As a Microsoft technical fellow, Jennifer Tour Chayes has made a name for herself as an expert in the field of network science and a leader of multidisciplinary labs that bring data science tools to bear on a wide range of problems. In January, she will leave her current position at Microsoft to become UC Berkeley’s first associate provost for the Division of Data Science and Information and Dean of the School of Information. 

New evidence challenges one of the dominate theories of the collapse of the Maya of Central America.

Introducing an opioid painkiller into a home can double the chances someone else living in the home seeks out the addictive drugs on his or her own, according to a new paper from two UC Berkeley researchers.

If the sight of a skittering bug makes you squirm, you may want to look away — a new insect-sized robot created by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, can scurry across the floor at nearly the speed of a darting cockroach.

Latino children are likely to enter elementary schools this year with fewer white peers than a generation ago, judging by data reported in a new study published today in Educational Researcher, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.

UC Berkeley was awarded a five-year grant expected to total $47 million from the U.S. National Institute on Aging (NIA) to incorporate advanced brain imaging into an Alzheimer’s Association-led study to explore whether lifestyle changes can protect memory in those at risk of developing dementia.

University of California astronomers have tested Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity in the crucible of the monstrous black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy and found it rock solid. For now.

Latina mothers living in the United States experienced a significant jump in preterm births in the nine months following the Nov. 8, 2016, election, according to a study by researchers at UC Berkeley and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Before bite-sized crustaceans like crayfish, shrimp and prawns land on our dinner plates, they first have to get fat themselves — and it turns out they relish the freshwater snails that transmit the parasite that causes schistosomiasis, the second most devastating parasitic disease worldwide, after malaria.

Scientists at UC Berkeley and Western University in Canada have used brain imaging to map the cerebellum, a formerly underappreciated neural region that contains the vast majority of the brain’s neurons, hence its Latin moniker “little brain.”

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has awarded a new patent to the University of California (UC), University of Vienna, and Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier covering methods of producing a genetically modified cell through the introduction of the Cas9 protein, or a nucleic acid encoding the Cas9 protein, as well as a single molecule DNA-targeting RNA. This patent (U.S. 10,351,878) covers the use of this method in a cell.

On bright summer days, the sunlight all around us is breaking bad by breaking bonds. Chemical bonds. Ultraviolet light shatters the links between atoms in the DNA of our skin cells, potentially causing cancer. UV light also breaks oxygen bonds, eventually creating ozone, and cleaves hydrogen off other molecules to leave behind free radicals that can damage tissue.

Professor Richard K. Lyons is UC Berkeley’s first-ever Chief Innovation and Entrepreneurship Officer (CIEO).

If all goes as planned, two teams of scientists and engineers at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory will be sending experiments into orbit around Mars and Earth by the end of 2022, each mission consisting of identical twin satellites.

Nine young faculty members have been awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on scientists and engineers in the early stages of their careers.

Global climate change is likely to exacerbate the ongoing immigration crisis in the United States, according to field research being done this summer in Guatemala by a UC Berkeley Ph.D. student funded by the Center for Latin American Studies.

Spotted owl populations are in decline all along the West Coast, and as climate change increases the risk of large and destructive wildfires in the region, these iconic animals face the real threat of losing even more of their forest habitat.

Scavenging spare parts and grabbing off-the-shelf hardware, University of California, Berkeley, space scientists are in a sprint to build scientific instruments that will land on the moon in a mere two years.

The dream of enjoying one’s so-called Golden Years, or advanced years of life, in comfortable retirement may be a fantasy for an increasing number of working Californians.

America’s political system isn’t working and there’s one clear culprit, according to a new article from a Berkeley political scientist: the contemporary Republican Party. The Republican Party has “mutated” over the last 20 years from a traditionally conservative party that argued for limited government and traditional values into an “insurgent force that threatens the norms and institutions of American democracy.”

People who report a declining quality of sleep as they age from their 50s to their 60s have more protein tangles in their brain, putting them at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease later in life, according to a new study by psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley.

