Amid the amazing biodiversity of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi lives a 5-gram frog that gives direct birth to tadpoles, without ever laying eggs. 

A UC Berkeley-led research team found that golden-winged warblers in Tennessee fled the path of tornado-generating storms one to two days ahead, well before any local signs of troubling weather. Signs point to the use of infrasound as Mother Nature’s early warning system.

An international research team has revealed important clues to the longevity of such Roman architectural marvels as the Pantheon, Trajan’s Markets and the Colosseum.

In semiconductors like silicon, electrons attached to atoms in the crystal lattice can be mobilized into the conduction band by light or voltage. Berkeley scientists have taken snapshots of this very brief band-gap jump and timed it at 450 attoseconds. 

Future fitness trackers could soon add blood-oxygen levels to the list of vital signs measured with new technology developed by engineers at UC Berkeley.

An analysis of 115 studies comparing organic and conventional farming finds that the crop yields of organic agriculture are higher than previously thought. Researchers also found that taking into account methods that optimize the productivity of organic agriculture could minimize the yield gap between organic and conventional farming.

Children living in revitalized public housing are significantly less likely to take repeated trips to the emergency room, according to a new study by researchers at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. The study suggests that improvements in public housing could potentially yield a big return on investment through the reduction in emergency room visits.

When it comes to getting out of a tricky situation, we humans have an evolutionary edge over other primates. UC Berkeley scientists have found mounting brain evidence that helps explain how humans have excelled at “relational reasoning,” a cognitive skill we use to solve problems.

Income inequality matters for everyone, but it matters differently for different groups of people. Researchers linked greater gaps in wealth to more deaths among black Americans, but fewer deaths among white Americans.

A new study shows that proper copper levels are essential to the health of the brain at rest.

We spend one-third of our lives sleeping, and yet it is only in the last decade or so that scientists have begun to really understand why. 

UC Berkeley’s new Center for Long-Term CyberSecurity will map out what the cybersecurity problem will mean a few years down the road, and to stimulate interdisciplinary research efforts that will make a difference in resolving the threat.

Despite working from a limited selection of components and at ambient temperature, nature has managed to craft a wide range of incredibly diverse materials with astonishingly elegant and complex architectures.

Today’s climate models predict a 50 percent increase in lightning strikes across the US during this century as a result of warming temperatures associated with climate change. UC Berkeley climate scientists look at predictions of precipitation and cloud buoyancy in 11 different climate models and conclude that their combined effect will generate more frequent electrical discharges to the ground.

The normally bland face of Uranus has become increasingly stormy, with enormous cloud systems so bright that for the first time ever, amateur astronomers are able to see details in the planet’s hazy blue-green atmosphere.

Strong statewide and federal clean-energy policies have positioned California as the nation’s solar energy leader in terms of generating new, well-paying construction and permanent jobs while working to curb climate change, according to a new report by UC Berkeley.

Two UC Berkeley scientists — structural biologist Jennifer Doudna and physicist Saul Perlmutter — were named 2015 Breakthrough Prize winners in life sciences and physics, respectively, at a star-studded gala in Silicon Valley.

The current Ebola outbreak shows how quickly diseases can spread with global jet travel. Yet knowing how to predict the spread of these epidemics is still uncertain, because the complicated models used are not fully understood.

In an underground laboratory in Italy, an international team of scientists has created the coldest cubic meter in the universe. The cooled chamber—roughly the size of a vending machine—was chilled to 6 milliKelvin or -273.144 degrees Celsius in preparation for a forthcoming experiment that will study neutrinos, ghostlike particles that could hold the key to the existence of matter around us.

One typically does not hear talk of the health benefits of arsenic, but a new study by researchers from UC Berkeley and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile has linked arsenic to a 50 percent drop in breast cancer deaths.

Ferroelectric materials – commonly used in transit cards, gas grill igniters, video game memory and more – could become strong candidates for use in next-generation computers, thanks to new research led by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Berkeley Lab researchers have recorded the first observations of the molecular structure of liquid water at a gold electrode under different battery charging conditions.

