And here’s the rare Google Bus what doesn’t go to Mountain View – it was labeled SBO-SFO, I assume because it goes to the YouTube facility in the part of San Bruno what didn’t get blown up by PG&E:
I was surprised to see the Genentech bus appear to maneuver to drop off just one employee.
What other big local outfits drive interstate-type buses about the 415? Apple? That’s the only one I can think of.
“Former state Supreme Court Justice and UC Davis School of Law Professor Emeritus Cruz Reynoso is the first member of task force that will review report about UC Davis pepper spraying from ex-L.A. police chief William Bratton.”
I, for one, am prepared to allow our UC some breathing room on this one. Let’s give them a little while and then see what they come up with, on both this incident and the prior UC Berkeley baton incident, m’kay?
Click to expand
“Cruz Reynoso chairs task force on pepper spray incident
Date: 2011-11-28
University of California President Mark G. Yudof announced today (Nov. 28) the appointment of former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso to chair the task force formed to address the pepper spraying of UC Davis students.Reynoso, a UC Davis law professor emeritus who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000, will be “absolutely fair,” Yudof said.The task force is part of UC’s efforts to address policing issues in the wake of the Nov. 18 pepper spraying of UC Davis students and other incidents involving law enforcement officers and protesters. Acting in response to a written request from UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, Yudof last Tuesday announced that former Los Angeles police chief William J. Bratton would lead an independent fact-finding of the pepper spray incident and report back the results to him within 30 days.Bratton, who also led the New York City police department, now heads the New York-based Kroll consulting company as chairman. He is a renowned expert in progressive community policing. Assembly Speaker John A. Perez also had made a request to Yudof and UC Regents Chair Sherry Lansing for an independent investigation.Under the plan, Bratton’s report also will be presented to the task force that Yudof is forming, again at Katehi’s request. The task force will consist of a cross-section of students, faculty, staff and other UC community members. Reynoso is the first member named to the task force. The task force will review the report and make recommendations to Katehi on steps that should be taken to ensure the safety of peaceful protesters on campus. She will present her implementation plan to Yudof.
Reynoso, a farmworker’s son, rose from an Orange County barrio to become the first Latino to serve on the California Supreme Court. He has a bachelor’s degree from Pomona College and a law degree from UC Berkeley. His distinguished career includes serving as director of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, a UCLA law school professor and as vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He joined the UC Davis law school faculty in 2001 as the inaugural holder of its Boochever and Bird Chair for the Study and Teaching of Freedom and Equality.
In remarks at the regents meeting today, Yudof reiterated his support for protecting the right to peaceful protests on campus and emphasized that Bratton’s investigation will be independent.
Last Tuesday, in a separate effort, Yudof also appointed UC General Counsel Charles Robinson and UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Christopher Edley Jr. to lead a systemwide examination of police protocols and policies as they apply to protests at all 10 UC campuses. The review is expected to result in recommended best practices for policing protests across the 10 UC campuses.
University of California President Mark G. Yudof moved on two fronts today (Tuesday, Nov. 22) to address policing issues in the wake of the pepper spraying of UC Davis students and other incidents involving law enforcement officers and protesters.
Acting in response to a written request from UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, Yudof agreed to conduct a thorough review of the events of Nov. 18 on the Davis campus.
As a first step, Yudof reached out to former Los Angeles police chief William J. Bratton to undertake an independent fact-finding of the pepper spray incident and report back the results to him within 30 days.
Bratton, who also led the New York City police department, now heads the New York-based Kroll consulting company as chairman. He also is a renowned expert in progressive community policing.
“My intent,” Yudof said, “is to provide the Chancellor and the entire University of California community with an independent, unvarnished report about what happened at Davis.”
Assembly Speaker John A. Perez also had made a request to President Yudof and UC Regents Chair Sherry Lansing for an independent investigation.
Under the plan, Bratton’s report also will be presented to an advisory panel that Yudof is forming, again at Katehi’s request. The panel will consist of a cross-section of students, faculty, staff and other UC community members.
The advisory panel, whose members will be announced at a later date, will review the report and make recommendations to Chancellor Katehi on steps that should be taken to ensure the safety of peaceful protesters on campus. She will present her implementation plan to President Yudof.
