Watson took courses in archeology, linguistics, and communications at Simon Fraser University, known among students at the time as Berkeley North. (He never finished a degree.) In 1968, in need of work, he skipped a semester to join the Coast Guard, and for several weeks he served aboard a weather ship.

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James Kirchner, from the University of California at Berkeley, and Anne Weil, of Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, looked at fossil record data spanning 530 million years.

BBC: Intel follows speedy chip debut

Some hours north of where I am on a trip with BACKROADS, a travel company based in Berkeley, California, sits the vast and controversial Canadian tar sands containing vast amounts of oil and natural gas, which are some day going to be sent through an 1800 mile pipeline to the Louisiana Gulf Coast that the US State Department has just approved.

FORBES: Canada's Magnificent And Priceless Water Supply

Last fall as part of the federal stimulus package, the Department of Energy awarded grants to a number of energy storage companies including Seeo of Berkeley, Calif. (backed by Khosla Ventures and other investors) and Premium Power of North Reading, Mass.

FORBES: Energy Storage Player Xtreme Power Pulls In $29 Million