SRI International
SRI International is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic development in the region; the organization was founded as the Stanford Research Institute. SRI formally separated from Stanford University in 1970 and became known as SRI International in 1977. SRI performs client-sponsored research and development for government agencies, commercial businesses, private foundations, it licenses its technologies, forms strategic partnerships, sells products, creates spin-off companies. SRI's annual revenue in 2014 was $540 million. SRI's headquarters are located near the Stanford University campus. William A. Jeffrey has served as SRI's president and CEO since September 2014. SRI employs about 2,100 people. Sarnoff Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of SRI since 1988, was integrated into SRI in January 2011. SRI's focus areas include biomedical sciences and materials, computing and space systems, economic development and learning, energy and environmental technology and national defense, as well as sensing and devices.
SRI has received more than 4,000 patent applications worldwide. In the 1920s, Stanford University professor Robert E. Swain proposed creating a research institute in the Western United States. Herbert Hoover a trustee of Stanford University, was an early proponent of an institute, but became less involved with the project after he was elected president of the United States; the development of the institute was delayed by the Great Depression in the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s, with three separate attempts leading to its formation in 1946. In August 1945, Maurice Nelles, Morlan A. Visel, Ernest L. Black of Lockheed made the first attempt to create the institute with the formation of the "Pacific Research Foundation" in Los Angeles. A second attempt was made by Henry T. Heald president of the Illinois Institute of Technology. In 1945, Heald wrote a report recommending a research institute on the West Coast and a close association with Stanford University with an initial grant of $500,000.
A third attempt was made by Stanford University's dean of engineering. Terman's proposal followed Heald's, but focused on faculty and student research more than contract research; the trustees of Stanford University voted to create the organization in 1946. It was structured so that its goals were aligned with the charter of the university—to advance scientific knowledge and to benefit the public at large, not just the students of Stanford University; the trustees were named as the corporation's general members, elected SRI's directors. Research chemist William F. Talbot became the first director of the institute. Stanford University president Donald Tresidder instructed Talbot to avoid work that would conflict with the interests of the university federal contracts that might attract political pressure; the drive to find work and the lack of support from Stanford faculty caused the new research institute to violate this directive six months through the pursuit of a contract with the Office of Naval Research.
This and other issues, including frustration with Tresidder's micromanagement of the new organization, caused Talbot to offer his resignation, which Tresidder accepted. Talbot was replaced by Jesse Hobson, who had led the Armour Research Foundation, but the pursuit of contract work remained. SRI's first research project investigated whether the guayule plant could be used as a source of natural rubber. During World War II, rubber was imported into the U. S. and was subject to strict rationing. From 1942 to 1946, the United States Department of Agriculture supported a project to create a domestic source of natural rubber. Once the war ended, the United States Congress cut funding for the program. SRI's first economic study was for the United States Air Force. In 1947, the Air Force wanted to determine the expansion potential of the U. S. aircraft industry. In 1948, SRI began research and consultation with Chevron Corporation to develop an artificial substitute for tallow and coconut oil in soap production.
Procter & Gamble used the substance as the basis for Tide laundry detergent. The institute performed much of the early research on air pollution and the formation of ozone in the lower atmosphere. SRI sponsored the First National Air Pollution Symposium in Pasadena, California, in November 1949. Experts gave presentations on pollution research, exchanged ideas and techniques, stimulated interest in the field; the event was attended by 400 scientists, business executives, civic leaders from the U. S. SRI co-sponsored subsequent events on the subject. In April 1953, Walt and Roy Disney hired SRI to consult on their proposal for establishing an amusement park in Burbank, California. SRI provided information on location, attendance patterns, economic feasibility. SRI selected a larger site in Anaheim, prepared reports about operation, provided on-site administrative support for Disneyland and acted in an advisory role as the park expanded. In 1955, SRI was c
Ohlone
The Ohlone, named Costanoan by early Spanish colonists, are a Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley. At that time they spoke a variety of related languages; the Ohlone languages belonged to the Costanoan sub-family of the Utian language family, which itself belongs to the proposed Penutian language phylum. The term "Ohlone" has been used in place of "Costanoan" since the 1970s by some tribal groups and by most ethnographers and writers of popular literature. In pre-colonial times, the Ohlone lived in more than 50 distinct landholding groups, did not view themselves as a distinct group, they lived by hunting and gathering, in the typical ethnographic California pattern. The members of these various bands interacted with one another; the Ohlone people practiced the Kuksu religion. Prior to the Gold Rush, the northern California region was one of the most densely populated regions north of Mexico.
