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Immigration reform is a complex topic, so it can be quite difficult to quantify public opinion on the subject. But in early May the Institute of Governmental Studies conducted an online poll to do just that. The survey, answered by 3,100 registered California voters, began with a simple choice between the status quo and a […]
Biological soil crusts (BSCs), as the name might suggest, are rather unprepossessing entities, typically presenting themselves as dark, mottled patches on desert soils. From a microbiological perspective, however, they are fascinating: living, symbiotic communities of cyanobacteria, mosses, and algae that can survive – indeed, thrive — where most other things wither and die. Scientists have […]
This week’s New Yorker has a fascinating and important story by science writer Michael Specter about Lyme disease in which he reports on who has it, treatment options, the ethics of unproven treatments, patients’ rights, and so on. And if you’re anything like us, you read it and thought, “Oooh! Ticks!” We called up a major […]
So where exactly do today’s two Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage leave California’s same-gendered couples? Still married, and likely to remain so. SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe in her “Plain English” column calls the result of this judicial cliff-hanger “a home run but not a grand slam” and Professor Melissa Murray of Berkeley Law is similarly […]
Just in time for San Francisco’s Pride weekend, this morning the US Supreme Court issued rulings on both the California Prop. 8 case and the Defense of Marriage Act challenge. And both rulings went as well as the defenders of marriage equality could hope for. In the Prop. 8 case (Hollingsworth v. Perry), it was […]
There are an estimated 3 million migrant and seasonal farmworkers in the United States, according to a 2012 survey compiled by the National Center for Farmworker Health. Most are foreign born, undocumented, under the age of 40, and have an average 8th grade education level. But as PBS’s new Frontline documentary reveals, the situation is […]
Today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Fisher v. UT Austin affirmative action case was surprising more for its silences than its declarations. Although the case was punted back to the district court, it was very much a punt: Left for another day, and maybe another court, was tackling whether race can be considered in admissions […]
The problems keep piling up for CalTrans – and by extension, for anyone who will drive across the new Bay Bridge. The project has been dogged by controversy from the start, and concerns have reached the point that public safety seems very much in question. Earlier this year – and as reported in the current […]
About three billion years ago, simple, single-celled organisms without much in the way of skill sets ruled the world. Then something simultaneously creepy and liberating happened: Bacteria parasitized these proto-plants and creatures. Some of these invaders became mitochondria, the minute, organic engines that provide energy for cellular activity. Others developed into chloroplasts, the organelles that […]
One of the more appalling and less talked about aspects of the American AIDS epidemic is how hard it has hit African Americans. According to Sonja Mackenzie, author of the new book Structural Intimacies: Sexual Stories in the Black AIDS Epidemic, the epidemic has disproportionately affected black America nearly from the start. Mackenzie, who received […]
Five days after East Bay native Oscar Grant was fatally shot by a police officer at the Fruitvale BART station, an incident captured on video by witnesses, Oakland-based attorney and Berkeley School of Law graduate John Burris filed a $25 million wrongful death claim against BART in support of the Grant Family. Tonight, when the […]
An article in the latest issue of The Auk (published by the University of California Press for the American Ornithological Union) indicates songbirds may be in even deeper peril than previously thought. In the piece, Point Blue Conservation Science (formerly Point Reyes Bird Observatory) researchers Renée Cormier, Diana Humple, Thomas Gardali and Nathaniel Seavy addressed the […]
Few know better the crushing blow to idealism of undergraduate engineering courses than College of Engineering Dean S. Shankar Sastry. “They come out of high school ready to change the world, and they’re beaten into submission,” said Sastry in a phone interview. “Why do that? We need to find ways to celebrate their creativity, to help […]
The San Francisco Business Journal reports that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was one of the top donors to UC Berkeley in 2012, having given nearly $20 million to the campus in support of research. It wasn’t the first time the Microsoft founder had given to the University. In 2009, for example, the Gates […]
Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over, goes the old saw about western water issues, and one of those fights was decided today in the U.S. Supreme Court. In a case that could have significant implications for regional water wars throughout the nation, the court ruled that Texas can’t jam a pipe […]
With the Supreme Court poised to rule on a case that could end the practice of universities using race as a determining factor in admissions, pundits like New York Times editor Bill Keller wonder whether affirmative action should be based on class rather than race. In a recent editorial, Keller writes that factoring economic class […]
Seth Holmes’s new book from UC Press, Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States, released June 10, could well change the way you look at your morning strawberries. Holmes, an assistant professor in Berkeley’s School of Public Health, spent a total of 10 months in 2003 and 2004 traveling with Mexican migrant […]
Has the Ugly American been supplanted by his Chinese counterpart? In the upcoming issue, California looks at the growing resentment in the developing world over Chinese business ventures abroad. It wasn’t so long ago that Chinese engineers and economists were welcomed with enthusiasm by struggling Asian, African and South American nations. The Chinese were seen […]
The current flooding in Central Europe is already being hailed as the worst in decades. In some parts of the region, flooding is reaching or surpassing the destruction left behind by the 2002 “hundred-year floods” — not unlike those that hit California, as reported by Anne Pinckard in our upcoming Summer 2013 issue. But the […]
