The K2 seismograph installed in a garage corner. (Courtesy USGS)

The new sensors will be deployed in August in homes and businesses in  the Pleasanton/Dublin/San Ramon area for up to three years. The USGS has been operating a network of similar urban sensors in the East Bay since 1999. They are designed to detect and interpret signals from nearby seismic events and feed data to the USGS via the Internet. They utilize whatever local network is available via WiFi and a broadband connection to transmit data after a quake.

The placement of the clusters of sensors is meant to help answer specific research questions, including the spatial variability in ground motion throughout an area. Scientists hope to capture data from events as small as 2.0 on the Richter Scale. The hope is that this data will help predict ground motion in larger events.

These particular sensors are not designed to transmit to the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in real-time during an earthquake – other sensor networks do that work. Rather, data from these sensors is collected and stored on a local disk and retrieved by scientists during maintenance visits twice a year.

The distance between the sensor locations 'tunes' the array to detect particular seismic waves in a manner similar to the way radios detect different stations by changing the frequency of the signal receiver.

The specific research area for the new group of sensors in along the East Bay Hills on the west between San Ramon and Pleasanton to the hills on the east and northeast of San Ramon, Dublin, and Pleasanton, encompassing the San Ramon, Amador, and Livermore Valleys.

Those hosting the sensors in their homes or businesses will be given an annual “guided tour” to the earthquakes that are recorded on their system when the engineers come by to retrieve the data.

Interested parties may visit the Volunteer Monitoring Website for more information and contacts.

Map of area for new seismic monitors (USGS).

On Thursday 10-year-old Justin Lee, a student at Edna Maguire Elementary School in Mill Valley, takes a break from beach clean up to push his classmate, Lorenzo Soleri, down a sand bank. Students gathered at San Francisco's Ocean Beach as part of the Kids’ Ocean Day Adopt-A-Beach Cleanup organized by the Richardson Bay Audubon Center. (Nick Moone/Ocean Beach Bulletin)

The Walt Disney Family Museum is showing a special exhibition, Maurice Sendak: 50 Years, 50 Works, 50 Reasons, featuring 50 works by the legendary author and illustrator. The exhibit is accompanied by 50 statements from notable celebrities and politicians who have been influenced by the author's work such as Stephen Colbert and President Barack Obama. Sendak was heavily influenced by Walt Disney's work and decided to become an illustrator at age 12 after watching Fantasia. The exhibit runs from May 23 to July 17. (Gina Scialabba/KQED)

At Stanford University's second annual Frost Music and Arts Festival Saturday, the "Frost Experience Dome" provided a refuge for festival-goers, who relaxed on hammocks or on the grass. (Katie Brigham/Peninsula Press)

Memorial Day for Cambodian veterans took place last month on the 38th anniversary of the rise of the Khmer Rouge, the communist regime that seized power in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, killing an estimated 2 million men, women and children. Cambodian Americans in Long Beach leave small bags of rice and messages of love for those killed by the Khmer Rouge. (Doualy Xaykaothao/KQED)

A bicyclist during the first "bikes on BART" trial program on Aug. 10, 2012. (Courtesy of sfbike/Flickr)

The BART Board of Directors voted 6-3 Thursday night to allow riders to be able to take their bicycles on trains at peak hours, as long as they obey a rule that restricts the bikes from any train cars that are overcrowded.

The new rule goes into effect on July 1, and will be reevaluated by BART  in November.

The three directors in dissent – Tom Radulovich, James Fang, and Robert Raburn – wanted to lift the ban outright and dispense with the reassessment in November.

So, when it came to allowing the bikes on board at peak times, the vote was essentially unanimous.

The majority of those who contacted BART prior to the meeting or spoke Thursday night favored dropping the ban.  BART said that an overwhelming 95 percent of the roughly 400 people who sent letters or emails prior to the meeting urged that the ban be lifted.

That follows what BART says was a successful one-week pilot in March in which a majority of riders surveyed favored lifting the restrictions.  According to BART, 76 percent of riders had a favorable reaction, and said that bicyclists did "not impede or delay service."