From the tiny electronics that power our smartphones to the new medicines that keep us well, a surprising number of the ideas and innovations that drive our economy were born not by corporations, but by federally-funded science, shows a new study led by University of California, Berkeley, researchers.

Some of the most successful plant communities in California — and probably in Mediterranean climates worldwide — that are characterized by wet winters and dry summers have taken a different approach. They’ve learned to thrive in areas with a below-ground water storage capacity barely large enough to hold the water that falls even in lean years.

The rise of anti-immigration rhetoric and policies in the United States following the 2016 presidential election may be taking its toll on the health of California’s Latinx youth, including those who are U.S. citizens, suggests a new study led by University of California, Berkeley, researchers.

The rings of Uranus are invisible to all but the largest telescopes — they weren’t even discovered until 1977 — but they’re surprisingly bright in new heat images of the planet taken by two large telescopes in the high deserts of Chile.

The phrase “we’re on the same wavelength” may be more than just a friendly saying: A new study by University of California, Berkeley, researchers shows that bats’ brain activity is literally in sync when bats engage in social behaviors like grooming, fighting or sniffing each other.

Genetically engineered trees that provide fire-resistant lumber for homes. Modified organs that won’t be rejected. Synthetic microbes that monitor your gut to detect invading disease organisms and kill them before you get sick. These are just some of the exciting advances likely to emerge from the 20-year-old field of engineering biology, or synthetic biology, which is now mature enough to provide solutions to a range of societal problems, according to a new roadmap released today (June 19) by the Engineering Biology Research Consortium, a public-private partnership partially funded by the National Science Foundation and centered at the University of California, Berkeley.

With a simple twist of the fingers, one can create a beautiful spiral from a deck of cards. In the same way, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have created new inorganic crystals made of stacks of atomically thin sheets that unexpectedly spiral like a nanoscale card deck.

Shruti Agarwal, a computer science graduate student at UC Berkeley, and her thesis advisor Hany Farid, an incoming professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and in the School of Information at UC Berkeley, are racing to develop digital forensics tools that can unmask “deepfakes,” hyper-realistic AI-generated videos of people doing or saying things they never did or said.

Scientists are rightly focused on anticipating and preventing the major impacts that climate change will have on humans, plants and animals. But they shouldn’t forget the effect on Earth’s microbes, on which everything else depends, warns a group of 33 biologists from around the globe.

Every spring, tens of thousands of elk follow a wave of green growth up onto the high plateaus in and around Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, where they spend the summer calving and fattening on fresh grass. And every fall, the massive herds migrate back down into the surrounding valleys and plains, where lower elevations provide respite from harsh winters. These migratory elk rely primarily on environmental cues, including a retreating snowline and the greening grasses of spring, to decide when to make these yearly journeys, shows a new study led by University of California, Berkeley, researchers.

California almond farmers who depend on commercial bee hives to pollinate their lucrative crops would benefit from increased efforts to protect essential bee foraging territory in northern prairie states, according a University of California, Berkeley, researcher.

The pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) today announced a five-year collaboration with UC Berkeley and UCSF to establish a laboratory where state-of-the-art CRISPR techniques will be used to explore how gene mutations cause disease, potentially yielding new technologies using CRISPR that would rapidly accelerate the discovery of new medicines.

As planets form in the swirling gas and dust around young stars, there seems to be a sweet spot where most of the large, Jupiter-like gas giants congregate, centered around the orbit where Jupiter sits today in our own solar system.

The number of young adults who fall at or below the federal poverty line has risen in the last 10 years, according to a new issue brief from the Berkeley Institute for the Future of Young Americans, a research center at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.

Spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way are studded with cold clouds of hydrogen gas and dust, like chocolate chips in a loaded Toll House cookie. Astronomers have long focused on these so-called molecular clouds, suspecting that they are hotspots for star formation. But are they?

If you think you know the farm animal most closely related to T-Rex, or the American president who inspired the creation of blueberry jelly beans — but aren’t quite sure — you’re more likely to bone up on the chicken-dinosaur connection or Ronald Reagan’s predilection for glazed, gel-filled candies.

The long-term effects of redlining, which for decades was used to justify discriminatory mortgage lending practices, may be impacting the current health of affected communities, suggests new research from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco.

