A proposal by Santa Clara County Supervisor Liz Kniss to use funds contributed to the county by Stanford University for a new bike bridge over Highway 101 in Palo Alto is facing resistance from the Stanford community, where residents and officials are urging the county to slow down and consider other alternatives for the funds.

The plan, which Kniss and Supervisor Dave Cortese unveiled Wednesday, May 16, calls for using $5 million in Stanford funds for the bike bridge at Adobe Creek and another $3 million to complete the Dumbarton link in the Bay Trail between Redwood City and Alviso. The money would come from a $10.34 fund that Stanford pledged to the county when it was applying for a General Use Permit (GUP) 11 years ago. The permit allowed Stanford to add up to 5 million square feet of construction to its campus. The $8 million recreation fund (which has since grown to $10.34 million because of interest) was intended to mitigate the loss of recreational opportunities that would result from the new construction.

But while Kniss maintained Wednesday that her proposals would boost recreational opportunities for Stanford students, residents and the wider community, members of the Stanford Campus Residential Leaseholders (SCRL) board of directors have other thoughts. The board, which is elected to represent the Stanford campus community, had its annual meeting last Wednesday night and Kniss' plan did not go down well with the board, said James Sweeney, the board's president.

Specifically, the board feels that the benefits of Kniss' proposed projects would provide little or no benefit to the campus residents, Sweeney said. Stanford had planned to use the funds to build a trail in San Mateo County but that plan fizzled in December, when the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to nix the idea.

The GUP specifies that if the trail proposal doesn't move forward, the funds would be used to reduce "the adverse effect on recreational opportunities for existing or new campus residents and facility users that will be caused by the housing and academic development approved by the GUP, which will reduce the availability of recreational facilities, while increasing the demand for such facilities."

Sweeney said he and the board believe that the projects proposed by Kniss fail to meet this criteria. Though they would provide benefits to the general population, they are too distant from Stanford's campus to get much use from the university community. Ideally, he said, the projects would benefit both Stanford and the public at large.

"We had a very strong negative reaction and we have not been able to identify anyone else who believes they'd have any benefit to them on the campus," Sweeney said, referring to the board's discussion of Kniss' proposals.

One proposal that the SCRL board supports is a plan to improve a trail along El Camino Real, between Stanford Shopping Center and Stanford Avenue and to enhance the existing trail along Stanford Avenue, which stops just short of the Stanford Dish. The proposal would stretch the trail to the Dish and to the newly completed S-1 trail on Page Mill Road.

University officials are also urging the Board of Supervisors to slow down. Though the board was scheduled to consider Kniss' proposals Tuesday morning, Stanford officials are calling for the board to continue the meeting to another date. Jean McCown, Stanford's vice president for communications, said Stanford has been waiting for the board to come up with a process for selecting a project that would be funded through Stanford's contributions.

Two Bay Area universities – UC Berkeley and Stanford – are ranked in the elite top six universities worldwide for reputation, according to the 2012 Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings released Thursday.

Lead by Harvard, the top six this year are the same as the top six last year and rank in the same order – with one exception. Stanford moved up to fourth this year from fifth, while Cal dropped from fourth to fifth.

The top six this year are:

• Harvard
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• Cambridge
• Stanford
• UC Berkeley
• Oxford

These universities scored considerably higher than others in the poll of more 17,500 academics worldwide and represent "an elite group of six 'super brands,' Times Higher Education said. The six are concentrated geographically as three pairs – in the Bay Area, in Cambridge, MA, and in the "Oxbridge" nexus not far from London. 

Stanford's news bureau was silent on the honor, while UC Berkeley issued a press release titled, "Berkeley shines in new reputation, graduate school rankings," about the Times Higher Education ranking and the latest U.S. News & World Report ranking of graduate schools, which placed several Berkeley programs high on the list.

Berkeley's press release cited the Times analysis saying, “The six occupy what one expert describes as ‘a special zone beyond ordinary competition,’ riding well ahead of the chasing pack and reaping the multiple rewards associated with being the world’s best in teaching and research.”

