5-10-09

 
5-10-09
Badlands Journal
Your local "high-tech, bio-tech engine for growth" at work...Badlands Journal editorial board
http://www.badlandsjournal.com/2009-05-09/007220
Speak Memory: During the entire run-up to approval of UC Merced and construction of its first phase, including all the bogus environmental review documents and the illegal water and sewer hookups with the City of Merced, boosters from the Regents to UC presidents Roger Atkinson and Robert Dynes, UC Merced's first chancellor, Carol Tomlinson-Keasey ("the Cowgirl Chancellor"),  representatives Gary Condit and Dennis Cardoza and their talented staffs, former state Sen. Dick Monteith (who declared the campus a "done deal" before it was, actually, a done deal), every realtor, bank and local land owner and local elected official (if a distinction between these classes can be discerned), every planner, our own Sonny Star, the local gigolo press, and most of all, the Great Valley Center (now a UC Merced partner), declared that the campus would be a "high-tech, bio-tech engine for growth in the San Joaquin Valley." We were promised another Silicon Valley right on the banks of Bear Creek, bright young things full of bright young ideas would be starting companies right and left, so we had to build proper housing for them here, there, and everywhere.
Nothing is more responsible for Merced and probably Modesto's national notoriety as foreclosure-rate capitals than the Coming of UC Merced and the total real estate-marketing illusion of all those brilliant people that were going to transform our economy from "old" agriculture to "new" technology. What we got instead were retiring Silicon Valley engineers following the hot tips of their financial advisors that you couldn't go wrong speculating in Merced real estate.
All that history makes the bit of recycled Bobcatflak in Sonny Star's pages (see below) pathetic proof of the "boondoggle" and "land deal" that UC Merced was and is. Here we have a student obviously of some mathematical ability designing "a more efficient wood-burning stove for Prakti Designs, a company based in Pondicherry, India."
This is presented as one more example of American know-how fulfilling its sacred mission to "developing countries" (formerly known as "undeveloped countries," "less developed countries," or the "Third World") -- areas beyond Merced County and its 21-percent unemployment.
Pondicherry is what is known as a "union terrority" (administered directly by the central government) rather than a state in India, due to complexities of colonial history. Originally built by the Dutch and the French, object of the aggressions of the British East India Company, Pondicherry is located on the Tamilnadu coast of the Bay of Bengal. The state of Tamilnadu is the home ground for nearby Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. Pondicherry is promoting itself as a high-tech and bio-tech growth center. In terms of agriculture, however, the local press reports an increase in farmer suicides due to real estate expansion for urban growth.
Prakti Designs appears to produce designs for less polluting, more efficient stoves for poor people around the world. Appropriate bio-energy technology is one of its main missions, fitting well with the project presented below. It also appears, from a half-hour web search, to be funded by Shell Foundation, based in the UK, which claims to be "independent" (of the oil company whose logo it displays). Another organization Prakti is connected to is Aprovecho, an American non-profit dedicated to sustainable agriculture, permaculture, and design solutions to all the world's problems. Impeccable. Lovely farm in Oregon.
Why do we smell a rat? In part because we sure could have used some of this low-pollution bio-energy stove design at least in central Merced last winter, where the acrid fumes of trash burning in fireplaces was a regular feature of evening walks.
In larger part, because the University of California is really not even anchored to California anymore. It is a global university. Less than a quarter of its budget comes from the state anymore, which may have been at least as much a problem with the state Legislature as with UC, but it has been the fact for several decades. UC cares about as much about Merced as WalMart does, whose distribution center and air pollution UC is bringing to Merced as surely as it brought the Mission Interchange and the Campus Parkway. These are institutions so huge they have long, long ago lost the ability to care about anything but themselves.
Perhaps UC Merced officials should ask the "independent" Shell Foundation if it couldn't rustle up the missing half-million dollars needed for First Lady Michelle Obama's upcoming appearance at the campus, the development project that "put Merced on the map" by sucking out its money, its local autonomy, destroying its character and landscape and leaving it with Depression-level unemployment. That's not to say that our regional economy wasn't always problematic and fragile, veering between boom and bust depending on cycles of overproduction of agricultural commodities, swings in global markets, and droughts and floods. But the speculative building boom is a cat of another color entirely and its anchor tenant turns out to be a "high-tech, bio-tech engine of growth" for India. Another source of contribution for the First Lady's visit is UC's companion global conglomerate, WalMart, a great marketing "engine of growth" for China.