Median rents for one-bedroom apartments by neighborhood in San Francisco (Zumper).

The apartment rental startup Zumper has updated its maps of the median rents for one and two bedroom apartments in San Francisco by neighborhood. It found that the median price for a one-bedroom in the city is now $2,764. The median price for a two-bedroom is $4,000.

The median is the numerical value separating the higher half of a data set from the lower half.

In San Francisco these rates vary substantially depending exactly which part of town we are talking about. Much like its notorious micro-climates, the city features micro-pockets of relatively affordable rental units.

For example, here are three most expensive neighborhoods to rent a one-bedroom:

South Beach - $3500
Russian Hill - $3410
Financial District - $3350

And here are the three least expensive neighborhoods to rent a one-bedroom:

Outer Richmond - $1850
Outer Sunset - $1975
Inner Richmond - $2015

As for the three most expensive neighborhoods to rent a two-bedroom:

Financial District - $5800
Marina - $5450
Cow Hollow - $5400

And the three least expensive neighborhoods to rent a two-bedroom:

Outer Mission/Excelsior - $2460
Outer Sunset - $2525
Lakeshore - $2640

Zumper Co-Founder & CEO Anthemos Georgiades explained the methodology the company uses to construct these maps:

• "We use medians for the average prices to discount outlier listings and so as to not over/under-state the real prices."
• "These May 2013 asking rents are perhaps different to what some readers may currently be paying if they rented a few years ago or if they are still paying rent controlled prices. However, these are the current prevailing prices for available apartments on the market today."
• "Most units on the market tend to be newer (read: non-rent controlled) developments built post 1979, since they experience more turn over. These units are often renovated with many more amenities than their rent-controlled counterparts, making them more expensive."

As for the "least expensive" neighborhoods on the list, this too is a relative matter, especially for low-income families. Earlier this year, the National Low Income Housing Coalition reported that San Francisco is the second least affordable rental market among all U.S.cities, after Honolulu.

This situation is driving some of those seeking apartments to take extreme measures to enhance their chances.

Craig Miller/KQED

But while Brown is preaching action on climate change, his proposal to shift revenue from California’s cap-and-trade auctions has environmental groups seeing red.

California is the first state to try and limit greenhouse gas emissions through a cap-and-trade system. The state Air Resources Board has held three carbon allowance auctions so far, generating nearly $260 million in state revenue. By law, that money is supposed to go toward programs aimed at reducing greenhouse gases  and improving the air.  A portion of the revenue is also supposed to be funneled to poorer, heavily-polluted communities.

But the Brown Administration says the state needs more time to design and develop these efforts, so the governor’s revised budget proposes taking all the revenue and loaning it to the general fund, which pays for broader government spending. That would essentially delay any spending on the emission-lowering programs for at least another year.

Mari Rose Taruc, the state organizing director for the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, said she was, “shocked and upset” when she got the news. "[The programs are] ready. AB 32 has been on the books for seven years now. Of course there are programs that are ready.”

Taruc’s group is one of several that has been meeting with the state to put together a plan on how to spend the cap-and-trade revenue. The Greenlining Institute, another environmental justice group, was also in those meetings. Legal council Ryan Young said the suggestions include, “low-income solar programs, increased access to transit, affordable transit-oriented development,  as well as community greening, like urban forestry."

Gov. Jerry Brown (Max Whittaker/Getty Images)

Those suggestions are all listed in the state’s new cap-and-trade investment plan. But Air Resources Board spokesman Dave Clegern said the blueprint needs improvement.  “We have a variety of options for spending money. It’s a pot of money, so there are a lot of people who want a piece of it,” he said, adding, “we want to make sure that money goes where it will have the biggest impact on the programs and the goals of AB 32, which is greenhouse gas emission reduction.”

Technically, by loaning the cap-and-trade money to the general fund, the state would still be complying with the requirements on how to spend it, since the money would eventually go toward those efforts when it’s repaid.

The state loans money from one fund to another all the time. But usually, the government is borrowing from special funds that are running a surplus so the loan doesn’t interfere with the fund’s main goal. Jason Sisney of the Legislative Analysts’ Office called the cap-and-trade proposal “unusual.”

