BERKELEY, Calif. May 7, 2020 – A new report from the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center finds that if transportation network companies (TNC) Uber and Lyft had classified their drivers as employees they would have paid $413 million into California’s Unemployment Insurance Fund between 2014 and 2019. The findings come as hundreds of thousands of gig […]
UC Berkeley
Posted inCalifornia
‘Liquid gold’: UC Berkeley lab makes free hand sanitizer for the needy
April 13, 2020 – When University of California, Berkeley, graduate student Abrar Abidi heard that several staff members at the San Francisco County Jail had tested positive for COVID-19, he and others worked around the clock to manufacture, package and deliver more than 900 bottles of hand sanitizer to the jail – enough for each […]
Posted inEnviro
Berkeley Talks: Naomi Klein on eco-facism and the Green New Deal
March 31, 2020 – “…At this very moment in our history, the men rising to the highest office in country after country… are full-fledged planetary arsonists,” said Naomi Klein at a Berkeley Journalism event on Oct. 24, 2019. “They are pouring fuels on these fires with defiance. We have Trump rolling back every environmental law conceivable, cracking […]
Posted inCalifornia
Underwater telecom cables make superb seismic network
December 3, 2019 – Fiber-optic cables that constitute a global undersea telecommunications network could one day help scientists study offshore earthquakes and the geologic structures hidden deep beneath the ocean surface. In a paper appearing this week in the journal Science, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Monterey Bay […]
Posted inCalifornia
New poll: Vaccine rule widely supported by California voters
Sept. 30, 2019 – Just 16% of voters are opposed to a new California law requiring parents vaccinate their children, according to a new poll from UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. The poll, conducted online from Sept. 13 to 18, found support for the bill from the vast majority of Californians: rich or poor, […]
Posted inCalifornia
First known cases of sudden oak death detected in Del Norte County
Sept. 24, 2019 – A team of collaborators including the citizen science project SOD Blitz have detected the first cases of the infectious tree-killing pathogen Phytophthora ramorum in California’s Del Norte county. The pathogen, a fungus-like water mold that causes sudden oak death, has ravaged millions of native oaks and tanoaks along California’s central and northern […]
Posted inUS
“It’s no secret.” Criminal Law Expert on How Weapons Fuel America’s Mass Shootings
Aug. 13, 2019 – Mental illness. Video games. The Internet. These are excuses offered by the U.S. President and his supporters for a scourge of mass killings. But five decades of empirical research by preeminent criminal law expert Professor Franklin Zimring tell a different story: The core of our country’s deadly violence is access to […]
Posted inUS
New Study: Low-Wage Areas Can Afford $15/Hr Minimum Wage
Berkeley, Calif. July 2, 2019 – A $15 federal minimum wage will not create job loss in low-wage states in the U.S. but, in fact, will offer more opportunities for workers and their families to lift themselves out of poverty, a study released Tuesday by Anna Godoey and Michael Reich, economists at UC Berkeley’s Center […]
Posted inCalifornia
GOP’s 2017 tax plan came down hardest on California, researchers say
April 25, 2019 – When the Republican Party rammed through tax changes in 2017, it wasn’t a surprise that the rich got richer. But in a just-published paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach and seven co-authors have uncovered eye-opening results of that hurried blitz, namely: red state rich […]
Posted inCalifornia
Falling levels of air pollution drove decline in Central Valley’s tule fog
April 10, 2019 – The Central Valley’s heavy wintertime tule fog – known for snarling traffic and closing schools — has been on the decline over the past 30 years, and falling levels of air pollution are the cause, says a new study by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley. Tule fog, named for […]
Posted inUS
The 2018 trade war cost the American economy $7.8 billion dollars in lost gross domestic product
March 13, 2019 – The 2018 trade war cost the American economy $7.8 billion dollars in lost gross domestic product, according to a new paper authored by a team of economists at UC Berkeley, Columbia University, Yale University and UCLA. The paper, “The Return to Protectionism,” makes that case that President Donald Trump’s trade war […]
Posted inCalifornia
Quakes a reminder of the reach of partial government shutdown
Jan. 17, 2019 – If the partial shutdown of the U.S. government doesn’t have you quaking, maybe it should. As part of the shutdown, members of the U.S. Geological Survey have been sidelined. So, when the Hayward Fault let fly with earthquakes that struck the Berkeley/Oakland/Piedmont area in the wee hours the last two days, […]
Posted inCalifornia
Efforts to lift children and families could fit California’s budget, new study says
Jan. 7, 2019 – Awarding parents more time with newborns and easing access to preschool could fit within Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first state budget, according to UC Berkeley researchers. Newsom — as candidate for governor — promised to expand affordable preschools, along with buoying parents raising infants and toddlers, in hopes of narrowing the “school […]
Posted inCalifornia
Is habitat restoration actually killing plants in the California wildlands?
January 2, 2019 – In 2014, plant biologists with the California Department of Agriculture reported an alarming discovery: native wildflowers and herbs, grown in nurseries and then planted in ecological restoration sites around California, were infected with Phytophthora tentaculata, a deadly exotic plant pathogen that causes root and stem rot. While ecologists have long been wary […]
Posted inLife
Hang in there. As couples age, humor replaces bickering
Dec. 3, 2018 – Honeymoon long over? Hang in there. A new UC Berkeley study shows those prickly disagreements that can mark the early and middle years of marriage mellow with age as conflicts give way to humor and acceptance. Researchers analyzed videotaped conversations between 87 middle-aged and older husbands and wives who had been […]
Posted inCalifornia
California’s Health Coverage Gains to Erode without Further State Action
BERKELEY, Nov. 28, 2018 – A new study by researchers at UC Berkeley and UCLA projects how changes to federal law that remove the Affordable Care Act (ACA) individual mandate penalty in 2019 could significantly impact California’s record-breaking health coverage gains. “Unless the state takes action, we could see 500,000 to 800,000 more Californians become […]
Posted inRegional
Fire & Water: Restoring natural fire to California’s mountains
The verdant meadows of Illilouette Creek drain directly into the southeastern corner of bustling Yosemite Valley via 370-foot Illilouette Falls. Springtime wildflower displays draw crowds from the popular lookout at Glacier Point, a short hike away. The Illilouette Creek Basin also happens to be surrounded by a bowl of pure Yosemite granite, meaning its 40,000 […]
Posted inUS
Synagogue shootings underscore ‘America’s failure to take anti-Semitism seriously’
October 30, 2018 – The murder of 11 Jews in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh Saturday morning thrust anti-Semitism center stage into the American conversation. It was the deadliest attack against Jews in American history, but it wasn’t the first, and its roots go back centuries. We asked John Efron, Koret Professor of […]
Posted inSci/Tech
National parks bear the brunt of climate change
BERKELEY, CA, Sept. 24, 2018 – Human-caused climate change has exposed U.S. national parks to conditions hotter and drier than the rest of the nation, says a new UC Berkeley and University of Wisconsin-Madison study that quantifies for the first time the magnitude of climate change on all 417 parks in the system. Without action […]
Posted inCalifornia
Rising housing costs are re-segregating the Bay Area, study shows
Sept. 19, 2018 – New reports from the Urban Displacement Project at UC Berkeley and the California Housing Partnership confirm that rising housing costs between 2000 and 2015 have contributed to displacement of low-income people of color and resulted in new concentrations of poverty and racial segregation in the Bay Area. Increases in housing prices […]