However, the arrival of Spanish colonizers to the area in 1769 vastly changed tribal life forever. The Spanish constructed Missions along the California coast with the objective of Christianizing the native people and culture. Between the years 1769 and 1834, the number of Indigenous Californians dropped from 300,000 to 250,000. After California entered into the Union in 1850, the state government perpetrated massacres against the Ohlones. Many of the leaders of these massacres were rewarded with positions in state and federal government; these massacres have been described as genocide. Many are now leading a push for cultural and historical recognition of their tribe and what they have gone through and had taken from them; the Ohlone living today belong to one or another of a number of geographically distinct groups, but not all, in their original home territory. The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe has members from around the San Francisco Bay Area, is composed of descendants of the Ohlones/Costanoans from the San Jose, Santa Clara, San Francisco missions.
The Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation, consisting of descendants of intermarried Rumsen Costanoan and Esselen speakers of Mission San Carlos Borromeo, are centered at Monterey. The Amah-Mutsun Tribe are descendants of Mutsun Costanoan speakers of Mission San Juan Bautista, inland from Monterey Bay. Most members of another group of Rumsien language, descendants from Mission San Carlos, the Costanoan Rumsien Carmel Tribe of Pomona/Chino, now live in southern California; these groups, others with smaller memberships are separately petitioning the federal government for tribal recognition. The Ohlone inhabited fixed village locations, moving temporarily to gather seasonal foodstuffs like acorns and berries; the Ohlone people lived in Northern California from the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula down to northern region of Big Sur, from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Diablo Range in the east. Their vast region included the San Francisco Peninsula, Santa Clara Valley, Santa Cruz Mountains, Monterey Bay area, as well as present-day Alameda County, Contra Costa County and the Salinas Valley.
Prior to Spanish contact, the Ohlone formed a complex association of 50 different "nations or tribes" with about 50 to 500 members each, with an average of 200. Over 50 distinct Ohlone tribes and villages have been recorded; the Ohlone villages interacted through trade and ceremonial events, as well as some internecine conflict. Cultural arts included basket-weaving skills, seasonal ceremonial dancing events, female tattoos and nose piercings, other ornamentation; the Ohlone subsisted as hunter-gatherers and in some ways harvesters. "A rough husbandry of the land was practiced by annually setting of fires to burn-off the old growth in order to get a better yield of seeds—or so the Ohlone told early explorers in San Mateo County." Their staple diet consisted of crushed acorns, grass seeds, berries, although other vegetation and trapped game and seafood, were important to their diet. These food sources were abundant in earlier times and maintained by careful work, through active management of all the natural resources at hand.
Animals in their mild climate included the grizzly bear, elk and deer. The streams held salmon and stickleback. Birds included plentiful ducks, quail, great horned owls, red-shafted flickers, downy woodpeckers and yellow-billed magpies. Waterfowl were the most important birds in the people's diet, which were captured with nets and decoys; the Chochenyo traditional narratives refer to ducks as food, Juan Crespí observed in his journal that geese were stuffed and dried "to use as decoys in hunting others". Along the ocean shore and bays, there were otters, at one time thousands of sea lions. In fact, there were so many sea lions that according to Crespi it "looked like a pavement" to the incoming Spanish. In general, along the bayshore and valleys, the Ohlone constructed dome-shaped houses of woven or bundled mats of tules, 6 to 20 feet in diameter. In hills where redwood trees were accessible, they built conical houses from redwood bark attached to a frame of wood. Residents of Monterey recall Redwood houses.
