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Can one of the state’s most critical ecological resources be saved? Berkeley engineering professor Ray Seed, arguably the nation’s greatest authority on levees, has one word to describe the risk to the people, farms, and ecological systems dependent on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta: Armageddon. A serious earthquake or flood could indefinitely threaten the water supply […]
Spitsbergen, which means “jagged peaks” in Dutch, is one of three inhabited islands in the Svalbard archipelago, the northernmost European territory. Svalbard is Norwegian for “cold coast.” Norway has sovereignty over the archipelago, but 40 countries signed the Svalbard Treaty of 1920, which gives all signatories the right to exploit the islands commercially. Currently, only […]
Michael Wilson wants the chemical industry to make products safe before they get to the market. Twenty years ago, when Michael Wilson worked as a firefighter—paramedic in the strawberry—and vegetable—growing region around Salinas, he responded to countless 911 emergency calls from workers caught in machinery or struggling to breathe. A malfunctioning conveyor belt would grab a […]
The new home of the California Academy of Sciences is more than just a brilliant design. It’s also an inspired collaboration To construct the most ambitious green building imaginable, the California Academy of Sciences required its architects, engineers, and builders to become walking encyclopedias. They needed to know, for example, the heat load capacity of an […]
Like D.H. Burnham’s design of a century ago, Lisa Iwamoto’s rendering of a future San Francisco reveals the anxieties of the age. Near the end of his comprehensive 1905 development plan for the city of San Francisco, internationally renowned architect D.H. Burnham considered the question of water. The obstacles weren’t what your drought-stricken 21st-century San Franciscan […]
If the Cal researchers consulting on Sonoma’s sustainability initiative have their way, the project will shift the greenhouse gas reduction focus away from a free-market approach known as cap-and-trade to more localized, technology-based fixes. Under cap-and-trade, companies or agencies that produce carbon emissions would be granted credits for their greenhouse gas production, though they ultimately […]
Laurie Anderson’s new show is an ambitious, yet enjoyable, exploration of the American narrative. A week after the 9/11 attacks, Laurie Anderson played two concerts at Town Hall in New York City. Fires were still smoldering under the rubble at Ground Zero, the Brooklyn Bridge was closed to traffic, and Anderson’s own downtown neighborhood—just north of […]
Romeo and Juliet, as Prokofiev intended. Berkeley audiences have come to expect surprises from Mark Morris, the endlessly inventive American choreographer who set Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker in a boozy 1960s cocktail party (The Hard Nut) and transformed a musty British “semi-opera” (Purcell’s King Arthur) into an exuberant contemporary delight. With his latest work, though, Morris delivers something […]
Coach Waldorf had a special affection for the vets on the postwar football teams—and they are still returning it This fall, surviving members of the first of Pappy Waldorf’s three consecutive Rose Bowl teams will observe with customary vigor the 60th anniversary of that extraordinary season. So, for that matter, should the rest of us, for […]
Sather Gate is falling down. But not for long Jim Horner walks into a conference room near his office, and with a heavy clank, plunks down a chunk of ornamented bronze on the table. “That was literally hanging by a thread,” he says. “If that had come off, it could have killed somebody.” The piece on […]
A new report by a Berkeley public health professor is the largest of its kind to refute the longstanding assumption that greater income leads to better health. In her study, Professor Lia Fernald, MBA ’00, and her UC San Francisco colleague examined the relationship between systolic blood pressure—a leading health indicator—and various measures of socio-economic […]
Diabetics may one day use their cell phones to keep track of their blood glucose tests, insulin levels, and diet. Mechanical engineer Chris Hannemann, M.S. ’08, who has type 1 diabetes, came up with the idea when, switching insulin therapies, he struggled to compile accurate information for his doctor and ended up with a lot […]
Q & A with chemistry professor Kristie Boering The prospects for alternative energy are rising along with the price of gas, and any discussion of future fuel sources is bound to include hydrogen. Hydrogen-powered cars wouldn’t produce noxious emissions or carbon dioxide—just water. Sounds great, but stratospheric chemist Kristie Boering worries that a “hydrogen economy” might […]
Ornithologists enlist Web surfers to track species via remote camera Bird enthusiasts worldwide have helped scientists confirm the range expansion of the green jay as well as other sub-tropical species such as the white-tipped dove. The project, co-directed by Berkeley Professor and Director of Center for New Media Ken Goldberg, features a remote-viewing Web application with […]
On May 29, 2006, residents in the Porong subdistrict of Sidoarjo, East Java, awoke to a strange rumbling and emerged from their homes to find a geyser of mud shooting 26 feet in the air. In the days that followed, more cavities opened in the ground, and the bowels of the earth came spilling out. […]
As Berkeley’s director of sustainability, Lisa McNeilly will first need to figure out what, exactly, she’s supposed to do. Tasked by Vice Chancellor Nathan Brostrom with “fostering a culture of sustainability and adding accountability to our climate commitment,” McNeilly recognizes that such language explains little of how to get where we’re going. Since assuming the […]
Turning Sonoma County into a laboratory to test new strategies for cooling the globe. Plus: Sonoma: Beyond cap-and-trade It looks like any other business park construction site: mounds of dirt pushed around by graders belching diesel smoke, concrete structures in various stages of completion, surveyors adjusting the tripods of their transits while simultaneously poring over blueprints. […]
Anthropologist Shannon May set out to study village life in rural China. She wound up getting an education in the pitfalls of green development When Shannon May was putting together her doctoral research project, she had a specific field setting in mind. May, an anthropology student at Berkeley, wanted to learn about life for the majority […]
The captain of the MS Langøysund is a silent, balding man. Slowly, he steers towards the Nordenskjöld glacier, which stretches blue and still before us. Occasionally he stops the vessel, lets it drift for a while, then glides toward the glacier again at a snail’s pace. Northern fulmars bob along on islands of ice; puffins, […]
