Oakland, California Will Host Pilot Program/Experiment for Guaranteed Income

Oakland, California, will host what may be the first universal basic income experiment in the United States.

Around 100 families will be given a minimum wage as part of a pilot experiment by startup accelerator Y Combinator.

They will be given between $1,000 and $2,000 each month to see how the basic income affects their happiness, well-being and how they spend their time.

Oakland was chosen for its social and economic diversity and the fact it has areas of concentrated wealth and considerable inequality. Participants were selected randomly across the economic spectrum and include both the employed and jobless.

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Boxitecture

Oh This Town I Live in

I've seen the Tesla X, Lambos, etc.  Oh this town...

A Whole Lot More Savage Than Noble in California

Notable paper: Eerkens J et al. 2016. Isotopic and genetic analyses of a mass grave in central California: Implications for precontact hunter-gatherer warfare. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 159:116–125.

Synopsis: Jelmer Eerkens and colleagues examined a mass burial of seven men from the Amador Valley of California around 850 AD. The people in the area at this time were sedentary hunter-gatherers living in small villages, and these seven men appear to have been killed in a violent event. Eerkens and colleagues were able to investigate stable isotopes in the bodies to show that the men came from outside the Amador Valley, and mtDNA established that the men were not close maternal relatives. Further, a slight contrast in the carbon and strontium stable isotopes between bone and teeth shared by the men suggest that they all changed residence locations, possibly together, some time after their third molars finished enamel deposition.

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Inside Google's Quantum Computing Lab

John Martinis used the arm of his reading glasses to indicate the spot where he intends to demonstrate an almost unimaginably powerful new form of computer in a few years. It is a cylindrical socket an inch and a half across, at the bottom of a torso-sized stack of plates, blocks, and wires of brass, copper, and gold. The day after I met with him this fall, he loaded the socket with an experimental superconducting chip etched with a microscopic Google logo and cooled the apparatus to a hundredth of a degree Celsius above absolute zero. To celebrate that first day of testing the machine, Martinis threw what he called “a little party” at a brewpub with colleagues from his newly outfitted Google lab in Santa Barbara, California.

That party was nothing compared with the celebration that will take place if Martinis and his group can actually create the wonder computer they seek. Because it would harness the strange properties of quantum physics that arise in extreme conditions like those on the ultracold chip, the new computer would let a Google coder run calculations in a coffee break that would take a supercomputer of today millions of years. The software that Google has developed on ordinary computers to drive cars or answer questions could become vastly more intelligent. And earlier-stage ideas bubbling up at Google and its parent company, such as robots that can serve as emergency responders or software that can converse at a human level, might become real.

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430 Horseshoe Hill, Bolinas, California

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2025 Center Street Berkeley Parking Structure to be Rebuilt With 271 More Parking Spaces

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That's actually hilarious.  Berkeley gave the Lab a serious hard time over the number of cars and parking spaces on the Hill.  Now Berkeley, the City itself, is going to be adding even more.  snork.

California to Experience More Extreme Droughts, Inundations due to Climate Change

In the future, the Pacific Ocean's temperature cycles could disrupt more than just December fishing. A study published in Nature Communications suggests that the weather patterns known as El Nino and La Nina could lead to at least a doubling of extreme droughts and floods in California later this century.

The study shows more frequent extreme events are likely to occur. Other research shows the Golden State's average precipitation increasing gradually, but not enough to account for the occurrence of extreme events. A better understanding of what gives rise to El Nino and La Nina cycles -- together known as El Nino-Southern Oscillation -- might help California predict and prepare for more frequent droughts and floods in the coming century.

"Wet and dry years in California are linked to El Nino and La Nina. That relationship is getting stronger," said atmospheric scientist Jin-Ho Yoon of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "Our study shows that ENSO will be exhibiting increasing control over California weather."

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Redwoods Will be Forced to Migrate North due to Global Warming

In a study published in the research journal Global Change Biology, climate scientists from the University of California, NatureServe and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) conclude that a warmer future with normal rainfall on California's coast will leave coast redwoods south of San Francisco Bay with significantly different climate than they have experienced for decades.

