June 13, 2018
Soil prospecting yields wealth of potential antibiotics
Soil microbes produce many types of chemicals that could be turned into antibiotics, drugs or industrial chemicals.
June 8, 2018
In desert trials, next-generation water harvester delivers fresh water from air
UC Berkeley scientist demonstrated that their device can collect drinkable water from the air each day/night cycle.
June 5, 2018
Study: L.A. lacks plan for narrowing achievement gaps, four years after funding reform
New study finds that education officials in Los Angeles fail to equitably fund schools hindered by poverty, stalling efforts to close achievement gaps.
June 1, 2018
June 14 launch of ICON satellite to probe the edge of space
NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) is charged with the task to measure the winds of ionized atoms at the edge of space and determine how they are impacted by atmospheric weather, in particular seasonal monsoons in the tropics.
May 25, 2018
Restoring culturally relevant food systems to Native American and immigrant populations
The Karuk Tribe once lived on more than a million acres in remote Northern California, but their food system had been broken almost overnight, and has yet to recover. Jennifer Sowerwine believes it still can be.
May 23, 2018
Rehabilitating lactate: from poison to cure
George Brooks, who discovered the key role lactate plays during exercise, says that it also plays a vital role in recovery from disease
May 22, 2018
Closing coal, oil power plants leads to healthier babies
Shuttering coal- and oil-fired power plants lowers the rate of preterm births in neighboring communities and improves fertility, according to two new University of California, Berkeley, studies.
May 21, 2018
Hippo poop a growing problem in African rivers
Hippopotamus are a major tourist draw to African watering holes, but their bountiful poop is increasingly fouling African rivers and lakes during the dry season, killing off fish and other aquatic life. And human activity is making it worse.
May 21, 2018
Promising research could lead to new strategies in NMR and MRI using diamonds and lasers
Diamond tech could lead to low-cost medical imaging tools
May 21, 2018
Urban Resilience: Hiding in Plain Sight
More than 1,500 abandoned parcels of land lie scattered throughout San Francisco, from unused alleys to vacant parking lots and public easements. The combined
May 16, 2018
What we inherited from our bug-eating ancestors
People who advocate adding insects to the human diet may be channeling their distant ancestors.
May 14, 2018
New structure of tau protein, a key player in Alzheimer’s disease
Alzheimer’s disease develops when proteins in the brain form abnormal tangles, and a key player is tau protein, which normally stabilizes the cytoskeleton of neurons.
May 14, 2018
CRISPR-EZ: Improving on a Good Thing
Using CRISPR technology to study how different genetic elements interact to assure normal cell development or trigger cancer.
May 10, 2018
Radar reveals details of mountain collapse after North Korea’s most recent nuclear test
As North Korea’s president pledges to “denuclearize” the Korean peninsula, an international team of scientists is publishing the most detailed view yet of the site of the country’s latest and largest underground nuclear test on Sept. 3, 2017.
May 9, 2018
Reconnection tames the turbulent magnetic fields around Earth
When the solar wind – which is really a driving rain of charged particles from the sun – strikes Earth’s protective magnetic field, the shock generates roiling, turbulent magnetic fields that enshroud the planet and stretch for hundreds of thousands of miles.
May 7, 2018
Ramping up Production of Vital Industrial Products
Studying yeast to create a new platform organism for new biofuels and a range of industrial chemicals.
April 30, 2018
Editing brain activity with holography
What if we could edit the sensations we feel; paste in our brain pictures that we never saw, cut out unwanted pain or insert non-existent scents into memory?
April 26, 2018
Scalable, cost-effective intervention helps parents improve student attendance, new study finds
Informing parents about not just when but how often their children miss school reduces absenteeism by 10 percent or more at every level from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature Human Behavior.
April 25, 2018
Long-sought structure of telomerase paves way for drugs for aging, cancer
While neither telomerase-based anti-aging drugs, touted as a “fountain of youth,” nor anticancer drugs have yet appeared, the publication today of the first detailed picture of the molecular structure of human telomerase should jump-start that effort.
April 24, 2018
A step toward faster, more accurate breast cancer detection
New technology being developed by engineers could dramatically improve the speed and accuracy of early breast cancer detection through the use of microfluidics.
April 23, 2018
Medical Exams: There’s an App for That
Your cell phone can already find your car and tell you what song the restaurant is playing. How about an app to screen for eye disease?
