Tag: News
US National Toxicology Program Cell Phone Study Report Released
The National Toxicology Program (NTP) has been conducting experiments in rats and mice on potential health hazards from cell phone radiofrequency radiation. Today, the NTP released a report on some important study findings.
Here are some key points about the cell phone study:
- The nomination for the NTP to study cell phone radiofrequency radiation was made by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
- These are the largest most complex studies ever conducted by the NTP.
- For the studies, rodents were exposed to frequencies and modulations currently used in cellular communications in the United States. Rats and mice were exposed for 10-minute on, 10-minute off increments, totaling just over 9 hours a day from before birth through 2 years of age.
- The NTP found low incidences of tumors in the brains and hearts of male rats.
- NTP has provided these findings to its federal regulatory partners to enable them to have the latest information for public health guidance about safe ways to use cellular telephones and other radiofrequency radiation emitting devices.
Likewise, the NTP is providing the findings to the public. A report has been posted at http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055699. The report is titled, “Report of Partial Findings From the National Toxicology Program Carcinogenesis Studies of Cell Phone Radiofrequency Radiation in Hsd: Sprague Dawley SD Rats (Whole Body Exposure).” Studies in mice and further evaluations of the rat studies are continuing. The complete results from all the rat and mice studies will be available for peer review and public comment by the end of 2017.
– from NTP News, May 27, 2016
Summer Reading List: Outside Lies Magic
The UC Berkeley Summer Reading List is an annual compilation of recommended (though not required) readings suggested by Cal faculty, staff, and students as a welcome to incoming freshmen and transfer students.
Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places
This is a great, fascinating book for inspiring creativity and wonder about the world around us. I’ve used it with first-year art students in order to start to raise questions about why things are they way they are. It’s a great introduction to things like the postal system; the effects of environmental design and the way we interact with it; and questions like “Why do eggs come in packages of 12?” (Answer: So you can split them in half twice and share them with your neighbors. Same with acres.) Read it to learn how to start discovering the world around you through looking and observation, and become your own explorer.
– TIM PINAULT Digital Projects Manager & Photographer, UC Berkeley Library
Post contributed by:
Michael Larkin Lecturer, College Writing Programs
Tim Dilworth First Year Coordinator, Library
Summer Reading List: The Innovators
The UC Berkeley Summer Reading List is an annual compilation of recommended (though not required) readings suggested by Cal faculty, staff, and students as a welcome to incoming freshmen and transfer students.
Before Page, Brin, Jobs, and Gates, there were many others whose innovations helped to shape our highly technologized world. Isaacson takes us on a 150-plus-year trip through new computational concepts and ways to apply them through physical devices where nobody can really claim center stage because it’s a collective contribution that has made it all possible.
You can tell that I liked the book 🙂
– GIULIA HILL Programmer Analyst, UC Berkeley Library
Post contributed by:
Michael Larkin Lecturer, College Writing Programs
Tim Dilworth First Year Coordinator, Library
Open Access highlight: SF homeless youth
Researchers from the School of Public Health conducted a 6-year study of increased mortality rates among homeless youth in San Francisco. Their research was recently published in PeerJ, an Open Access, biological and medical sciences journal.
A recent issue of the Berkeleyan, the UC Berkeley campus newsletter, highlights the study, “Six-year mortality in a street-recruited cohort of homeless youth in San Francisco, California,” by Colette L. Auerswald, Jessica Lin and Andrea Parriott.
Committed to rapid review and fast publication of research results, PeerJ has an innovative publishing model that charges authors a membership fee rather than charging subscription fees to readers.
Because the UC Berkeley Library has an institutional membership, when a paper by a Berkeley author is accepted for publication in PeerJ, the Berkeley Library will automatically pay the cost of a Basic Membership for each Berkeley author. That membership allows authors to publish one PeerJ article every year, for life, for free.
Funding PeerJ author memberships is an example of the Library’s commitment to Open Access and increasing the impact of UC Berkeley researchers for the benefit of all.
