A daily selection of stories about UC Berkeley and higher education that have appeared in the local and national media.
Friday, 10 February 2012
1. Hydrogen from acidic water
Science Codex
Berkeley chemists Christopher Chang, Jeffrey Long, and Marcin Majda have created a new molecule replicating the active part of a widely used industrial catalyst — a discovery that could have profound impact on the chemical industry and growing market for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
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2. California Energy Commission Funds New Projects
Smart Meters
The California Energy Commission has awarded nearly $2 million for a multi-campus project, including Berkeley, to develop the California Center for Sustainable Communities, designed to conduct and coordinate research and development activities on sustainable communities and serve as a resource for state planning organizations, governments, and policy makers.
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3. Berkeley Lab sees campus that interacts
San Francisco Business Times (*requires registration)
Chemistry professor and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory director Paul Alivisatos discusses plans for the lab's new campus at the UC Berkeley-owned Richmond Field Station, saying: “There will be the potential to have a research park and for corporate partners to potentially locate there and to be adjacent to us.”
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4. Occupy Cal tents return to UC Berkeley
Oakland Tribune
Occupy demonstrators returned to Sproul Plaza Thursday and set up several tents. Police monitoring the situation said that putting up tents was a violation of campus policy, and that the encampments would have to be removed. Other stories on this topic appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle (AP) and on KGO TV—link to video.
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5. Dot.Commentary: Trying to balance privacy, free speech on Internet
San Francisco Chronicle Online
As the European Union considers enacting privacy rules far stronger than those in the U.S., including a "right to be forgotten," Paul Schwartz, faculty director for the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, says that European — especially German — sensitivities can be traced back to philosophers like Hegel, as well as awareness of how personal information was used against people under communist rule and dictators like Hitler, while "Americans just feel more comfortable with this rough-and-tumble social discourse."
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6. Tech Europe Blog: Big Data Demands New Skills
Wall Street Journal Online (*requires registration)
EMC is working with universities, including Berkeley, to develop a curriculum for data science, since "All the Big Data in the world is useless unless there are the people who can understand it, can turn data into information, and information into action."
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7. Mortgage pact to yield billions for California
San Francisco Chronicle
About the $26 billion mortgage settlement announced Thursday, business professor Jim Wilcox says: "This will burn off the fog of uncertainty that banks have faced. … Presumably it will start to unclog some of the backed-up foreclosures that got stalled (during the robo-signing investigation). Buyers may be a little more confident that there won't be a torrent of supply coming into the market."
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8. Economix Blog: Why Manufacturing Still Matters
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
Business professor Laura Tyson explains that manufacturing is still important in part because: "American leadership in science and technology remains highly dependent on R.&D. investment by manufacturing companies, and the social returns to such investment are substantial, far exceeding the returns to the companies that fund it."
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9. Chicago News Cooperative: Another City’s Lesson About Crime Reduction
New York Times & International Herald Tribune (*requires registration)
Law professor Franklin Zimring, a criminal justice expert, is leading an "A-list symposium" hosted by the University of Chicago Crime Lab on Friday to discuss the policies in New York that led to a significant drop in the crime rate there.
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10. Despite Fukushima disaster, anti-nuclear activists fight uphill battle in Japan
Christian Science Monitor
Adjunct education professor Susan Holloway comments on the challenges faced by anti-nuclear activists in Japan, saying: “It’s fine to go around with a Geiger counter and see if your child’s playground is radioactive, but how do you go from that to getting the laws to change so that this kind of thing can’t happen again?”
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11. Moreno Valley: Opening of car pool lanes pleases area drivers
Press-Enterprise
The Performance Management System database of traffic data maintained by Caltrans and Berkeley researchers helped officials decide to open car pool lanes along Highway 60 in Moreno Valley to solo drivers during non-peak hours — a move praised by drivers in the area.
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12. Op-Ed: Pseuds' corner
Times Higher Education [UK]
Daniel Melia, associate professor of rhetoric and Celtic studies, explains how any "careful reader, familiar with the conventions of publishing and argument, can learn to spot a bad book without knowing anything about the subject that the book purports to elucidate."
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13. Charles Murray, Author of 'The Bell Curve,' Steps Back Into the Ring
Chronicle of Higher Education (*requires registration)
As Charles Murray, author of the controversial book "The Bell Curve," releases a new book, sociology professor Claude Fischer, a long-time critic of the author, says he "seems to be read much more by journalists and policy folks than by the social scientists who specialize in the topics he covers."
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14. After Navigating the MLA Gantlet, a Graduate Student Decides on a Job and Discovers His Worth
Chronicle of Higher Education (*requires registration)
Javier Jiménez, a comparative literature graduate student profiled last month as he prepared to seek work at the Modern Language Association's annual meeting, has accepted a tenure-track position at Marietta College, in Ohio.
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15. Obituary: Painter William Theophilus Brown Dies at Age 92
New York Times Online (*requires registration)
Alum William Theophilus Brown, noted painter of the San Francisco Bay Area's "figurative" movement, has died at 92. This obituary appeared in more than 100 sources nationwide.
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16. Berkeley for startups: Perfect or brain drain in action?
Berkeleyside
Former visiting scholar Vivek Wadhwa comments on the city of Berkeley's failure to attract tech start-ups in spite of the fact that the town is "teeming with brilliant people and brilliant professors" — an issue that will be taken up at the "Berkeleyside Local Business Forum: Startup Berkeley" on March 5.
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17. IT CEOs to go back to university
Times of India
Vivek Wadhwa, a former visiting scholar at the School of Information, discusses the CEOs and other bright lights attending programs at Singularity University, where he is vice-president of academics and innovation, saying: "You see why I resigned from Harvard and UC Berkeley to teach here."
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18. Andy Warhol 'Polaroids': Berkeley Art Museum Displays Photo Collection Of Pop Art Master
Huffington Post
The Berkeley Art Museum is exhibiting a collection of Polaroid photographs taken by Andy Warhol between 1970 to 1987.
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19. KQED Radio News
KQED Radio
The Cal baseball fan fest will be held at Evans Diamond on campus tomorrow, beginning at 11 a.m.
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