Also significant, the Times said, is improved standings of Asian and mainland European universities in the top 100, attributable in part to increased higher-education investment by the respective governments. Several moved up, while some U.S. and UK institutions dropped off the list.

This year's ranking finds the University of Tokyo in eighth place below Princeton in seventh and above UCLA in ninth and Yale in 10th.

U.S. universities dominate the list with 44 of the top 100, followed by the UK with 10.

"Meanwhile," the Times said, "Chinese universities performed well, with Tsinghua University up to 30th from 35th place and Peking University rising to 38th from 43rd.

"The University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University and the National University of Singapore all rose this year, while Japan has five institutions in the top 100," the Times said.

Times Higher Education is "the United Kingdom’s leading educational news publication," said UC Berkeley's news release.

Palo Alto's cloud-computing giant VMware is planning to dramatically expand its Stanford Research Park property by adding six buildings and two garages to its "campus in the forest."

The company made headlines earlier this year when it took over a 1-million-square-foot property formerly occupied by Roche. The company unveiled its plans for its expanded campus Thursday in front of the Architectural Review Board.

Though the board didn't vote on the project, members found plenty to like about VMware's proposal, which seeks to create what it calls a "campus in the forest." The site already has 500 trees, including oaks and redwoods, and the company has indicated that it plans to maintain its perimeter of mature trees.

Company officials are now working with city staff to develop a landscape plan that is consistent with the city's requirements, city Planner Jason Nortz wrote in a report.

The company's expanded Hillview Avenue campus would feature groves, trails and a plaza called, "Town Square," featuring oaks, sycamores and fountains.

"Visitors arrive and they know they arrived at the new VMware," David Walker, the landscape architect for the project, told the board.

The company also plans to add four office buildings to supplement the 16 existing ones at the site. These buildings would be added during the first of three construction phases. The second phase would entail building two amenity facilities featuring gyms and food services. For the third phase, VMware plans to construct three new parking structures.

Though the company is still refining its design, board members said they liked what they saw during their preliminary look.

Board member Judith Wasserman called it "generally a quite wonderful and exciting project" and called the landscaping elements in it "very strong." Her colleague Alex Lew agreed, called the company's landscaping design "stunning" and "really beautiful."

Board Chair Clare Malone Prichard agreed and said the project "keeps on getting better."

Stanford University's Graduate School of Business has received a $150 million gift -- one of the largest in the university's history -- to create an institute to alleviate poverty through entrepreneurship, officials have announced.

The gift from Dorothy and Robert King of Menlo Park was inspired by 40 years of hosting international students in their home. As hosts, the Kings saw the impact that education and entrepreneurship can have on individuals and on a larger scale, they said in a Stanford announcement.

The funding will create the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (SIID, but referred to as "SEED"), which will help develop entrepreneurship in countries where the per-capita income is less than $1.25 per day. An estimated 1 billion people worldwide live at that level, business school officials said.

Robert King is an investment partner at Peninsula Capital in Menlo Park and a 1960 Stanford graduate business school alum. He said he was inspired by the success of one entrepreneurial venture, led by two entrepreneurs whom one of his houseguests introduced.

King provided seed money for Baidu, a Chinese-language search engine, which later debuted on NASDAQ in 2005. Baidu now employs 10,000 people in China, he said.

"We believe that innovation and entrepreneurship are the engines of growth to lift people out of poverty. And we believe Stanford's tradition of innovation coupled with a forward-thinking global bias as well as its multidisciplinary resources will make a real impact," he said.

Hau Lee, a professor of operations, information and technology at the Graduate School of Business, will head SEED. He said the institute will provide on-the-ground support for entrepreneurs, offer new courses and engage in research. Training programs could help local farmers to be independent, while funding and mentoring could help expand the work of overseas entrepreneurs, he said.