Post contributed by Margaret Phillips, Education Librarian, Gender & Women’s Studies Librarian & Elliott Smith, Emerging Technologies Librarian, Bioscience and Natural Resources Library
New Old Release: Roughing It
We’re glad to announce that Roughing It (1993), edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and Edgar Marquess Branch, is available at MTPO (at last). Enjoy!
Summer Reading List: The Sparrow
The UC Berkeley Summer Reading List is an annual compilation of recommended (though not required) readings suggested by Cal faculty, staff, and students as a welcome to incoming freshmen and transfer students.
“This literary science fiction novel is about the first humans to travel to an alien planet. And who are the first humans to do so? Jesuits. Parallel with Jesuit missions of the past, these interplanetary colonizers face cultural clashes that make them question their purpose. Likewise, the reader is forced to question the colonial past and the potential of future alien contact.”
– RYAN BARNETTE Library Stacks Supervisor, Access Services Division
Post contributed by:
Michael Larkin Lecturer, College Writing Programs
Tim Dilworth First Year Coordinator, Library
Summer Reading List: Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia
The UC Berkeley Summer Reading List is an annual compilation of recommended (though not required) readings suggested by Cal faculty, staff, and students as a welcome to incoming freshmen and transfer students.
“Although women didn’t even have the right to vote, Gertrude Bell relied on her education, upbringing, and self-confidence to influence policy decisions made by leaders in England and the Mid-east. This is a remarkable story of a remarkable woman whose work in the early 20th century explains many of the situations observed today.”-
– CHARLOTTE SMITH Lecturer, School of Public Health
Post contributed by:
Michael Larkin Lecturer, College Writing Programs
Tim Dilworth First Year Coordinator, Library
Addressing the Behavioral Health Needs of Transgender & Gender Non-Conforming Patients: Free webinar by HRSA
Are you interested in learning about some promising practices that address the behavioral health needs of transgender and gender non-conforming patients in a culturally appropriate manner? Then this HRSA free webinar might be of interest to you.
This HRSA webinar will feature promising practices of Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) grantees. Additionally, the HHS Office for Civil Rights will discuss the proposed nondiscrimination rule under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.
The target audience for this webinar includes public health officials, HRSA grantees, healthcare providers, and advocates wanting to improve competency in regards to serving the needs of transgender and gender non-conforming patients in their practices.
Date: Monday, June 13, 2016
Time: 11:00am to 12:30pm PDT
Cost: free
You’ll find more information and a link to the registration page on the TARGET Center’s web page for this webinar.
CDPH in the News, May 2016
CDPH in the News
LA residents affected by pollution from shuttered battery plant say slow cleanup adds insult to injury
from Free Speech Radio News
ttorneys with the NAACP filed a federal class action lawsuit last week on behalf of residents of Flint, Michigan affected by lead contaminated water. While national attention has been focused on the Flint crisis since late last year, another environmental disaster in Los Angeles has been unfolding for much longer – nine decades in fact – and most Americans aren’t aware of it. For years, a battery recycling plant most recently managed by Exide Technologies leached lead and other carcinogens into the soil, air and water in surrounding residential neighborhoods. Residents say the company’s shutdown took too long and that cleanup efforts are also sluggish.
The interim director of public health for LA County has said that lead contamination could affect up to 10,000 homes within a 1.75-mile radius of the shuttered Exide plant. And a recent analysis by the California Department of Public Health found slightly elevated levels of lead in children living within two miles of Exide, but it didn’t determine what the source was. It was confirmation of what many residents feared: that they’re not safe, and the government still doesn’t know how unsafe they are.
Researchers slowly homing in on risk of Zika birth defect
from Washington Post
As the international epidemic of Zika virus disease has unfolded and led to devastating birth defects for at least 1,300 children in eight countries, an agonizing question has persisted: What is the chance that an infected pregnant woman will have a baby with these defects?
Researchers don’t yet have a complete answer, but they are slowly homing in on one. The largest study to ever look at the question says the risk of one especially severe type of birth defect is “substantial” – in the range of 1 percent to 14 percent. It also reinforces the understanding that women infected in the early stages of pregnancy face the greatest risk. “These numbers are probably only the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr. Neil Silverman, a UCLA professor of obstetrics who has been advising the California Department of Public Health on Zika issues.
