Nov 20, 2009 Los Angeles Times Effects of judge's Katrina ruling could be huge

The finding that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is liable for much of the New Orleans flooding could change how levees are designed nationwide. "The American public frequently believes they are protected by these piles of dirt that we call levees, when they are not," said Robert Bea, a UC Berkeley civil engineering professor who testified during three days of the trial. "I hope this ruling would serve as a wake-up call."

Nov 19, 2009 National Geographic Katrina damage due to "monumental" neglect, judge rules

A federal judge ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina, a decision that could make the federal government vulnerable to billions of dollars in claims. Speaking in May, months before the ruling, Bob Bea, a civil engineer and levee expert at UC Berkeley, told National Geographic News that the federal government could be on the hook as much as two trillion dollars.

Nov 19, 2009 Innovations A Reality Check on High-Speed Rail for California

In November 2008, California voters passed a $9.95-billion bond issue to build a bullet train that would zip passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles via the Central Valley at speeds up to 220 miles per hour. Clearly, many Americans are smitten with the romance of the rails. But last month, at an overflow symposium at UC Berkeley, a panel of experts in the fields of transportation engineering and city and regional planning urged caution.

Nov 18, 2009 The New York Times Andy Grove's prescription for health care

Andrew S. Grove, the 73-year-old former chief executive of Intel, has long brought a piercing intellect and a personal passion to the subject of health care. Mr. Grove will deliver a presentation on Wednesday morning at a symposium in San Francisco, "Translating Technology into Cost-Effective Healthcare," focusing on the shortcomings in the medical innovation pipeline. "Why doesn’t technology give us medical treatments that are better, faster, cheaper? A system that works, heaven forbid, like the chip world." An answer, Mr. Grove says, lies in a concept called "translational medicine."

Nov 16, 2009 Forbes Look who's hiring now: Inquire within

It's really bad out there. But, sensing opportunity, companies across America are starting to hire again, despite powerful drags on hiring. "We're seeing a classic case of behavioral conservatism," says Jonathan Burgstone, who runs UC Berkeley's Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology. Most companies don't feel comfortable adding to their payrolls unless they see competitors doing the same, he reasons. "They require much more proof than is necessary to convince themselves that hiring is the right thing to do."

Nov 11, 2009 Technology Review Breaking the botnet code

Software that deciphers botnet communications could help infiltrate criminals' networks. Researchers from UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University, including Berkeley Engineering professor Dawn Song and Ph.D. student Juan Caballero, have created a way to automatically reverse engineer the communications between compromised computers and their controlling servers.

Nov 11, 2009 Marin Independent Journal Working artist: Engineer builds career melding technology with art - and whimsy

Engineering and art may seem worlds apart to some, but to Mill Valley artist Ken Goldberg they're complementary pursuits. Both require a magical combination of creativity, persistence and hard work. Case in point: Goldberg, a Berkeley Engineering professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, is also director of the UC Berkeley Center for New Media, where he teaches and builds robots that do complex tasks. He also creates expansive, conceptual art installations that deal with the identity, nature and the Internet.

Nov 09, 2009 San Francisco Chronicle Eyebar just one of Bay Bridge's many problems

Despite all the attention it has received, the eyebar isn't the biggest danger on the eastern span of the Bay Bridge -- and it's not the reason the span is being replaced instead of retrofitted. At least one Bay Area engineer believes the span could still withstand a major earthquake and should be retrofitted. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a UC Berkeley civil engineering professor and a frequent critic of Caltrans, says the eastern span would be more resistant to earthquakes and terrorist attacks than the single-tower suspension span under construction.

Nov 05, 2009 San Francisco Examiner Old bridge bumper technology means future oil spills likely

Two years after a rigid bumper system on a Bay Bridge tower ripped open two fuel tanks of a wayward cargo ship, the dangerously outdated technology remains in use. The old-fashioned design of the bumper systems has been criticized by UC Berkeley engineering professor Abdolhassan Astaneh-Asl.

