Major gift boosts Bay Area's status as hothouse of biomedical innovation
A cargo ship is seen passing under the Golden Gate Bridge (AFP)

SAN FRANCISCO - The University of California, San Francisco, announced Thursday that it would receive a $500 million gift - among the largest donations ever to any university - reinforcing the health-science university's ascendency in research and education and promising to stoke the Bay Area's already white-hot life sciences industry. The money from the Helen Diller…