The POLARBEAR experiment, directed by UC Berkeley physicist Adrian Lee, is studying the B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation. He hopes to determine the structure of matter in the universe, the masses of neutrinos and the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

The trend of hospitals consolidating medical groups and physician practices in an effort to improve the coordination of patient care is backfiring and increasing the cost of patient care, according to a new study led by a UC Berkeley health-policy expert.

A surprise discovery that overturns decades of thinking about how the body fixes proteins that come unraveled greatly expands opportunities for therapies to prevent diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, which have been linked to the accumulation of improperly folded proteins in the brain.

NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft settled into its planned orbit around Mars on Sept. 21 and is already sending back data about the upper atmosphere, according to University of California, Berkeley, space scientist Davin Larson.

UC Berkeley scientists have taken proteins from nerve cells and used them to create a “smart” material that is extremely sensitive to its environment. This marriage of materials science and biology could give birth to a flexible, sensitive coating that is easy and cheap to manufacture in large quantities.

UC Berkeley geophysicist Paul Renne, grad student Courtney Sprain and their Italian and French colleagues found that Earth’s last magnetic reversal took place 786,000 years ago and happened very quickly, in less than 100 years – roughly a human lifetime. The rapid flip is much faster than the thousands of years most geologists thought.

Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues showed that CRISPR/Cas9, can be used with great precision to selectively disable or add several genes at once in human cells, offering a potent new tool to understand and treat complex genetic diseases.

As birth rates decline in countries that include parts of Europe and East Asia, threatening the economic slowdown associated with aging populations, a global study from UC Berkeley and the East-West Center in Hawaii suggests that in much of the world, it actually pays to have fewer children.

Researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley have teamed up to create an innovative, integrated center for research on neurodegenerative diseases. Supported by a $3 million grant from the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, the new center aims to pave the way to developing novel treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

Fad diets come and go, but might there be something to the ones that involve consuming grapefruit and grapefruit juice? New research found that mice fed a high-fat diet gained less weight when they drank grapefruit juice instead of water.

President Barack Obama has chosen three UC Berkeley faculty members – chemist Judith Klinman, applied mathematician Alexandre Chorin and the late statistician David Blackwelll – to receive the 2014 National Medal of Science. They were among 10 honorees announced Oct. 3 by the White House.

Three professors at UC Berkeley will receive $1.5 million over the next five years from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation as part of the foundation’s Data-Driven Discovery Initiative. The initiative, one of the largest privately funded data scientist programs of its kind, is committed to enabling new types of scientific breakthroughs by supporting interdisciplinary, data-driven researchers.

The National Institutes of Health today announced its first research grants through President Barack Obama’s BRAIN Initiative, including three awards to the University of California, Berkeley, totaling nearly $7.2 million over three years.

Two state-of-the-art research areas – nanotech and optogenetics – were the dominant theme last Thursday, Sept. 18, as six researchers from UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory sketched out their teams’ bold plans to jump-start new brain research.

The radio show “Science Friday” profiled UC Berkeley graduate student Madeline Girard and her study of peacock spiders, using Girard’s amazing video of the rhythmic, disco-like courtship dances males employ to entice and placate females.

Threespine sticklebacks undergo rapid evolutionary change when they move from the ocean into freshwater, losing their armor and gaining more teeth in as little as 10 years. UC Berkeley biologist Craig Miller now shows that this rapid change results not from mutations in functional genes, but changes in regulatory DNA. He pinpoints a gene that could be responsible for jaw deformities in humans.

Why are human faces so variable compared to other animals? Berkeley biologists Michael Nachman & Michael Sheehan analyzed human faces and the genes that code for them and found a variability that could only be explained by selection for uniqueness, probably because of the importance of social interactions in human relationships and the need for all of us to be recognizable.

UC Berkeley researchers have found that the human brain is capable of a neural workaround that compensates for the buildup of beta-amyloid, a destructive protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The findings could help explain how some older adults with beta-amyloid deposits in their brain retain normal cognitive function while others develop dementia.