Fourteen redwood parks are located in this area, including Big Basin Redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park south of Carmel, and Garrapata State Park between Carmel and Big Sur on the Monterey coast.

Scientists also predict that redwood forest bioclimate, marked by fog, ample winter rain and moderate year-round temperatures, will expand by 34 percent northward from the coast of California into southern Oregon.

"With warmer climate forecast for more than half the coast redwood range in the next 10-15 years, we are eager for research that helps identify those areas that are most sensitive to climate change," says Paul Ringgold, Chief Program Officer for San Francisco-based Save the Redwoods League, the land trust which catalyzed the study under its Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative (RCCI). "These key findings help us better understand the future impacts of climate change and how to manage for these impacts on our redwood forests."

"Redwoods will still exist in the most vulnerable areas, while continued research on changing redwood bioclimate will help us identify and address redwood forest regeneration challenges. Moreover, locally unique weather patterns such as fog may influence projected climate trends in the future," he says.

"Coast redwoods have endured climatic changes over thousands of years. We are encouraged by our RCCI research, which shows that redwood trees continue to grow, even under warmer conditions, and will thrive further north into Oregon."

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2211 Harold Way, Berkeley, California Renderings

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Almost Looks Like Snowden Snuck Back Into the USA

Almost assuredly NOT him, but it sure looks like it.

First the Hulk, now...Xenomorphs With Money?!

Looks like a $1.50 in quarters superglued.

The strange things I see on the way to the office in the morning these days.

HULK! MAD!

Something happened there last night.  Must be the Hulk.

Seeing Sad Sal

Walking  this morning, I saw this little desiccated salamander.  I didn't see it the night before when I walked that way.  

The salamander seemed smashed a bit, but I was not sure if that was the cause of death or being dried out.  There was no sign of innards anywhere.  Perhaps it died and then was squished a bit later?

Anyone know what kind of salamander Sad Sal is?

huh.  Sad Sal looks like a del norte salamander.  Wrong habitat area though and the coloring doesn't quite look right.

Agrobot: Bringing the Robopocalypse to the Strawberry Fields

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If this link is true, then the $100k quoted for an agrobot needs to replace around 13,800 man hours of labor to break even.

Death Knell of Bitcoin: California Bills Proposes VERY Strict Rules for Bitcoin Transactions

California, the state that prides itself as the birthplace of modern technology and whose policies such as the unenforceability of non-competes contributed substantially to the innovation ecosystem, recently proposed a law that requires innovators to get permission from the state, or be banned.

Last week CA's State Assembly announced AB 1326, a bill that would ban any unlicensed bitcoin or cryptocurrency business activity. It would "prohibit a person from engaging in this state in the business of virtual currency, as defined, in this state unless the person is licensed by the Commissioner of Business Oversight or is exempt from the licensure requirement." Banks, financial institutions, and governments would be exempted under the law, making it even harder for a startup to compete. Worse yet, the bill doesn't even define what "the business of virtual currency'" means, making it both overly vague and counter to the very nature of the trustless, permissionless innovation that bitcoin and blockchain technology enable. So right now, if you're building multisignature technology to better enable people to secure their bitcoin, or developing an open source peer-to-peer remittance app that connects users to send each other bitcoin, the state of CA could very well ban you from operating unless you've received a license.

So for the next wave of entrepreneurs building technology in the bitcoin or blockchain space, the state is poised to say that in order to start your company or release your technology, you must pay $5000 for a license and tens or hundreds of thousands in legal and compliance fees, not to mention requirements such as informing them of your educational background and 10 years of past addresses. That might be awkward for the 21 year old college dropouts working on a cryptocurrency startup. And of course there's no guarantee the state will actually grant the license, or shall we say, permission.

