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BERKELEY — A bicyclist was hospitalized after being struck by a hit-and-run driver at Sixth and Hearst streets in Berkeley on Friday morning.

The accident came three days after an Oakland woman was struck and killed by a driver under the influence at Adeline and Harmon streets in Berkeley.

The bicyclist, whose medical condition was unavailable, was lying on the ground bleeding from the head when police arrived.

The person who struck the bicyclist was driving a tan pickup truck with a white toolbox in the rear, police said. He is described by witnesses, who photographed the truck, as a white man in his 50s wearing a tan coat., police said.

CONCORD — Police are investigating the stabbing death of a man that resulted from a disturbance at his home Thursday morning.

A man has been arrested in connection with the death, police said.

The victim, whose identity had not been released because his relatives had not been notified, was stabbed about 10:30 a.m. at his home in the 3500 block of Concord Boulevard, said Investigations Lt. Jim Lardieri.

Police responding to a disturbance call found the man and summoned an ambulance. He died at the hospital.

Patrol cars, unmarked squad cars and the Concord police mobile forensics lab gathered at the homicide scene Thursday afternoon, where police tape sealed off a private driveway that leads to three small housing units.

Neighbors said the victim’s home, which is located at the end of the driveway, was often the site of domestic disputes. Maria Orfanos, who for six years has lived on the other side of the fence separating their properties, said a husband and wife have lived at the home where the stabbing took place for about a year.

“There would always be screaming and yelling,” Orfanos said.

It has gotten so bad, Orfanos said, that she had already decided to move away from the neighborhood for her young children’s sake before hearing about news of the killing.

Geologists have a logical term for the recent rash of devastating earthquakes around the world: They’re called clusters, and scientists recognize that such groupings do occur.

For Californians, the cluster seemed to start with a magnitude 6.5 quake outside Eureka on Jan. 9. Then a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated Haiti on Jan. 12. A similar-size quake struck Japan on Feb. 26, followed the next day by a powerful magnitude 8.8 temblor rocking Chile. A magnitude 6.4 earthquake hit Taiwan on March 4 and a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck Indonesia the next day. Then, on Monday, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake shook Turkey.

Despite the unnerving series of recent quakes, it’s not a sign that more seismic havoc is imminent. Although large earthquakes are capable of triggering faraway temblors, the subsequent quakes are typically well under magnitude 4, geologists say. So when major earthquakes occur close in time but thousands of miles apart, it’s considered coincidence.

Stephen Kirby, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, compared it to a long series of coin tosses.

“Most geoscientists feel this is just a statistical variation that you would expect with a random process,” Kirby said. “In other words, if you take a penny and you flip it, sometimes you’ll get five heads in a row and sometimes you’ll get five or six tails in a row. But averaged over time, you get 50-50 heads and tails.”

The seismic waves from

a large earthquake rapidly diminish in strength over distances, and they’ve only been observed to cause tiny quakes in distant lands, explained David Hill, a retired scientist with the USGS.

In California, he said, the Chilean earthquake has triggered a number of small earthquakes in the southern end of the Sierra Nevada, in the Coso Geothermal Field area, as well as a number of roughly magnitude 1 earthquakes in the Geysers Geothermal Field above Calistoga. Most of these are too small to feel, although seismic monitoring equipment picks them up.

There’s one scenario, however, in which a big quake can unleash another large one, for instance magnitude 7 or higher, but it’s only in nearby areas through a process called a “stress transfer.”

“When a large earthquake happens, it changes the stress field in the vicinity and in some cases can load an adjacent fault that hasn’t slipped yet,” Hill said. “And that’s been documented a number of times around the world.”

Four quakes that hit Argentina in the days after the Chilean temblor are “good candidates” for having been triggered by stress transfer, Kirby said.

Hill agreed that given what’s known about earthquakes today, the recent set of large earthquakes is rightly ascribed to chance. But he doesn’t unequivocally rule out a connection between large earthquakes close in time but a great distance apart.

