Tag: News
California ballot measure resources for June 7
The Institute of Governmental Studies has released a guide to the ballot measure on the June 7 Primary Election ballot on the California Choices website.
In addition to voter resources and in-depth analyses of the proposition, the site features a View Endorsements and Share Your Vote page where you can compare endorsements from political parties, newspapers, and other organizations, and share how you are voting with friends and family.
California Choices is a collaborative effort by the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley and the nonpartisan nonprofit organization Next 10.
For more information, contact Paul King.
Post contributed by Paul King, Institute of Governmental Studies Library
Summer Reading List: Just Mercy
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 week we take a closer look at Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson, New York : Spiegel & Grau, 2014.
Among the first things UC Berkeley will send the incoming class of 2020 is this book that will form the centerpiece of this fall’s On the Same Page program.
“Passion, commitment, justice, brutality, the defense of the condemned. In Just Mercy, Brian Stevenson–he’s been called America’s Nelson Mandela, America’s Atticus Finch–sears the reader in his telling of his fight as a young lawyer for social justice on behalf of the poor and the disadvantaged. Just Mercy grips you like the best of novels, bringing you into the lives of the most desperate of people caught in systems of imperfect justice. Stevenson makes us despair that just mercy is beyond our reach, but fills us with glimmers of hope that it is also always within our grasp. Just Mercy is about human suffering and guilt, about the morality of punishment, about poverty and the law, and about the possibilities for heroic action in an imperfect world.”
– ALAN TANSMAN, Professor East Asian Languages and Cultures
Post contributed by:
Michael Larkin Lecturer, College Writing Programs
Tim Dilworth First Year Coordinator, Library
Squatter Politics and the Civil War: Bancroft Roundtable, May 19
Dangerous Ground: Squatters, Statesman, and the Rupture of American Democracy, 1830-1860 will be the topic of the next Bancroft Roundtable on May 19th at noon in The Faculty Club.
John Suval, Gunther Barth Fellow at The Bancroft Library and doctoral candidate, History, University of Wisconsin–Madison will present.
Squatters were a persistent frontier presence from the earliest days of the United States, yet these illegal settlers emerged as political and cultural lightning rods in the Jacksonian and antebellum periods. Why?
This talk explores how squatters in the expanding West came to occupy a central place in U.S. political culture, territorial conquests, and conflicts leading up to the Civil War. California was a particularly violent and disruptive proving ground of squatter politics, and a primary focus of the discussion.
Date: May 19, 2016
Time: Noon
Where: Lewis-Latimer Room, The Faculty Club
Free and open to the public.
Post contributed by Kathryn M. Neal, Associate University Archivist
and
Crystal Miles, Public Services Assistant, The Bancroft Library
The Papyrus in the Crocodile: 150 Years of Exploration, Excavation, Collection, and Stewardship at Berkeley
The collections assembled by Berkeley’s patrons and collectors over the last 150 years form the foundation of many of the university’s academic disciplines. This unprecedented exhibition, sponsored by the Mellon Foundation and co-curated by graduate students from the History of Art Department, brings together materials from The Bancroft Library, the Hearst Museum of Anthropology, the Environmental Design Archives, the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, and the Berkeley Art Museum. Read the Berkeley News article for more information.
Date: May 5 to July 29, 2016
Place: The Bancroft Library Gallery
The Bancroft Library Gallery is open Monday-Friday, 10am-4pm, excluding holidays.
Post contributed by Alison Wannamaker, Library Graphics Office
Image courtesy of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley.
NCCMT Spotlight on Methods & Tools: Program Evaluation Toolkit webinar
Are you looking for tools to support program evaluation? Then this free webinar might be of interest to you.
Kyle Ferguson and Melissa Jennings of the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health will talk about the Program evaluation toolkit developed by their Centre.