April 23, 2018
Did last ice age affect breast feeding in Native Americans?
The critical role that breast feeding plays in infant survival may have led, during the last ice age, to a common genetic mutation in East Asians and Native Americans that also, surprisingly, affects the shape of their teeth.
April 19, 2018
Enlarged spleen key to diving endurance of ‘sea nomads’
Over hundreds if not thousands of years, however, a group of Southeast Asian “sea nomads” known for their deep-diving prowess has evolved a solution to increase their time underwater: larger spleens.
April 17, 2018
Calaveras Dam fossil trove gives researchers greatest local find in decades
Researchers are using an exceptional stash of fossils found during the construction of a new East Bay dam to piece together a picture of what the Bay Area may have looked like some 15-20 million years ago.
April 17, 2018
In ‘Gone City,’ geographer questions Silicon Valley’s boom times
Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area, a new book by geographer Richard Walker, sets off some seismic tremors in its unflinching evaluation of the perch of Silicon Valley.
April 16, 2018
UC Berkeley’s massive egg collection helps project up for possible Webby
Can the 12,800 egg sets in the collection of Museum of Vertebrate Zoology tell us why some eggs are oval, and others are round?
April 16, 2018
Drought treatment restructures plants’ microbiomes
New research demonstrates that exposing sorghum plants to drought conditions can shift the balance between specific types of microorganisms found within their root systems.
April 16, 2018
Thin film converts heat from electronics into energy
Engineers have developed a thin-film system that can be applied to sources of waste heat like these to produce energy at levels unprecedented for this kind of technology.
April 12, 2018
Berkeley ecologist selected as a lead author for IPCC report
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has selected Patrick Gonzalez as a lead author for its next major report on climate change.
April 11, 2018
New technology could wean the battery world off cobalt
Now, a research team has opened the door to using other metals in lithium-based batteries, and have built cathodes with 50 percent more lithium-storage capacity than conventional materials.
April 10, 2018
Berkeley engineers build smallest volume, most efficient wireless nerve stimulator
Now, Berkeley engineers have taken neural dust a step forward by building the smallest volume, most efficient wireless nerve stimulator to date.
April 10, 2018
Making computer animation more agile, acrobatic — and realistic
It’s still easy to tell computer-simulated motions from the real thing – on the big screen or in video games, simulated humans and animals often move clumsily, without the rhythm and fluidity of their real-world counterparts.
April 9, 2018
Start of most sensitive search yet for dark matter axion
Thanks to low-noise superconducting quantum amplifiers invented at UC Berkeley, physicists are now embarking on the most sensitive search yet for axions, one of today’s top candidates for dark matter.
April 5, 2018
A ‘Deep Look’ into leeches’ comeback
Once widely used as a cure-all for an array of ailments, leeches are making a resurgence in the medical community just for being their bloodthirsty selves.
April 3, 2018
Podcast explores UC’s pivotal role in California history
In 1929, a young physicist named Ernest Lawrence was going through physics periodicals in the library when he came across a diagram in an obscure technical journal.
April 3, 2018
Study asks why students with more to gain from charter schools are less likely to apply
Low-achieving, non-white and poor students stand to gain the most academically from attending charter schools but are less likely to seek charter school enrollment than higher-achieving, more advantaged students who live closer to charter schools.
April 2, 2018
Mortgage industry is back on shaky ground, experts warn
A decade after the last housing crash, the mortgage market faces the risk of another meltdown that could endanger the economy.
April 2, 2018
Hubble peers through cosmic lens to capture most distant star ever seen
A phenomenon called gravitational lensing – the bending of light by massive galaxy clusters in the line of sight – can magnify the distant universe and make dim, far away objects visible.
March 29, 2018
Poor grades tied to class times that don’t match our biological clocks
It may be time to tailor students’ class schedules to their natural biological rhythms, according to a new study.
March 29, 2018
Eating out increases exposure to harmful phthalates
A new study has found that people who ate more fast food were exposed to higher levels of potentially harmful chemicals known as phthalates than people who ate more home-cooked meals.
March 29, 2018
Land degradation pushing planet towards sixth mass extinction
More than 100 experts from 45 countries have published a three-year study of the Earth’s land degradation, calling the problem “critical”.
