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Wednesday, 11 June 2008
1. Cal astrophysicist wins $1 million prize
Reinhard Genzel has spent decades hunting a black hole at our galaxy's center.
Oakland Tribune
June 11, 2008
UC BERKELEY ASTROPHYSICIST REINHARD GENZEL has won the $1 million Shaw Prize in astronomy for 2008 for his role in showing there's a gigantic black hole at our galaxy's center.
Genzel, both a Cal physics professor and director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, will be honored Sept. 9 at a ceremony in Hong Kong. He was unavailable for comment Tuesday.
Scientists in 1969 suggested the Milky Way might contain a supermassive black hole at its center, but couldn't support it because the galactic core is obscured by interstellar dust and could be detected only as a relatively faint radio source.
Genzel was a Cal post-doctoral fellow working with CHARLES TOWNES, NOW A CAL PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF PHYSICS and Nobel Laureate, when they first presented observations supporting the theory about 25 years ago....
Genzel and his colleagues nailed it down in 2002 by reporting a star's orbit around the galactic center, concluding it circled an object with the mass of 3 million stars like our sun, all tightly packed into an area less than our solar system's size. Other teams have confirmed this, but "Reinhard was first and has done the best work," Townes said....
UC BERKELEY THEORETICAL ASTROPHYSICIST ELIOT QUATAERT said Genzel's group "has continued to make quite remarkable strides, both in observing the orbits of stars around the black hole, which has provided evidence beyond any reasonable doubt that there is a black hole at the center of the galaxy, and then also pushing forward in trying to get observations of the emission from the gas that is spiraling into the black hole."...
Annual Shaw Prizes in astronomy, mathematics and life sciences have been awarded since 2004, funded by Hong Kong businessman Run Run Shaw. Genzel is the third Cal astrophysicist to have received the astronomy prize: PHYSICS PROFESSOR SAUL PERLMUTTER, a Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory staff scientist, shared it in 2006, and ASTRONOMY PROFESSOR GEOFFREY MARCY shared it in 2005. Also, the late SHIING-SHEN CHERN, THEN A CAL PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF MATHEMATICS, won the 2004 Shaw Prize in mathematics.
[This story also appeared in the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times] Full Story
2. Protests at UC animal-lab workers' homes
San Francisco Chronicle
June 11, 2008
Officials have been trying to keep it quiet, but 24 UC BERKELEY RESEARCHERS and seven staffers have been harassed by animal rights activists in recent months, in some cases having their homes or cars vandalized.
"What they all have in common is that they all work in animal research," UC BERKELEY SPOKESMAN ROBERT SANDERS said of the targeted employees.
In several instances, the activists have shown up outside researchers' homes in the middle of the night with bullhorns and chanting, "Animal killers." Sometimes they have scrawled slogans on the sidewalk in chalk.
On more than one occasion, rocks have been thrown through the researchers' windows and their cars have been scratched up.
"Sometimes (the activists) go up to the door," Sanders said, "which can be very frightening to the family."...
Thirteen researchers have been harassed on more than one occasion, authorities said. One researcher, who studies how cat brains work for epilepsy research, has reported seven incidents at his home.
No specific group has been identified as being behind the harassment.... Full Story
3. Fatal Mine Collapse Covered 50 Acres
Science Daily
June 3, 2008
New calculations show that the deadly Crandall Canyon mine collapse -- which registered as a magnitude-3.9 earthquake -- began near where miners were excavating coal and quickly grew to a 50-acre cave-in, University of Utah seismologists say in a report on the tragedy.
The University of Utah Seismograph Stations estimated the size of the collapse is about four times larger than was thought shortly after the time of the Aug. 6, 2007, disaster that resulted in the deaths of six miners and, 10 days later, three rescuers....
Seismologists recalculated the epicenter of the magnitude-3.9 mine collapse, and found it "was within the mine boundary and very close to where the miners were working," says the study's lead author, seismologist Jim Pechmann, a research associate professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah Seismograph Stations....
Soon after the Aug. 6 collapse, Utah seismologists gained support from UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory seismologists, who said their analysis of the seismic recordings revealed implosive, downward movement -- like a mine collapse and not like shearing motion along a fault.
The California seismologists also have submitted a report of their work to Seismological Research Letters. Pechmann says the new Berkeley paper shows that while seismic waves from the Aug. 6 mine collapse are incompatible with a natural earthquake, about 20 percent of the seismic energy released came from vertical shearing motion.... Full Story
4. NewsHour: Obama Breaks Political Ground En Route to Nomination
PBS
June 4, 2008
...Gwen Ifill: When Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination last night, he instantly added a new page to the nation's history books....
MARIA ECHAVESTE, LECTURER IN RESIDENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY LAW SCHOOL, she served as assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff in the Bill Clinton White House.
Gwen Ifill: Maria Echaveste, you just heard Congressman Clyburn talk about the 60-year arc of history. You obviously were or are a Hillary Clinton supporter. Do you think that some of the bad feelings left over in the wake of this very close race might obscure some of the progress that's been made or exacerbate some of the divisions that exist?
Maria Echaveste, former Clinton administration White House official: Well, I think it has been a long haul, but there's no question that it is historic. And I would submit that it will really be historic, the kind of page turning, when he wins in November.
And that is what I'm most concerned about, that we begin to try to heal the party and particularly focus on those parts of the electorate, for example, Hispanic voters, who are going to have to get to know Senator Obama so we can be sure that he wins in November....
[Link to video and audio] Full Story
5. Judge Orders Ohio to Alter Its Method of Execution
New York Times (*requires registration)
June 11, 2008
Ohio must stop using a common combination of three chemicals to execute condemned inmates because they may produce excruciating pain, a state court judge there ruled Tuesday....