A new study by biologists at Stanford University and UC Berkeley highlights the dramatic hit on the evolutionary diversity of wildlife when forests are transformed into agricultural lands.

Sixteen faculty members from UC Berkeley’s Bakar Fellows Program recently took their research ideas to Sand Hill Road — the heart of Silicon Valley’s venture capital community — for a coveted meeting with some of the nation’s top angel investors.

Scientists estimate that fewer than 100 Devils Hole pupfish remain in their Mojave Desert home, but a conservation biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, is giving important guidance in the efforts to rescue them by establishing a captive breeding program.

Are humans programmed to tell the truth? Not when lying is advantageous, says a new study led by Assistant Professor Ming Hsu  at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. The report ties honesty to a region of the brain that exerts control over automatic impulses.

A new argument has just been added to the growing case for graphene being bumped off its pedestal as the next big thing in the high-tech world by the two-dimensional semiconductors known as MX2 materials.

Scientists at the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory were alerted 10 seconds before Sunday morning’s 6.0 magnitude temblor on the Napa Fault, courtesy of the ShakeAlert earthquake early-warning system.

The White House has given a public nod to a ground-breaking UC Berkeley air-monitoring project and its new collaboration with a Colorado public media platform, which aims to build a citizen-science story-corps to help monitor carbon emissions in the Bay Area.

Earth’s magnetic field, a familiar directional indicator over long distances, is routinely probed in applications ranging from geology to archaeology. Now it has provided the basis for a technique which might, one day, be used to characterize the chemical composition of fluid mixtures in their native environments.

Everyone notices the academic superstars and failures, but what about the tens of millions of American teens straddling these two extremes? A new UC Berkeley study has spotlighted a high school subculture that has made an art of slacking – even with ample educational resources – and may be destined to perpetuate the nation’s struggling lower-middle class.

Since 2006, when NASA’s Stardust spacecraft delivered its aerogel and aluminum foil dust collectors back to Earth, a team of scientists has combed through the collectors in search of rare, microscopic particles of interstellar dust. The team reports they have found seven dust motes that probably came from outside our solar system.

A photo is worth a thousand words, but what if the image could also represent a thousands of other images? New software developed by UC Berkeley computer scientists seeks to tame the sea of visual data in the world by generating a single photo that can represent massive clusters of images.

A project begun some 13 years ago by Jay Keasling, the Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences at Berkeley Lab and the CEO of the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), was culminated with an announcement on August 12 from the partnership of Sanofi, the multinational pharmaceutical company, and PATH, the nonprofit global health organization.

A year-long project will focus on standardizing a subset of neuroscience data, making this research simpler for scientists to share. This is the first collaboration launched by “Neurodata Without Borders,” a broader initiative with the goal of standardizing neuroscience data on an international scale, making it more easily sharable by researchers worldwide.

Researchers at UC Berkeley are developing vision-correcting displays that can compensate for a viewer’s visual impairments to create sharp images without the need for glasses or contact lenses. The technology could potentially help those who currently need corrective lenses to use their smartphones, tablets and computers, and could one day aid people with more complex visual problems.

UC Berkeley’s Anthony Barnosky and his wife, Elizabeth Hadly, a palaeoecologist at Stanford University, are featured in Nature for their work on the 30-page statement, “Maintaining Humanity’s Life Support Systems in the 21st Century.”

A team of researchers at UC Berkeley have found a way to dramatically increase the sensitivity of a light-based plasmon sensor to detect incredibly minute concentrations of explosives. The sensor could potentially be used to sniff out a hard-to-detect explosive popular among terrorists.

Despite a deluge of new information about the diversity and distribution of plants and animals around the globe, “big data” has yet to make a mark on conservation efforts to preserve the planet’s biodiversity. But that may soon change.

Measuring the nation’s economic health has long been a slow, costly and imprecise exercise, but researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have helped develop a new way to measure real-time consumer behavior that could vastly improve economic policymaking.