“It’s not completely out of the question that it could indeed happen,” he said. But for major shaking to trigger a large earthquake elsewhere on the globe the stress buildup along the fault line of the second earthquake would already have to be on the verge of breaking.

“(It) would have to be close to failure anyway,” Hill said. “It’s basically what some people refer to as a ‘clock advance.’ That stress has built up slowly over time, and some small change in stress happens and advances the time of the bigger earthquake.”

But the existence of “clock advance” quakes remains in the realm of the hypothetical, as there’s no way to measure if such a quake has ever occurred. And not every scientist agrees they are even plausible.

“Data trump everything,” said Ross Stein, a geophysicist with the USGS. “But data that I’ve seen thus far do not support the idea of a large quake triggering another large earthquake around the globe.”

This year’s earthquake toll may appear higher than normal, experts note, because many struck in heavily populated regions, leading to massive casualties in some areas and billions of dollars in damage. But, in fact, there’s nothing unusual about the quake numbers, as on average every year there’s one quake somewhere in the world that’s at least magnitude 8. And every year on average there are 17 earthquakes from magnitude 7 to 7.9, but most typically receive little coverage because they occur undersea or in sparsely populated areas.

“That’s what counts, the occurrence of large, damaging earthquakes,” Stein said.

Suzanne Bohan covers science. Contact her at 510-262-2789. Follow her at Twitter.com/suzbohan.

Several outside groups are trying to unravel the inner workings of the Peralta Community College District, which has been beset by scandal and sloppy accounting.

One group, the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, known as FCMAT, will comb through the four-college district’s financial records to determine, in part, whether fraud or other illegal activities have occurred.

Investigators and district leaders said they do not suspect the crimes, but that Peralta’s messy bookkeeping makes it difficult to know what happened. A firm contracted for the district’s annual audit has been unable to complete its look at last year’s budget because of problems getting information.

“One never knows (whether fraud has occurred) until the audit has been completed,” said Anthony Bridges, who is directing the crisis team’s study. “It’s more preventive than about allegations.”

Last year’s independent audit, by Vavrinek, Trine, Day and Co., uncovered serious budget problems at the Oakland-based district. Peralta leaders, who recently suspended their top two budget administrators as budget problems mounted, admit they have not solved several of those problems, and it is likely the shortcomings will threaten the colleges’ accreditation status in the next year.

Among the problems revealed by auditors last year were a lack of oversight, an inability to monitor district finances and shoddy record keeping. The district has an annual

operating budget of about $100 million.

The crisis team study was recommended by consultant Tom Henry, who has also been called in to look at other parts of Peralta’s operations. Peralta officials support the outside help, said Abel Guillen, president of the Peralta board of trustees.

“We had ongoing issues,” Guillen said. “We just realized, before we got in too deep, (that we should) call in some experts.”

The fiscal crisis team, which has been in existence since 1991, played a key role in the state’s 2004 takeover of the corruption-ridden Compton Community College District in Los Angeles County. Statewide college officials said they hope the organization can help districts such as Peralta avoid the same fate.

The key will be gaining the district’s cooperation, said Frederick Harris, the state’s assistant vice chancellor for finance and facilities planning. Unraveling last year’s budget will help solve other problems at Peralta, he said.

“The idea here is let’s clear the plate so we have a foundation to build upon for a complete recovery,” Harris said. “We want the district’s help and leadership solving these problems.”

Besides suspending Peralta’s top budget officials, trustees also declined to renew the contract of Chancellor Elihu Harris, who is due to depart this summer. The decision came after the Bay Area News Group published a series of articles about questionable decisions by Harris, including a no-bid contract between the district and Harris’ longtime friend and business partner.

The district’s shaky situation stems from a leadership void, said Debra Weintraub, president of Peralta’s faculty union.

“I think (the chancellor and trustees) should have been asking more questions all along,” she said. The accreditation is at risk “because of things going on in the district offices, not at the colleges, which is a shame.”

Matt Krupnick covers higher education. Contact him at 925-943-8246. Follow him at Twitter.com/mattkrupnick.

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