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Monday, 20 September 2010
1. Editorial: UC Berkeley's sports dilemma
San Francisco Chronicle
September 18, 2010
Credit CAL with taking up a third-rail topic: the runaway costs of college sports. After trimming academics, the campus heeded an outcry and ordered up a study on its ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT.
The fix-it suggestions include the usual: more fundraising, better management and a call for thrift in the face of a $10 million-and-rising yearly deficit. There's another idea in the report written by ALUMNI AND FACULTY LEADERS: Consider cutting five to seven teams from Berkeley's roster of 27 sports squads.
Campus higher-ups may make a decision within the next two weeks on cutting teams. If it happens, it will be an emotional, complicated but necessary calculation. Sports knit the campus together. Headlines and broadcasts give Cal visibility. Check-writing alums start out donating to athletics, but later contribute bigger sums to academic causes and building projects. These benefits can't be ignored.
But a hard look at Cal athletics turned up problems. The yearly deficit can't be defended while faculty and staff face furloughs and wage freezes, student fees rise, and operations sink to the point where campus buildings have 63 roof leaks and the grounds have a single gardener to mow lawns....
The final result isn't clear. But Berkeley is taking an informed approach on an emotion-laden topic. Full Story
2. Video: UK Animators Use Cellphone and Microscope To Film Smallest Stop-Motion Animation Ever
Popular Science
September 20, 2010
Using a Nokia N8 smartphone and a CellScope, the team behind the Wallace & Gromit series has made the world’s smallest stop-motion animation film.
Follow 0.35-inch-tall Dot as she runs through an obstacle course made of British currency, rides a bumblebee and stitches her way out of trouble. The music is catchy too....
Directors Ed Patterson and Will Studd attached a CellScope (winner of a PopSci Best of What's New award in 2008) to a Nokia N8 12-megapixel camera to film Dot’s struggle in her microscopic world. They said Nokia commissioned them to make the film in celebration of CellScope’s potential to improve medicine in the developing world.
CellScope is the brainchild of DANIEL FLETCHER, A BIOENGINEER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY, who combined a cellphone camera with a 50x magnification microscope.
[Link to video] Full Story
3. Perceptual Learning In Healthy Adults Boosted By Alzheimer's Drug
Medical News Today
September 20, 2010
Research on a drug commonly prescribed to Alzheimer's disease patients is helping NEUROSCIENTISTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, better understand perceptual learning in healthy adults.
In a new study, to be published online Thursday, Sept. 16, in the journal Current Biology, researchers from UC BERKELEY'S HELEN WILLS NEUROSCIENCE INSTITUTE AND SCHOOL OF OPTOMETRY found that study participants showed significantly greater benefits from practice on a task that involved discriminating directions of motion after they took donepezil, sold under the brand name Aricept, compared with a placebo....
Donepezil, like other cholinesterase inhibitors, is used to treat early stages of Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Previous research on donepezil has focused primarily on its beneficial effects on quality of life and clinical symptoms in patient populations. However, little was known about the specific cognitive processes that are enhanced by this drug.
"We wanted to better understand the biological mechanisms that underlie the ability to learn new tasks and to shed light on which specific neural processes are being enhanced by donepezil," said the study's principal investigator, MICHAEL SILVER, UC BERKELEY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF OPTOMETRY AND NEUROSCIENCE. "This is the first study to show that donepezil can enhance learning of a new skill, even in normal, healthy people."... Full Story
4. Political Economy: It's official: The Great Recession ended last summer
Washington Post
September 20, 2010
The Great Recession is officially over -- and has been for more than a year.
The panel of economists that is the widely accepted arbiter of business cycles has called an end to what is now officially the longest U.S. economic downturn of the post-World War II era. The recession ended in June 2009, 18 months after it began in December 2007, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research's business cycle dating committee.
But the committee took pains to make clear that it was not asserting that the economy has returned to full health....
The business cycle dating committee consists of eight top macroeconomists, chaired by Stanford University's Robert Hall. Only seven participated in the decision, however: DAVID ROMER, AN ECONOMIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, is on leave as his wife, CHRISTINA ROMER [ALSO A UC BERKELEY ECONOMICS PROFESSOR], was until recently serving as a top adviser to President Obama. Full Story
5. Editorial: Stimulus for Clunkers
A new study charts an economic failure.