‘The cap-and-trade auction revenues are a new source,” he explained. “ And the governor’s plan, as I understand it, is to borrow all of those monies, for at least the next year.” In fact, the $500 million Brown wants to borrow is about twice as much money as the auctions have raised so far.

Meanwhile, the LAO warns that delaying the environmental spending may interfere with the goal of reducing greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020. But Clegern insisted that won’t be a problem. “The goal here is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “We will do that. The proceeds give us an extra tool with which to further that effort.”

Under California’s plan, the cap-and-trade system only accounts for about 20 percent of those emissions reductions. The rest are supposed to come from energy efficiency projects, better fuel standards, and more renewable energy.

The ground has shifted since Brown announced his budget last week. The LAO says the governor’s tax estimates are too low, and predicts the state will take in about $3 billion more than the administration is estimating. Environmental groups argue that extra revenue takes away the governor’s justification for delaying the cap-and-trade spending.

Sri Srinavasan (Official Photo)

Srinivasan is the first nominee to that important Circuit Court to win confirmation. Because that court considers legal challenges to executive actions by the President — such as environmental or health regulations — it's considered a stepping stone to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The 46-year-old Srinivasan is an attorney with the Obama Adminsitration's Solicitor General office, a holdover from the Bush Administration. Those kinds of bipartisan credentials won him support from Republican Senators who objected to previous Obama nominees.

Santa Clara Law School professor Bradley Joondeph, who is married to Srinivasan's sister, confirms that Srinivasan does not see the law in political terms.

"He is not ideologically driven," said Joodeph. "He is someone who is very devoted I think to the craft of legal argumentation and the integrity of the law."

Srinivasan was born in India. He father brought the family to the U.S. after earning a Fulbright Scholarship to study at UC Berkeley.

His confirmation by 97-0 means the D.C. Appeals Court now has four judges appointed by Republican Presidents and four by Democrats.

(Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images)

Casting ballots were about 1,400 voting members of The Boy Scouts of America's National Council who were attending their annual meeting at a conference center not far from BSA headquarters in suburban Dallas.

The proposal drafted by the BSA's governing executive committee says boys can no longer be excluded from Scouting solely on the basis of sexual orientation. A longstanding ban on gay adult leaders will remain in place.

Debates over the issue may continue.

Some conservative churches that sponsor Scout units want to continue excluding gay youths, and in some cases threatened to leave the BSA if the ban were lifted.

More liberal Scout leaders — while supporting the proposal to accept gay youth — have made clear they want the ban on gay adults lifted as well. If the full no-gays policy is maintained, some units in liberal areas may consider either leaving the Scouts or openly defying the ban.

The BSA could take a hit financially. Many Scout units in conservative areas fear their local donors will stop giving with the ban on gay youth lifted.

In January, the BSA executive committee suggested a plan to give sponsors of local Scout units the option of admitting gays as both youth members and adult leaders or continuing to exclude them. However, the plan won little praise, and the BSA changed course after assessing responses to surveys sent out starting in February to members of the Scouting community.

Of the more than 200,000 leaders, parents and youth members who responded, 61 percent supported the current policy of excluding gays, while 34 percent opposed it. However, most parents of young Scouts, as while as youth members themselves, opposed the ban.

In the weeks leading up to the vote, and on Wednesday as National Council members arrived in Grapevine, advocacy groups on both sides of the debate organized news conferences, photo opportunities and forums to make their case.

Two conservative groups opposed to any easing of the ban — the Family Research Council and OnMyHonor.net — placed an ad Thursday in the Dallas Morning News warning that lifting the ban on gay youth would trigger lawsuits that could force the BSA to admit gay adults as well as youth. It said lifting the ban on gay boys could drive out as many as 400,000 of the Scouts' youth members.

The BSA's overall "traditional youth membership" — Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and Venturers — is now about 2.6 million, compared with more than 4 million in peak years of the past. It also has about 1 million adult leaders and volunteers.