March 28, 2018
Why some people are selling their cars and renting their neighbors’
Peer-to-peer car sharing services have encouraged a small number of their members to ditch car ownership, according to a first-of-its-kind study of from the Transportation Sustainability Research Center.
March 27, 2018
First large-scale nuclear reactor monitor will boost neutrino physics
A new U.S. Department of Energy project to develop the first detector able to remotely monitor nuclear reactors will also help physicists test the next generation of neutrino observatories.
March 26, 2018
Atomically thin light emitting device opens the possibility for ‘invisible’ displays
UC Berkeley engineers have built a bright-light emitting device that is millimeters wide and fully transparent when turned off.
March 26, 2018
Flash-in-the-pan supernovas explained
Most exploding stars flare brightly and then slowly fade over weeks to months, but an unusual group of supernovas noticed only in the last 10 years flare up and disappear within days.
March 22, 2018
Want to clean up the environment? Make credit easier to get
Businesses are more likely to be environmentally friendly if it’s easier for them to borrow money.
March 20, 2018
Brewing hoppy beer without the hops
Hoppy beer is all the rage among craft brewers and beer lovers, and now UC Berkeley biologists have come up with a way to create these unique flavors and aromas without using hops.
March 20, 2018
David Patterson, pioneer of modern computer architecture, receives Turing Award
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) today named David A. Patterson, professor emeritus, a recipient of the 2017 ACM A.M. Turing Award for pioneering a systematic, quantitative approach to the design of computer architectures.
March 19, 2018
Mars’ oceans formed early, possibly aided by massive volcanic eruptions
A new scenario seeking to explain how Mars’ putative oceans came and went over the last 4 billion years implies that the oceans formed several hundred million years earlier and were not as deep as once thought.
March 15, 2018
Researchers create a protein ‘mat’ that can soak up pollution
In a breakthrough that could lead to a new class of materials with functions found only in living systems, scientists have figured out a way to keep certain proteins active outside of the cell.
March 9, 2018
How to make space molecules
How could complex carbon-based molecules – a rich zoo of chemical compounds formed from fused rings of carbon and hydrogen – possibly form in the cold vacuum of space?
March 8, 2018
How brightly colored spiders evolved on Hawaii again and again … and again
In Hawaiian Ariamnes stick spiders, adaptive radiation has resulted in 14 species now living across Hawaii.
March 7, 2018
Sinking land will exacerbate flooding from sea level rise in Bay Area
A new study warns that sinking land — primarily the compaction of landfill in places such as Treasure Island and Foster City — will make flooding even worse.
March 6, 2018
Brown fat flexes its muscle to burn energy -- and calories
Scientists have discovered that the same kind of fat cells that help newborn babies regulate their body temperature could be a target for weight-loss drugs in adults.
March 6, 2018
Smart Materials: Getting the Sun to Pull Down the Shade
When a car seat heats up on a hot day, it just gets.... hot. But some materials become totally transformed by the sun’s heat. They undergo a kind of Jekyll and
March 6, 2018
A way to grow plants with less water
Crops possibly can be grown with significantly less water by altering a gene involved in regulating photosynthesis, according to new research.
March 5, 2018
How to improve health care affordability in California
A new report offers options for California policymakers interested in narrowing the coverage and affordability gaps for people struggling to afford premiums and out-of-pocket costs for health insurance.
March 1, 2018
Retraining the brain’s vision center to take action
Neuroscientists have demonstrated the astounding flexibility of the brain by training neurons that normally process input from the eyes to develop new skills, in this case, to control a computer-generated tone.
February 27, 2018
Scientists detect how words grow new meanings. Maybe computers will, too
What are voice-controlled personal assistants like Alexa and Siri to do when faced with words like “face” that have multiple meanings ranging from a body part
February 27, 2018
$10 million for Berkeley RISELab’s AI research
The National Science Foundation today announced that RISELab has been awarded an Expeditions in Computing award to enable game-changing advances in real-time decision making technologies.
February 27, 2018
Hidden ‘rock moisture’ may be key to tree survival during drought
An oft-neglected layer of weathered rock underlying the soil on hillslopes could be a significant reservoir for water, providing critical moisture for trees during droughts, according to a new study.
February 23, 2018
Mechanical Engineering To Aid Back Surgery
Lower back pain is not as common as the common cold. But it’s close. About 80 percent of people suffer back pain sooner or later.