But, hey, Sonny Star got another UC Bobcatflak puff release to regurgitate (we mean "chronicle"). The official charade must go on because that's all that is officially left.
Badlands Journal editorial board
5-8-09
Merced Sun-Star
First Class: Top math student will pursue graduate studies at UC Merced...DANIELLE GAINES
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/834310.html
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is one of several that will chronicle the lives of members of the UC Merced inaugural graduating class. As pioneers at UC Merced, their contributions will leave a lasting effect on the Merced community...
(UC Merced graduating senion Paul Tranquilli)  settled on applied mathematics because "it will give me the ability to get involved in a lot of fields. The flexibility is what makes it interesting," he said.
By definition, applied mathematics creates equations and computer models used to provide a mathematical basis to guide other areas of innovation like design or engineering, said UC Merced professor Mayya Tokman.
Tokman has been working with Tranquilli for about a year on a research project to create a more efficient wood-burning stove for Prakti Designs, a company based in Pondicherry, India.
"This is a project that can have a really big impact on the lives of people in developing countries," Tokman explained. "There are millions of people who use wood burning stoves."
Tokman and Tranquilli created a mathematic equation to simulate the efficiency of the stoves. Using that equation, Prakti can test various prototypes of the stoves quickly and with relatively little expense.
"It will basically keep the consumer's cost down by avoiding multiple physical prototypes," Tranquilli explained. With the virtual version, the company could conduct billions of tests until the best design is created.
Tokman said the new design could decrease the amount of smoke -- and the related health issues -- in homes with wood-burning stoves. It could also provide a more efficient heat source in communities where wood is hard to find.
That's not the first research project Tranquilli has been involved with at UC Merced.
In 2007, he was listed as a co-author with UC Merced professor Arnold Kim on a study published by the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer.
The article, titled "Numerical solution of the Fokker-Planck equation with variable coefficients," was Tranquilli's first published work as a scientist.
This past March, Tranquilli was awarded the campus' first math prize.
Led by professor Francois Blanchette, members of the UC Merced faculty devised the UC Merced Applied Mathematics Prize to recognize the achievements of the most outstanding undergraduate math student on campus.
Tranquilli qualified for the prize by earning the highest GPA in the math program, doing so consistently in upper division and math courses...Tranquilli doesn't know where he wants to settle either; San Diego is too crowded, but Merced is too sparse.
Someday, he will calculate a future that's just right.
Sacramento Bee
Washington state, California ponder high-speed rail line...Les Blumenthal, McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/v-print/story/67712.html
WASHINGTON — Washington state and California officials have held preliminary discussions about a high-speed, state-of-the-art rail line that would connect San Diego and Vancouver, B.C., with trains that could travel in excess of 200 miles per hour.
The talks come just weeks after Congress approved a $787 billion economic stimulus bill sought by the White House that included $8 billion for high-speed rail in the Northwest and nine other corridors around the nation.
Washington state will seek nearly $900 million in federal money to double to eight the number of daily roundtrips from Portland to Seattle in the next three years or so. Even with the improvements, the trains will be able to travel at 110 mph over only limited sections of track.
But Scott Witt, director of the Washington state Department of Transportation's rail and marine program, said that though he and others are focused on the "here and now," high-speed trains running nearly the length of the West Coast aren't just a fantasy.
"They would go like a son of a gun," he said.
Witt envisions trains like the Shinkansen, the bullet trains in Japan, or France's TGV trains that regularly travel at near 190 mph. The bullet trains, in tests, have traveled at 277 mph, and the TGV trains have been tested at 320 mph. Both countries and others are working on Maglev or electromagnetic propulsion trains that could cruise at speeds approaching 400 mph.
Constructing a truly high-speed West Coast rail corridor wouldn't be easy. It would require entirely new rails and a new corridor that smoothed out grades and corners. Picking a route and deciding where the trains would stop would be politically bruising. And the cost could be astronomical.
The 1,500-mile line, by some estimates, could cost between $10 million and $45 million per mile to build.