Of the more than 100,000 Scouting units in the U.S., 70 percent are chartered by religious institutions. Those include liberal churches opposed to any ban on gays, but some of the largest sponsors are relatively conservative denominations that have previously supported the broad ban — notably the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Southern Baptist churches.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced in April that it was satisfied with new proposal, and the National Catholic Committee on Scouting has not opposed it.

However, 50 leaders of other conservative religious groups have issued a statement imploring the National Council to retain the full ban, warning that easing it "would open the Scouts to a wide range of open sexual expressions."

The signatories included the leaders of the Assemblies of God, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

The BSA, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2010, has long excluded both gays and atheists.

Protests over the no-gays policy gained momentum in 2000, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the BSA's right to exclude gays. Scout units lost sponsorships by public schools and other entities that adhered to nondiscrimination policies, and several local Scout councils made public their displeasure with the policy.

The 49ers recent successes contributed to the NFL's decision to award the Super Bowl to the Bay Area (Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

The championship game will take place at the 49ers' stadium now under construction in Santa Clara. And no one sounded more jubilant than Santa Clara Mayor Jamie Matthews, who played a key role in getting the stadium project rolling. "I was not building a stadium, I was building an ATM machine,"  Matthews told Bay City News.

Matthews said the championship game will generate between $300 million to $500 million in economic activity for the Bay Area.

But his spokesperson, Dan Beerman, said Matthews couldn't cite a source for those numbers, and some economists think these types of figures are routinely exaggerated. The real gain is likely to be between $30 million and $120 million, says Victor Matheson, an economist at Holy Cross college in Worcester, Mass., who specializes in sports economics.

Claiming benefits of over $300 million for Super Bowls happens all the time, he said, but generally these studies are funded by football supporters, and they tend to make three false assumptions.

First, there is "substitution." Bay Area fans who spend their money on football-related activity would have spent it on something else in the Bay Area, Matheson said, so the region isn't really gaining anything.

Second, there is "crowding out." To some extent, people coming into the Bay Area for the Super Bowl will displace other people who can't make it because hotels are booked up.

Third, there is "leakage." Even if Bay Area hotels can charge more during the Super Bowl, they won't pay hotel workers more. Instead, the money will go to corporate headquarters in some other part of the country.

(Then, of course some Bay Area residents may even have reactions like this one ... )

RT @kqednews: BREAKING: San Francisco awarded Super Bowl L in 2016 // BREAKING: I will be leaving the SF Bay Area that week.

— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) May 21, 2013

"The primary beneficiaries are the owners of the scarce hotel space rather than the community at large," concluded Philip Porter, a University of South Florida economist, in looking at "mega-sports events."

At least one economic assessment linked to Super Bowl supporters claims to have taken the first two problems into consideration. A report by the New Orleans Super Bowl Host Committee and the University of New Orleans found that the 2013 Super Bowl brought $480 million into the area.

That study states that it does not count local residents in making its estimate. And it says it subtracted income from hotel visitors who might have come to the region if the hotels weren't booked for the event.

But the New Orleans study doesn't say anything about "leakage." We couldn't reach the authors for comment.

The debate about Super Bowl economics has gone on for a while. In a 2002 study in the Journal of Sports Economics, researchers concluded that from 1969 to 1997, the Super Bowl put an average of about $140 in the pocket of each resident of the host city. But it concluded that "overall economic benefits flowing from future postseason appearances cannot justify public expenditures on professional sports franchises or facilities."

"Nobody trusts the studies," said Beerman. "There are going to be parties from Sonoma all the way down to Santa Clara. That's why these economic activity numbers are always fudgey." Still, he insists $300 million to $500 million is a reasonable estimate for the Super Bowl.

And the Super Bowl is only one event. Won't the new stadium continue making money for the region for years?

Matheson doesn't think so. "Almost certainly it is not going to be a net benefit to the Bay Area," he said.

Also  there is a burden on the transportation system. (Think of all the hours Silicon Valley engineers will spend stuck in traffic instead of inventing the next iPhone.) That's particularly true of a suburban stadium because most of the big hotels are in San Francisco, San Jose and the San Francisco airport.