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Cynelos malasi: An Eurasian Bear Dog in Miocene Neogene Southern California

A skull of the immigrant Eurasian beardog Cynelos (Carnivora, Amphicyonidae) from the early Miocene of southern California

Authors:

Hunt et al

Abstract:

At ∼23 Ma, large amphicyonid carnivorans participated in the initial Neogene mammal migration passing though the Bering filter en route to North America. Among the migrants were the amphicyonines Cynelos and Ysengrinia, first appearing in early Miocene sediments of the upper Arikaree Group in Nebraska and Wyoming, having entered the New World with chalicotheres, small cervoids, and the cursorial rhinoceros Menoceras. Early representatives of these immigrant carnivores had not, until recently, been recovered from localities along the Pacific coastal corridor of western North America. Here we report the discovery of a unique skull that establishes the presence of an early Neogene species of Cynelos (C. malasi, sp. nov.) in coastal southern California. The skull shares craniodental features with early Miocene species of the genus in Europe. Dentition (P4-M1-M2) and cranial morphology of Cynelos malasi compare with C. helbingi (southern Germany) and C. lemanensis (France, Germany) but uniquely combine size and occlusal detail to preclude assignment to these species. Cynelos malasi is assigned a latest Arikareean (Ar4) age in the North American Land Mammal Age (NALMA) chronology. By the early Miocene, species of Cynelos had dispersed from western Europe to northern Africa and into western North America. Whether the taxon arrived in North America by following a coastal southern Asian route or by Palaearctic dispersal is unconfirmed. Given the similarity between North American and European species of Cynelos, we suspect that the genus spanned Asia during the early Miocene.

California's Drought Tied to Climate Change, Could be Very Frequent in the Future

The atmospheric conditions associated with the unprecedented drought currently afflicting California are "very likely" linked to human-caused climate change, Stanford scientists say.

In a new study, a team led by Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh used a novel combination of computer simulations and statistical techniques to show that a persistent region of high atmospheric pressure hovering over the Pacific Ocean that diverted storms away from California was much more likely to form in the presence of modern greenhouse gas concentrations.

The research, published on Sept. 29 as a supplement to this month's issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is one of the most comprehensive studies to investigate the link between climate change and California's ongoing drought.

"Our research finds that extreme atmospheric high pressure in this region—which is strongly linked to unusually low precipitation in California—is much more likely to occur today than prior to the human emission of greenhouse gases that began during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s," said Diffenbaugh, associate professor of Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

The exceptional drought currently crippling California is by some metrics the worst in state history. Combined with unusually warm temperatures and stagnant air conditions, the lack of precipitation has triggered a dangerous increase in wildfires and incidents of air pollution across the state. A recent report estimated that the water shortage would result in direct and indirect agricultural losses of at least $2.2 billion, and lead to the loss of more than 17,000 seasonal and part-time jobs in 2014 alone. Such impacts prompted California Governor Jerry Brown to declare a drought emergency, and the federal government to designate all 58 California counties as "natural disaster areas."

Scientists agree that the immediate cause of the drought is a particularly stubborn "blocking ridge" over the northeastern Pacific –popularly known as the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, or "Triple R"–that prevented winter storms from reaching California during the 2013 and 2014 rainy seasons.

Blocking ridges are regions of high atmospheric pressure that disrupt typical wind patterns in the atmosphere. "Winds respond to the spatial distribution of atmospheric pressure," said Daniel Swain, a graduate student in Diffenbaugh's lab and lead author of the study. "We have seen this amazingly persistent region of high pressure over the northeastern Pacific for many months now, which has substantially altered atmospheric flow and kept California largely dry."

Blocking ridges occur periodically at temperature latitudes, but the Triple R was exceptional for both its size and longevity. While it dissipated briefly during the summer months of 2013, it returned even stronger by fall 2013 and persisted through much of the winter, which is normally California's "wet season." "At its peak in January 2014, the Triple R extended from the subtropical Pacific between California and Hawaii to the coast of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska," said Swain, who coined the term "ridiculously resilient ridge" last fall to highlight the unusually persistent nature of the offshore blocking ridge.