One of the main village buildings, the sweat lodge was low into the ground, its walls made of earth and roof of earth and brush. They built boats of tule to navigate on the bays propelled by double-bladed paddles. Men did not
Redwood Regional Park
Redwood Regional Park is a part of the East Bay Regional Parks District in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is located in the hills east of Oakland; the park contains the largest remaining natural stand of coast redwood found in the East Bay. The park is part of a historical belt of coast redwood extending south to Leona Canyon Regional Open Space Preserve and east to Moraga. Redwood forests are more found closer to the coast where the air is cool and humid year-round. In the Bay Area, such forests are found in the Marin Hills; the unique geographical circumstances of the redwood forest in Redwood Regional Park create coastal conditions. Winds funneled through the Golden Gate flow directly across the Bay and are channeled into the linear valley in which the Montclair District of Oakland is situated; this valley is well-watered all year round and is protected from extremes of temperature and high winds. Up to the middle of the 19th century, the bulk of the redwood forest lay in the Redwood Creek valley, with extensions to the surrounding ridges.
In 1826 British navy captain Frederick William Beechey used the "Navigation Trees", two tall redwood trees along the ridges, to help them navigate in San Francisco Bay. However, logging from 1845 to 1860 wiped out the original trees. A second logging occurred after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. In this instance the second growth redwoods as well as the stumps from the first generation trees were logged, the site of, registered as California Historical Landmark #962; the redwoods contained in today's regional park are third-growth trees, many of which are over 100 years old. Only one old-growth redwood remains in the area, a 93 feet tall tree that seems to grow miraculously out of a rock on a cliff face near Merritt College, which may have survived because it was out of reach for loggers. Popular activities for park visitors include picnicking, hiking and horseback riding along the 40 miles of park trails. Fishing is not allowed inside Redwood Regional Park; the park offers four picnic sites.
Advance reservations are recommended. These are accessible to handicapped persons; some overnight group camping areas are available. Reservations are required. A play structure for children is a quarter mile down Stream Trail from the Canyon Meadow staging area. Nature watching is another popular activity; the park is home such as the golden eagle and the Alameda striped racer. More common fauna are deer, raccoons and squirrels. Multiple storms, accompanied by strong winds and heavy rains, caused damage to Redwood Regional Park. EBRPD has posted notices stating that the following Redwood Park trails have been closed to users until further notice: East Ridge trail from Skyline Gate, because of a landslide that continues to grow; this trail is open beyond the slide area, can be accessed from Skyline National Trail. Phillips Loop trail is closed from Eucalyptus trail to the northwest intersection with East Ridge trail. Multiple large trees have fallen across the trail; these will remain closed until the trails have been declared safe for public use.
In 1989 Chabot Observatory & Science Center was formed as a Joint Powers Agency with the City of Oakland, the Oakland Unified School District, the East Bay Regional Park District, in collaboration with the Eastbay Astronomical Society, in 1992 was recognized as a nonprofit organization. The project was led by Chabot's Executive Director and CEO, Dr. Michael D. Reynolds, breaking ground for the facility in October 1996 with construction of the new 88,000-square-foot Science Center beginning in May 1998. In January 2000, anticipating the opening of the new facility, the organization changed its name from Chabot Observatory & Science Center to Chabot Space & Science Center; the new name was chosen to better convey the organization's focus on astronomy and the space sciences, while communicating both the broad range and the technologically advanced nature of programs available in the new Science Center. Opened August 19, 2000, the Chabot Space & Science Center is an 86,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art science and technology education facility on a 13-acre site in the hills of Oakland, adjoining the western boundary of Redwood Regional Park.
Redwood Regional Park official web page Redwood Regional full trail map
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a shallow estuary in the US state of California. It is surrounded by a contiguous region known as the San Francisco Bay Area, is dominated by the large cities of San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland. San Francisco Bay drains water from 40 percent of California. Water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, from the Sierra Nevada mountains, flow into Suisun Bay, which travels through the Carquinez Strait to meet with the Napa River at the entrance to San Pablo Bay, which connects at its south end to San Francisco Bay; the Guadalupe River enters the bay at its southernmost point in San Jose. The Guadalupe drains water from the Santa Cruz mountains and Hamilton Mountain ranges in southernmost San Jose, it enters the bay at the town of Alviso. It connects to the Pacific Ocean via the Golden Gate strait. However, this entire group of interconnected bays is called the San Francisco Bay; the bay was designated a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance on February 2, 2012. The bay covers somewhere between 400 and 1,600 square miles, depending on which sub-bays, wetlands, so on are included in the measurement.