Witt said he has been talking with his counterpart in California for about three weeks.
"It's very, very preliminary," Witt said. "But it makes a lot of sense."
An alliance with California and perhaps Oregon would make it easier to leverage federal planning funds, he said.
"We've been a highway culture in the West," Witt said. "It could be time for a change."
California voters last year approved the sale of nearly $10 billion in bonds for a San Diego to Sacramento high-speed train. In Japan and France, however, high-speed rail is funded not by borrowed money but with revenue from a steep gas tax, which also encourages people to take trains rather than drive.
Yet the reality in the Northwest, at this point, has more to do with the little engine that could than a bullet train speeding up the Interstate 5 corridor at near airplane speeds.
In including $8 billion in the stimulus package for high-speed rail, President Barack Obama said it would be a "down payment" on bringing the nation's rail system into the 21st century.
"This is not some fanciful, pie-in-the-sky vision of the future," Obama said. "It's been happening for decades. The problem is it has been happening elsewhere, not here."
The stimulus funding initially will provide grants for ready-to-go projects. The first of the grants could be awarded before the end of summer. Follow-on funding would be used for more extensive corridor programs and longer-range planning.
Federal officials estimate the existing intercity passenger rail service uses one-third less energy per passenger-mile than cars. If high-speed rail lines were built on all the federally designated corridors, the officials said it could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 6 billion pounds annually.
Congress also has approved spending an additional $5 billion over the next five years on high-speed rail projects.
"We make no bones about it, this will not fund a high-speed rail network," said Robert Kulat, a Federal Railroad Administration spokesman. "But it kicks it down the track."
Since 1994, Washington state and Oregon have invested $1.1 billion in the rail corridor from Portland to Seattle, Witt said. Federal funding would help pay for some long overdue upgrades that could allow the trains to travel up to 110 mph near Kelso and Centralia.
The Talgo trains, built in Spain with a suspension system that allows them to lean going through corners, are capable of speeds up to 125 mph. But the trains are mostly limited to 79 mph until track, crossing and train control improvements are made.
Federal stimulus money will not allow an increase in service from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C. There is now one train a day, but that will increase to two a day prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics.
The passenger trains share the tracks with freight trains on a BNSF mainline.
Last year, the Portland-Seattle line carried 750,000 passengers, an 82 percent increase over the past 10 years.
By 2023, the trains could be carrying 3 million passengers a day on 13 daily roundtrips between Portland and Seattle and four between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., according to the state's rail master plan. Corridor improvements could reduce travel times from Portland to Seattle by almost an hour, from three hours and 25 minutes to two hours and 30 minutes.
But the cost -- $6.5 billion -- could be prohibitive.
Even so, Witt said, federal stimulus funding was a start.
"It's a huge opportunity," he said.
Washington state has one other ace in the hole: Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. As chair of the Senate transportation appropriations subcommittee, Murray is positioned to help.
"This is real stuff about moving people, creating jobs and reducing greenhouse gases," Murray said.
As for a high speed San Diego to Vancouver run, Murray said not to dismiss it out of hand.
"Obviously it would be in the future and it would be great," she said. "But if this (stimulus spending) can lead to that, it would be amazing."
San Francisco Chronicle
Successful cases of sealing court records...Peter Scheer
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/10/INST17G6DO.DTL&type=printable
Secret court cases undermine our system of justice. Here's a short list of recent cases where both the prosecutors and defenders successfully prevailed upon the judge to seal the court record:
-- In a major wage-and-hour class action against Wal-Mart (which eventually resulted in a $172 million verdict), thousands of pages of documents relating to a motion for summary judgment and motion for class certification were sealed by the trial judge upon Wal-Mart's request without the necessary findings. The ruling was eventually reversed.
-- In a recent battle between two Bay Area hospitals, the hospitals sealed virtually all of their court filings - even a newspaper article - in a civil suit in Contra Costa County. Only after a newspaper moved to unseal were the papers unsealed.
-- In an unsuccessful antitrust suit challenging MediaNews Group's acquisition of several Bay Area newspapers and an investment in MediaNews Group by the owners of The Chronicle, all parties by agreement sealed most of the records in the case, including records quoted at length in the court's own decisions in the case.
