Subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, The Cal Connection.
The King Fire continues to rage. As of this writing, it has scorched 87,000 acres of Sierra forest and burned down at least 10 homes and 22 outbuildings. The fire also menaced Berkeley’s Blodgett Forest Research Station, the site of a seminal study on fuel-reduction treatments. “It got within a mile, and then the wind […]
Increasingly, police are looking at the world’s oldest profession as anything but a profession. Rather, they claim, it’s simple human trafficking, the sexual enthrallment of women and girls by heinous pimps for exploitation by amoral customers. Consequently, prostitutes increasingly are considered victims, and the emphasis is on outreach more than punishment. Pimps and johns, on […]
Andrea, a Costa Rican mother, stands in court before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C., testifying against her country’s ban on in vitro fertilization (IVF). Sitting across the courtroom is Martha Garza, a U.S. anti-abortion doctor, arguing for protection of the embryos’ rights. The year is 2008, eight years after Costa Rica […]
Decades after the Free Speech Movement, we look back at the three figures central to the conflict.
Sitting around a table together is about to get even more symbolic. For the first time, two students, one Muslim and one Jewish, will sit together as the two student members of the University of California’s Board of Regents when the board meets in San Francisco later this month. One voted against the other’s appointment […]
A forklift operator at Wild Horse Winery near Paso Robles was maneuvering between barrel rows in the wine cellar when suddenly the ground started to shake. The 18-foot-high stacks swayed above her and then collapsed, burying her in an avalanche of 600-pound barrels. It took rescuers over an hour to reach her, after carefully draining […]
West Nile infections are spiking to record levels in California, making it the country’s hot spot for the virus. And that’s something of a conundrum, given the state’s drought. Logic would dictate that the dread mosquito-borne disease would fall off during dry periods. But mosquitoes don’t need much water to propagate, and indeed, some evidence […]
George Ban-Weiss is all about being cool: Not only does coolness figuratively define his work as a professional jazz bassist, it almost literally defines his career as a scientist. His work was pivotal in persuading the city of Los Angeles to require this year that new and renovated residential rooftops be “cool roofs”—reflecting rather than […]
As the U.S. Forest Service finalizes plans to restore forests torched in last year’s Yosemite-area Rim Fire—the third largest in state history—conservationists are worried that the scheme skimps on environmental protection. Also concerned is one of the state’s top forestry experts, a UC Berkeley professor who warns that replanting trees the traditional way will simply […]
The first thing likely to hit viewers of a new photo exhibit on the UC Berkeley campus—given that it features images from some of the most strife-torn places in the world—is the lack of any graphic violence. “Envisioning Human Rights,” which opens Thursday at the UC Berkeley School of Law and includes the work of […]
If burrowing owls and Coho salmon could talk, they probably wouldn’t tell many lawyer jokes. For the most part, attorneys have helped such endangered creatures. The courts are often, well, the court of last resort for rare animals and their habitats. But lawyers are expensive, and bank accounts aren’t a priority in the animal kingdom; […]
If it wasn’t prescient, it at least embodied an eerie kind of synchronicity. A study led by a UC Berkeley graduate student finds that protestors tend to respond forcefully when confronted by police outfitted in military garb and employing hyper-aggressive tactics. Confrontation plays out on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. QED. Nick Adams and his […]
Saving your life when the Big One finally rocks California? Yeah, there’s an app for that. There will be soon, anyhow, if Richard Allen has his way. The director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, Allen has been a leading researcher and proponent of earthquake early warning systems. These networks of sensors and communication devices are […]
Editors’ Note: This summer has seen the most widespread, deadly outbreak of Ebola in recorded history as the virus has ravaged West Africa. This week we learned that a U.S. doctor and missionary who contracted Ebola while working there and were flown to Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital have been successfully treated and released. Medical experts […]
You may not know him by name, but you certainly know his work. If you’ve ever bemoaned this country’s widening income gap; if you’ve ever been to an Occupy protest and loudly proclaimed yourself a member of the 99 percent; if you’ve ever tried to trace with your finger the squiggly graph line depicting the […]
Legend has long engulfed UC Berkeley’s iconic Jane K. Sather Tower—the Cal Campanile , which was completed 100 years ago and is celebrating its centennial this academic year. Perhaps you’ve heard that it contains prehistoric fossils? Unlike some other mysterious tales floating around about the Campanile, this one is actually true. Within the tower’s confines […]
Update: The Berkeley City Council on May 12 unanimously voted to make Berkeley the nation’s first city with a “Right to Know” law about health risks associated with radio frequency radiation from cell phones. Under the ordinance, which would take effect in July, retailers must give consumers printed warnings including: “If you carry or use […]
The police shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, is the lead story on all broadcast, social media and print outlets, pushing out the Gaza conflict, ISIS in Iraq, and the war in Ukraine. It’s caused unease across the country and along the full range of the political spectrum. That’s because it’s not […]
As California’s drought drags on, is it time for universities to shut off their sprinklers and bid their velvety, emerald-green campus lawns farewell? That’s the question posed in a recent Berkeley Blog post by UC Berkeley law professor Daniel Farber, who doubts the appropriateness of lush campus quads in this increasingly desiccated era. Yes, “some […]