Students and faculty at UC Berkeley have long conducted research at Point Reyes National Seashore, and now they have a home-away-from-home within the park to make overnight stays and field studies easier.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, first unveiled Salto’s high-flying capabilities in 2016. Now, they’ve equipped the robot with a slew of new skills, giving it the ability to bounce in place like a pogo stick and jump through obstacle courses like an agility dog. Salto can even take short jaunts around campus, powered by a radio controller.

Beaches around the Japanese city of Hiroshima are littered with minuscule glassy beads formed from debris melted by the atomic bomb blast that devastated the city nearly 75 years ago, according to a new study by Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley scientists.

Locking away people who have committed assault, robbery and similar felonies may keep them off the streets for a period of time, but it does not affect whether they will commit violent crimes after their release, according to new research from UC Berkeley.

Love military strategy games like Risk and Diplomacy? Try SIGNAL, a new online game that lets you satisfy your appetite for virtual global domination while simultaneously helping researchers understand the risks of real-world nuclear conflict.

California regulators are overestimating the impact the state’s cap-and-trade system is having on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new policy brief from a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Center for Environmental Public Policy, part of the Goldman School of Public Policy.

Today’s hipster creatives and entrepreneurs are hardly the first generation to partake of ayahuasca, according to archaeologists who have discovered traces of the powerfully hallucinogenic potion in a 1,000-year-old leather bundle buried in a cave in the Bolivian Andes.

Increasing the minimum wage and expanding a tax credit for low-wage workers may prevent more than 1,200 suicides each year, according to a new working paper by a team of UC Berkeley researchers.

When the Republican Party rammed through tax changes in 2017, it wasn’t a surprise that the rich got richer. But in a just-published paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach and seven co-authors have uncovered eye-opening results of that hurried blitz, namely: red state rich did better than blue state rich.

New soccer-ball-shaped robots, created by engineers at UC Berkeley and Squishy Robotics, have the remarkable ability to fall from a height of more than 600 feet and be no worse for wear. Built of a network of rods linked by contracting cables, they can also shapeshift in order to crawl from one point to another.

From prosthetics and implants to dental crowns and hearing aids, 3D printers are being used to manufacture a whole host of customized medical devices for patients in need. So, why not organs, too?

The number of 18- to 26-year-old students who report suffering from anxiety disorder has doubled since 2008, perhaps as a result of rising financial stress and increased time spent on digital devices, according to preliminary findings released Thursday by a team of UC Berkeley researchers.

India could make a major dent in air pollution by curbing emissions from dirty household fuels such as wood, dung, coal and kerosene, shows a new analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the India Institute of Technology.

Nine UC Berkeley faculty have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a prestigious nonpartisan research center that convenes scholars and leaders in academic, business and government sectors, drawing expertise across disciplines, to address the most complex challenges of our time. Here are this year’s honorees:

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley have built a new photonic switch that can control the direction of light passing through optical fibers faster and more efficiently than ever. This optical “traffic cop” could one day revolutionize how information travels through data centers and high-performance supercomputers that are used for artificial intelligence and other data-intensive applications.

University of California scientists think they know why Earth’s generally warm and balmy climate over the past billion years has occasionally been interrupted by cold snaps that enshroud the poles with ice and occasionally turn the planet into a snowball. The key trigger, they say, is mountain formation in the tropics as continental land masses collide with volcanic island arcs, such as the Aleutian Islands chain in Alaska.

The New York metropolitan area has seen tremendous economic growth, but many residents in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods are struggling to afford living in the 31-county, tri-state region, University of California, Berkeley, researchers have found.

The Central Valley’s heavy wintertime tule fog – known for snarling traffic and closing schools — has been on the decline over the past 30 years, and falling levels of air pollution are the cause, says a new study by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley.

Enter Blue, a new low-cost, human-friendly robot conceived and built by a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. Blue was designed to use recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and deep reinforcement learning to master intricate human tasks, all while remaining affordable and safe enough that every artificial intelligence researcher — and eventually every home — could have one.