Los Angeles Times
UC Merced's first full graduating class: We made it!
When they arrived as freshmen in 2005, classroom buildings weren't ready. They created their own traditions amid adversity and attrition. They even got Michelle Obama to be their graduation speaker...Larry Gordon
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-merced10-2009may10,0,6611228,print.story
Reporting from Merced, Calif. — They were the trailblazers, this first full class about to graduate from the University of California, Merced. And like most pioneers, they had to create their own traditions amid adversity and attrition.
When they arrived as freshmen in the fall of 2005, classroom buildings weren't ready on the fledgling campus, a former golf course surrounded by cow pastures in the San Joaquin Valley. For more than a year, classes met in the library and dorm lounges; sometimes, because of construction, the only access was by fire escape.
"I think it takes a certain kind of person to go to a school where there is nothing and start something," said Kim Wilder, an English major from Brea who is among an expected 320 students -- less than half those who started as freshmen -- who will graduate on Saturday. Twenty-one others finished early, 110 are continuing and about 250 transferred or dropped out.
Wilder, 22, said the opportunity to be part of something new, along with small classes and the chance to work with faculty on research, kept her and many classmates at Merced. "Of course, we grumbled and complained now and then," she said. "But for the most part, people got behind the idea that if we stuck it out, it would feel a little more normal."
Merced, the first new UC campus in four decades, is more normal now, with 2,700 students, 120 full-time professors and three major academic buildings around a grassy quad with views of the Sierra Nevada. It is also about to be celebrated on a national platform.
Merced's seniors decided they wanted First Lady Michelle Obama as their commencement speaker and pursued her through a lobbying campaign featuring 900 valentine cards, a video that declared "Dear Michelle, We Believe in You" and the pulling of every possible political string between Central California and Washington, D.C.
To the surprise of UC administrators, Obama accepted. Her spokesperson said the first lady was touched by the students' efforts and their inaugural class status. Suddenly, what would have been a low-key ceremony may cost as much as $700,000 for such expenses as Jumbotron screens and extra security, although campus officials hope donations will offset some of the total.
Faculty and administrators attribute the Obama visit to the can-do spirit of a graduating class that learned to rely on itself. They also hope the attention will boost UC Merced's profile and its freshman applications, which dropped slightly this year and were less than half that of UC Riverside, which typically trails the other UC campuses. And they want state funding to help the Merced campus grow to 12,000 students over the next decade and eventually to about 25,000.
"A lot of high school students hear about UC Merced and may not know the opportunities we have here. Too many may think it's a start-up, too new or too much of a risk," said Yaasha Sabbaghian, a former student body president who helped lead the "Dear Michelle" campaign.
Merced's high-profile visitor "will shine a limelight on us and show we are respected," said Sabbaghian, a biology major from San Mateo who said he received an excellent education and is considering law school.
The founding students' dogged spirit showed in the way they persisted in their educations and established 75 campus organizations, without older students paving the way, said Charles Nies, associate vice chancellor for student affairs.
"They created stuff and asked, 'Why do we have to do it that way, why can't we do it differently?' " Nies remembered. And though that could be frustrating some days, it was also valuable, he said: "That's what we are training our students to do -- to go out there, challenge all the processes and find new ways to do things."
Students who launched the first fraternities and sororities did so in an unusual way. Traditionally, national Greek organizations visit a campus to recruit. Instead, UC Merced students researched the clubs and invited only those with values and customs they liked, Nies said.
One campus group allied itself with Kappa Kappa Gamma because it was among the first sororities in the nation, founded in 1870 at Illinois' Monmouth College, said UC Merced senior Katie Murray, one of the organizers. "We felt the founding women of that sorority related to us in so many ways," said Murray, 21, a psychology major from Novato.
Four years ago, Murray was rejected by UC Santa Barbara; like many in the graduating class, she received an unexpected invitation to enroll at what became the 10th UC campus.
She accepted, despite warnings from friends at other colleges who said UC Merced might be "a joke school." Now, she said proudly, "I feel I have had a chance and choice to make a difference instead of just being a face in the crowd."
Justin Duckham, 22, a history major from Los Gatos, said he had considered transferring to a university with a livelier arts scene and in a more cosmopolitan community. But when he talked to friends at other UC campuses, he was shocked at the difference.
