Ancient Polynesians went from building small-scale temples to constructing monumental, pyramid-shaped temples in just 140 years, not in four or five centuries as previously calculated, according to research led by a University of California, Berkeley, anthropologist and published this week in the print edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Researchers at Berkeley and other universities to find ways to capture carbon dioxide, produced by burning coal and natural gas, from the waste stream of power plants so that it can be sequestered underground.
UC Berkeley's Rasmus Nielsen teamed up with Chinese researchers to compare the genomes of Tibetans living above 14,000 feet to Han Chinese living at essentially sea level. They found that within the last 3,000 years, Tibetans evolved genetic mutations in a number of genes having to do with how the body deals with oxygen, making it possible for Tibetans to thrive at high altitudes while their Han relatives cannot.
UC Berkeley's Center for Labor Research and Education officially launched a series of monthly reports that highlight the employment outlook in the black community as national jobless numbers hover around 10 percent and African Americans fare far worse.The Labor Center's "Black Employment and Unemployment" detailed data brief for June will be available online shortly after researchers assess a monthly national jobs report to be issued Friday from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority's forecasts of demand and ridership for a new San Francisco-to-Los Angeles high-speed train are not reliable because they are based on an inconsistent model, according to a new study by researchers at UC Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies. The study is the first academic review of the rail authority's ridership forecasts, which was included in California's successful application for federal stimulus dollars.
The world of elementary particles is divided between bosons, such as photons, and fermions, including electrons and neutrinos. Fermions and bosons play by separate rules, which makes chemistry possible as well as superconductivity. But do bosons sometimes play by fermion rules? Two UC Berkeley physicists asked that question, and found — so far — that the answer is, no.
Six Berkeley faculty members experts were selected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to write the fifth comprehensive climate-change report.
A new UC Berkeley-led study of pregnant women links higher blood levels of PBDEs, a common type of flame retardant, with altered thyroid hormone levels. Normal maternal thyroid levels are important for healthy fetal neurodevelopment.
Of all of the advances people have developed over the millennia, food plants may be the most important. By examining the plant remains on early settlements, Berkeley professor of anthropology Christine Hastorf pieces together how ancient peoples worked, ate, traded and worshiped.
The UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley, nestled in Strawberry Canyon just above the central campus, features a mind-boggling 12,000 kinds of plants and breathtaking views of the Bay Area. The term breathtaking soon will describe the rotten flesh-like stench of the gardens about-to-blossom Titan Arum, aka the corpse plant