The main part of the bay measures three to twelve miles wide east-to-west and somewhere between 48 miles 1 and 60 miles 2 north-to-south. It is the largest Pacific estuary in the Americas; the bay was navigable as far south as San Jose until the 1850s, when hydraulic mining released massive amounts of sediment from the rivers that settled in those parts of the bay that had little or no current. Wetlands and inlets were deliberately filled in, reducing the Bay's size since the mid-19th century by as much as one third. Large areas of wetlands have been restored, further confusing the issue of the Bay's size. Despite its value as a waterway and harbor, many thousands of acres of marshy wetlands at the edges of the bay were, for many years, considered wasted space; as a result, soil excavated for building projects or dredged from channels was dumped onto the wetlands and other parts of the bay as landfill. From the mid-19th century through the late 20th century, more than a third of the original bay was filled and built on.
The deep, damp soil in these areas is subject to soil liquefaction during earthquakes, most of the major damage close to the Bay in the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 occurred to structures on these areas. The Marina District of San Francisco, hard hit by the 1989 earthquake, was built on fill, placed there for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, although liquefaction did not occur on a large scale. In the 1990s, San Francisco International Airport proposed filling in hundreds more acres to extend its overcrowded international runways in exchange for purchasing other parts of the bay and converting them back to wetlands; the idea was, remains, controversial. There are five large islands in San Francisco Bay. Alameda, the largest island, was created when a shipping lane was cut to form the Port of Oakland in 1901, it is now a suburban community. Angel Island was known as "Ellis Island West" because it served as the entry point for immigrants from East Asia, it is now a state park accessible by ferry.
Mountainous Yerba Buena Island is pierced by a tunnel linking the east and west spans of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. Attached to the north is the artificial and flat Treasure Island, site of the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition. From the Second World War until the 1990s, both islands served as military bases and are now being redeveloped. Isolated in the center of the Bay is Alcatraz, the site of the famous federal penitentiary; the federal prison on Alcatraz Island no longer functions, but the complex is a popular tourist site. Despite its name, Mare Island in the northern part of the bay is a peninsula rather than an island. San Francisco Bay is thought to represent a down-warping of the Earth's crust between the San Andreas Fault to the west and the Hayward Fault to the east, though the precise nature of this remains under study. About 560,000 years ago, a tectonic shift caused the large inland Lake Corcoran to spill out the central valley and through the Carquinez Strait, carving out sediment and forming canyons in what is now the northern part of the San Francisco Bay and Golden Gate strait.
Until the last ice age, the basin, now filled by the San Francisco Bay was a large linear valley with small hills, similar to most of the valleys of the Coast Ranges. As the great ice sheets began to melt, around 11,000 years ago, the sea level started to rise. By 5000 BC the sea level rose 300 feet; the valley become a bay, the small hills became islands. From 15,000 – 10,000 years ago, the Ohlone tribe inhabited the area, now the San Francisco Bay; the natives were displaced 5,000 years ago as the bay filled with water due to the rising sea level at the end of the ice age. The first European to see San Francisco Bay is N. de Morena, left at New Albion at Drakes Bay in Marin County, California by Sir Francis Drake in 1579 and walked to Mexico. The first recorded European discovery of San Francisco Bay was on November 4, 1769 when Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portolà, unable to find the port of Monterey, continued north close to what is now Pacifica and reached the summit of the 1,200-foot-high Sweeney Ridge, now marked as the place where he first sighted San Francisco Bay.
Portolá and his party did not realize what they had discovered, thinking they had arrived at a large arm of what is now called Drakes Bay. At the time, Drakes Bay went by the name Bahia de San
Fremont, California
Fremont is a city in Alameda County, United States. It was incorporated on January 23, 1956, from the annexing of Centerville, Irvington, Mission San José, Warm Springs; the city is named after John C. Frémont, an American explorer and former US Senator from California, Governor from Arizona, Major General in the Union Army, the first Republican presidential candidate, in 1856. Located in the southeast San Francisco Bay Area and straddling both the East Bay and South Bay regions, Fremont has a rapidly-growing population of around 230,000, it is one of the largest cities by land area and the fourth most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area, behind San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland. It directly borders and is the closest East Bay city to Silicon Valley as formally defined, is thus associated with it; the city has an extensive and expanding base of both tech industry and workers. The area consisting of Fremont and the cities of Newark and Union City is known collectively as the Tri-City Area.
