Research News

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.

Significant advances in artificial intelligence (AI) over the past decade have relied upon extensive training of algorithms using massive, open-source databases. But when such datasets are used “off label” and applied in unintended ways, the results are subject to machine learning bias that compromises the integrity of the AI algorithm, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Texas at Austin.

The lab has an unparalleled record, going back more than 75 years, of daily or even hourly temperature, snowfall and snowpack measurements. While there are several hundred automated snow and precipitation stations throughout the Sierra Nevada, only CSSL has a snow scientist on site to cross-check measurements — there are four different instruments in Schwartz’s backyard that measure precipitation — and provide a measure of the water content in the snow every two to three days.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that a drug once widely used to wean alcoholics off of drinking helps to improve sight in mice with retinal degeneration, which may revive sight in humans with the inherited disease retinitis pigmentosa (RP), and perhaps in other vision disorders, including age-related macular degeneration.

The discovery highlight the region’s “cryptic diversity” while simultaneously underscoring the importance of conservation in a global hotspot for biodiversity.

Our latest research paper, California’s Homekey Program: Unlocking Housing Opportunities for People Experiencing Homelessness, focuses on the lessons learned from Homekey, one of the most significant programs through which the state has stepped up its investments in addressing homelessness.