Berkeley Lab researchers help find that what was believed to be noise is an important signaling factor. A breakthrough discovery into how living cells process and respond to chemical information could help advance the development of treatments for a large number of cancers and other cellular disorders that have been resistant to therapy.

Tens of thousands of years ago, the common ancestors of Han Chinese and Tibetans interbred with a mysterious human-like group known as Denisovans and picked up a unique variant of a gene for hemoglobin regulation that later helped them adapt to a low-oxygen environment on the high Tibetan plateau, reports UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology Rasmus Nielsen

The University of California is launching an initiative to marshal resources across the UC campuses — including Berkeley’s 90 courses, 150 faculty and staff and multiple institutes and centers devoted to the study of agriculture and food — to address global food challenges.

Robert Dudley, an evolutionary physiologist and professor of integrative biology, discusses his new book, “The Drunken Monkey, Why we drink and abuse alcohol” (UC Press 2014). Dudley talks about his motivations for writing the book, the evidence that our attraction to alcohol is an evolutionary adaptation, and what this means for efforts to prevent alcohol abuse.

Imagine feeling a slimy jellyfish, a prickly cactus or map directions on your iPad display. Virtual textured touchscreens are where tactile technology is headed. New research has found that people are faster at navigating tactile technology when using both hands and several fingers. Moreover, blind people in the study outmaneuvered their sighted counterparts.

Berkeley Lab researchers have detected the smallest force ever measured – approximately 42 yoctonewtons – using a unique optical trapping system that provides ultracold atoms. A yoctonewton is one septillionth of a newton.

UC Berkeley, economist and assistant professor of public policy Solomon Hsiang led the econometrics team that helped assemble a major report released today (Tuesday, June 24) that projects significant economic risks from climate change in the United States.

The disco clam was named for the rhythmic, pulsing light that ripples along the lips of its mantle. UC Berkeley graduate student Lindsey Dougherty now reports that the mirror is actually a highly reflective, densely packed layer of silica spheres a mere 340 nanometers across never before seen in animals.

A team of UC Berkeley scientists has launched a project called RadWatch to provide the public online access to a wealth of information — including near real-time readings — on environmental radiation levels. The researchers say the effort is meant to demystify radiation, an often misunderstood subject.

Trolling for real-world solutions to support ocean fisheries, the U.S. State Department sponsored a “Fishackathon” at five sites across the country. A team from UC Berkeley’s School of Information, working out of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, took home the national grand prize for a mobile app designed to help West African fishermen.

UC Berkeley computer theorists have identified an algorithm to describe the strategy used by genes during sexual recombination. In doing so, they address the dueling evolutionary forces of survival of the fittest and of diversity.

People playing betting games engage two main areas of the brain: the medial prefrontal cortex and the striatum. Ming Hsu of UC Berkeley and Eric Set of the University of Illinois scanned 12 genes involved in dopamine regulation in these areas and found that people’s genetic variants affected how they dealt with trial-and-error learning and belief learning.

An advance has been achieved towards next generation ultrasonic imaging with potentially 1,000 times higher resolution than today’s medical ultrasounds. Researchers with the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have demonstrated a technique for producing, detecting and controlling ultrahigh frequency sound waves at the nanometer scale.

UC Berkeley researchers have discovered that oxytocin – a hormone associated with maternal nurturing, social attachments, childbirth and sex – is indispensable for healthy muscle maintenance and repair, and that in mice it declines with age.

Televised sports can reduce crime. In brief, that’s the conclusion of two UC Berkeley law students, based on their research exploring the relationship between major sporting events on television in Chicago and crime rates there.

Berkeley Lab researchers have devised a technique whereby self-assembling nanoparticle arrays can form a highly ordered thin film over macroscopic distances in one minute.

Peggy Lemaux, UC Berkeley cooperative extension specialist, is working with Berkeley Lab and the University of Kentucky to develop a genetically engineered tobacco plant that will produce oil that can be used as a biofuel. KQED Science wrote this story about the research effort.

Berkeley Lab researchers have found unexpected traces of water in semiconducting nanocrystals that helps answer long-standing questions about their surface chemistry.

