studies into this year's spring term because of the military buildup and increasing hostilities between India and Pakistan.

Research briefs

Churchgoers live longer, researchers say
A new study provides more evidence that regular church attendance is linked to a longer, healthier life. Researchers found that people who attended religious services once a week had significantly lower risks of death compared with those who attended less frequently or never, even after adjusting for age, health behaviors and other risk factors.

“We found this difference even after adjusting for factors such as social connections and health behaviors, including smoking and exercising,” said Doug Oman, lead author of the study and a lecturer at the School of Public Health.

The researchers used data taken over 31 years from a longitudinal survey of 6,545 adult Alameda County residents.

“The picture that is developing is that religious activity is affecting health through several pathways,” said Oman.

Solar clothing may be on the horizon
Campus chemists have found a way to make cheap plastic solar cells flexible enough to paint onto any surface and potentially able to provide electricity for wearable electronics or other low-power devices. The group’s first crude solar cells have achieved efficiencies of 1.7 percent, far less than the 10 percent efficiencies of today’s standard commercial photovoltaics.

“Our efficiency is not good enough yet by about a factor of 10, but this technology has the potential to do a lot better,” said A. Paul Alivisatos, professor of chemistry and a member of the Materials Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “There is a pretty clear path for us to take to make this perform much better.”

“The beauty of this is that you could put solar cells directly on plastic, which has unlimited flexibility,” post-doc Janke Dittmer, one of the coauthors. “This opens up all sorts of new applications, like putting solar cells on clothing to power LEDs, radios or small computer processors.”

For the full version of these research stories, see www.berkeley.edu/ news/media/releases.