Community Corner

🌱 Patch AM: What the Caribou Biosciences shutdown means for 87 Berkeley workers.

Spotted on the Berkeley calendar: Grin & Bear It Featuring Daniel Franzese

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Cheers Berkeley! We're back, helping you stay up to date with what's happening. Let's take on the day together! ☀️

In today's newsletter:

  • What the Caribou Biosciences shutdown means for 87 Berkeley workers.
  • Why a convicted Berkeley workplace poisoner is asking to clear his record.
  • How a visiting artist fell for Solano Avenue and UC Berkeley.

Also on today's calendar: Grin & Bear It Featuring Daniel Franzese and 9 more events.

Today's riddle: Why do some birds fly south for the winter? 🤔 (Answer below!)

Weather forecast:

  • Monday: Partly sunny and cool, with a high of 69 and low of 49 degrees.
  • Tuesday: Areas of low clouds, then sun, temps: high: 75, low: 51.
  • Wednesday: Mostly sunny and pleasant, with a high of 75 and low of 51 degrees.

📰 News we're reading

1. Why is Caribou Biosciences ending CAR-T development before a planned phase (business-news-today.com) — Berkeley residents should know that local biotech firm Caribou Biosciences is shutting down its Berkeley operations, with 87 jobs slated for permanent elimination in December as the company winds down and seeks a buyer or merger. Despite having over $100 million in cash, management says it can't responsibly fund late-stage trials, so most staff will depart this quarter while a small team handles closures and potential transactions.
   

2. Video of Bay Area man convicted of poisoning co-worker released as he seeks to dismiss ruling (abc7news.com) — A disturbing poisoning case tied to a Berkeley engineering firm is back in the spotlight as convicted former employee David Xu heads to Alameda County court Monday seeking to dismiss his felony conviction. Hidden-camera video from nearly a decade ago, now shared publicly, shows him tampering with a co-worker's water bottle, which police say contained cadmium at extremely dangerous levels that nearly killed her.
   

3. SF Bay Area, Part 4: Berkeley (blogspot.com) — A visiting sketch artist spent several days staying in a walkable Berkeley neighborhood, drawing local trees, homes, and scenes around Solano Avenue's restaurants, shops, and cafes. They also toured UC Berkeley's campus, admired its architecture and historic buckeye tree, and left eager to return and explore more of the city's distinctive streets and scenery.
   

4. Independent sets and sphere packings: a symbiotic relationship (berkeley.edu) — A Simons Institute event at UC Berkeley explores surprising links between independent sets in graphs and dense sphere packings, touching on questions from mixing times to phase transitions. For Berkeley residents interested in math, physics, or theoretical computer science, it's a chance to hear how ideas developed on campus connect abstract models to real-world structures in high dimensions.
   

5. On Zeros and Algorithms for Disordered Systems (berkeley.edu) — A new Simons Institute talk at UC Berkeley dives into cutting-edge algorithms for estimating partition functions in complex Ising models, a core problem in statistical physics and computer science. While highly technical, it highlights frontier research happening right on the Berkeley campus that shapes how scientists understand randomness, complexity, and phase transitions in large systems.
   

📸 Around Berkeley

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🗓 Upcoming Events in Berkeley

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💬 Chatter

What your neighbors are talking about on social media

  • Update: Pet Reunited
    Charley/zoe, a cat who went missing in Oakland, CA, has been safely reunited with their family after 18 hours, 37 minutes. Message from Owner: … (Nextdoor Claremont Hills)
  • Meet a famous chubby street cat from the Ziverbey neighborhood in the Kadıköy district of Istanbul.
    He used to hang out and watch the world go. After he died, the city honoured him with his very own statue. (Nextdoor Lorin District)
  • Albertsons Company posted a job opening for Deli Clerk in Berkeley. Apply here.
  • Silverado posted a job opening for Full Time Housekeeper (AM) in Berkeley. Apply here. You can search for other jobs near Berkeley here.

Ok Berkeley! So now you're in the loop about what's happening today. Thanks for reading, and see you in your inbox next time! Oh -- and if you like what you're reading, invite a friend to Patch AM!

-- The Patch AM Team

P.S. The answer to today's riddle: "Why do some birds fly south for the winter?" — Because it's too far to walk..! (Thank you Theresia F. for sending it in!)
Got a good riddle for PatchAM? Submit it here!

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