Many aspects of insulin signaling remain unclear, particularly its long-term effects on cells, and there are currently no effective cures for the hundreds of millions of people around the world living with diabetes. Now, Professor Anders Näär and collaborators from Harvard Medical School (HMS) have made key new insights into the molecular behavior of insulin.

Sticker shock may not have been the only force driving the decline in soda consumption in Berkeley after residents voted to enact the nation’s first soda tax in November 2014. The election, and the vigorous campaigning around the tax that led up to the vote, also may have played a major role in changing habits, shows a new study by economists at the University of California, Berkeley.

A meteor impact 66 million years ago generated a tsunami-like wave in an inland sea that killed and buried fish, mammals, insects and a dinosaur, the first victims of Earth’s last mass extinction event. The death scene from within an hour of the impact has been excavated at an unprecedented fossil site in North Dakota.

A new technique developed by University of California, Berkeley uses inexpensive lab equipment to efficiently infuse large macromolecules into cells. Called nanopore-electroporation, or nanoEP, the technique gently creates fewer than a dozen tiny holes in each cell that are sufficient to let molecules into the cell without traumatizing it.

New research from UC Berkeley suggests that language acquisition between birth and 18 is a remarkable feat of cognition, rather than something humans are just hardwired to do.

Barnacles that hitch rides on the backs of humpback and gray whales not only record details about the whales’ yearly travels, they also retain this information after they become fossilized, helping scientists reconstruct the migrations of whale populations millions of years in the past, according to a new University of California, Berkeley, study.

A team of engineers at the UC Berkeley and the Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) of The Claremont Colleges combined CRISPR with electronic transistors made from graphene to create a new hand-held device that can detect specific genetic mutations in a matter of minutes.

Still depending on your kids to figure out why your smartphone’s acting weird? As a rule, children are wired to explore, experiment and get results through trial and error – usually more quickly than grownups. But why?

University of California, Berkeley, scientists inserted a gene for a green-light receptor into the eyes of blind mice and, a month later, they were navigating around obstacles as easily as mice with no vision problems. The researchers say that, within as little as three years, the gene therapy — delivered via an inactivated virus — could be tried in humans who’ve lost sight because of retinal degeneration, ideally giving them enough vision to move around and potentially restoring their ability to read or watch video.

The pre-Columbian city of Cahokia was once among the most populous and bustling settlements north of Mexico. But by 1400 A.D., Cahokia’s population had dwindled to virtually nothing. While theories abound about what happened to the indigenous people of Cahokia, AJ White, a Ph.D. student in anthropology at UC Berkeley, has studied ancient poop samples to connect the city’s 13th century population plunge – at least in part – to climate change.

A team of researchers led by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has developed a simple method that could turn ordinary semiconducting materials into quantum machines – superthin devices marked by extraordinary electronic behavior. Such an advancement could help to revolutionize a number of industries aiming for energy-efficient electronic systems – and provide a platform for exotic new physics.

Millions of Americans are progressively losing their sight as cells in their eyes deteriorate, but a new therapy developed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, could help prolong useful vision and delay total blindness.

The University of California announced today that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued U.S. Patent Number 10,227,611 covering use of single-molecule RNA guides and Cas9 protein in any cell, thus creating efficient and effective ways for scientists to target and edit genes.

The 2018 trade war cost the American economy $7.8 billion dollars in lost gross domestic product, according to a new paper authored by a team of economists at UC Berkeley, Columbia University, Yale University and UCLA.

In a new study, researchers at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab describe how the architecture of the long-horned passalid beetle's gut — and the beneficial microbes that inhabit it — help the beetle carry out an amazing transformation. This knowledge could help scientists engineer more efficient systems for producing bioproducts in the lab.

In an exclusive New York Times story today, Berkeley and 20 other universities announced they are forming a new consortium, the Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN), to support not only the development of new technologies, but also to exploring what policies and safeguards must be put into place to ensure that they will work for the benefit of society.

Physicists have used a seven-qubit quantum computer to simulate the scrambling of information inside a black hole, heralding a future in which entangled quantum bits might be used to probe the mysterious interiors of these bizarre objects.