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
September 20, 2010
By now, the only defense Democrats can mount of the Obama stimulus programs is that the economy would have been worse without them. There's no way to disprove this counterfactual, but now we have some empirical evidence other than 9.6% unemployment and 1.6% growth.
To wit, economists ATIF MIAN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY and Amir Sufi of the University of Chicago have examined "cash for clunkers," the $2.85 billion program that subsidized consumers to buy new cars and destroy older ones. Their conclusion: The program "had no long run effect on auto purchases." It did juice sales during its two-month run last summer, by about 360,000 cars, but then it quickly hurt sales by about the same amount, in effect stealing purchases from the future. The program was a wash in a mere seven months.
White House economists might dismiss that finding because their larger goal with cash for clunkers was to stimulate "aggregate demand" in the overall economy. Earlier this year, [UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR] CHRISTINA ROMER, the former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, wrote that cash for clunkers was an example of "very nearly the best possible countercylical fiscal policy in an economy suffering from temporarily low aggregate demand." The program wasn't sold as a discount for cars people were already planning to buy, but rather to encourage knock-on economic activity such as more consumer spending and job creation....
Messrs. Mian and Sufi caution that their findings "do not warrant the claim that all forms of fiscal stimulus fail to boost long-run economic output" (their emphasis). But if this is the result from the "best possible" stimulus program—per Ms. Romer—the impact of the others must have been awful.
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
6. Op-Ed: Tortoise economy of the Great Recession
San Francisco Chronicle
September 19, 2010
Word from the 12 Federal Reserve Banks, summarized in the Fed's Beige Book, shows the economy slowing in July and August.
Duh.
But the Fed is quick to point out that the economy overall is still growing - even though it's growing more slowly than in the spring.
Can we have a moment of realism here, please?
In 2008 and 2009 the economy fell into the deepest hole it's been in since the Great Depression. Since then we've been struggling to get out. We're failing big time.... Full Story
7. Op-Ed Column: A Health Care Plan for Colleges
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
September 18, 2010
Over the past few weeks, millions of parents sent their children off to college. But amid the packing and unpacking (and in some cases, the tears), most probably didn’t realize how increasing health care costs are harming their kids’ education.
Consider this: In 1980, a new associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a leading public school, earned about the same amount as one at the University of Chicago, a nearby leading private school; ditto for the University of Texas at Austin and Rice University.
By 2000, new associate professors at the University of Illinois and the University of Texas were earning about 15 percent less than their counterparts at Chicago and Rice. And by this year, the differential had widened to 20 percent....
What does health care have to do with any of this? Research I’ve done with Tom Kane of Harvard and the Gates Foundation finds a surprisingly strong connection: over recent decades, as state governments have devoted a larger share of resources to rising costs of Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, they have cut support for higher education....
The result, as we’ve seen, is that public colleges haven’t been able to stay competitive with private universities on salaries and spending on students. It might be possible to trim some more fat, but ultimately quality is going to suffer.
The evidence suggests that may already be happening. The U.S. News and World Report college rankings are hardly perfect, but they do provide some perspective. In the 1987 survey, there were eight public schools among the top 25; this year there were only three, and none in the top 20. In 1987, the top-ranked public university (the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY) came in fifth. By 2010, Berkeley was still the top-rated of the public universities, but it had fallen to 22nd overall.
How can we reverse this trend? One step is to provide more federal support for Medicaid when downturns hit, because that is when states tend to put the squeeze on higher education. ... Full Story
8. 'Cookies' Cause Bitter Backlash
Spate of Lawsuits Shows User Discomfort With Latest Innovations in Online-Tracking Technology
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
September 19, 2010
Tools that track users' whereabouts on the Web are facing increased regulatory and public scrutiny and prompting a flurry of legal challenges.
Since July, at least six suits have been filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against websites and companies that create advertising technology, accusing them of installing online-tracking tools that are so surreptitious that they essentially hack into users' machines without their knowledge. All of the suits seek class-action status and accuse companies of violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and other laws against deceptive practices....
The tools cited in the suits are part of an "arms race" in tracking technologies, said CHRIS HOOFNAGLE, DIRECTOR OF THE BERKELEY CENTER FOR LAW & TECHNOLOGY'S INFORMATION-PRIVACY PROGRAMS. Some users, uncomfortable with tracking, now routinely block or delete cookies. "There are some in the industry who do not believe that users should be able to block tracking, so they are turning to increasingly sophisticated tools to track people," he said.