February 22, 2018
How the ‘I approve’ tagline boosts nasty political ads
With primary season just around the corner, voters will soon start hearing a familiar refrain: “I’m Candidate X, and I approve this message.”
February 21, 2018
Better planetary management though data science
In the past, world leaders had little but magic to predict the future. Today, they can turn to masses of data to project the future and help prepare for it.
February 21, 2018
Amateur astronomer captures rare first light from massive exploding star
Thanks to lucky snapshots taken by an amateur astronomer in Argentina, scientists have obtained their first view of the initial burst of light from the explosion of a massive star.
February 20, 2018
Some black holes erase your past
If someone were to venture into a relatively benign black hole, they could survive, but their past would be obliterated and they could have an infinite number of possible futures.
February 16, 2018
Cockroach-inspired robot is no crash-test dummy
UC Berkeley researchers have taken a lesson from cockroaches and built a robot called DASH that uses the momentum of a head-on crash to tip itself upward to climb a wall.
February 16, 2018
Security for data analytics – gaining a grip on the two-edged sword
In the world of data analytics, privacy restrictions can get in the way of analysis. It’s a classic two-edged sword, and finding a flexible but secure solution to assure both privacy and deep data access has been difficult to achieve.
February 15, 2018
CRISPR scissors, Cas12a, enables cutting-edge diagnostics
CRISPR-Cas12a, one of the DNA-cutting proteins revolutionizing biology today, has an unexpected side effect that makes it an ideal enzyme for simple, rapid and accurate disease diagnostics.
February 15, 2018
Six young faculty members named Sloan Research Fellows
Six assistant professors from the fields of computer science, economics, neuroscience and physics have been named 2018 Sloan Research Fellows, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced today.
February 12, 2018
Security for Data Analytics - Gaining a Grip on the Two-Edged Sword
In the information age, data is power, and the ability to mine it can boost business profits, save patients’ lives and aid government security.
February 6, 2018
Connecting the dots between declining wildlife and human misery
Justin Brashares explores the social and cultural impacts of declining wildlife populations around the world, from fish to carnivores.
February 6, 2018
New Berkeley IGS Poll: Two Calif. House Republicans should worry about jobs
Two Republican House members from California should start to worry about their jobs, according to two new polls from UC Berkeley’s Institute for Governmental Studies.
February 5, 2018
Computer Vision to Protect Patients — and Budgets
Alexandre Bayen and PhD student Pulkit Agrawal developed a computer vision-based system to help memory care centers monitor patient falls and to reduce them where possible.
January 30, 2018
Super-resolution microscopy reveals fine detail of cellular mesh
One of today’s sharpest imaging tools, super-resolution microscopy, produces sparkling images of what until now has been the blurry interior of cells.
January 30, 2018
Why traffic apps make congestion worse
Has your smartphone traffic app ever led you into a traffic jam? Join the club.
January 30, 2018
Super-resolution microscopy reveals fine detail of cellular mesh
One of today’s sharpest imaging tools, super-resolution microscopy, produces sparkling images of what until now has been the blurry interior of cells, detailing not only the cell’s internal organs and skeleton, but also providing insights into cells’ amazing flexibility.
January 24, 2018
Artificial leaves to produce fuel on Earth and, one day, Mars
Call it “liquid sunlight.” With the right technology, the gas station of the future will make its own fuel directly from sunlight, in the process sucking up carbon and producing oxygen.
January 22, 2018
Chemists create tinted windows that also generate electricity
A new discovery by Berkeley researchers may soon bring us windows that automatically tint on a sunny day to block the heat while also generating electricity.
January 22, 2018
Recording a thought’s fleeting trip through the brain
UC Berkeley neuroscientists have tracked the progress of a thought through the brain, showing clearly how the prefrontal cortex at the front of the brain coordinates activity to help us act in response to a perception.
January 22, 2018
2018 Ed Roberts Award for accessible design leader Raymond Lifchez
The Center for Independent Living will recognize UC Berkeley architecture and city planning professor Raymond Lifchez tomorrow (Jan. 23) with the second annual Ed Roberts Award, which recognizes and honors individual contributions to the success of CIL and the independent living/disability rights movement.
January 19, 2018
Research finds social media users actually wind down, not up
Contrary to conventional wisdom, people tend to wind down rather than whip themselves into a frenzy while browsing Facebook and Twitter.
