Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

SRI International (SRI), founded as Stanford Research Institute, is an American nonprofit research institute 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. SRI is now one of the largest contract research institutes in the world.

The institute formally separated from Stanford University in 1970 and became known as SRI International in 1977. SRI describes its mission as discovery and the application of science and technology for knowledge, commerce, prosperity, and peace. It performs client-sponsored research and development for government agencies, commercial businesses, and private foundations. It also licenses its technologies, and creates spin-off companies.

SRI's headquarters are located near the Stanford University campus. Physicist Curtis Carlson has been SRI's president and CEO since 1998. SRI's annual revenue in 2013 was approximately $540 million. SRI employs about 2,300 people. Sarnoff Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of SRI since 1988, was fully integrated into SRI in January 2011. SRI International Sarnoff is used as a brand name for business activities based in Princeton, New Jersey.

SRI's focus areas include biomedical sciences, chemistry and materials, computing, Earth and space systems, economic development, education and learning, energy and environmental technology, security and national defense, as well as sensing and devices. SRI has received more than 1,000 patents and patent applications worldwide. (more...)

Leo Joseph Ryan, Jr. (May 5, 1925 – November 18, 1978) was an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served as a U.S. Representative from California's 11th congressional district from 1973 until he was shot to death in Guyana by members of the Peoples Temple, shortly before the Jonestown Massacre in 1978.

After the Watts Riots of 1965, Assemblyman Ryan took a job as a substitute school teacher to investigate and document conditions in the area. In 1970, he investigated the conditions of California prisons by being held, under a pseudonym, as an inmate in Folsom Prison, while presiding as chairman of the Assembly committee that oversaw prison reform. During his time in Congress, Ryan traveled to Newfoundland to investigate the practice of seal hunting.

Ryan was also famous for vocal criticism of the lack of Congressional oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and authored the Hughes–Ryan Amendment, passed in 1974. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously in 1983. (more...)

Emeryville is a small city in Alameda County, California, in the United States. It is located in a corridor between the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, extending to the shore of San Francisco Bay. Its proximity to San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, the University of California, Berkeley, and Silicon Valley has been a catalyst for recent economic growth. It is home to Pixar Animation Studios, Peet's Coffee & Tea, Jamba Juice and Clif Bar. In addition, several well known biotech and software companies have made their home in Emeryville: Electronic Arts' Maxis Software division, LeapFrog, Sendmail, MobiTV, Novartis (formerly Chiron before April 2006), and BigFix (now IBM). The population was 10,080 as of 2010, although it swells considerably on weekdays due to the city's position as a regional employment center. Emeryville has some features of an edge city; however, it is located within the inner urban core of the Oakland/greater East Bay and was heavily industrialized before the First World War. (more...)

• Fleishhacker Zoo opens in San Francisco
• Air Corps Station, San Rafael begins service
• The Golden West Savings and Loan Association in Oakland opens
• The Berkeley Women's City Club building (pictured) is built by Julia Morgan

• ... that the vivid colors of the San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds (pictured), ranging from magenta to blue-green, come from the brine shrimp and microorganisms that thrive in the water?
• ... that the Laguna Creek watershed debouches into the San Francisco Bay near the site of the ghost town of Drawbridge?
• ... that the chase scene from the 1968 Steve McQueen film Bullitt starts on Cesar Chavez Street (then Army Street) before continuing through San Francisco?
• ... that the title of There There, a 2018 novel about urban Indians in Oakland, California, mirrors Gertrude Stein's quip about the city that "There is no there there"?

 • ... that Live Oak Park is one of Berkeley's oldest and most naturalistic public parks? (park fireplace pictured)
 • ... that Eugene Tsui's Ojo del Sol house is based upon the world's most indestructible living creature, the tardigrade? (architect pictured)
 • ... that Sutter Cinema's owner/manager Arlene Elster was the first, if not the only, woman to operate an adult theater?
 • ... that Sarah Althea Hill became a national celebrity when she sued millionaire senator William Sharon for divorce in 1883, claiming to have secretly married him three years earlier by private contract?
 • ... that the Third and Townsend Depot (pictured) was built in 1914 for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition?

March 2015

Midsummer Mozart Festival is an annual music festival that exclusively features the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The festival was founded by George Cleve in 1974 and is held at various venues across the San Francisco Bay Area. (The San Francisco Boys Chorus, past performers, pictured)

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