Nov 05, 2009 TheScientist.com Scientific song and dance

What started as a creative idea for a video contest about nanotechnology is now growing into a full-fledged science music video production team. Composed of four University of California, Berkeley, students and one alumnus, 'The Sounds of Science' is making a quite a splash with its Broadway-style musical numbers, which enliven the realities of the laboratory through song, dance, and puppetry.

Nov 05, 2009 The New York Times Searching for answers

Among the hundreds of current research projects in the Bay Area, some may solve problems crucial to local industries, like clean tech and bio-tech. Others focus on possible disaster, like the collapse of the Sacramento Delta levees in an earthquake. From Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to the flood that inundated the Midwest last year, Robert Bea, a civil engineer at UC Berkeley, has crossed the country to study levee failures. But when he looked closer to home he found the signs of a looming disaster.

Nov 04, 2009 KCRA.com Aerial robots future of aviation?

Small but powerful aerial robots, specially programmed to avoid mid-air collisions, could help pilot the future of aviation. "It's programmed into the individual vehicles that may come in conflict with each other," said Dr. Claire Tomlin, professor of electrical engineering at both UC Berkeley and Stanford. "We would like to have guarantees that these algorithms will safely guide the vehicles away from each other."

Nov 01, 2009 Technology Review Mining fool's gold for solar

UC Berkeley's Cyrus Wadia is using abundant materials to grow nanocrystals for cheaper photovoltaics. His ultimate goal is to turn pyrite into real treasure: an inexpensive solar cell.

Oct 29, 2009 San Francisco Chronicle Bay Bridge repairs will face extra scrutiny

Teams of independent engineers and federal bridge experts will scrutinize the repairs Caltrans and a contractor are making to a failed structural fix on the Bay Bridge. Berkeley Engineering professors C. William Ibbs and Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl offer comments and critique.

Oct 28, 2009 SF Weekly Engineer: High winds a credible -- but shocking -- explanation for Bay Bridge failure

Jack Moehle -- a UC Berkeley engineering professor and one of the Bay Area's acknowledged experts on freeway and bridge failure -- said that Caltrans' initial claims that high winds contributed to yesterday's rupture on the Bay Bridge is "a credible explanation." Still, he's taken aback that the failure occurred just weeks after the installation of the parts in question.

Oct 28, 2009 New Scientist Brain scanners can tell what you're thinking about

Using scans of brain activity, researchers can now recreate moving images that volunteers are viewing, and even make educated guesses about what they are remembering. Last week at the Society for Neuroscience meeting, Jack Gallant, a leading "neural decoder" at UC Berkeley and a core member of the UCB/UCSF Graduate Group in Bioengineering, presented one of the field's most impressive results yet.

Oct 28, 2009 San Francisco Chronicle Tough commute likely after Bay Bridge rod snaps

The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge has been closed indefinitely after a rod installed during last month's emergency repairs snapped, causing a traffic nightmare. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a civil engineering professor at UC Berkeley, who has spent 20 years studying the Bay Bridge, called the initial crack a "warning sign" of potentially bigger safety issues with the bridge. "The repair they were doing was really a Band-Aid," said Astaneh-Asl, who criticized Caltrans at the time for rushing to reopen the bridge.

Oct 25, 2009 EurekAlert Berkeley researchers create first hyperlens for sound waves

Ultrasound and underwater sonar devices could "see" a big improvement thanks to the development at UC Berkeley of the world's first acoustic hyperlens, which provides an eightfold boost in the magnification power of sound-based imaging technologies. "We have successfully carried out an experimental demonstration of an acoustic hyperlens that magnifies sub-wavelength objects by gradually converting evanescent waves into propagating waves," said Berkeley Engineering professor Xiang Zhang, a principal investigator.

Oct 23, 2009 The New York Times Lots of stimulus money - and concerns about where to put it to work

"Shovel-ready" projects demonstrate the pros and cons of the Obama administration's efforts to stimulate the economy. Robert G. Bea, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley, said, "These projects do a good job filling potholes, patching up the quilt. But we have a monumental mess. There's no one with a vision, and there are so many systems that could completely collapse."

Oct 23, 2009 PhysOrg.com Parallel course: Researchers help ease transition to parallel programming

Krste Asanovic, an associate professor at the Parallel Computing Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, comments on the challenges of parallel programming.