Stanford students will be able to travel to developing countries to work on socially conscious projects, such as product development, through the institute.

Employing entrepreneurship to build up economies "is distinct from providing humanitarian aid and relief. It is turning people from receivers of aid to self-employed or the working," Lee said.

The Graduate School of Business and Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design have already pioneered a program in which students collaborate with overseas organizations to identify needs and create new ventures. Two such examples are d.light, a consumer-products company serving people without electricity, and Driptech, a water-technologies firm that produces affordable, high-quality irrigation systems designed for small-plot farmers.

Garth Saloner, business-school dean, said many students want to work on the global level, making people's lives better through business, education, health care and governance.

He called SEED "an enormous opportunity for Stanford students, faculty and on-the-ground entrepreneurs."

"There are very few settled solutions about how best to alleviate poverty in a wide range of contexts, which means there is plenty of opportunity to uncover, share and apply new insights," Saloner said.

Lee has had his own first-hand experiences with the societal impact of business.

"I did a hazelnut plantation in Bhutan so that people didn't have to be migrants," he said. Prior to the project, village children were mostly raised without their fathers, and many areas had been deforested. But now, locals are able to stay home and work at the plantation. The fields and woodlands have been restored.

And 25 percent of the company's profits go back to the community, he said.

Social entrepreneurship also has positive political effects, he said. Local farmers are welcoming foreigners.

"They are not viewing it as Western capitalism coming in. It's having a positive impact," he said.

Stanford has received other large gifts: $400 million from the Hewlett Foundation in 2001 ($100 million for matching undergraduate scholarships and $300 million to the School of Humanities and Sciences); $100 million from real-estate developer John Arrillaga in 2006; $105 million from Nike founder Phil Knight in 2006; and $75 million from Business Wire founder Lorry Lokey in 2008.

In the five-year poker game between Stanford University and the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors over the fate of a decrepit and unsafe trail on the south side of Alpine Road between Portola Valley and Menlo Park, the supervisors saw Stanford's $10 million pile of chips Tuesday morning and, in effect, raised the bet.

In addition to paying to upgrade the trail, Stanford's current offer of $10.4 million would also fund the study of any of three trail redesign plans:

• Move parts of Alpine Road to the north to make room for an adequate trail on the south side of the road.

• Leave Alpine Road as it is and redo the trail without that extra space available.

• Find that the trail cannot be made safe with the funds available.

That was not enough for the supervisors, who by a 4-1 majority on Tuesday (Nov. 1) gave Stanford until the board's Dec. 13 meeting to revise its offer to include funding for three more alternatives:

• A trail that hugs the north side of Alpine Road after crossing at Piers Lane, where there is an informal entrance and parking lot to enter the undeveloped lands around Stanford's Dish radio telescope.

• A trail that crosses Alpine Road and heads north on undeveloped land in the direction of Sand Hill Road.

• Build the proposed trail between Ladera and Piers Lane, which would avoid the complexities of trying to improve the trail that passes through Stanford Weekend Acres.

Supervisor Dave Pine introduced the alternatives, adding that the trail cannot be left as it is. He instructed County Counsel John Beiers to work with Stanford to revise the agreement language that seems to preclude actions the board may want to take and that could "trip up" the county on deadlines.

Supervisor Adrienne Tissier recommended changes that would extend the county's window of time to complete the environmental studies beyond Stanford's deadline of December 2013.

The public spoke ardently for and against Stanford's offer, and Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson, who represents much of Menlo Park, commented that the recent community outreach by the county managers office did not achieve its objective of consensus.

Supervisor Don Horsley, who represents parts of Menlo Park and Portola Valley, Woodside and Atherton, said he was "appalled" at the traffic conditions on Alpine Road on a visit there with project opponent Lennie Roberts, but that the county should accept money for an environmental study on a trail that is inarguably unsafe.