With support from the Bakar Fellows Program, David Schaffer is working on one of the first gene therapies to be approved for clinical use. The therapy acts to restore vision in children with a rare and previously incurable disease called Leber's congenital amaurosis type 2.

Some of the peculiar aspects of our solar system — an enveloping cloud of comets, dwarf planets in weird orbits and, if it truly exists, a possible Planet Nine far from the sun — have been linked to the close approach of another star in our system’s infancy that flung things helter-skelter.

UC Berkeley synthetic biologists have engineered brewer’s yeast to produce marijuana’s main ingredients—mind-altering THC and non-psychoactive CBD—as well as novel cannabinoids not found in the plant itself.

A new study from UC Berkeley challenges decades of research positing that emotional intelligence and recognition are based largely on the ability to read micro-expressions signaling happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt and other positive and negative moods and sentiments.

Inserting or tweaking genes in plants is more art than science, but with a new technique developed by University of California, Berkeley, scientists could make genetically engineering any type of plant—in particular, gene editing with CRISPR-Cas9—simple and quick.

It’s still some years off, but Steven Conolly aims to see disease in a totally new way. He leads research on an emerging Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) technology that already can peer past tissue or organs to detect disease deep within the body.

Based on new data published today in the journal Science, it seems increasingly likely that an asteroid or comet impact 66 million years ago reignited massive volcanic eruptions in India, half a world away from the impact site in the Caribbean Sea.

Consumption of sugary drinks in Berkeley’s diverse and low-income neighborhoods dropped precipitously in 2015, just months after the city levied the nation’s first soda tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.

Astronomers now think that Neptune’s tiniest moon, Hippocamp, was chipped off a larger moon, Proteus, by a cosmic collision billions of years ago.

Climate change is fueling coral bleaching throughout the tropics, with potentially devastating consequences on coral reef ecosystems and on the people who depend on them for seafood, tourism and shoreline protection.

New simulations led by researchers working at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley combine decades-old theories to provide new insight about the driving mechanisms in the plasma jets that allow them to steal energy from black holes’ powerful gravitational fields and propel it far from their gaping mouths.

Nearly 40 percent of women worldwide stop using birth control pills within a year – mainly due to side effects such as depression, weight gain, bleeding between periods and blood clots. Research by Polina Lishko on a non-hormonal contraceptive is showing promise as a new birth control alternative.

Peidong Yang assumes the role of Director of the Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute (ENSI).

Researchers discover copper has potential as a catalyst for turning carbon dioxide into sustainable chemicals and fuels without any wasteful byproducts, creating a green alternative to present-day chemical manufacturing

Caitlin Rosenthal, an assistant professor of history at UC Berkeley, has brought history into fresh focus with her new book, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management, which examines how white owners of enslaved black people were early innovators of many business practices and terms we use today.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a notice of allowance for a University of California patent application covering systems and methods for using single molecule guide RNAs that, when combined with the Cas9 protein, create more efficient and effective ways for scientists to target and edit genes.

Cloud applications and the ever-increasing demand by large enterprises to transmit and analyze “big data” are stretching the capacity of even the largest data center servers as traditional switches become data flow bottlenecks. Ming Wu has invented a new optical, or photonic, switch capable of record-breaking speed that can be fabricated as integrated circuits so they can be mass-produced, keeping the cost per device low.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has snapped the latest weather pictures of our solar system’s frigid outer planets, and UC Berkeley astronomers have jumped in to interpret them.

Ooh, surprise! Those spontaneous sounds we make to express everything from elation (woohoo) to embarrassment (oops) say a lot more about what we’re feeling than previously understood, according to new UC Berkeley research.

In a mere seven years, Cas9 has shown itself to be a formidable gene editor, employed in humans, plants, animals and bacteria to quickly and accurately cut and splice DNA, transforming biology and opening new avenues for treating disease. But a new kid on the block, CasX, may give Cas9 a run for its money.

A new 3D printer uses light to transform gooey liquids into complex solid objects in only a matter of minutes.

Researchers exploring the effects of a long-standing treatment for cystic fibrosis have discovered a potential new target for drugs to treat the disease, which has no cure and typically cuts decades off the lives of patients.