Like a large boulder that has tumbled into a narrow stream, the Triple R diverted the flow of high-speed air currents known as the jet stream far to the north, causing Pacific storms to bypass not only California, but also Oregon and Washington. As a result, rain and snow that would normally fall on the West Coast were instead re-routed to Alaska and as far north as the Arctic Circle.

An important question for scientists and decision-makers has been whether human-caused climate change has influenced the conditions responsible for California's drought. Given the important role of the Triple R, Diffenbaugh's team set out to measure the probability of such extreme ridging events. The team first assessed the rarity of the Triple R in the context of the 20th century historical record. They found that the combined persistence and intensity of the Triple R in 2013 was unrivaled by any event since 1948, which is when comprehensive information about the circulation of the atmosphere is first available.

To more directly address the question of whether climate change played a role in the probability of the 2013 event, the team collaborated with Bala Rajaratnam, assistant professor of Statistics and of Environmental Earth System Science, and an affiliated faculty of the Woods Institute for the Environment. Rajaratnam and his graduate students Michael Tsiang and Matz Haugen applied advanced statistical techniques to a large suite of climate model simulations. Using the Triple R as a benchmark, the group compared geopotential heights–an atmospheric property related to pressure– between two sets of climate model experiments. One set mirrored the present climate, in which the atmosphere is growing increasingly warm due to human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. In the other set of experiments, greenhouse gases were kept at a level similar to those that existed just prior to the Industrial Revolution.

The interdisciplinary research team found that the extreme geopotential heights associated with the Triple R in 2013 were at least three times as likely to occur in the present climate as in the preindustrial climate. They also found that such extreme values are consistently tied to unusually low precipitation in California, and the formation of atmospheric ridges over the northeastern Pacific.

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Fire is Complicated Beast in California

Fire season has arrived in California with vengeance in this third year of extended drought for the state. A series of large fires east of Redding and Fresno, in Yosemite, and on the Oregon border prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency on Sunday, August 3rd.

As force of destruction and renewal, fire has a long and intimate history with the ecology of California. Ecological scientists will discuss aspects of that history in detail at the upcoming 99th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America on August 10 – 15th, 2014.

"Big fires today are not outside the range of historical variation in size," said Jon Keeley, an ecologist based in Three Rivers, Cal., with the U.S. Geological Survey's Western Ecological Research Center, and a Fellow of the Ecological Society.

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New Regulations for Self Driving Cars in Calfornia

The law is finally catching up to driverless cars. As of September 16, the state of California—home of auto newcomer Google—will require test drivers to have a special license, like a trucker or school bus driver. They will need to be employees or contractors of the car manufacturer, complete safety training, and have clean road records. Carmakers themselves will have to apply for a testing permit annually, install manual controls and override systems in each car, submit incident reports and secure $5 million in insurance.

These new rules come into effect at a time when a handful of players, including Google and Nissan, are testing driverless technologies. Up until now, autonomous test vehicles have had a spotless record; Google's fleet of modified Lexus sedans, for instance, has driven more than 700,000 miles without an accident. The most pressing issue for the California Department of Motor Vehicles and manufacturers is ensuring the ongoing safety of these cars—prototypes, all—and the cars around them.

In essence, regulators are trying to keep pace with driverless technology, says Bryant Walker Smith, a fellow at the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford University. The upcoming California laws will make many of the safety checks already in place in driverless prototypes, including the presence of a human operator and a vehicle that is street legal, mandatory. (That means that Google engineers will need to add manual controls to the company's new self-driving car before it can go onto public roads.) The California dmv is not stipulating anything about the technologies themselves, which keeps companies free to test new systems.

Laws will continue to evolve as the technology becomes more advanced. By December the California dmv will release another set of regulations laying out the requirements for everyday drivers to pilot autonomous vehicles. A second set may also be necessary for cars that drive themselves absent any driver. But that does not mean we will be hailing robo taxis by this time next year. Nissan says it will not roll out a driverless car until 2020, and everyone else will also proceed with caution. “Every company wants to have the first self-driving car,” Walker Smith says, “but no one wants to have the first self-driving car crash.”

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