Research News

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.

Daniel Weisz, an assistant professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley, was honored at this week’s meeting of the American Astronomical Society for his early-career research on relatively nearby “dwarf” galaxies using the Hubble Space Telescope.

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.

Berkeley Lab researchers have discovered that electron spin is key to understanding how cuprate superconductors can conduct electricity without loss at high temperature.

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.

A new neurostimulator developed by engineers at UC Berkeley can listen to and stimulate electric current in the brain at the same time, potentially delivering fine-tuned treatments to patients with diseases like epilepsy and Parkinson’s. The device, named the WAND, works like a “pacemaker for the brain,” monitoring the brain’s electrical activity and delivering electrical stimulation if it detects something amiss.

Advances in artificial intelligence have created new threats to the privacy of health data. A new UC Berkeley study suggests current laws and regulations are nowhere near sufficient to keep an individual’s health status private in the face of AI development.

Sixteen prominent climate scientists argue that there is more reason than ever for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases, at the same time some politicians are pushing the EPA to reverse its 2009 decision to do so.

A cheap and effective new catalyst developed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, can generate hydrogen fuel from water just as efficiently as platinum, currently the best — but also most expensive — water-splitting catalyst out there.

Just when William Blake was out of Amanda Goldstein’s life, he came stomping back in a most unexpected way.The book the Berkeley associate professor had written about the melding of poetry and science centuries past, Sweet Science: Romantic Materialism and the New Logics of Life, had been out of her mind for the better part of a year. Then, not long ago came an email telling her that she’d won the Modern Language Association’s 25th annual Prize for a First Book.

Electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Connie Chang-Hasnain has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), an organization that champions the societal benefits of university research.

When it comes to the gut, it’s not which microbes you have but how they interact that appears to affect health. This insight comes from a recent study of fruit fly gut microbes that explored the puzzling results of a UC Berkeley study from 91 years ago.

For decades, psychologists have viewed the neurotransmitter dopamine as a double-edged sword: released in the brain as a reward to train us to seek out pleasurable experiences, but also a “drug” the constant pursuit of which leads to addiction.

Geckos are renowned for their acrobatic feats on land and in the air, but a new discovery that they can also run on water puts them in the superhero category, says a University of California, Berkeley, biologist.

Honeymoon long over? Hang in there. A new UC Berkeley study shows those prickly disagreements that can mark the early and middle years of marriage mellow with age as conflicts give way to humor and acceptance.