On a second track, Yudof appointed UC General Counsel Charles Robinson and UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Christopher Edley Jr. to lead a system-wide examination of police protocols and policies as they apply to protests at all 10 UC campuses.
This effort will include visits to campuses for discussions with students, faculty and staff, and consultation with an array of experts.
The review is expected to result in recommended best practices for policing protests across the 10 UC campuses.
“With these actions,” Yudof said, “we are moving forward to identify what needs to be done to ensure the safety of students and others who engage in non-violent protests on UC campuses. The right to peaceful protest on all of our campuses must be protected.”
“UC Board of Regents chair Sherry Lansing says in a video statement that she is “shocked and appalled” by the images of police actions during recent student protests at UC Berkeley and UC Davis.
Lansing supports UC President Mark Yudof’s effort to review systemwide procedures so that students can engage in peaceful protests.
“We regents share your passion and your conviction for the University of California,” Lansing says. “We want all of you to know that we fully and unequivocally support your right to protest peacefully.”
Lansing also invites the people to express their views at the Board of Regents meeting on Nov. 28. The rescheduled meeting will be open to the public and connected by a teleconference with regents participating from UC San Francisco-Mission Bay, UCLA, UC Davis and UC Merced. As usual, the meeting will also be streamed online. The public comment period has been expanded from 20 minutes to at least one hour.”
"We had a technical issue updating Forum last night - Pat Buchanan will not be our guest at 10am. The guests will be:
Linda Katehi, Chancellor, University of California, Davis Nathan Brown, Assistant Professor Organization: Department of English - University of California, Davis. And member of the Davis Faculty Association, which on Saturday called for the resignation of Chancellor Katehi over the pepper spray incident. Fatima Sbeih, Senior at UC Davis - She was among those demonstrators pepper-sprayed"]
“The pepper-spraying of Occupy Wall Street protesters at the University of California, Davis by a law enforcement officer on Friday has drawn criticism outrage from around the world. At 10am pst KQED’s popular call-in show, Forum, will discuss the incident with UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, who has been the target of student protests following the pepper-spraying and has been asked to resign by the university’s faculty association.
UC Davis announced today that it has placed university police chief Annette Spicuzza on leave after her officers used pepper spray to move seated Occupy UC Davis protesters on Friday. The incident, which has gained international media attention, also led the campus faculty association to call for the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi. She says she will not step down. We discuss the controversy.”
University of California President Mark G. Yudof today (Sunday, Nov. 20) announced the actions he is taking in response to recent campus protest issues:
I am appalled by images of University of California students being doused with pepper spray and jabbed with police batons on our campuses.
I intend to do everything in my power as President of this university to protect the rights of our students, faculty and staff to engage in non-violent protest.
Chancellors at the UC Davis and UC Berkeley campuses already have initiated reviews of incidents that occurred on their campuses. I applaud this rapid response and eagerly await the results.
The University of California, however, is a single university with 10 campuses, and the incidents in recent days cry out for a system-wide response.
Therefore I will be taking immediate steps to set that response in motion.
I intend to convene all 10 chancellors, either in person or by telephone, to engage in a full and unfettered discussion about how to ensure proportional law enforcement response to non-violent protest.
To that end, I will be asking the Chancellors to forward to me at once all relevant protocols and policies already in place on their individual campuses, as well as those that apply to the engagement of non-campus police agencies through mutual aid agreements.
Further, I already have taken steps to assemble experts and stake-holders to conduct a thorough, far-reaching and urgent assessment of campus police procedures involving use of force, including post-incident review processes.
My intention is not to micromanage our campus police forces. The sworn officers who serve on our campuses are professionals dedicated to the protection of the UC community.
Nor do I wish to micromanage the chancellors. They are the leaders of our campuses and they have my full trust and confidence.
Nonetheless, the recent incidents make clear the time has come to take strong action to recommit to the ideal of peaceful protest.
As I have said before, free speech is part of the DNA of this university, and non-violent protest has long been central to our history. It is a value we must protect with vigilance. I implore students who wish to demonstrate to do so in a peaceful and lawful fashion. I expect campus authorities to honor that right.”
OAKLAND — The University of California Board of Regents meeting, postponed this week because of public safety concerns, has been rescheduled for Monday, Nov. 28.
