Research News

Together with a leadership team with specialties in law, algorithms, computer science and public policy, Berkeley Journalism has formed a multipronged initiative, “Our Better Web” to study and inform legislation on disinformation and illegal activities on social media platforms.

A new paper published March 30, 2022, in JAMA Network Open by authors Patton Khuu Nguyen, MPH, and Berkeley Public Health Professor of Environmental Health Sciences S. Katharine Hammond, is the first to quantify SHCS levels from social cannabis smoking using a bong in the home. The research reveals concentrations greatly exceeded those in homes with tobacco cigarette or hookah smoking and decayed very slowly, which suggests that, contrary to popular beliefs, bong smoking is not safe for those nearby.

In this Berkeley Voices episode, Bree Rosenblum, a professor of global change biology at UC Berkeley, talks about why we need to stop blaming each other for the environmental crisis that we’re in, and instead confront its root causes and expand our ideas of what it means to be human on our planet.

Professor Arpad Horvath is part of the team that will develop novel models that integrate material properties and characteristics into greenhouse gas sequestration scenarios to inform technological breakthroughs in carbon storing building materials.

A three-year-old consortium has finally filled in remaining DNA, providing the first complete, gapless genome sequence for scientists and physicians to refer to. The newly completed genome, dubbed T2T-CHM13, represents a major upgrade from the current reference genome, called GRCh38, which is used by doctors when searching for mutations linked to disease, as well as by scientists looking at the evolution of human genetic variation.

In a new study published today in the Journal of Biogeography, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, provide the first detailed description of the stunning array of fungi that make their home on the Polynesian island of Mo’orea. The collection includes more than 200 species of macrofungi — that is, fungi producing visible, fruiting bodies — many of which may be new to science.

Early this past Monday morning, a small team of University of California, Berkeley, engineers gathered around a two-story-tall drilling rig parked at an out-of-the-way spot on the north side of campus. As the overnight rain turned to drizzle, the team watched as a drilling crew used a massive 8-inch-wide drill bit to start punching a new borehole in the soil.

For 25 years, UC Berkeley biologist Robert Dudley has been intrigued by humans’ love of alcohol. In 2014, he wrote a book proposing that our attraction to booze arose millions of years ago, when our ape and monkey ancestors discovered that the scent of alcohol led them to ripe, fermenting and nutritious fruit. A new study now supports this idea, which Dudley calls the “drunken monkey” hypothesis.

Since the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, minority voter underrepresentation has intensified—especially in places where Black, Asian, and Latino voters are on the brink of being electoral majorities, according to a new Berkeley Haas study.

Scientists have successfully restored dim-light vision to dogs with an inherited disorder that causes night blindness, a major step toward using the same gene therapy to help people with similar vision problems.

New research from UC Berkeley will provide lawmakers with previously unavailable data that pinpoint the impact that new housing production, rent stabilization and just-cause eviction policies have on residential displacement.

Among the small community of Ukrainians and Ukrainian-Americans at UC Berkeley, other students tell similar stories. The invasion four weeks ago triggered a nearly overwhelming surge of anxiety and anger, but many have found ways to transform those emotions into action, sometimes working with anti-war Russian students and others from the region.

Interventions that seek to evoke empathy in teachers can sideline biases and narrow the racial gap in suspensions of middle school students, suggests new UC Berkeley research.

A new research center at the University of California, Berkeley, funded by alumni Eric and Wendy Schmidt, will tackle major environmental challenges including climate change and biodiversity loss by combining data science and environmental science.

A new analysis by the nonpartisan California Policy Lab and the Student Loan Law Initiative shows that the student loan pause improved credit standing for most of the 26 million affected borrowers who have had their payments “paused” since March 2020.

Quantum materials, such as superconductors, graphene and topological insulators, are materials with "exotic properties" and great promise. A panel of experimentalists describes how these materials will enable many important technologies of the future, from energy to quantum computing.