One such technology involves "Flash cookies," which use Adobe Systems Inc.'s popular Flash program to save a small file on a user's computer. ...
Last year, researchers including Mr. Hoofnagle at Berkeley found that some Flash cookies were being used to re-create regular browser cookies that users had deleted. ...
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
9. Digits Blog: How to Protect Your Child’s Privacy Online
Wall Street Journal Online (*requires registration)
September 17, 2010
Websites popular among children and teens place more tracking technologies on users’ computers than do the top websites aimed at adults, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. But parents can take steps to limit their children’s exposure....
But studies and interviews suggest additional considerations for protecting children, particularly young children, online. Elementary-school-age children may not understand basics of Internet safety, according to a 2005 study in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. ...
Such concerns are less pressing with teenagers, who tend to know as much, or more, about the Web as their parents. But a study released earlier this year by RESEARCHERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY and the University of Pennsylvania found that older teenagers are more likely than adults to believe their privacy is being protected online when it isn’t. ...
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
10. White roofs cool energy bills
Washington Post
September 18, 2010
New York -- Herb Van Gent points his infrared gun at a square of still-unpainted gray shingle and clicks the trigger. He gets an immediate temperature reading: 143 degrees and rising. Then he aims it five feet away to a square of roof I have just painted: 98 degrees and decreasing.
He smiles.
"A 45-degree difference and we're only on the first coat," he says. That means it also will be cooler inside the building, saving energy, he says....
The idea of painting roofs white is catching on across the country; Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said it could help in the fight against global warming....
According to former California energy commissioner [and UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR EMERITUS] ARTHUR ROSENFELD, an average, 1,000-square-foot roof painted white can save 10 tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of emissions from one car for about 2 1/2 years. On a national scale, turning roofs cool could eliminate 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide, about the same as taking 20 million cars off the road for 20 years, according to Rosenfeld, who carried out his experiments with Hashem Akbari at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.... Full Story
11. PG&E exceeded its own maximum pressure standard on San Bruno pipeline
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
September 17, 2010
Federal investigators have determined that the natural gas in the pipeline that exploded in San Bruno was running at a higher pressure than the maximum limit PG&E has told the public it maintained.
At the time of the explosion, the utility's computers showed that the gas was at least 386 pounds per square inch, according to a source familiar with the investigation. PG&E spokesman Jeff Smith said Thursday that the maximum the company operated the line at was 375 psi, a figure that PG&E Vice President Geisha Williams also cited in a news conference Monday....
"Between 375 and 400 psi still sounds safe, but it's all premised on a defect-free line," said BOB BEA, A PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING AT UC BERKELEY with extensive pipeline experience.
"Here's where the demands on the pipeline from internal pressure have to be matched with a set of capacity questions. Was the steel brittle? Did we have a combination of corrosion and fatigue?"...
Bea noted two factors that could have contributed to the explosion. First is a sewer pipe replacement project that the city of San Bruno contracted for in 2008. ...
The second is corrosion from liquid in the line. ...
[This story also appeared in the Contra Costa Times and Oakland Tribune] Full Story
12. Op-Ed: Setting low-carbon fuel standard proves tough for state's air board
Sacramento Bee
September 18, 2010
The 1848 Gold Rush led to California's "Golden State" nickname, but now it's the sun's golden rays that could sustain the state as an economic and environmental powerhouse....
Scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy have already documented biodiesel's greenhouse gas emissions benefits. However, the California Air Resources Board has embarked on its own analysis. The ARB says it wants to confirm that biodiesel made from existing byproducts and co-products in the United States does not result in indirect emissions anywhere in the world....
Uncertainty led the agency to assemble an expert work group with representatives from environmental advocacy organizations, government and various universities, such as UC Davis, UC BERKELEY and Iowa State University. The work group plans to draft a set of recommendations that can be applied directly to the ARB's modeling exercise to improve its scientific credibility.
We expect the ARB will receive sound advice from the group and will use those recommendations to come to a rational conclusion about emissions from various sources of renewable energy....
The time to use more low-carbon fuels is now.... Full Story
13. Experts wonder if Jerry Brown's words make him a straight shooter or loose cannon
Since the primary, the Democrat has compared Meg Whitman's campaign to a Nazi propagandist and referred to Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. Some strategists worry about long-term damage.
