Tag archive: Berkeley

Sugar cane and corn may soon be sharing the biofuel spotlight with a new contender: seaweed. A new breakthrough to break down sugars in seaweed may make the abundant marine algae central to replacing fossil fuels. The breakthrough is credited to scientists from the Berkeley-based Bio Architecture Lab, Inc (BAL). According to the Scientific American, the BAL researchers used a genetically modified version of Escherichia colito (E. coli) to digest… Read More

We all hate spam, and it keeps on coming. But just how do spammers make money, and is it the fabled millions people have claimed? A new study carried out earlier this year by computer scientists from University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego saw the seven-strong team hijack part of the Storm botnet to discover the answers, according to the BBC. They created several “proxy bots” between the Storm control system and… Read More

Swiss-owned hardware manufacturer Logitech padded out the software side of its operation on Wednesday with the acquisition of SightSpeed, a company that offers video conferencing applications. The company laid out approximately $30 million in cash to seal the deal, which will wrap up after customary closing conditions in November. “With this acquisition, we are significantly augmenting our current video R&D resources to help us… Read More

If you’re a student at University College, London (UCL) or Trinity College, Dublin, a new academic service means you’ll be able to download lectures from iTunes, making the alarm clock a thing of the past. They’re the latest addition to the so-called iTunes U, where lectures from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UC Berkeley and MIT are all available for free. Video and audio recordings of the Trinity College and UCL… Read More

The future is in parallel computing. So say the CEOs of both IBM and Google, who are converting their shared vision into a huge investment in college campuses to strengthen student understanding of the technology. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the companies would sink between $20 million and $25 million into hardware, software and services in parallel computing resources for college campuses. The reason: both say… Read More

For college students who have ever wasted time cruising for videos on YouTube when they should have been studying, there’s now an easy compromise: going to class on YouTube. The University of California at Berkeley became the very first college to offer lectures on YouTube when it announced the UC Berkeley channel on Wednesday. YouTubers can now attend 300 lectures on everything from biology to nonviolence, completely free of charge.… Read More

A new study shows that which social networking site you use can help show your social status.   According to research by PhD student Danah Boyd from the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley, Facebook users comes from homes with a higher income and are more likelyto attend college. By contract, Myspace users usually go straight to work following high school and don’t pursue a degree.   Boyd’s researchalso shows that… Read More

There’s a new P2P network coming. But it won’t be file-sharing this time. The new iCare network, invented by a pair of UC Berkeley students, will make for a much faster flow of disaster relief in the United States.   Anand Kulkarni and Ephrat Bitton, both working on their PhDs,were inspired by Hurricane Katrina and its nightmare aftermath. Communications were virtually impossible, and the logistics of relief became a nightmare… Read More

Yahoo! Research is bringing in some of the big guns of academic braintrusts as they move to invent new and cool things for us to play with online. They announced today they have teamed with the folks up the road at the University of California, Berkeley to open a new research facility near the famous campus. The new Yahoo! Research Labs

The official reponse by the RIAA:

From RealNetwork's press release: RealNetworks, Inc. today announced agreements with the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Minnesota to offer its award-winning Rhapsody Internet jukebox service to students starting this fall. The agreements, which will give more than 80,000 undergraduate and graduate students deeply discounted access to Rhapsody, are the first the company has signed within the higher education… Read More

The all-new Yahoo! Messenger gives consumers a more personal and interactive instant messaging (IM) experience by offering leading Yahoo! services like LAUNCHcast Internet radio, Yahoo! Games, Yahoo! AddressBook, and Yahoo! Search right in the messaging window, plus expressive features including Avatars and Audibles. Consumers have flocked to this deeper integration and enhanced self-expression with more than 1.5 million people helping the… Read More

Efficeon ushers in a new era (eon) of efficient computing for users of ultra-portable and mainstream notebook computers. Likewise, Efficeon enables innovation and new classes of devices such astablet PCs, ultra-personal computers, silent desktop computers, blade servers and embedded systems. The Efficeon microprocessor offers an unmatched combination of power efficiency, design flexibility, performance-on-demand and low cost, and will be a… Read More