January 18, 2018
100 million dead trees in the Sierra are a massive risk for unpredictable wildfires
To drive through parts of the Sierra Nevada these days is to witness a morbid reminder of California’s extreme drought: Vast landscapes of standing dead trees, a brown tide sweeping across the green landscape.
January 18, 2018
100 million dead trees in the Sierra are a massive risk for unpredictable wildfires
To drive through parts of the Sierra Nevada these days is to witness a morbid reminder of California’s extreme drought: Vast landscapes of standing dead trees,
January 18, 2018
Moms, sisters, wives rank among most ‘difficult’ kin
Most of us put up with whiners, naggers, control freaks and other annoying people in our lives for good reason – we’re related to them.
January 18, 2018
Amid flu epidemic, more bad news about its spread
Getting lots of sleep, drinking lots of water, sneezing into the crook of your arm and getting a vaccination no doubt will help fight back the flu. But if you don’t want to get it in the first place, don’t breathe.
January 17, 2018
Berkeley anthropologist honored with 2017 Huxley Award
Margaret Conkey, a professor emerita of anthropology, is the Royal Anthropological Institute’s 2017 Thomas J. Huxley Memorial Medal recipient.
January 17, 2018
Professor Lee Schruben receives INFORMS Simulation Society Lifetime Professional Achievement Award
IEOR Professor Lee W. Schruben recently received the Lifetime Professional Achievement Award (LPAA) by the Institute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Simulation Society, the highest honor given by the society.
January 16, 2018
History professor’s ‘Work of the Dead’ wins 2018 Shannon Prize
“The Work of the Dead,” a book by history professor Thomas W. Laqueur, was selected to receive the 2018 Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies.
January 16, 2018
Building better batteries to provide renewable energy anytime, anywhere
Research on lithium ion batteries — the power source for cellphones and nearly every piece of electronics we use daily — began at UC Berkeley some 50 years
January 16, 2018
Report on California correctional officers’ suicide risks spurs widespread attention
Response to a recent report finding that California’s correctional and parole officers face extraordinarily high risks of suicide and other mental health problems has Amy Lerman feeling cautiously optimistic about the state’s ability to address the issue.
January 12, 2018
Podcast: Here’s what our recent quake sounded like
Toppling tchotchkes and whining dogs were only some of the sounds from last week’s 4.4-magnitude earthquake on the Hayward Fault. Underground, seismic sensors captured the quake’s deep rumble.
January 12, 2018
With interspecies hybrids, it makes a difference who’s the dad and who’s the mom
With the occasional appearance of coydogs, pizzlies and ligers, it’s clear that different species can often interbreed, even if the offspring are infertile.
January 11, 2018
Largest recorded underwater volcanic eruption sheds light on deep-sea events
The 2012 eruption of the Havre volcano took place three-quarters of a mile under the surface near New Zealand, and offered researchers a rare opportunity to study submarine eruptions.
January 10, 2018
SETI project homes in on strange ‘fast radio bursts’
Recent observations of a mysterious and distant object that emits intermittent bursts of radio waves so bright that they’re visible across the universe provide new data about the source but fail to clear up the mystery of what causes them.
January 9, 2018
Berkeley part of new international Buddhist Studies network
Center for Buddhist Studies is part of a new international network of universities that is receiving $4.9 million to advance the study of Buddhism and East Asian cultures.
January 9, 2018
Changing when we use energy to fit the ‘duck curve’
Physicist Mary Ann Piette wants to address too much electricity from solar in the middle of the day and a sharp drop-off in the evenings and mornings by changing when Californians use energy.
January 9, 2018
Heart health at risk for Latinas worried about deportation
A recent study found that worry about deportation was associated with multiple cardiovascular health risk factors in Latinas from California’s Salinas Valley, home to many immigrants.
January 8, 2018
Berkeley expert on restaurant exploitation is red-carpet guest at Golden Globes
Saru Jayaraman, director of UC Berkeley’s Food Labor Research Center, was actress Amy Poehler’s date to the Golden Globes last night.
January 3, 2018
Which came first: complex life or high atmospheric oxygen?
How crucial were high oxygen levels to the transition from simple, single-celled life forms to the complexity we see today?
January 2, 2018
CRISPR put to work to save chocolate from devastation
Chocolate is forever, right? Scientists, using the revolutionary gene-editing tool CRISPR, are working to make it so, as climate change threatens the cacao plant’s favorite growing sites.