The recorded history of the Fremont area began on June 6, 1795, when Mission San José was founded by the Spaniard Father Fermin de Lasuen. The Mission was established at the site of the Ohlone village of Oroysom. On their second day in the area, the Mission party killed a grizzly bear in Niles Canyon; the first English-speaking visitor to Fremont was the renowned trapper and explorer Jedediah Smith in 1827. The Mission prospered reaching a population of 1,887 inhabitants in 1831; the influence of the missionaries declined after 1834, when the Mexican government enacted secularization. José de Jesus Vallejo, brother of Mariano Vallejo, was the grantee of the Rancho Arroyo de la Alameda Mexican land grant, his family was influential in the Fremont area in the late colonial era, owned and built a flour mill at the mouth of Niles Canyon. In 1846 the town's namesake John C. Frémont led a military expedition to map a trail through Mission Pass for reaching the Pacific coast and to take possession of California from Mexico for the United States.
The Fremont area grew at the time of the California Gold Rush. A town called Mission San José grew up around the old mission, with its own post office from 1850. Agriculture dominated the economy with nursery plants and olives as leading crops. In 1868 the 6.8-magnitude Hayward earthquake on the Hayward Fault collapsed buildings throughout the Fremont area, ruining Mission San José and its outbuildings. Until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake caused its destruction, the Fremont area's Palmdale Winery was the largest in California; the ruins of the Palmdale Winery are still visible near the Five Corners in Irvington. From 1912 to 1915 the Niles section of the Fremont area was the earliest home of California's motion picture industry. Charlie Chaplin filmed several movies in the Fremont area, most notably The Tramp. Fremont was incorporated under the leadership of Wally Pond in 1956, when five towns in the area, Centerville, Mission San José, Warm Springs came together to form a city. Glenmoor Gardens, the largest subdivision in Fremont, was under construction in the area, by developers Ralph E. Cotter, Jr. James R. Meyer, civil engineer Fred T. Duvall, contractors James L. Reeder, Robert H. Reeder.
When the Glenmoor Gardens Homeowners Association was incorporated, in March 1953, there were no more than 75 houses in the subdivision. It was the first such organization in the Fremont area; the five-member board of directors was set up to oversee a full range of services, from police and fire protection to street maintenance. Fremont became more industrialized between 1953 and 1962. A boom in high-tech employment in the 1980s to the late 1990s in the Warm Springs District, caused rapid development in the city and linked the city with the Silicon Valley; the Apple factory where the first Mac computer was manufactured was located in Fremont. Other semiconductor and telecommunications firms soon opened in the city, including Cirrus Logic, Asyst Technologies, Mattson Technology, Lam Research, Premisys Communications, Nextlink California. 750 high tech companies had offices, headquarters or production facilities in Fremont by 1999. These firms included fifteen of the top one hundred fastest-growing public companies in the San Francisco Bay Area and eighteen of the top fifty companies in the East Bay.
The high-tech growth in Fremont is a major industry for the city. The General Motors automotive assembly plant in South Fremont was the town's largest employer, Fremont was known for its drag strip. In the 1980s, the plant became a joint venture automotive assembly plant of Toyota and General Motors, was renamed NUMMI. Toyota and NUMMI shut down its operations in early 2010. Part of the plant was acquired in June 2010 by Tesla Motors as its primary production plant, known as the Tesla Factory. Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer, was promoted in 2010 by President Barack Obama as a model for government investment in green technology after his administration approved a $535-million Department of Energy loan guarantee and the company built a $733 million state-of-the-art robotic facility, but in 2011 the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and laid-off 1,000 workers. Data storage company Seagate Technology, incorporated in the Republic of Ireland with executive offices in Cupertino, acquired the former Solyndra building.