The time for public comment, scheduled to begin at 9 a.m., will be expanded from the usual 20 minutes to a full hour with regents, UC staff and members of the public in attendance on four campuses — UC San Francisco-Mission Bay, UCLA, UC Davis and UC Merced. The sites will be connected to each other via teleconference. The public notice of the meeting, where they will take place on campuses and the agenda are available at www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/nov28.html.
O.K. then. For Jerry Brown, the time to swab your mouth to get DNA is when you get arrested for a felony, but the ACLU thinks that law enforcement should wait until you get convicted of a felony. That’s the focus of today’s oral arguments at the 9th Circuit.
Now, one of the recent successes of the state’s DNA program is the capture of the Grim Sleeper down in L.A. County. That’s an amazing story involving the use of “familial DNA,” an approach that’s illegal in some parts of the U.S. but A-OK here due to JB’s approval back in in aught-eight.
I’d say so. But you can’t even attempt a shot at making a connection with familial DNA if you don’t have the DNA collected in the first place so that’s what today’s court fight is about.
They’ll be partying hard today down at the Mission Bay campus. The celebration in Genentech Hall starts in just a few minutes and they’ll have a full-blown news conference this afternoon.
Of course Elizabeth wouldn’t want to leave out her co-winners, so let’s give a shout out to Carol W. Greider of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Jack W. Szostak of Harvard Medical School.
It’s going to be on!
Congratulations to Elizabeth and everybody at the University of California, San Francisco
Fiat Lux, baby!
THE DISCOVERY OF THE TELOMERASE ENZYME
The scientists discovered an enzyme that plays a key role in normal cell function, as well as in cell aging and most cancers. The enzyme is called telomerase and it produces tiny units of DNA that seal off the ends of chromosomes, which contain the body’s genes. These DNA units – named telomeres—protect the integrity of the genes and maintain chromosomal stability and accurate cell division. They also determine the number of times a cell divides—and thus determine the lifespan of cells.
Telomerase is pronounced (tel-AH-mer-AZE). Telomere is pronounced (TEEL-oh-mere).
The research sparked a whole field of inquiry into the possibility that telomerase could be activated to treat such age-related diseases as blindness, cardiovascular disease and neurodegenerative diseases, and deactivated to treat cancer, in which the enzyme generally is overactive.
In recent years, Blackburn and colleagues have explored the possibility that life stress, the perception of life stress and lifestyle behaviors could take a toll on telomerase and telomeres. They have reported several studies with human participants, suggesting a correlation. The findings may offer insight, at the cellular level, into the impact of stress on early onset of age-related diseases.
The scientists were named to receive the prize “for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the telomerase enzyme,” according to the Nobel committee in Stockholm, Sweden.
Evolution of discovery
Blackburn’s road to discovery traces back to 1975 to 1977, when she was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University. There, working with Joseph Gall, she discovered the unusual nature of telomeres, with their simple, repeated DNA sequences comprising chromosome ends. The work was published in 1978.
With Szostak, she established that these DNA repeats stabilize chromosomes inside cells. They also predicted the existence of an enzyme that would add the sequences to the ends of chromosomes.
In 1985, while a professor at University of California, Berkeley, Blackburn and her then-graduate student Greider reported the discovery of such an enzyme, which they named telomerase. Their research showed that in some organisms, such as the single-celled pond dweller Tetrahymena, telomerase continuously replenishes the chromosome’s telomeric tips. In humans, however, researchers, including Blackburn and her group, showed that telomerase is damped down at certain times in the lives of many types of cells, limiting their ability to self-replenish.
With this discovery, scientists saw the possibility of exploring whether, in humans, the enzyme could be reactivated to prolong cell life to treat age-related diseases, and deactivated to interrupt cancers.
Blackburn joined the UCSF faculty in 1990 and is the Morris Herzstein Endowed Chair in Biology and Physiology in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics.
She is the fourth UCSF scientist to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
A native of Australia, Blackburn has lived in the United States since 1975, and is a naturalized citizen of the United States as of September 2003.
She lives in San Francisco with her husband, John Sedat, PhD, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at UCSF. They have one son, Benjamin.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