Los Angeles Times
September 20, 2010
When gubernatorial nominee Jerry Brown blurted out his unfiltered thoughts last week, aiming barbs at a longtime rival and former president whose assistance Brown's campaign had been scurrying to obtain, the reaction from Democrats was dismay, but not surprise....
"Meg Whitman, she's learned her lessons," said BRUCE CAIN, A POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR AT UC BERKELEY. "She's very poised, she's got that little smile she flashes no matter how much she hates you, she's got her lines down, she's very quick-witted. I can't imagine she'll deviate from that."
Cain said most electoral contests feature two candidates like Whitman, scripted and unwavering from their central message.
"I really like unconventional politicians, they're more fun to watch," he said, but they are not necessarily the most successful. "In general, the upside of being scripted exceeds the downside of being scripted, that's why everybody does it."... Full Story
14. Robert Reich's Blog: Christine O'Donnell and the 'crackpot gap'
Many Americans are cynical about government, but they like dangerously out-of-touch politicians even less.
Christian Science Monitor Online
September 20, 2010
After the victories of many of the insurgent primary candidates she’s sponsored, Sarah Palin is off to Iowa today (Friday) for a high-profile series of political events. Is it possible she’s looking to make a run in 2012? Do birds fly?
Republicans are being fueled by a so-called “enthusiasm gap” but their biggest worry leading up to the midterms should be the “crackpot gap.”
In Delaware, Palin-endorsed tea partier Christine O’Donnell is so far right she’s called “delusional” by Delaware’s GOP leader. In Kentucky, Palin-favored Rand Paul says the Civil Rights Act of 1964 shouldn’t apply to businesses. In Colorado, tea partier Ken Buck talks of getting rid of the 17th amendment, which provides for the direct election of senators. In Nevada, Palin-favored Sharon Angle has called for “2nd Amendment remedies” if Congress doesn’t change hands....
We’re in the midst of an ongoing economic emergency that requires clear thinking, intense work, and practical ideas. It also requires that we join together rather than be pushed apart. The loonies who are taking over the GOP pose a real and present danger.
[Professor Reich also blogged on trade sanctions against China in the Christian Science Monitor Online] Full Story
15. Interview: ‘I’d Rather Hear Stories That Affect Our 600 Million’
Beating the drum of India Rising is all very well but India is ignoring less flattering aspects at its own peril.
Outlook [India]
September 18, 2010
Activist and academic RAJ PATEL’s profile proudly notes that he has worked for the World Bank and the WTO, and protested against them both around the world. A VISITING SCHOLAR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY’S CENTRE FOR AFRICAN STUDIES, Patel’s latest offering to the literary world—The Value of Nothing—is a New York Times bestseller. In an interview with Ashish Kumar Sen, Patel says beating the drum of India Rising is all very well but India is ignoring less flattering aspects at its own peril....
Q. Where does the India story go from here?
A. For some, the India story is one of inevitable and unbridled prosperity in the future. All it will take is just the right combination of FDI, right foreign policy and the right kind of business partnerships and suddenly there will be prosperity raining down on everyone. For me, that may all be well for the 50 million people touched by it. But the story I’m more interested in, and the Indian story that appears in movies like Peepli [Live], affects 600 million people. That is the story I’m more keen to hear about.
Q. To what extent does ignoring that story have a detrimental effect?
A. It’s already a very serious problem. I think a lot of Indians are mortified to hear that a few Indian states have more poor people than all of sub-Saharan Africa. This is not so much a problem that will have consequences in the future as one that already has consequences. Full Story
16. Blog: The New Agtivist
Francis Thicke wants to lead Iowa agriculture to a greener future
Grist
September 20, 2010
There's a lot at stake in the 2010 mid-term elections. Democrats are biting their nails over the House and Senate races; Grist is highlighting the 37 governorships that are up for grabs. In this picture, the contest for secretary of agriculture in Iowa might seem a tad obscure to non-Iowans -- especially if you, like most people, would have trouble naming your own state's Ag Sec.
But Iowa is the big kahuna when it comes to farming, producing a fifth of the nation's corn, a sixth of its soy, 30 percent of its hogs, and 12 percent of its eggs. It's also the second-largest recipient of federal farming subsidies, and currently in the news for the recall of half a billion salmonella-tainted eggs. If challenger Francis Thicke (pronounced "TICK-ee") manages to unseat incumbent agriculture secretary Bill Northey, it would be a huge win not only for sustainable agriculture in Iowa, but the nation. And it would send a clear message to Congress as lobbyists and activists begin putting on their battle overalls for the next Farm Bill.