Then there is the cost of police and sanitation.

"Of course the biggest cost is the fact that Santa Clara built a brand‑new stadium," said Matheson.

The latest estimates show the stadium costing $1.2 billion to build.

It's difficult to say how much money will come directly out of taxpayers' pockets, if any. The financing arrangements are so complicated that Matheson plans to spend part of his summer trying to figure them out, he said.

But he says one thing is clear: "The 49ers got a huge tax break."

The Santa Clara Stadium Authority, which is owned by the city of Santa Clara, cosigned an $850 million loan that pays the bulk of the cost for building the stadium. (The remainder is financed by the league and a few other sources.)

The city expects income from naming rights, season ticket license sales, and luxury box sales to repay the loan. (Levi Strauss just agreed to pay $220 million to name the new venue Levi's Stadium, so that part is underway.)

But this income will technically accrue to the Santa Clara Stadium Authority. And as a public entity, it doesn't have to pay taxes. So the state and federal government lose out on corporate income taxes that the 49ers would have had to pay, Matheson said. "So you have a large corporate entity generating a large number of revenues and not having to pay taxes."

Taxpayers lose out because the state and federal government can't afford services they might have paid if the 49ers were paying taxes the way other companies do.

It's all perfectly legal, said Matheson, just not necessarily beneficial to taxpayers. "The 49ers have quite a sweetheart deal with Santa Clara," he said. "You don't see other firms getting this type of treatment."

Beerman responds that Santa Clara has no regrets so far. "The city pushed for, and got, a better deal than any other city in the NFL," he said.

Notably, it avoided the problem of some other cities, like Oakland, which was on the hook when ticket sales fell short of expectations. That was the reason for setting up a separate entity, the Santa Clara Stadium Authority, to finance the stadium, insulating the city's general fund.

Whether or not Santa Clara or the Bay Area got a good deal may not be known for years.

But in the meantime, Matheson is willing to acknowledge one benefit to having the Super Bowl in town: "There is evidence that events like this make people happy."

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The America's Cup regatta director has released 37 recommendations made by a group of sailing experts intended to increase safety in the race nearly two weeks after a practice run on San Francisco Bay turned deadly.

British sailor Andrew Simpson, a member of the Swedish America's Cup racing team died when the Artemis Racing AC-72 catamaran capsized. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Artemis chief executive Paul Cayard's statement posted on the team's website was his first public comment since May 9, the day crew member Andrew "Bart" Simpson died when Artemis' catamaran capsized. Cayard said a decision to race would depend on what safety changes America's Cup organizers adopt after completing their review of the May 9 incident.

Cayard said officials are still investigating what caused the 72-foot catamaran to capsize and break into pieces.

Among Wednesday's recommendations are equipping crews with body armor, hands-free breathing apparatus and high visibility helmets. The group also suggests a flexible start time for the race, based on wind and projected tidal flows, wind limits and a safe buffer zone around course boundaries and obstructions.

"Producing and implementing the safety plan is within the scope of the America's Cup, as the sponsoring organization for this summer's racing," said Stephen Barclay, the CEO of the America's Cup. "This America's Cup safety plan is a necessary component of the permit application submitted to the Coast Guard for their consideration."

The catamarans of the four teams vying for the America's Cup have proven hard to handle. The wing sail looks and acts like an airplane wing, improving the yacht's speed and maneuverability. The 7-ton boat's hulls are lifted out of the water and it skims along the waves on "foils," reducing the drag on the boat and increasing speed dramatically.

The owner of the Italian entry Luna Rossa had proposed a prohibition on racing if winds are deemed too strong. Others have recommended better ways of foiling, which is technically barred in the official regulations of the America's Cup but the teams still have found legal ways to foil.

The three teams vying to take on defending champion Oracle Racing begin competing in July.

• 
• Source: Kqed

The state's health insurance exchange, Covered California, announced Thursday morning the plans and premiums that will be available to people statewide to millions of Californians. And what everyone wants to know is: how much will it cost. Experts had warned of "rate shock," that premiums might skyrocket for all kinds of reasons.

Read more at: blogs.kqed.org