Viruses plague bacteria just as viruses like influenza plague humans. Some of the largest of these so-called bacteriophages have now been found in the human gut, where they periodically devastate bacteria just as seasonal outbreaks of flu lay humans low, according to a new study led by UC Berkeley scientists.

UC Berkeley’s new Cannabis Research Center, announced today by a multidisciplinary team of faculty, will explore how cannabis production impacts the environment and society, and how these impacts will evolve under new regulations set in place by legalization.

When we’re in pain, we have a hard time sleeping. But how does poor sleep affect pain? For the first time, UC Berkeley scientists have answered that question by identifying neural glitches in the sleep-deprived brain that can intensify and prolong the agony of sickness and injury.

Prior infection with the dengue virus could protect children from the symptoms of Zika, finds a new study led by researchers at UC Berkeley and the University of Michigan.

A detailed study of four mouse models of autism challenges the most common assumption about what goes wrong in brain circuits to cause disease symptoms.

Over the last 24 years, Robert Alter has balanced his work on the modern novel with time spent translating the Old Testament in a way that strikes him as “rhythmic.”

David Zilberman, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at UC Berkeley, has been awarded the 2019 Wolf Prize in Agriculture in recognition of his work developing economic models for fundamental problems in agriculture, economics, and policy.

A new fly-through of the fly brain allows anyone to whizz past neurons and visit any of the 40 million synapses where neurons touch neuron. It’s a super-resolution view of the complex network connections in the insect’s brain that underlie behaviors ranging from feeding to mating.

One of the last acts of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft before its death plunge into Saturn’s hydrogen and helium atmosphere was to coast between the planet and its rings and let them tug it around, essentially acting as a gravity probe.

John F. Hartwig from University of California at Berkeley and Stephen L. Buchwald from MIT, awarded the 2019 Wolf Prize for Chemistry for the development of efficient transition-metal catalysts that have revolutionized drug manufacturing, leading to a breakthrough in molecule and synthetics design. 

From spoons to stuffed animals, humans learn early in life how to pick up objects that have a variety of shapes, textures and sizes. A new machine-learning algorithm developed by engineers at UC Berkeley can teach robots to grasp and carry items with similar dexterity.

Not everyone is benefiting equally from the availability of new solar energy technologies, a new study by researchers at UC Berkeley and Tufts University shows.

UC Berkeley integrative biology Ph.D. student Alexander Stubbs and colleague determined that a mysterious noise reported by U.S. diplomats stationed in Cuba plagued by resulting hearing loss and other medical symptoms was not from sonic attacks as feared, but was produced by the Indies short-tailed cricket (Anurogryllus celerinictus).

UC Berkeley researchers have now made CRISPR-Cas9 even more versatile by giving it an “on” switch, allowing users to keep the Cas9 gene editor turned off in all cells except its designated target.

Heat trapped by greenhouse gases is raising ocean temperatures faster than previously thought; further evidence that earlier claims of a slowdown or “hiatus” in global warming over the past 15 years were unfounded.

With the help of sponges inserted in the bloodstream to absorb excess drugs, doctors are hoping to prevent the dangerous side effects of toxic chemotherapy agents or even deliver higher doses to knock back tumors, like liver cancer, that don’t respond to more benign treatments.

Women and underrepresented minorities in STEM fields are more likely to advance professionally, publish more research and secure postdoctoral and faculty positions if their institutional culture is welcoming and sets clear expectations, according to a study of hundreds of Ph.D. students at four top-tier California research universities.

For the vast majority of teachers, existing pensions provide a higher, more secure retirement income than a cost-equivalent 401(k)­-style plan. And pensions keep teachers in classrooms, according to a new study from UC Berkeley and the National Institute on Retirement Security.

Awarding parents more time with newborns and easing access to preschool could fit within Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first state budget, according to UC Berkeley researchers.

A “bumper crop” of prestigious awards, prizes and honors will be presented Wednesday, Jan. 3 in Chicago to UC Berkeley faculty members by the American Historical Association, the nation’s most important professional association for historians.