"To the extent that the 'farm bloc' is shown to be much less unified in its resistance to change, the more likely that change is to come in Washington," MICHAEL POLLAN, food-system journalist and UC BERKELEY PROFESSOR, tells me by email. (Pollan and -- in a surreal twist -- filmmaker David Lynch are judges in a contest to make a music video for the brain-colonizing song "Happy Cow" that will be used in Thicke's campaign.) "As the scandal over Jack DeCoster's egg 'farm' demonstrated, Iowans are deeply divided over the industrialization of their agriculture," he continues. "The triumph of a reform candidate like Francis Thicke would demonstrate to Washington that a change in agricultural policy would in fact be welcome in much of the farm belt, and that legislators who purport to represent farm states by simply blocking reform more closely reflect the interests of agribusiness than that of their own constituents."... Full Story
17. Company With Bay Area Roots Seeks Approval For Modified Salmon
KTVU Online
September 20, 2010
Tinker with the genetics of salmon and maybe you create a revolutionary new food source that could help the environment and feed the hungry.
Or maybe you're creating what some say is an untested "frankenfish" that could cause unknown allergic reactions and the eventual decimation of the wild salmon population.
The Food and Drug Administration hears both arguments Monday when it begins a two-day meeting on whether to approve the marketing of the genetically engineered fish, which would be the first such animal approved for human consumption. The agency has already said the salmon, which grows twice as fast as conventional salmon, is as safe to eat as the traditional variety.
The FDA's approval was being sought by AquaBounty -- a company that was originally incorporated in1991, under the name A/F Protein, to pursue the commercial development of antifreeze protein-based technology under license from the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY.
Approval of the salmon would open the door for a variety of other genetically engineered animals, including an environmentally friendly pig that is being developed in Canada or cattle that are resistant to mad cow disease....
Critics have two main concerns: The safety of the food to humans and the salmon's effect on the environment.... Full Story
18. Why science can't hold sway
Our biases are overpowering.
Philadelphia Inquirer
September 20, 2010
Why do so many Americans disagree with scientific consensus on issues such as global climate change and the safety of burying nuclear waste? Is it our poor education? Science illiteracy? Innumeracy?
None of the above, according to a new study published in Journal of Risk Research. People's positions on these issues and their willingness to believe or discount scientists depends mostly on ideology, or what the study's authors call "cultural cognition."
After surveying 1,500 people, the researchers found that those who were "egalitarian and resentful of economic inequality" were more likely to assume that there was scientific consensus that human activity is contributing to climate change, but not that it's safe to dispose of nuclear waste underground. Those who were more "hierarchical, individualistic and connected to industry and commerce" were more likely to make the opposite assumptions....
"It's not that one group is paying more attention to what scientific consensus is," said Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale and author of the study. But there's a pervasive tendency to form perceptions of scientific consensus that reinforce people's values.
The researchers also confronted subjects with FICTIONAL AUTHORS - Robert Linden, professor of meteorology at MIT; OLIVER ROBERTS, PROFESSOR OF NUCLEAR ENGINEERING AT U.C. BERKELEY; and James Williams, professor of criminology at Stanford. All had Ivy League Ph.D.s and membership in the National Academy of Sciences.
Subjects were asked whether they'd recommend a book by any of these authors to a friend.
The result: The experts could be seen as sages or stooges depending on whether they were said to agree with a subject's preexisting belief.
Sure, professor Roberts might have a Ph.D. from Princeton but if he's going to panic about nuclear waste he must be a girly man - or if he thinks it's safe to bury it, someone in the nuclear industry must be paying him.... Full Story
19. Awards given for outstanding research papers
EE Times Asia
September 20, 2010
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) handed out awards and commendations to students from around the world who submitted outstanding research papers for the company's annual search.
Thirty-seven student researchers received cash prizes during TSMC's Outstanding Student Research Awards ceremony in Hsinchu, Taiwan on August 20. The winners, selected from 203 entries, came from Taiwan, the United States, Holland, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and India....
Scholars from Cornell University, UC-BERKELEY, Georgia Tech and Cambridge University won gold awards, while MIT, Stanford and National Taiwan University bagged silver awards. Bronze awards went to scholars from Ohio State University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, National Tsinghua University (Taiwan), National Taiwan University, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The Award Committee bestowed the top prize, the Academy Award, to Albert Bartok-Partay, a doctoral candidate at Cambridge University.
