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The days of your inbox bursting at its digital seams with Viagra pitches and the sob stories of Nigerian princesses are long gone – but that doesn’t mean the scams are gone. They’ve just migrated to find fresh victims on Twitter. That, at least, is the conclusion of a paper just presented at the 22nd […]
A lone wolf academic calls into question the safety of an herbicide being peddled by a Big Ag-embedded conglomerate. But alas, said conglomerate has donated a fat chunk of change to the university where the academic is employed and, before you can say “quid pro quo,” the maverick scientist is out of funding. That, of […]
You know a typical Alfred Hitchcock film when you see it—the eerie shadows, the quivering face of some blonde ingénue. But it also fills you with dread when you hear it—the echo of footsteps down a dark hallway, the violin-punctuated slashes of a knife, the histronic screams of a cinematic victim. It may be difficult […]
Moby had it right: we are all made of stars. Astronomers have long known that stars fuse hydrogen and helium, ultimately creating somewhat heavier elements, which are then expelled through the universe when stars explode as supernovae. All the carbon and calcium in our bodies, all the oxygen we breathe, originated in stars. But where is […]
In the love-hate relationship that the Bay Area has with its own economic boom, nothing seems to pack the symbolic punch of the “Google Bus” (an imprecise but convenient short-hand for the private shuttles operated by nearly 40 regional tech and biotech companies.) Especially in San Francisco, these shuttles—double-decked, dark-windowed, and usually unidentified— have come […]
Boil the American Dream down to a single maxim and it’s this: “If you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to get what’s yours.” Our mutual commitment to meritocracy is, we’re told, about as central to our national character as baseball. Divvying up gains based on ability and hard work (as oppposed […]
Turns out that the creation of the robot bug we introduced you to last week—the one ready to be mass-produced on 3D printers—sprang from research funded by the Israeli army, and is considered ideal for urban reconnaissance missions. The collapsible cyber-critter nicknamed STAR (Sprawl Tuned Autonomous Robot) has particular advantages over the other bio-inspired robots […]
A proposal to name 3.4 million square nautical miles of ocean surrounding the United States after Ronald Reagan is thrilling a lot of Republicans and satirist Stephen Colbert. “I’ve always known the ocean was conservative,” he giddily told his audience Thursday night. “Like the Republican party, it’s full of Great Whites.” But among those who […]
As a science fiction motif, the Robot Apocalypse ranks right up there with the Zombie Apocalypse. And, it seems, it’s more likely: anyone who has browsed Ray Kurtzweil’s work on the Singularity—the point at which computers achieve true intelligence, and discover their interests aren’t necessarily congruent with our own—may find the meteoric pace of cybernetics […]
That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for the burgeoning field of image forensics. Thanks to a new technique developed by computer scientists at UC Berkeley and Dartmouth College, it’s now going to be that much trickier to convincingly doctor a photograph. Putting the unbending rules of physics and geometry to computer code, […]
The East Bay Community Law Center—founded in 1988 by Berkeley (Boalt) Law School students—garnered some effusive kudos when Gov. Jerry Brown signed the Fair Debt Buying Practices Act last month. The center was instrumental in the passage of the bill, which strengthens consumer protections against coercive debt collection. As the law school reported, the center […]
Congratulations are due to Berkeley alumnus Jonn Herschend, MFA ’06, and the three other recipients of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s biennial SECA Award for local artists, announced today. In previous years, an exhibition of the winners’ works would be mounted at the museum, complete with the usual wine-and-cheese reception. But this year, the museum […]
A few days ago, we posted a piece on breakthroughs in thin-film solar cells, noting the development could lead to wider applications of solar technology. Now, a new study from a team of Berkley researchers led by Dan Kammen, a professor in the Energy and Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy and the […]
Perhaps you’ve seen the news: “Hotter Weather Actually Makes Us Want to Kill Each Other.” That’s the snappy title that The Atlantic used to describe a new academic paper that looks at the relationship between climate change and human conflict. A joint effort between public policy and economics wonks at Berkeley and Princeton, the meta-study (or […]
As we reported earlier today, a forthcoming study, to be released on Monday, details the consequences—both good and bad—of the Twin Tunnels project that would divert water from the Sacramento River to farms and cities to the south. Critics say that it addresses only the concerns of contractors and agriculture, and doesn’t mention the rest of […]
It’s hard to generate a great deal of excitement over water. The language that governs its development and disposition is wonky and snooze-inducing; and, hey, I just turned on the tap to wash my hands and water came out, so what’s the problem? Well, plenty. Battles over California water having been going on since the […]
If you’re looking for a unifying theme behind the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden’s Summer Concert Series, good luck. Proudly hodge-podge in its curation, the summer-long line-up of acts playing the tree-shaded Redwood Grove amphitheater runs willy-nilly from old time R&B to Afropop to Indian roots music to “Tom Waits–approved Americana.” Sticking to the theme of […]
Cal Dining chefs Ida Shen Mary Ferrer made an appearance at the Gilroy Garlic Bowl last Friday and went head to head (Iron Chef style) with San Jose State and Fresno State in a nerve-wracking, garlic-infused recipe competition. They were given one hour to cook up two dishes (each containing at least six cloves of garlic) in front of a live audience, […]
In solar cell technology, thin films are the Holy Grail. Standard (crystalline silicon) solar cells are heavy, rigid and bulky; they’re good for bolting to the roof of your house or using as components in vast arrays covering square miles of the Mojave, discomfiting endangered desert tortoises. But that’s about it. When it comes to […]