Researchers led by UC Berkeley economist Paul Gertler report that early childhood development programs are particularly important for disadvantaged children in Jamaica and can greatly impact an individual’s ability to earn more money as an adult. 

Inspired by how enzymes work in nature’s biological processes, CBE professor Alex Katz and colleagues have demonstrated a way to improve control of synthetic catalysts.

Neuroscientists, engineers and physicians are teaming up for an ambitious five-year, $26 million project to develop new techniques for tackling mental illness.

UC Berkeley scientists have discovered the extremely subtle effect that the prescription drug Taxol has inside cells that makes it one of the most widely used anticancer agents in the world.

Blocking a pain receptor in mice not only extends their lifespan, it also gives them a more youthful metabolism, including an improved insulin response that allows them to deal better with high blood sugar.

Berkeley-led wage-theft study leads to local policy changes.

Our Sun may seem pretty impressive: 330,000 times as massive as Earth, it accounts for 99.86 percent of the Solar System’s total mass; it generates about 400 trillion trillion watts of power per second; and it has a surface temperature of about 10,000 degrees Celsius. Yet for a star, it’s a lightweight.

California’s winter tule fog – hated by drivers, but needed by fruit and nut trees – has declined dramatically over the past three decades, raising a red flag for the state’s multibillion dollar agricultural industry, according to researchers at UC Berkeley.

A new study of preschools and day care centers finds that flame retardants are prevalent indoors, potentially exposing young children to chemicals known to be hazardous. This study represents the first systematic review of flame retardants in early child care settings.

Winter rains and summer groundwater pumping in California’s Central Valley make the Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges sink and rise by a few millimeters each year, creating stress on the state’s earthquake faults that could increase the risk of a quake.

UC Berkeley Professor of Astronomy, Geoffrey Marcy, is featured in the New York Times Profiles in Science series for his work discovering scores of alien worlds, so-called exoplanets circling distant stars.

While a virus, essentially, may be nothing more than a dollop of DNA packed into a protective coating of protein called a capsid, the packaging of that DNA is critical. The molecular motors that drive this DNA packaging process, however, have remained almost as enigmatic as the viruses themselves.

Rebecca Peters’ IQ score measured so low in fourth grade that her school did not deem her to be college material. Her parents didn’t buy it, and neither did she. Today she’s a diehard clean-water-access warrior, the winner of three of America’s top 10 scholarships — and UC Berkeley’s top graduating senior

A comparison of the genomes of polar bears and brown bears reveals that the polar bear is a much younger species than previously believed. Also uncovered were several genes that may be involved in the polar bears’ extreme adaptations to life in the high Arctic.

Scientists working together on Kelp Watch 2014 announced today that the West Coast shoreline shows no signs of ocean-borne radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, following their analysis of the first collection of kelp samples along the western U.S. coastline.

By the end of this century climate change will result in more frequent and more extreme heat, more drought, and fewer extremes in cold weather in the United States. Average high temperatures could climb as much as 10 or more degrees Fahrenheit in some parts of the country. 

People working in buildings certified under LEED’s green building standard appear no more satisfied with the quality of their indoor workplace environments than those toiling in conventional buildings, according to new research from UC Berkeley, and the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.

William Dietrich and graduate student Daniella Rempe have proposed a method to determine underground details without drilling, potentially providing a more precise way to predict water runoff, the moisture available to plants, landslides and how these will respond to climate change.

French economist Thomas Piketty, gave a talk at UC Berkeley on inequality this week. Piketty's work traces rising global income and wealth inequality – often conducted with UC Berkeley economics professor and MacArthur Foundation Fellow Emmanuel Saez.

Some wasps have developed bigger eyes, and thus better vision, to read the social cues written on the faces of their sister wasps, according to a new UC Berkeley study.The findings were published this week in the journal Biology Letter.

A new study by UC Berkeley researchers and international collaborators finds that policies to support sustainable cattle ranching practices in Brazil could put a big dent in the beef and food industry’s greenhouse gas impact by reducing deforestation.