Gold award winners received $6,000 while silver and bronze award winners received $4,000 and $2,000, respectively. Full Story
20. Astronomy's Amateurs A Boon for Science
Discovery News
September 20, 2010
Back in 1994. a comet broke apart, slammed into Jupiter and created a visible scar that lasted for weeks. The comet's discovery was credited to one professional astronomer and two amateurs: Gene and Carol Shoemaker, and David Levy. Hence it became known as Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.
Since the earliest days of human history, mankind has scoured the heavens. The invention of the telescope in the late 16th century launched a hugely popular backyard hobby that has yielded its fair share of terrific discoveries -- made not by scientists, but by amateurs.
Amateur astronomers scored again this year by being the first to observe two asteroid impacts on Jupiter using high-speed video monitoring equipment: one on June 3, 2010 (image and video here), and another on Aug 20....
A new paper analyzing follow-up observations of the June event by professional astronomers will soon appear in Astrophysical Journal Letters. ...
What gives them an advantage over professional astronomers when it comes to spying these small 10-meter objects? According to co-author IMKE DE PATER OF UC-BERKELEY, they can record the night sky for longer periods of time using color video cameras to capture small impacts lasting two seconds or less; professional telescopes can only capture them by chance.... Full Story
21. Left Behind in Venezuela to Piece Lives Together
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
September 18, 2010
Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela — The first scavengers one sees in Cambalache, a sprawling trash dump on this city’s edge, are the vultures. Hundreds drift through the veil of smoke that rises from the refuse each day at dawn.
The carrion birds vie with children and their parents for scraps of meat discarded by Ciudad Guayana’s more fortunate residents. Those toiling under the vultures’ wake mutter to one another in Warao, an indigenous language spoken in the nearby delta where the Orinoco, one of the world’s mightiest rivers, meets the Atlantic....
Such harrowing scenes of misery are supposed to be receding into Venezuela’s history. The country claims in figures it gives the United Nations that it vies with historically egalitarian Uruguay for Latin America’s most equitable income distribution, as a result of oil-financed social welfare programs....
The authorities know about the Warao who live at Cambalache. Their living conditions are a highly sensitive issue....
Warao leaders and RESEARCHERS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, informed federal health officials in 2008 of an outbreak of a rabieslike disease that killed dozens in Delta Amacuro, only to have the authorities refuse to see them, attack them in speeches, try to discredit their findings and open a criminal investigation into their report.... Full Story
22. Woman Held in Iran Arrives in U.S.
New York Times Online
September 20, 2010
New York (AP) -- An American woman who was held in Iran for more than 13 months and accused of espionage said Sunday she and two men detained with her never spied or committed any crime, calling their arrest ''a huge misunderstanding.''
Discussing her experience at the most length since her release Tuesday, SARAH SHOURD underscored her gratitude at being released but said she felt only ''one-third free'' because her fiance, SHANE BAUER, and their friend JOSH FATTAL remain in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison.
''This is not the time to celebrate,'' Shourd, 32, said at a New York news conference. ''The only thing that enabled me to cross the gulf from prison to freedom alone was the knowledge that Shane and Josh wanted with all their hearts for my suffering to end.''
Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly. He later met with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to discuss developments in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East and efforts to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.
Ahmadinejad told The Associated Press, ''We're very glad that that lady was released. (Due) to the humanitarian perspective the Islamic Republic chose to adopt on the subject, she was released on bail. And we hope that the other two will soon be able to prove and provide evidence to the court that they had no ill intention in crossing the border, so that their release can also be secured.''...
THE THREE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY GRADUATES were detained in July 2009 after Iranian officials said they intentionally crossed the country's border from Iraq. Echoing accounts their families have given in their absence, Shourd said Sunday that the three had been hiking in a popular tourist area -- near a waterfall in Iraq's Kurdistan region -- and had no idea the border was nearby....
[This story appeared in hundreds of sources nationwide] Full Story
23. Diversity in Academe: Undergraduate Diversity
More Minorities, More Women
The Chronicle of Higher Education (*requires registration)
September 19, 2010
Growing numbers of college students in America are women or members of minority groups. Even so, a smaller percentage of all black and Hispanic college-age people are enrolled in academic institutions than are white people of college age. In college, members of minority groups struggle disproportionately to succeed academically.
