Mayor Stan Thurston, who heard about the report from his aviation business partner, agreed it's difficult to find a job in Merced. He said there are jobs available, but people don't have the right training. As an example, he pointed to the high number of agriculture-based jobs in the county with few people qualified to work them.
Councilwoman Mary-Michal Rawling agreed that education, or a lack of it, is at the heart of the issue. "It's all about education. We need to be sure our residents are getting the education they really need to have good, sustainable careers,"she said.
(Councilman) Murphy said UC Merced will play a big role in turning the situation on its head. "UC Merced will be a key to long-rangesuccess. Integrating the university and its graduates into our local economy, in a way that hasn't quite happened yet, willbe important for the community to move forward." -- "Merced County at top of magazine's 'worst' list," Merced Sun-Star, Jan.24, 2012
The award, which comes with a grant of $473,797 over five years, will pay for the tuition of two of Yang's graduate students as well as research equipment. --
"UC Merced professor earns six-figure payoff
Research project a winner," Merced Sun-Star, Jan. 24, 2012
If the whole UC Merced project, which violated environmental law and regulation in countless ways, had not been anything but a real estate-speculation boondoggle to the direct economic benefit of regents and politicians as well as the finance, insurance and real estate industry, and if that global swindle were not quite as responsible as it is for the present lamentable economic condition of Merced CA, Foreclosure Capital of the Nation, we might feel more inclined to rejoice with Dr. Yang and his two graduate students for their robust breakthrough in computer gadgetry.
At first glance, it would appear to be fulfillment of the promises made by every UC official about UC Merced: that it would become a "high tech, bio tech engine of growth." After all, job creation must start somewhere.
Graduate student by graduate student Merced will rise again!
As the Creative Destruction of capitalism continues to munch its merry way through the community, spreading the gospel of the Free Market with every nibble, government work goes on at the university. It reminds us dimly of when unemployment used to threaten to swallow Modesto until the torpedo plant got another order from the Defense Department. Only, in that case, a lot of people got jobs for awhile. In this case, a half a million dollars goes to employ two graduate students for awhile and buy some lab equipment.
Badlands Journal editorial board
1-24-12
Merced Sun-Star
Merced County at top of magazine's 'worst' list
The reason is difficulty finding a job, in a comparison of metropolitan areas…BRANDON BOWERS and AMEERA BUTT
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/01/24/v-print/2202758/merced-county-at-top-of-magazines.html [1]
Merced County is the worst place in the country to find a job.
That's according to the latest findings by the U.S. News & World Report.
Merced County leads the magazine's list of metropolitan areas where it's increasingly difficult to find employment. But we're in good company: Five other Central Valley communities were also on the list. The reason? The unemployment rate, for starters. The housing crisis is another factor.
The news didn't surprise Merced City Council members.
"The truth is, we need jobs in Merced," said Mike Murphy. "We've got our work cut out for us." Merced had a 16.9 percent unemployment rate in November 2011, a 1.7 percent decrease over the previous year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The magazine cites a report called "U.S. Metro Economies," released last week by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and research
firm IHS Global Insight, showing a connection between a high unemployment rate and metropolitan areas taking the brunt of the national housing crisis.
The report says average home prices in Merced fell 19.5 percent, from $101,076 to $81,379, between the fourth quarter of 2010 and the fourth quarter of 2011 -- more than any other other city in the country.
Mayor Stan Thurston, who heard about the report from his aviation business partner, agreed it's difficult to find a job in Merced. He said there are jobs available, but people don't have the right training. As an example, he pointed to the high number of agriculture-based jobs in the county with few people qualified to work them.
Councilwoman Mary-Michal Rawling agreed that education, or a lack of it, is at the heart of the issue. "It's all about education. We need to be sure our residents are getting the education they really need to have good, sustainable careers," she said.
Murphy said UC Merced will play a big role in turning the situation on its head. "UC Merced will be a key to long-range success. Integrating the university and its graduates into our local economy, in a way that hasn't quite happened yet, will be important for the community to move forward."
Murphy and Thurston, both elected in November on pro-business platforms, said the city needs to set itself apart from other communities to encourage industry to grow and expand.
Thurston said the area needs to offer further incentives to businesses, such as tax holidays.
"We can't just go out and say 'please, hire people.' We need to get businesses here who can do it and make it more affordable for existing businesses who want to expand and do that," he said.
Murphy said the council intends to look at impact fees charged to businesses, and that he wants to streamline the permitting process to make operating a company in Merced as easy as possible.
"We have to recognize that we're in competition with other cities when businesses are looking to set up shop and expand, so we really need to set ourselves apart. We need to welcome these people and roll out the red carpet, not only to tune up our economic engine, but really rebuild it. That's the big priority."
UC Merced professor earns six-figure payoff
Research project a winner
By JOSHUA EMERSON SMITH Merced Sun-Star
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/01/24/2202773/uc-merced-professor-earns-six.html [2]
UC Merced assistant professor Ming-Hsuan Yang points over his student's shoulder at a computer screen playing a video of a rock concert. Around a guitar player's head are several colored rectangles that follow him as he moves across the stage. As lights flash and the musician moves more erratically some of the rectangles lose him and attach themselves to other objects.
"All the trackers fail at some point," Yang said. "People have been working on this for decades, but they just have problems.
They just could not handle a lot of things."
The rectangles follow the object based on a computer algorithm, each one developed by software engineers from around the world. Each represents an attempt to solve the intractable problem of having a computer track an object being viewed by a camera, something Yang has been working on for more than six years.
This research has broad applications, Yang said, including assistive technology for the visually impaired, in medicine, computer generated animation and improvements to surveillance technology.
Recently, Yang received the National Science Foundation's Early Career Research Award for his work developing object tracking software. The award is aimed at boosting the progress of the most promising young researchers.
The award, which comes with a grant of $473,797 over five years, will pay for the tuition of two of Yang's graduate students as well as research equipment. Yang and his two students are one team of many around the country that competed for the award.
"I'm thrilled," he said. "I'm very happy. It's good for us. If you look at the track record of the other people (whoapplied), they've done good work."
Humans can easily track objects in their environment, in part because they continually gather information about objects they view. Yang's research is built on what he calls "online learning," the idea that an effective algorithm also has to continually gather information about the objects it's tracking.
"As humans we often learn things online," he said. "As we speak I look at you. And every time I look at you I get some more information. And then gradually I will refine the model."
Yang hopes online learning will be the secret to avoiding pitfalls that confuse object tracking software, such as lighting changes, object occlusion and pose variation.
People have been using online learning in different fields for decades, Yang said. But he was one of the first to apply it to object tracking software about six years ago when he was working as a research scientist for Honda.
Now, many people in the field have caught on to the self-teaching algorithm technology, but Yang continues to stand out as an innovator.
Since joining UC Merced, Yang has received several awards, including the Google Faculty Award in 2009, the UC Merced Academic Senate's Distinguished Early Career Research Award in 2011 and a research grant from the National Science Foundation Information and Intelligent Systems' Robust Intelligence program.
When asked why he was chosen to receive this award Yang flashed a humble smile.
"We have been working on this for a long time and we have some good results," he said. "So we have a good reputation. But like for anything you also need to have some luck.
Links:
[1] http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/01/24/v-print/2202758/merced-county-at-top-of-magazines.html
[2] http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/01/24/2202773/uc-merced-professor-earns-six.html