Board President Carole Groom voted against the idea of accepting Stanford's money at all, in part because it won't be enough to cover the costs. She noted the unanimous votes by the board in 2006 and 2010 against Stanford's offer. Opponents to Stanford's offer have lived with this controversy for five years and do not deserve another two years of it, she added. "I am simply not in favor of this," she said. When some in the audience applauded, she told them to stop.

In the end, Groom and supervisors Tissier and Jacobs Gibson made it fairly clear that they would oppose accepting Stanford's offer if Stanford does not agree to fund the study of Pine's three additional alternatives.

Asked for a reaction, Stanford spokesman Larry Horton, caught in mid-stride, smiled and said, "We'll see in December."

Beware of lines at Target as more than 1,700 freshmen arrive to take up residence at Stanford University Tuesday (Sept. 20).

The new students come from all 50 states and from 52 countries. The 1,709 freshmen are the ones who said "yes" to Stanford out of the 2,427 students admitted from an initial applicant pool of 34,348.

Thirty-nine percent of Stanford's class of 2015 graduated from high schools in California, and 16 percent of the freshmen are the first in their families to attend a four-year college.

Caucasians comprise 30.6 percent of the class; Asian-Americans 22.4 percent; Hispanics 15.4 percent; African-American students 10.6 percent; Native-Americans and Hawaiians 4.7 percent, with the remainder unknown, the university said.

A quarter of the entering class members said they are primarily interested in natural sciences, followed by engineering (21 percent); pre-law and pre-medicine (18 percent); humanities (17 percent); social sciences (12 percent); earth sciences (2 percent) and "undecided" (5 percent).

Ninety-two percent of the Class of 2015 ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating classes, and 87.5 percent earned high school GPAs of 3.8 or higher.

Among 47 transfer students also arriving Tuesday, 21 graduated from community colleges and nine are U.S. military veterans.

A 44-page "major events" calendar for new students begins with an opening convocation with President John Hennessy in the quad at 4 p.m. today. The week is packed with placement testing, library tours, advisor meetings, faculty research presentations, religious services, cultural group welcomes and parties.

On Thursday, new students are invited to a 9 a.m. "first lecture" by celebrated author and Medical School Professor Abraham Verghese. The topic is "the purpose of a liberal education and how you will become more than your major."

Orientation wraps up Sunday with a discussion moderated by Political Science Professor Scott Sagan with the authors of three books freshmen were assigned to read over the summer: "March" by Geraldine Brooks; "The Violence of Peace" by Stephen L. Carter and "One Bullet Away" by Nathaniel Fick.

Sagan said he chose the books because he wants students to understand current global conflicts and ethical issues in war.

"I think war is too important for young people at a major university to ignore," he has said.

In a June letter to freshmen, Sagan said, "Students at an American university should not forget that the United States is currently engaged in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and 15 additional civil wars are raging elsewhere, and that U.S. troops are deployed in many U.N. peacekeeping missions.

"Our peaceful intellectual oasis exists in a world of conflict."

Noting that reasonable people often disagree, Sagan said he wants students "to wrestle with the ethical dilemmas involved in decisions about war and peace."

Regular classes for Stanford undergraduates begin on Monday, Sept. 26.

A free online course at Stanford on artificial intelligence has attracted more than 70,000 students from around the world.

The class, taught by professors Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig, will offer an introduction to artificial intelligence and offer the same materials and testing as the offline course.

“Many years ago, when I was a young student in Germany, there were no classes on artificial intelligence that I could take, and understanding the field was really difficult,” said Professor Thrun in a video posted Sunday.

Thrun helped develop Google's driverless car after leading the development of Stanley, an autonomous car that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge.

Norvig, who is Director of Research at Google, led the computational sciences division of NASA and authored the textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach.

“We have been absolutely ecstatic about the many many of you who are up to take this challenging class,” said Thrun.

The class is one of three being offered free by Stanford Computer Science this fall, and has already attracted high school students and retirees, according to the New York Times.

“If you haven’t already done so, sign up now, and get ready for a deep and fascinating journey into the field of AI,” said Thrun.

