A Sampling of Clips for October 7^th, 2009

* UCSD faculty and staff may obtain a copy of an article by e-mailing the University Communications Office

Governor in Showdown with Lawmakers
Los Angeles Times, Oct. 7 – Like the cinematic action hero he was, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants a big finish. With little more than a year left in office, he is willing to take hostages to get it. So, as the clock ticks toward a Sunday deadline for signing or rejecting more than 700 bills on his desk, Schwarzenegger has engaged legislative leaders in a game of chicken, threatening a mass veto if lawmakers don't strike a deal to upgrade the state's water system. (Quotes Thad Kousser, a UCSD political scientist) More

To Soften Cuts, UCSD to Borrow from Itself
San Diego Union-Tribune, Oct. 7 – UCSD is blunting the damage from $84.2 million in state budget cuts with a plan to borrow nearly half that amount from internal funds. By lending itself $40 million, the campus could put off some painful cuts at a time when students are coping with higher fees and staff members are struggling with unpaid furlough days.  “If we'd had to take another $40 million in cuts, it would have been terrible,” said Paul Drake, UCSD's senior vice chancellor for academic affairs. “We're trying to maintain the quality of education as best we can.” More 

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IBM, Google, and Colleges talk Cloud Projects
San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 5 -- Sponsored by IBM, Google, and the National Science Foundation (NSF), university researchers are gathering Monday to tout their respective cloud computing projects as part of the CLuE (Cluster Exploratory) program. In presentations at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, academics are hailing projects like "Scaling the Sky with MapReduce/Hadoop" at the University of Washington, "Commodity Computing in Genomics Research" at the University of Maryland, and "Dynamic Provisioning of Data Intensive Applications" at UCSD. The meeting is for CluE Principal Investigators. IBM and Google presentations also are featured at Monday's event. More

Food Supply Hangs in the Balance
Tehran Times, Oct. 7 – Rocketing food prices and hundreds of millions more starving people will be part of humanity's grim future without concerted action on climate change and new investments in agriculture, experts reported this week. The current devastating drought in East Africa, where millions of people are on the brink of starvation, is a window on our future, suggests a new study looking at the impacts of climate change.  (Qoutes Charles Kennel of the UCSD Sustainability Solutions Institute) More

No More Plastic Water Bottles
Huffington Post, Oct. 6 -- It is time to stop the insanity and you can help! I am referring to the madness of purchasing water in single-use, disposable plastic bottles. In spite of the convenience, this is a crazy concept and we must put an end to it. You may ask, "What's so crazy about using individual bottles of water?" Pardon my candor, but not only is this habit unnecessary and ridiculously expensive, it is also wasteful and dependent on diminishing resources. (Mentions UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography) More

It’s Still Academic
Forbes, Oct. 6 -- While the basic idea for virtualization is as old as mainframe computers, the current enthusiasm for all things virtual owes a great deal to academia. Pioneering company VMW had its origins in work at Stanford University done by the company's co-founder, Mendel Rosenblum. The popular open source Xen hypervisor software came out of work done at Cambridge University in the U.K. (Mentions UCSD) More

How to Minimize Risk of Getting the Flu
San Diego Union-Tribune, Oct. 6 -- The following are things you and your family can do to minimize the risk of contracting influenza during the next few months. Prepare a flu emergency kit in case the virus is serious enough to keep you and your family at home. (Quotes Kim Delahanty, a nurse epidemiologist and administrative director of infection prevention at UCSD Medical Center) More

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