Paul Waddell, a city planning professor at the University of California, Berkeley, with a penchant for conducting research with what he calls his “big urban data,” is putting his work to a real-world test in San Francisco.

UC Berkeley neuroscientist Daniela Kaufer and colleagues in Israel and Germany have shown in rats that a drug commonly prescribed for hypertension can nearly eliminate the epilepsy that often follows severe head injury. Nearly one in five cases of epilepsy is the result of head trauma.

Bangladesh may be known mostly for its poverty, environmental vulnerability and deadly factory fires, but the new Subir and Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is ready to prove that this South Asian country of over 160 million people has a lot more to teach the rest of the world.

Chimpanzees may throw tantrums like toddlers, but their total brain size suggests they have more self-control than, say, gerbils or fox squirrels, according to a new study of 36 mammal and bird species ranging from orangutans to zebra finches.

Using nanodot technology, Berkeley Lab researchers have demonstrated the first size-based form of chromatography that can be used to study the membranes of living cells.

Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, Romania, Turkey and several other seismically active countries operate early warning systems - but not the United States. Although the technology is available along the west coast and a demonstration system is operating, a public alert system does not exist.

When Hollywood knocked on the doors of UC Berkeley engineering professors Michel Maharbiz and Jose Carmena, the researchers answered. Director Wally Pfister tapped their expertise in neural engineering and brain-machine interfaces during the filming of his movie, “Transcendence,” which opens in theaters April 18.

Students were invited recently to develop a compelling user interface to the Bancroft Library’s FSM Digital Archive, and shared their results 12 days later before a panel of judges. It’s hoped that HackFSM will spur future efforts to make online collections more accessible and useful to scholars and the public.

Arkin has been named one of six recipients of the 2013 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award by U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The E.O. Lawrence Award, the DOE’s highest scientific honor, is recognizing Arkin “for his work advancing biological and environmental sciences."

Solomon Hsiang's research provides a “ground–level” view of climate’s current and likely future role in such social stresses as child mortality, crime and social upheaval.

When Berkeley graduate student Jeff Benca submitted a paper describing a new species of long-extinct lycopod, he ditched the standard line drawing and insisted on a detailed color reconstruction of the plant. This piece earned the cover of the American Journal of Botany.

Ehud Isacoff and his colleagues explore the brain at several levels critical to ultimately understand how memories form and what can threaten their demise. He is the Director of Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute.

“Transcendence” director Wally Pfister, Oscar®-winning cinematographer (“Inception”), will come to UC Berkeley, for a screening of exclusive film clips and audience Q&A.

A newly constructed family tree of the hummingbirds, published today in the journal Current Biology, tells a story of a unique group of birds that originated in Europe.

The College of Chemistry has launched a new collaborative research center, the California Research Alliance by BASF (CARA), a multidisciplinary effort focused on innovation and technology transfer. Along with Berkeley and the chemical company BASF, CARA academic partners include UCLA and Stanford University.

Recent media reports about Covered California have focused on the crush of people trying to sign up for the program’s medical insurance programs by March 31, but analysts at UC Berkeley say not to overlook the many people who will join or leave the program after that deadline.

Vision scientists at UC Berkeley and MIT have discovered an upside to the brain mechanism that can blind us to subtle visual changes in the movies and in the real world.

Michael Dear’s Why Walls Won’t Work: Repairing the US–Mexico Divide, published by Oxford University Press, has been selected by the Globe Book Award Committee to receive the 2013 Association of American Geographers Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography.

Lick's Automated Planet Finder (APF) is the first robotic telescope for planet hunters. In its first months of operation, the APF has found two new planetary systems, giving astronomers a taste of planetary riches to come.

Backed by a vibrant startup culture that serves as the engine of economic growth for much of the Bay Area, UC Berkeley has established several new programs that support the translation of university research into real-world solutions.

Academic research sponsored by industry has a strong track record of leading to innovative patents and licenses, challenging assumptions that corporate support skews science toward inventions that are less accessible.

According to University of California, Berkeley, and Chinese researchers, a rapid succession of coronal mass ejections — the most intense eruptions on the sun — sent a pulse of magnetized plasma barreling into space and through Earth’s orbit.