Call it the $8 million offer that won't die: Stanford University's proposal to pay for trail improvements along Alpine Road between the Menlo Park and Portola Valley boundaries (with interest, now up to $10.5 million), which was unanimously rejected by the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors in 2008 and again in 2010. Well, it has sprung back to life.

On Tuesday (July 26) the supervisors voted unanimously to go back to residents of the areas near the trail, including Ladera and Stanford Weekend Acres, to see if time has changed their minds about the proposed trail improvements.

Citing changes in the financial and political climate, and the deterioration of the existing trail, the supervisors agreed to take one more look at the proposal before it expires at the end of December this year. They rejected the staff's recommendation to ask Stanford for a one-year extension of the deadline for making the improvements, saying that if an extension is needed they can ask for it in December after hearing from the public.

If San Mateo County rejects the offer and lets the deadline pass, the money will go to Santa Clara County for recreation.

The offer of money for the trail originated in conditions put on Stanford by Santa Clara County in 2000 when the university was given permission to add 5 million square feet of buildings on campus.

Stanford agreed to build two trails to offset the loss of recreational opportunities. One trail, located south of Page Mill Road and Foothill Expressway and running through the foothills, opened this spring. Portola Valley is now working on a section of trail running from Ladera to Ford Field along Alpine Road, which is scheduled to reopen by October.

Santa Clara County Supervisor Liz Kniss sent a representative to the meeting to ask that Santa Clara County also be included in talks about the trail improvements and how the money from Stanford could be used.

New supervisor and former San Mateo County Sheriff Don Horsley said he was influenced by the fatal bike accident on that stretch of Alpine Road in November 2010 to take another look at finding a way to make the area safer. "That trail is simply not safe as it stands," he said.

"I would like to hear what the residents say," Horsley said. "I think there are a lot of areas we could negotiate on."

Fifteen people showed up at the meeting to comment on the proposal, and, as in the past, their opinions were mixed.

Janet Davis, who lives on Alpine Road, accused Stanford of "trying to pressure local residents into something they don't want." She cited concerns of privacy and traffic hazards.

Barbara Ann Barnett, who said she has lived in Stanford Weekend Acres for more than 40 years, said that getting in and out of the neighborhood is already a nightmare and the trail would make that worse. "I personally am really, really nervous about the safety issues," she said. "I hope we do not go down this road again.

Noel Hirst, who has lived in Ladera for 14 years and works at Stanford, said the existing trail has its own safety problems. "I used to bike to work two times a week during the non-rainy months," she said. She has given it up because of the trail conditions. Now, she said, "I can't get there and I won't put my kids at risk to possibly not have a mom." If the county doesn't use the Stanford money to repair the trail; it will have to spend its own money to repair it, she said.

Ellyn Rubin, who has lived for more than 30 years in Ladera, agreed. The current trail is unsafe for cycling, she said. "More and more people are biking. It's just going to get more and more dangerous if nothing is done."

Palo Alto will have almost $40 million at its disposal to spend on health programs, affordable housing, infrastructure and green initiatives as part of its recently approved agreement with the Stanford University Medical Center.

Tonight, the City Council will consider ways to spend these funds, which Stanford had agreed to provide in order to get the city's permission for a massive expansion of its hospital facilities.

Under a development agreement the council approved last month, Stanford will provide payments in three installments, with the first $15.7 million payment due this summer. Future payments are scheduled for January 2012 and January 2018.

The agreement was designed to give the city flexibility on what kind of projects to spend the money on. The council, for example, could use the $7.7 million earmarked for "infrastructure, sustainable neighborhoods and affordable housing" to subsidize low-income housing or to address the city's gaping infrastructure backlog, currently estimated at about $500 million.

Stanford is scheduled to contribute $4 million for "community health and safety programs"; $23.2 million for "infrastructure, sustainable neighborhoods and affordable housing"; and $12 million for "sustainability programs" relating to climate change.