"I was the only one who was getting individual attention from professors and was discussing things with them outside class. They know my name," said Duckham, who helped found an underground newspaper at UC Merced and wants a job in radio journalism.
UC Merced sits on rolling grassland about an hour north of Fresno and five miles from the sleepy downtown of its namesake farming community. Its early construction was delayed by state funding shortages and efforts to protect the area's vernal wetlands and the fairy shrimp, an endangered species. (Despite tongue-in-cheek calls to adopt that crustacean as Merced's mascot, a bronze statue of the real honoree, the golden bobcat, was erected last month, next to a scenic campus bridge.)
The campus recently received federal approval for a development plan that allows it to push well past the original golf course site. But growing pains continue, with concerns that state budget deficits may delay completion of a much-needed classroom building now under construction, said Chancellor Sung-Mo "Steve" Kang, a South Korean-born electrical engineer.
In 2006, its second year, the campus was rattled by a drop in enrollment of new and continuing students. That turned around the next year. Still, current seniors recall that some former classmates left because they didn't like rural life and the constant view of cows. Others who transferred wanted big-time sports -- Merced has only club-level teams -- or needed a wider array of academic majors. The campus has just 18 majors but plans to add more.
Professors say some students in the initial classes were unprepared for college work. All admitted UC students must meet the university system's relatively high standards, but those admitted at UC Merced on average tend to have lower grades and test scores than those admitted at other UC campuses.
They also have the highest rates among their UC peers in these categories: of being in the first generation of their families to attend college; of belonging to a low-income household or under-represented racial minority; and of living in a rural area.
Kang said the statistics reflect the reason UC Merced was founded: to attract more San Joaquin Valley students, who now comprise about a third of the school.
Of the freshmen who entered in 2005, about 49% will graduate within four years. That is lower than last year's UC systemwide average of 59% but slightly better than last year's class at UC Riverside, whose demographics are similar to Merced's.
The size of the first graduating class "is pretty remarkable given what these students had to deal with when they first came here," said campus provost Keith Alley. "It really is a remarkable testament to the fortitude of these kids and one reason I think they are so special."
Now, the history of Merced's pioneering class, and of the campus, has been written by students in a newly published book, "The Fairy Shrimp Chronicles." The project's advisor, UC Merced history professor Gregg Herken, was in the first graduating class at UC Santa Cruz 40 years ago. He says he sees similarities with this Merced class of '09, starting with its willingness to attend a muddy start-up.
As farewells loom, UC Merced's first graduating class is waxing nostalgic for those early, chaotic days, when students knew nearly everyone on campus. That changed as enrollment increased.
"Little by little, we saw a new face every day," recalled student leader Sabbaghian. "We noticed we were losing the tight-knit community we had, and we realized how much we loved it."
Waterfowl groups oppose proposed Central Valley power line routes...Kelly Burgess...Outposts...5-7-09
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/outposts/2009/05/waterfowl-groups-oppose-proposed-power-line-routes.html
Ducks Unlimited and the California Waterfowl Assn. are calling on members, waterfowl hunters and conservationists to voice their concern and opposition to a new power line construction proposal, stating that the suggested routes will negatively affect many of the waterfowl habitats and hunting areas in central California (for maps of area involved click here).
The Transmission Agency of Northern California Transmission Project would place transmission towers and lines along approximately 600 miles, including portions of numerous wildlife refuges.
"Ducks Unlimited and waterfowl hunters are not opposing the new energy in the region, we would just like to see wetlands and other wildlife habitat protected from the placement of power lines in these proposed routes," Rudy Rosen, director of Ducks Unlimited Western Regional office said.
The DU website states that less than 250,000 acres of wetland remain of an area that once encompassed 3 million to 5 million acres. The proposed power lines will threaten this relatively small acreage that wintering and breeding waterfowl are dependent on.
Waterfowl experts say that large power lines impact birds, especially in foggy conditions when large waterbirds such as geese, cranes, herons and swans are killed or injured when they hit the lines.
"California's Central Valley winters or provides migration habitat for 60% of the Pacific Flyway's waterfowl and 20% of North America's waterfowl population," added Rosen. "This is not just a California issue but should be addressed by everyone in the U.S."