UC Berkeley alumni, Mark Levinson returned to the Bay Area to premiere his new documentary, ‘Particle Fever,’ about the discovery of the Higgs boson. The film includes Berkeley physicists, Lawrence Hall and Yasunori Nomura, along with several campus alums.

Children born to mothers who work in California’s pesticide-treated fields show signs of developmental problems, according the pathbreaking CHAMACOS study, led by UC Berkeley professor Dr. Brenda Eskenazi in the Center for Environmental Research and Children’s Health.

Ben Recht was recently honored by the White House with a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, recognizing some of the most promising young researchers.

Researchers at UC Berkeley found that an electrical current can be used to orchestrate the flow of a group of cells, an achievement that could establish the basis for more controlled forms of tissue engineering and for potential applications such as “smart bandages”.

Flawed but colorful diamonds are among the most sensitive detectors of magnetic fields known today, allowing physicists to explore the minuscule magnetic fields in metals, exotic materials and even human tissue.

Preschoolers can be smarter than college students at figuring out how unusual toys and gadgets work because they’re more flexible and less biased than adults in their ideas about cause and effect, according to new research from UC Berkeley and the University of Edinburgh.

Ashok Gadgil set out to solve an insidious public health problem afflicting South Asia, arsenic contamination of groundwater. He knew the hard part would not just be inventing the technology but also ensuring a way to sustain its long-term use on a large scale.

First look at how individual staphylococcus cells adhere to nanostructures could lead to new ways to thwart infections. Berkeley Lab led research could guide the development of bacteria-resistant materials.

Dr. Ashok Gadgil is inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) for his water disinfecting device. The NIHF honors those who are responsible for the great technological advances that make human, social and economic progress possible.

Feng Wang is studying how electrical fields modulate the optical properties of a number of materials. The flip of a light switch – a nano-scale light switch – may some day dramatically boost the speed of data transmission, from streaming movies to accelerating the most data-intense computation. 

A big step in the development of next-generation fuel cells and water-alkali electrolyzers has been achieved with the discovery of a new class of bimetallic nanocatalysts that are an order of magnitude higher in activity than the target set by the DOE.

Two of the world’s most eminent research institutions from the United States and the United Kingdom issued a joint publication today (Thursday, Feb. 27) that distills climate change science.

Jennifer Doudna, professor of molecular and cell biology, is the 2014 recipient of the Lurie Prize in the Biomedical Sciences from the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health.

Mary Wildermuth is developing plant breeding strategies that can weaken the effects of powdery mildew. If not controlled, powdery mildew is a fast spreading fungus that can cause billions of dollars of crop damage in California.

University of California researchers today released two reports that indicate high need and potential for health coverage among undocumented teens and young adults in the Golden State.

Infrared technique at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source could help improve flow reactor chemistry for pharmaceuticals and other products.

Astronomers for the first time have peered into the heart of an exploding star in the final minutes of its existence. The feat is one of the primary goals of NASA’s NuSTAR mission.

Daniela Kaufer made a startling discovery about the effect of psychological stress on the brain a few years after serving in the Israeli army during the first Gulf War. 

Peru’s treasured Manu National Park is the world’s top biodiversity hotspot for reptiles and amphibians, according to a new survey published last week by biologist.

A new study by UC Berkeley and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers finds that the practices of outsourcing and offshoring jobs appear to have both positive and negative effects on American jobs and wages.

As California grapples with what state water officials have called a drought of “epic proportions,” UC Berkeley urban-water expert David Sedlak has been watching for signs that people are ready for a water revolution.

The California Alliance, led by UC Berkeley, is setting a new course for diversifying the postdoctoral and faculty ranks at top-tier research universities nationwide.

Felix Fischer and fellow researchers are fabricating strips of carbon only one-atom thick and less than 15 atoms wide, the aim is to create molecular-scale “wires” capable of carrying information thousands of times faster than is possible today.

