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.

Oct 22, 2009 CBS News Security flaws discovered in California EDD website

After receiving reports of security issues with the California Employment Development Department website, CBS 5 asked UC Berkeley computer science professor and privacy expert Doug Tygar to take a look at the site. Tygar "was able to access other people's personal information including their address, their phone numbers, email, personal details." He said, "I consider that to be a serious security breach...the Caljobs website has very serious security problems and the system administrators have not yet understood the scope of those problems."

Oct 22, 2009 The New York Times Senate confirms nominees for Interior, DOE

Filling some of the remaining holes in the Obama administration's energy and environmental team, the Senate yesterday confirmed one Interior and two Energy department nominees. The Senate unanimously approved Arun Majumdar, professor of engineering and materials science at UC Berkeley, to direct the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. At the confirmation hearing, Majumdar pledged to grow the agency into "a robust engine of American innovation."