The Program evaluation toolkit utilizes a three-phase process to apply to program evaluation. This toolkit contains lists, steps, and templaates for developing a logic model and final report. It was designed to be used by anyone involved in planning and conducting program evaluation, accessing data sources and analysing data on an ongoing basis.
Date: Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Time: 10:00 – 11:30 am PDT
Register: online here
New updates to EndNote – Microsoft Word 2016 now supported
EndNote released X7.5, its latest update for Windows, on April 5, 2016 . This update enables EndNote’s Cite While You Write to work with Microsoft® Word 2016. Other enhancements and optimizations included are for the find full text feature, syncing libraries with large file attachments, and Windows devices with higher screen resolutions.
To update to this version of EndNote, follow the prompts when you next open EndNote. Not sure if you have the latest update? You can check to see by opening EndNote, clicking on Help in the menu bar at the top, and then clicking on Check for Updates.
CDPH now has an enterprise license for EndNote X7. Contact Debbie Jan at debbie.jan@cdph.ca.gov if you have any questions on this.
CDPH in the News, April 2016
CDPH in the News
California health department warns against illegally made cheese
from KUTV
“Illegal Cheese Can Make You Sick!” warns a press release from The California Department of Public Health, cautioning consumers against eating illegally made soft cheeses. In the release, California Department of Public Health (CDPH) Director and State Public Health Officer Dr. Karen Smith, advised people against consuming “…illegally manufactured Mexican-style soft cheeses, often sold by street vendors.”
“These cheeses are often made with raw, unpasteurized milk and under unsanitary conditions,” Smith warned, describing how they have witnessed “…a dramatic increase in the number of reported Salmonella cases, particularly in the Hispanic community.”
Health alert issued over counterfeit pills
from Turlock Journal
Health officials and law enforcement are warning the public of a rash of overdose deaths from a counterfeit painkiller that is actually a powerful opiate. The overdoses have all been linked to pills sold on the street that are designed to look like hydrocodone, but are actually synthetic fentanyl, which is a narcotic more powerful than morphine.
In a two week time span there were 10 overdose deaths in Sacramento County from the narcotic. Other overdoses have been reported in other California counties as well, according to the California Department of Public Health.
Razor clam fishery closed
from Times Standard
The California Fish and Game Commission closed the razor clam fishery in Humboldt and Del Norte counties on Monday after an emergency meeting. Following the latest batch of test results last week, Lauren Zeise, acting director of the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, cited an “emergency situation” after toxicity levels of clams came in over five times the allowable limit.
According to the commission’s official emergency meeting report, “Ingesting razor clams with high levels of domoic acid is a matter upon which urgent action is necessary to avoid severely impairing public health and safety.” Concerns about razor clam toxicity levels have been present since last summer, but recent test results from the California Department of Public Health showed elevated levels. The current federal action level for domoic acid in clams is 20 parts per million. The CDPH test results show that all but one of the 18 samples were over this limit, with one-third of the samples topping out above 100 ppm.
Rodents carrying potentially fatal hantavirus found in Inland region
from Press Enterprise
Riverside County’s director of disease control on Tuesday urged caution around certain rodent species after 10 mice carrying the potentially deadly hantavirus were found in San Timoteo Canyon near Beaumont. The California Department of Public Health confirmed the animals, which lived in the Norton Younglove Preserve near Beaumont, tested positive for the disease after being live-trapped in March with 14 other rodents.
The virus was found in deer mice, harvest mice and the California or parasitic mouse. Hantavirus is common in the Inland region, said Dottie Merki, Riverside County’s environmental health program chief.
Big increase in suicides for middle-aged women
from San Diego Union Tribune
In the past 15 years, the national suicide rate has increased 24 percent, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. In 1999, the national age-adjusted suicide rate was 10.5 per 100,000 people, and in 2015, that number increased to 13 per 100,000. The report noted that increase picked up pace after 2006.