Palo Alto officials have already committed to spending $2 million from the community-health fund to support Project Safety Net, a project aimed at promoting youth well-being.

The Stanford funds are flowing into the city's coffers at a time when the city remains mired in budgetary uncertainty. Though the council balanced the fiscal year 2012 budget last month without cutting any popular programs, officials predict budget deficits of close to $7 million in each of the next two fiscal years.

Deputy City Manager Steve Emslie wrote in a new report that Stanford's contributions "provide the city with an exceptional opportunity to begin to address its overall infrastructure and sustainable goals." Emslie noted that while the timing of the money will give the council an "immediate opportunity to initiate projects," staff is recommending a "strategic approach" to spending Stanford funds.

To get the strategic discussion rolling, staff has proposed appointing two council members to a joint committee that would also include Stanford officials. The committee would review possible uses for the community-health funds. The council would then make the final decision on how to spend the money. Under the proposal, the council's Finance Committee would also consider various projects and programs that could be funded before the full council finalizes the spending programs.

Stanford's hospital-expansion program includes reconstruction of Stanford Hospital & Clinics, an expansion of Lucile Packard Children's Center and renovations to various Stanford University School of Medicine buildings.

Facebook and a non-profit health care group have announced plans to design an online service that they hope will replace the nation's antiquated paper-based health care system.

The U.S. Health Care Warranty Exchange (USHCWE), a non-profit health care warranty entity, plans to create a new health care system that provides adequate, affordable health coverage without any federal government involvement.

“The project started out five years ago, just with the idea of trying to come up with another health care industry for health coverage that didn’t involve the federal government or private health insurers,” USHCWE Founder Matthew R. Wright said. “As it evolved, we reached out to Facebook and the team that’s in charge there.”

Wright, who hopes to execute the plan by 2014, says health care will be more accessible through the use of technology such as social networking.

“We looked at the benefits of us and [Facebook] teaming up and we found out [that] with the social media network, we can provide health care access just by a click of a button,” he said.

An online health care system would, in part, facilitate users in checking their health care information and appointments.

“It will be easy for people to have their health records, confirm or deny doctors, track what they do, track their health care and have doctors target certain people with certain problems because everything is privately controlled,” he said. “It will be a system [where] people will just sign up for health coverage and have their health coverage streamlined instead of how the system is today and how strict it is.”

By joining Facebook—which may hit one billion users some time this year—in a movement to improve the current health care system, USHCWE hopes to foster a sustainable program despite the inevitable factors of technology.

“If we and the Facebook’s team team up to jump into other markets, it will have a longer lasting effect. Other changes in the technology world won’t make it dissolve as quickly or lose value because it’s helping more people and it’s connecting more people to get what they want too,” Wright said.

Public Relations Consultant Sharon Wright describes the additional benefits of switching the health care system from print to online.

“There’s going to be some internal information—most of it will be computerized,” she said. “We’re trying to eliminate paper access so people that don’t have access to health care files will not be able to inadvertently look into anybody’s private information. That’s another way [Matthew R. Wright’s] going to secure people’s privacy to their medical records.”

The privacy of members’ information will be protected though an online service, providing additional security for the user’s identity.

“It’s also going to reduce fraud,” she said. “Because the records will be computerized, the health care exchange will have an independent fraud unit that will monitor doctors [and] anyone that has access to the members’ information to avoid health care fraud [including] double billing.”

Matthew R. Wright believes the lack of technology used in promoting health care today is causing the system to lag.  

“There’s not enough technology in the current health care market, that’s the problem,” he said. “Technology is our lives, and right now with the current health care system you have to call a million numbers [and] you have to fill out paper forms. The younger generations, the middle generations and the baby boomers just don’t have the time to fill out papers,” he said.

“This is a fast paced life, so if we involve more technology into health care, it will save time, save money, streamline the whole health care process and it will be efficient and better for all Americans,” he said.