The first Fremont post office o
Oakland, California
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, United States. A major West Coast port city, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the San Francisco Bay Area, the eighth most populated city in California, the 45th largest city in the United States. With a population of 425,195 as of 2017, it serves as a trade center for the San Francisco Bay Area. An act to incorporate the city was passed on May 4, 1852, incorporation was approved on March 25, 1854, which made Oakland a city. Oakland is a charter city. Oakland's territory covers what was once a mosaic of California coastal terrace prairie, oak woodland, north coastal scrub, its land served as a rich resource when its hillside oak and redwood timber were logged to build San Francisco. Oakland's fertile flatland soils helped. In the late 1860s, Oakland was selected as the western terminal of the Transcontinental Railroad. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, many San Francisco citizens moved to Oakland, enlarging the city's population, increasing its housing stock and improving its infrastructure.
It continued to grow in the 20th century with its busy port, a thriving automobile manufacturing industry. The earliest known inhabitants were the Huchiun Indians; the Huchiun belonged to a linguistic grouping called the Ohlone. In Oakland, they were concentrated around Lake Merritt and Temescal Creek, a stream that enters the San Francisco Bay at Emeryville. In 1772, the area that became Oakland was colonized, with the rest of California, by Spanish settlers for the King of Spain. In the early 19th century, the Spanish crown granted the East Bay area to Luis María Peralta for his Rancho San Antonio; the grant was confirmed by the successor Mexican republic upon its independence from Spain. Upon his death in 1842, Peralta divided his land among his four sons. Most of Oakland fell within the shares given to Antonio Vicente; the portion of the parcel, now Oakland was called Encinal—Spanish for "oak grove"—due to the large oak forest that covered the area, which led to the city's name. During the 1850s—just as gold was discovered in California—Oakland started growing and developing because land was becoming too expensive in San Francisco.
The Chinese were struggling financially, as a result of the First Opium War, the Second Opium War, the Taiping Rebellion, so they began migrating to Oakland in an effort to provide for their families in China. However, the Chinese struggled to settle because they were discriminated against by the white community and their living quarters were burned down on several occasions; the majority of the Chinese migrants lived in unhealthy conditions in China and they had diseases, so plague spread into San Francisco though the Chinese were inspected for diseases upon their arrival to San Francisco. In 1851, three men—Horace Carpentier, Edson Adams, Andrew Moon—began developing what is now downtown Oakland. In 1852, the Town of Oakland became incorporated by the state legislature. During this time, Oakland had 75-100 inhabitants, two hotels, a wharf, two warehouses, only cattle trails. Two years on March 25, 1854, Oakland re-incorporated as the City of Oakland, with Horace Carpentier elected the first mayor, though a scandal ended his mayorship in less than a year.
The city and its environs grew with the railroads, becoming a major rail terminal in the late 1860s and 1870s. In 1868, the Central Pacific constructed the Oakland Long Wharf at Oakland Point, the site of today's Port of Oakland. A number of horsecar and cable car lines were constructed in Oakland during the latter half of the 19th century; the first electric streetcar set out from Oakland to Berkeley in 1891, other lines were converted and added over the course of the 1890s. The various streetcar companies operating in Oakland were acquired by Francis "Borax" Smith and consolidated into what became known as the Key System, the predecessor of today's publicly owned AC Transit. Oakland was one of the worst affected cities in California, impacted by the plague epidemic. Quarantine measures were set in place at the Oakland ports requiring the authorities at the port to inspect the arriving vessels for the presence of infected rats. Quarantine authorities at these ports inspected over a thousand vessels per year for plague and yellow fever.