[UC BERKELEY is listed. See also Table: Race and Ethnicity of Students, by Institution. Link by subscription only] Full Story
24. Curb Your Enthusiasm
Some advisers suggest maximizing the emotional, as well as the financial, returns from investments. But our emotions can sometimes lead us astray
Wall Street Journal (*requires registration)
September 20, 2010
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus told his students that the wise man "keeps guard against himself as his own enemy, and one lying in wait for him". This is a view of human folly shared by the rather younger field of behavioral economics. As James Montier, behavioral economist and member of GMO's asset allocation team, puts it: "Your worst enemy when it comes to investment is yourself."...
Behavioral psychologists believe many of the mistakes investors make come from illogical thinking. We process information quickly and badly, which leads us to make poor decisions. Behavioral economists look for the typical mistakes – or 'cognitive biases' – that humans make when interpreting information and making decisions....
TERRANCE ODEAN, PROFESSOR OF BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BERKELEY, says: "We've shown in a study that investors who trade more actively tend to do less well than more passive investors." This is probably, Mr. Odean argues, because active investors, who check their portfolios every day have more emotional, instinctive and short-term reactions to market volatility....
You can also set checks on your own impulses. Professor Odean says: "Electronic trading has made investing a lot quicker and more seamless. But this is not entirely a good thing. Friction and obstacles can be a good check on impulsive behavior. Investors can create these sorts of checks for themselves, like speed bumps."...
[Link by subscription only] Full Story
25. This Week in GeekTech: Blackmailing Trojans, New Processors
San Francisco Chronicle
September 18, 2010
Another week, another batch of nerdery from PCWorld's GeekTech blog: This week, we look at odd malware, goodies from IDF, a linux tablet hack, and a couple of developments in the world of robotics. So put on your nerdiest T-shirt, get a cup of coffee, and grab your Spock ears. It's time for This Week in GeekTech....
Touchy-Feely, Blood-Clot-Busting Robots Are Coming!
We covered a couple developments in robotics this past week. UC BERKELEY RESEARCHERS developed a technology that would let robots feel and actually grasp objects with a lighter touch. So maybe a Jetsons-style chorebot isn't so far off after all?...
[Another story on this topic appeared in The Independent (UK)] Full Story
26. The Corner Stall Office
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
September 17, 2010
My friend Michael was facing a dilemma earlier this summer. He was running late at work; he was overdue to meet a friend; he needed to return the phone call of an important client, “a Broadway legend,” as he described her. So he did what many people do these days. He multitasked. He slipped into the lavatory; he dialed his client....
The bathroom, long home to the most private of human acts, has increasingly entered the public domain....
In many ways, the anxiety surrounding cellphone conduct mirrors the period a century ago when the telephone itself was becoming widely adopted. CLAUDE S. FISCHER, A SOCIOLOGIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, and the author of “America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940,” said that telephone companies originally discouraged people from using the phone for social conversations at all.
“There was a lot of punditry at the time about the terrible things the telephone was doing,” he said. “It was mechanical, impersonal and killed a lot of time.” Etiquette books scorned inviting people for dinner over the telephone, saying only a written note would do. AT&T openly discouraged people from answering the phone with “Hello” because it was considered vulgar.
“But what happens in periods of large social change is that people adapt the new technology to fit their priorities,” Dr. Fischer said. With the original telephone, people began using the technology to make dates with friends or to call their widowed mothers back on the farm. Far from destroying social cohesion, the public believed the telephone was advancing it. “A similar transition is under way today,” he said.... Full Story
27. Hundreds stride for late Saratoga city councilman and cancer research
San Jose Mercury News (*requires registration)
September 19, 2010
Saratoga City Councilwoman Susie Nagpal wasn't a runner. But more than 300 of her friends and relatives showed up under pleasant skies Sunday for "Stride for Susie," a walk and run in her memory that raised money for lung cancer research.
Nagpal was 46 when she died from the disease in May.
"I had no idea it would be this big," said her niece, TARINI ULLAL, A UC BERKELEY SENIOR who came up with the idea of a fundraising run to remember her aunt....
Sunday's event raised about $30,000 for the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation, according to Tarini Ullal. Donations can still be arranged by calling 650-642-4142 or e-mailing andrea@lungcancerfoundation.org. Full Story
28. Critic's notebook: Museums building on a renewed civic life
The Pompidou's intriguing new outpost illustrates the current phase of museum design in which architects are hands-on participants of urbanism.