The decision is an exception to recent judicial trends in the wake of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in April in Baze v. Rees, which upheld Kentucky’s lethal injection protocol, similar to the one used in Ohio....
The Ohio judge, James M. Burge of the Lorain County Court of Common Pleas in Elyria, appeared to concede that a constitutional challenge to the Ohio protocol would fail under Baze. Judge Burge based his decision instead on an Ohio law requiring that lethal injections use “a drug or combination of drugs of sufficient dosage to quickly and painlessly cause death.”...
ELISABETH A. SEMEL, THE DIRECTOR OF THE DEATH PENALTY CLINIC AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, welcomed Judge Burge’s ruling.
“It is likely to reduce the risk of executions that cause suffocation and excruciating pain,” Professor Semel said.... Full Story
6. Crime Rates Shown to Be Falling
Lastest figures show a reversal of an upward tick, but the picture remains complicated
U.S. News & World Report
June 11, 2008
It was an alarming trend. In 2005 and 2006 violent crime began to creep up again. With growing economic uncertainty and hundreds of thousands of convicts leaving prison each year, law enforcement officials began to warn that the country might be headed for a reprise of the crime wave of the late 1980s and early '90s."There are those that say this is a statistical blip, an aberration," Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum told the Associated Press at the time. "After two years, this is no aberration."...
Unlike in the late 1980s and '90s, when the crack epidemic sent crime rates up across the board, there "isn't a consistent set of national trends" these days, says FRANK ZIMRING, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY'S BOALT HALL SCHOOL OF LAW.... Full Story
7. Marketplace Op-Ed: More demand shaping global reality
Many people are looking for someone or something to blame for rising prices in food and fuel. Commentator Robert Reich says a rapidly growing middle class is demanding these things faster than they can be produced.
NPR
June 11, 2008
...Robert Reich: The cost of food and fuel are soaring, not just in the U.S. but all over the globe. The world's poor are suffering the most -- culminating in riots and starvation -- but price hikes are eroding living standards in advanced nations as well....
You see, hundreds of millions of people in China and India and the former Soviet republics are ascending into the middle class at a rate never before seen in history. And the two items this huge, rapidly-growing middle class want most are cars and meat....
The answer to all this lies mainly in increasing the supply of food and fuels. And both will depend on two kinds of green research -- into more productive and sustainable agriculture, and into more efficient and sustainable fuels.
In other words, we're in a race between a new generation of biotechnology and non-carbon-based energy technology, on the one hand, and rising political and economic conflict on the other. And the global clock is ticking ominously fast.
[Link to audio] Full Story
8. J-School Confidential
Editor & Publisher
June 1, 2008
Since Claire Harlin became editor of The Daily Texan in June 2007, the University of Texas' student newspaper has added a six-person multimedia team and two more bloggers -- and expanded its use of audio and video to at least one offering per day. "That's how students get most of their news," says Harlin, 24, a senior majoring in journalism and Latin American studies....
Contrary to what many may fear, there is still a great number of J-school students who hope to land a job at a newspaper, although they realize the format is forever changing -- and job security has been diminished....
NEIL HENRY, DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, agrees. "Newspapers are still a passion of a significant number of our students," he says of his program, which includes some 120 enrollees each year. But that percentage, he notes, is on the decline: "When I started teaching 15 years ago, 50% to 75% of students were desiring careers in newspapers. Now that is down to one-third, with one-third in multimedia and the rest in magazine, broadcasting, and documentary [work]."
He adds that "the pressures of teaching students to stay technologically current has ratcheted up a great deal."...
[Link by subscription only]
9. Changing world of commencement speakers
San Francisco Chronicle
June 11, 2008
On Sunday morning, America's most famous media personality and philanthropist will take the podium at Stanford Stadium to deliver a commencement speech to the class of 2008. Oprah Winfrey's charge is nothing less than to inspire an elite segment of the next generation to go forth and change the world....
Traditionally, commencement speakers have been politicians, scholars or business leaders. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt gave the keynote address to graduates at UC BERKELEY....
LEON LITWACK, THE UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY EMERITUS - who delivered commencement speeches [at Mills College] in 1981 and 2001, urging graduates to "think in terms of a life of activism" - said that by far the best graduation speeches he's read are by playwrights.
Litwack said that David Mamet in 2004 at the University of Vermont and Tony Kushner in 2002 at Vassar College "each used their vast knowledge and imagination to speak to the needs and the challenges of the present. They addressed a problem we face - that is, whatever party is in power, it is corporate power that really rules....
On May 13, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark gave the commencement convocation at the Greek Theatre at UC Berkeley. "This is a genuine honor, though I do feel in my gut this must be the result of a clerical error," he said in opening his remarks.
There's just one thing ...
If his tone was jocular, his main message - "get out there and vote" - was in earnest. "There's a favor I'm going to ask of you," he said. "We're going to need a lot of smart people in Washington to rebuild a lot of things.... Full Story
10. Oakland bishop calls for defeat of same-sex marriage
Contra Costa Times (*requires registration)
June 11, 2008
The leader of East Bay Catholics has gone beyond an accommodating message on same-sex marriages from bishops statewide to urge his parishioners to change the law.
"As faithful citizens, Catholics are called to bring our laws regarding marriage into conformity with what we know about the nature of marriage," said Bishop Allen Vigneron, head of the Oakland Diocese....
"We can have different perspectives in Catholicism, and the bishop is entitled to his," said ANTONIO SALAS, LEADER OF THE UC BERKELEY NEWMAN CENTER LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER CATHOLICS... Full Story