If ancient gray whale populations migrated and fed the same as today’s whales, what happened during the Ice Ages, when their major feeding grounds disappeared? UC Berkeley and Smithsonian paleontologists argue that gray whales utilized a range of food sources in the past, including herring and krill, in addition to the benthic organisms they consume today. As a result, prewhaling populations were two to four times greater than today’s population of around 22,000.

Scientists looking for unusual cellulose-digesting enzymes, called cellulases, have found one that works at a higher temperature, 109 degrees Celsius, than any others found to date. The cellulase comes from an Archaea found in a Nevada hot spring.

Berkeley Lab researchers created tetrapod molecules of semiconductor nanocrystals and watched them break a fundamental principle of photoluminescence known as “Kasha’s rule.” The discovery holds promise for multi-color light emission technologies, including LEDs.

Information theory dictates that a logical operation in a computer must consume a minimum amount of energy. Today’s computers consume a million times more energy per operation than this limit, but magnetic computers with no moving electrons could theoretically operate at the minimum energy, called the Landauer limit, according to UC Berkeley electrical engineers.

How do lesbian and gay parents navigate in a world where heterosexuality is still the norm? Rafael Colonna, a Ph.D. student in sociology, has been interviewing same-sex parents across California to find out. In the process, he’s discovered that in family life, “small practices” such as assigning family names and titles, “have a lot of meaning behind them.”

Folding laundry may seem mundane, but for a robot, identifying a 3-D object and manipulating it correctly, it’s an exercise that requires intelligence that humans may take for granted. Pieter Abbeel and his team of engineers are developing increasingly efficient strategies and algorithms to help robots fold towels, forming the foundation for the next generation.

UC Berkeley researchers Terry Speed, Elizabeth Purdom, John Ngai and Yoon Gi Choi have joined colleagues at Berkeley Lab and around the country in creating the first comprehensive catalog of the genetic aberrations responsible for an aggressive type of ovarian cancer that causes most ovarian cancer deaths. This “atlas” could lead to targeted treatment based on a person’s cancer fingerprint.

Patrick V. Kirch, a UC Berkeley professor of anthropology and integrative biology and an authority on the archaeology of the Pacific Islands, has been awarded the 2011 Herbert E. Gregory Medal for Distinguished Service to Science in the Pacific Region.

Radiation damages metal and other materials, which can be a problem in nuclear power plants. UC Berkeley/LBNL materials scientist Andrew Minor and colleagues have developed a way to test nano-sized samples to determine how well they withstand the effects of radiation.

San Joaquin Valley communities with large Latino populations are exposed to disproportionately high levels of the agricultural chemical nitrate through their drinking water, according to a UC Berkeley study. When ingested via drinking water, nitrate can lead to numerous health problems, particularly among women and young children.