UC Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson looks back on his longitudinal study of 156 middle-aged and older couples in the San Francisco Bay Area who survived the slings and arrows of early wedlock.

University of California, Berkeley, researchers have shown that chronic stress generates long-term changes in the brain that may explain why people suffering chronic stress are prone to mental problems such as anxiety and mood disorders later in life.

Key protein in photosynthesis likely evolved before oxygen Virginia Tech and UC Berkeley researchers discover that thioredoxin, a critical protein in photosynthesis, likely developed on Earth long before oxygen became available. Thioredoxin, the researchers found, plays an important role in methanogens, an ancient type of microbe found in deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

Biochemist Jennifer Doudna and biophysicist Eva Nogales led an international collaboration with results that point the way to the rational design of new and improved versions of Cas9 enzymes for basic research and genetic engineering.

Lydia Sohn is developing a new technique based on microtechnology to distinguish between different types of circulating tumor cells also known as CTC’s . She hopes this more sensitive approach will help clinicians learn which CTC’s are most prone to lead to metastasis.

A team of researchers with the Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have determined how the bacterial enzyme known as Cas9, guided by RNA, is able to identify and degrade foreign DNA during viral infections, as well as induce site-specific genetic changes in animal and plant cells

UC Berkeley Professor Reza Alam, an expert in wave mechanics, is looking to harness the power of big ocean waves by using the seafloor “carpet”, which he proposes will convert ocean waves into usable energy.

American voters are pointedly asked during every presidential campaign if they are better off today than four years ago. But a new study published in the latest edition of the American Journal of Political Science examines why voters actually consider how the economy has performed only in the last six months.

Californians can now use smartphones to grade their state on timely issues. Developed by the office of Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom with the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative at UC Berkeley.

Costas Spanos, the Andrew S. Grove Professor and Chair of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, will become the fourth Director of CITRIS (the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society).

As 2013 came to a close, the media dutifully reported that the year had been the driest in California since records began to be kept in the 1840s. UC Berkeley paleoclimatologist B. Lynn Ingram didn’t think the news stories captured the seriousness of the situation.

Bioengineers at UC Berkeley see inspiration in turkeys for a new type of biosensor that changes color when exposed to chemical vapors. This feature makes the sensors valuable detectors of toxins or airborne pathogens.

From the world of nanotechnology we’ve gotten electronic skin, or e-skin, and electronic eye implants or e-eyes. Now we’re on the verge of electronic whiskers.

UC Berkeley graduate student Katayun Kamdin’s experience as an undergraduate physics major at the University of Chicago was like that of many women who enter a field traditionally dominated by men.

University of California, Berkeley, scientists will receive $4,900,000 over the next five years to study the nearly 10,000 square kilometer Eel River watershed in Northern California and how its vegetation, geology and topography affect water flow all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Forget remote-controlled curtains. A new development by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, could lead to curtains and other materials that move in response to light, no batteries needed.

A comparison of Y chromosomes in eight African and eight European men dispels the common notion that the Y‘s genes are mostly unimportant and that the chromosome is destined to dwindle and disappear.

Bioengineering professors Sanjay Kumar and Niren Murthy have been granted a $500,000 research award from the W.M. Keck Foundation for their project, Single Tumor Cell Proteomics for Diagnosis and Prognosis.

Science magazine’s Breakthrough of the Year for 2013 – cancer immunotherapy – emerged from work conducted at UC Berkeley in the 1990s, while a 2012 UC Berkeley discovery was named one of nine runners up for the annual honor.

The Jepson Herbarium at UC Berkeley has a big mission: understanding and protecting California’s flora. Given that the state is home to thousands of native plants, nearly 1,500 of which can be found only here, that’s a lot of work for a lot of people with a lot of specialized knowledge. So the Jepson Herbarium has done what comes naturally in order to ensure it will always have the well-trained plant-lovers it needs.

President Obama named 102 researchers as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.

According to a new study by UC Berkeley researchers, population-dense cities contribute less greenhouse-gas emissions per person than other areas of the country, but these cities’ extensive suburbs essentially wipe out the climate benefits.