The trends are similar in California, although the data is kept differently. In 1999, there were 9.1 suicides per 100,000 people, and that population-based rate increased to 10.4 in 2013, the latest data kept by the California Department of Public Health.
Mass. firefighters seek ban on flame retardants
from Boston Globe
Amid growing concern that flame retardants are responsible for elevated cancer rates in firefighters, Massachusetts lawmakers are pushing legislation that would go further than any other state’s in banning the use of chemicals meant to slow the spread of fires.
Fire officials and environmental advocates, who have joined forces to support the restrictions, contend that at least 10 chemicals used in flame retardants endanger firefighters, while doing little to stop fires. They support two bills that would prohibit manufacturers and retailers from using the chemicals in children’s products and upholstered furniture and authorize state environmental officials to ban other retardants they designate as health risks. Saunders, director of Clean Water Action in Massachusetts, pointed to an ongoing study by the California Department of Public Health that has found that firefighters who have been on the job for more than a year have been exposed to substantially higher levels of chemicals in flame retardants than civilians.
Library Undergraduate Research Prize Reception – May 4
The Library is delighted to announce the winners of the 2016 Charlene Conrad Liebau Library Prize for Undergraduate Research! Please join us for an award ceremony and reception, held jointly with the American Cultures Innovation in Teaching and Student Research Prize, to honor the work of these outstanding students.
Library Undergraduate Research Prize Reception
Date: Wednesday, May 4
Time: 4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Location: Morrison Room, Doe Library
Lower Division
- Glenn Richardson: Betrayal in Brussels: The Conference that Changed International Science. History 30, Professor Rodolfo John Alaniz.
- Tiange Wang:The Interior-Exterior Unification in Chinese Literati Residences: A Tool for Upholding the Literati Identity. Architecture 170, Professor Andrew Shanken.
Upper Division
- James Bradley: The Union Ruptured: Mechanization, Modernization, and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. History 101, Professor Robin Einhorn.
- Charlotte Hull: Becoming Atlantic: A Spatial History from Seventeenth-Century Martha’s Vineyard. History 101, Professors Waldo Martin and Mark Peterson.
- Marvin Morris: First in Flight: A Comprehensive Study of Etruscan Winged “Demons.” Classics H195B, Professors Kim Shelton and Lisa Pieraccini
- Elizabeth Rainey: The Education of Joan Didion. English 195B, Professor Scott Saul.
Honorable Mention
- Cameron Silverberg: The Dragon, the Lion, and the Ballot Box: Evaluating China’s Impact on Democracy in Africa. Political Science H190B, Professor Amy Gurowitz.
Post contrubuted by David Eifler and Lynn Jones Co-Chairs, Charlene Conrad LIebau Library Prize for Undergraduate Research
Data Acquisition and Access Program
The Library is pleased to announce a new program to support research needs of UC Berkeley students and faculty — the Data Acquisition & Access Program.
The Library supports resources that are of broad interest, and up to $100,000 per year will be available through this new program to purchase data that is of use to more than one research group or department. There will be four review cycles each year with the first review beginning on May 1, 2016.
The application form and more information are available at guides.lib.berkeley.edu/data.
Post contributed by Jean McKenzie, Acting Acting Associate University Librarian, Collections
Movies @ Moffitt, May 4: Hafu
The Movies @ Moffitt series features films selected by students for students, on the first Wednesday of each month.
Title: Hafu
Directors: Megumi Nishikura & Lara Pérez Takagi
Synopsis: Hafu follows the lives of five “hafus” – the Japanese term for people who are half-Japanese – as they explore what it means to be multiracial and multicultural in a nation that once proudly proclaimed itself as the mono-ethnic nation.
Date: Wednesday, May 4
Time: Doors open at 6:30pm, and the film starts at 7:00pm.
Place: 150D Moffitt Library
A UCB student ID is required for entry, and the event is free. Light refreshments served.
Post contributed by Tim Dilworth, First Year Coordinator, The Library