With a foothold at Berkeley, ‘engaged scholarship’ goes where it’s needed

With a foothold at Berkeley, 'engaged scholarship' goes where it's needed with video

Urban forester Lara Roman, a Berkeley grad student, is conducting multi-year research designed to help a Sacramento tree-planting program maximize cooling shade for the area’s hot summers. “Engaged scholarship” like Roman’s, increasingly popular with students, is part of the campus’s DNA. New forms of institutional support are helping it flourish.

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Professor of Greek history worries about his homeland’s future

Professor of Greek history worries about his homeland’s future

As Sunday’s vote on austerity measures approaches, Nikolaos Papazarkadas, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of classics and a native of Greece, is apprehensive about conditions in his native land improving anytime soon.

Breakthrough in designing cheaper, more efficient catalysts for fuel cells

Breakthrough could lead to cheaper, more efficient hydrogen fuel cells

UC Berkeley chemists Chris Chang, Jeff Long and Marcin Majda have redesigned catalysts in ways that could have a profound impact on the chemical industry as well as on the growing market for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Biometric ID cards for workers would cost $40 billion, study says

Biometric IDs for all workers would cost $40 billion

The first-ever in-depth analysis of the costs of establishing a biometric employment identity card, just released by Berkeley Law’s Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy, finds that cards for all workers would cost $40 billion, and would infringe on civil liberties and fail to stop the employment of undocumented immigrants.

Advanced power-grid model finds low-cost, low-carbon future in West

Eliminating coal key to meeting carbon emission goals

The least expensive way for the Western U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to help prevent the worst consequences of global warming is to replace coal with renewable and other sources of energy that may include nuclear power, according to a new study by UC Berkeley researchers.