Napa LGBTQ program gets state grant to expand services Upvalley
from Napa Valley Register
Napa’s LGBTQ Connection has been awarded grants totaling $1 million from the California Department of Public Health to expand mental health-related services to Upvalley, Fairfield and Sonoma Valley over the next five years. “It’s very exciting,” said Ian Stanley, LGBTQ Connection program director. “What was once a little program in Napa is now going to be a model for other communities in the state and beyond.” This grant is “an amazing gift to the valley,” said Greg Miraglia, a dean at Napa Valley College and the national program manager for Stop the Hate, an educational initiative that provides training on how to create programs to support LGBTQ students.
In total, the California Department of Public Health will award $60 million to 41 contractors and grantees throughout the state. The goal is to reduce mental health disparities across African-American, Asian and Pacific Islander, Latino, LGBTQ and Native American communities.
State employees offered bikes to rent as option for downtown trips
from Sacramento Bee
State employees needing transportation for business purposes within the city of Sacramento can now request a car or a bicycle. Several departments have their own bike-sharing programs for employees, most funded through grants, said Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the California Department of General Services. Based on the positive response to those programs, he said, General Services decided to make bicycles available to employees of any department through the State Garage on 10th Street in downtown Sacramento. The State Employee BikeShare Program launched Tuesday.
Ferguson said the state purchased 12 bicycles, costing less than $200 each, which employees may rent for business purposes. “It’s an opportunity to get people out of their cars and get them on bikes,” Ferguson said. Employees can reserve bicycles online just as they do state cars, and the bicycles will be maintained by staff members at the state garage. The California Department of Public Health recently celebrated the two-year anniversary of its BikeShare program. The bicycles are available to department employees to travel to downtown meetings, run errands or exercise during lunch breaks.
State Investigators Fault Sutter Hospice In Overmedication Of Prominent Calif. Health Care Leader
from California Healthline
The California Department of Public Health has issued a report that found Sutter VNA & Hospice provided Jerome Lackner’s caregivers with excessive amounts of morphine that may have contributed to his death. A state investigation into the death of Jerome Lackner, an iconoclastic California health care leader who served as a physician for Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr., has found that Sutter VNA & Hospice provided his caregivers with excessive amounts of morphine that, if administered, may have contributed to his death or killed him. The report by California Department of Public Health investigators faults the Sutter hospice for continuing to provide morphine to Lackner’s lay caregivers, despite nurses’ concerns that he was being overmedicated. It notes that during one nine-hour period, he was given morphine at almost double the maximum dosage prescribed.
Global Access to Berkeley Research
“Sorry, you do not have access to this article.”
Have you ever hit that annoying paywall? People unaffiliated with universities see messages like this all the time. Many academic articles are published in expensive scholarly journals paid for by academic libraries and they’re only available to currently enrolled students or faculty.
The UC Open Access Policy, passed by the Academic Senate in 2013, seeks to change that by ensuring that research articles authored by UC faculty are made available free of cost to the general public and researchers worldwide. Since implementation of the policy began at UC Berkeley in November 2015, more than a thousand articles by UC Berkeley authors have been posted to eScholarship.
A few of the articles that are now widely available:
- The Challenges of Afghanistan and Iraq Veterans’ Transition from Military to Civilian Life and Approaches to Reconnection by Jennifer Ahern (School of Public Health)
- “Is That A Method of Birth Control?” A Qualitative Exploration of Young Women’s Use of Withdrawal by Anu Gomez (School of Social Welfare)
- Mindless Modernism by Joshua Gang (Department of English)
- Targeting climate diversity in conservation planning to build resilience to climate change by David Ackerly (Department of Integrative Biology)
For more on the UC Open Access Policy or to find out how you can post your articles in eScholarship, check out this video or write to the OA Implementation Team at oapolicy [at sign] lists.berkeley.edu.
Margaret Phillips
Librarian, Social Sciences Division
Open Access Policy Implementation Team