By 1908, over 5,000 people were detained in quarantine. Hunters were sent to poison the affected areas in Oakland and shoot the squirrels, but the eradication work was limited in its range because the State Board of Health and the United States Public Health Service were only allotted about $60,000 a year to eradicate the disease. During this period Oakland did not have sufficient health facilities, so some of the infected patients were treated at home; the State Board of Health along with Oakland advised physicians to promptly report any cases of infected patients. Yet, in 1919 it still resulted in a small epidemic of Pneumonic plague which killed a dozen people in Oakland; this started when a man killed a squirrel. After eating the squirrel, he fell ill four days and another household member contracted the plague; this in turn was passed on either indirectly to about a dozen others. The officials in Oakland acted by issuing death certificates to monitor the spread of plague. At the time of incorporation in 1852, Oaklan
Cross country running
Cross country running is a sport in which teams and individuals run a race on open-air courses over natural terrain such as dirt or grass. Sometimes the runners are referred to as harriers; the course 4–12 kilometres long, may include surfaces of grass, earth, pass through woodlands and open country, include hills, flat ground and sometimes gravel road. It is both a team sport. Both men and women of all ages compete in cross country, which takes place during autumn and winter, can include weather conditions of rain, snow or hail, a wide range of temperatures. Cross country running is one of the disciplines under the umbrella sport of athletics, is a natural terrain version of long-distance track and road running. Although open-air running competitions are pre-historic, the rules and traditions of cross country racing emerged in Britain; the English championship became the first national competition in 1876 and the International Cross Country Championships was held for the first time in 1903. Since 1973 the foremost elite competition has been the IAAF World Cross Country Championships.
Cross country courses are laid out on an woodland area. The IAAF recommends that courses be grass-covered, have rolling terrain with frequent but smooth turns. Courses consist of one or more loops, with a long straight at the start and another leading to the finish line. Terrain can vary from open fields to forest hills and across rivers, it includes running down and up hills. Because of variations in conditions, international standardization of cross country courses is impossible, not desirable. Part of cross country running's appeal is the distinct characteristics of each venue's terrain and weather, as in other outdoor sports like motor racing and golf. According to the IAAF, an ideal cross country course has a loop of 1,750 to 2,000 metres laid out on an open or wooded land, it should be covered by grass, as much as possible, include rolling hills "with smooth curves and short straights". While it is acceptable for local conditions to make dirt or snow the primary surface, courses should minimize running on roads or other macadamized paths.
Parks and golf courses provide suitable locations. While a course may include natural or artificial obstacles, cross country courses support continuous running, do not require climbing over high barriers, through deep ditches, or fighting through the underbrush, as do military-style assault courses. A course at least 5 metres full allows competitors to pass others during the race. Clear markings keep competitors from making wrong turns, spectators from interfering with the competition. Markings may include tape or ribbon on both sides of the course, chalk or paint on the ground, or cones; some classes use colored flags to indicate directions: red flags for left turns, yellow flags for right turns, blue flags to continue straight or stay within ten feet of the flag. Courses commonly include distance markings at each kilometer or each mile; the course should have 400 to 1,200 m of level terrain before the first turn, to reduce contact and congestion at the start. However, many courses at smaller competitions have their first turn after a much shorter distance.
Courses for international competitions consist of a loop between 2000 meters. Athletes complete three to six loops, depending on the race. Senior men compete on a 12-kilometre course. Senior women and junior men compete on an 8-kilometre course. Junior women compete on a 6-kilometre course. In the United States, college men compete on 8 km or 10 km courses, while college women race for 5 km or 6 km. High school courses are 5 km. Middle school courses are 1.5 mi or 2 mi long. All runners start at the same time, from a starting arc marked with lines or boxes for each team or individual. An official, 50 meters or more in front of the starting line, fires a pistol to indicate the start. If runners collide and fall within the first 100 meters, officials can call the runners back and restart the race, however this is done only once. Crossing the line or starting before the starting pistol is fired is considered a false start and most results in disqualification of the runner; the course ends at a finish line located at the beginning of a funnel or chute that keeps athletes single-file in order of finish and facilitates accurate scoring.
Depending on the timing and scoring system, finish officials may collect a small slip from each runner's bib, to keep track of finishing positions. An alternative method is to have four officials in two pairs. In the first pair, one official reads out numbers of finishers and the other records them. In the second pair, one official reads out times for the other to record. At the end of the race, the two lists are joined along with information from the entry information; the primary disadvantage of this system is that distractions can upset the results when scores of runners finish close together. Chip timing has grown in popularity to increase accuracy and decrease the number of officials required at the finish line; each runner attaches a transponder with RFID to her shoe. When the runner crosses the finish line, an electronic pad records the chip number and matches the runner to a database. Chip timing allows officials to use checkpoint mats throughout the race to calculate split times, to ensure runners cover the entire course.
This is by far the most efficient method, although it is t