Los Angeles Times
September 19, 2010
Reporting from Metz, France — The new outpost of the Pompidou museum, which opened in the spring in Metz, a city of 125,000 in eastern France, is not what you would call a conventionally handsome building. Designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban and France's Jean de Gastines, the museum has a translucent, Teflon-coated roof that appears to have melted over the top of its long, tube-shaped galleries. Inside it is full of cavernous spaces, some dramatically scaled and others merely bloated....
The $91-million building is emblematic of a rich new phase in museum design, which continues to be a surprising bright spot for architects otherwise struggling through a dismal couple of years. Although the sputtering economy has forced a handful of museums to cancel or scale back expansion plans, many others, seemingly against all odds, are building or raising money for renovations, new wings or satellite facilities.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art will open its second building by Renzo Piano, the $54-million Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion, on Oct. 2, even as the museum's director, Michael Govan, pursues plans for the eastern half of the LACMA campus with the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. In downtown Los Angeles, New York firm Diller, Scofidio + Renfro is racing to finish designs for the 120,000-square-foot Broad Collection building while also at work on two other museum projects: an inflatable event space for the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington and a new home for the UC BERKELEY ART MUSEUM AND PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE in downtown Berkeley. After an ambitious international competition, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art this summer chose Norwegian firm Snohetta to design a $250-million extension that will add 100,000 square feet of gallery space.... Full Story
29. Clark Center's Japanese art blooms in Berkeley
San Francisco Chronicle
September 18, 2010
Most Bay Area residents might not even have heard of the San Joaquin Valley town of Hanford, let alone stopped there. So they will not have seen one of the region's most surprising and inspiring assets: the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture.
The BERKELEY ART MUSEUM's big fall exhibition, "Flowers of the Four Seasons," brings a generous selection of the Clark Center's holdings to a Bay Area audience for the first time. The show borrows its title from one of the glories of the center's collection, a gilded six-panel screen decorated with a riot of colorful flowers by Saito Ippo, an artist active at the turn of the 19th century.
The screen serves well as an emblematic object because the Clark Center collection favors art of the Edo period (1615-1868) because of the work's somewhat eccentric exuberance and because it has a beauty that appeals to Japanese and Western eyes alike.
These qualities also fairly represent the taste of the center's founder, WILLARD CLARK, AN ALUMNUS OF UC BERKELEY and UC Davis and a native of Hanford (Kings County), who began collecting Japanese art with his wife, Elizabeth, in the 1970s....
Flowers of the Four Seasons: Ten Centuries of Art From the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture: Scroll paintings, sculpture, ceramics and basketry. Through Dec. 12. Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. (510) 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. Full Story
30. '57 Triumph an unlikely family car
San Francisco Chronicle
September 19, 2010
There is a myth about sports cars that they can never be considered a family car - especially when one is raising young children. They are dangerous and encourage a reckless attitude towards driving and a capricious outlook on what should be a sensible exemplar of good parental judgment and safety. Let us quietly go about our business in our Saabs, our Volvos and minivans. No way!
Our 1957, bright red, racing screened, roaring, head-turning, grin-raising, big-eyed Triumph TR3 small-mouth convertible has brought more smiles, joy and laughter to our family of 14 than any circus could ever muster! Just seeing it parked on the street makes anyone's face light up in a big smile from ear-to-ear.
I remember the time that our four-year-old daughter was eating her noodles on a drive home and the wind caught her little noodle cup and blew it into the heavens, never to be found again. Fifteen years later we still all carry that memory with a sense of joy and wonder. The "Baby Car," she named it, with endearing love in her eyes. To her, this was not a car, it was something to care for, a little friend, a bringer of happiness, something to hug, an adventure to ride to school and back.
All this unexpected happiness for our family all started one day in Berkeley in 1984. One of my students won a travel scholarship to Europe, but he didn't have any money to live on while on the road. He concocted the idea to sell me his Triumph TR3 for whatever I could get for my 1980 Ford Escort - $2.500....
We are all children (within our adult bodies) and we should never forget the sense of wonder and innocence we had when the world was a shiny red, windy car with a big happy face carrying us where we had to go. It is the little car that could! And it helped us believe that, sometimes, even a car, can be that friend that makes life more exciting, happy and enchanting. We must all dare to catch the full wind of life in our face and Triumph over the impossible! Full Story