It's easy to assume retiring baby boomers will benefit from Social Security and Medicare at the expense of younger generations, as analysts estimate that these government-run programs will pay out more than they collect in payroll taxes by 2017. But a far-reaching new study from UC Berkeley concludes that younger Americans are actually getting the better deal when the value of public education is also taken into account.

A team from Berkeley's Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department has figured out how to get a robot to fold previously unseen towels of different sizes. Their approach solves a key problem in robotics -- how to deal with flexible, or "deformable," objects.

With climate change concerns escalating, fossil fuel supplies diminishing and electricity consumption expected to double in 10 years, nuclear power has regained some of its lost luster.

The giggle call of the spotted hyena tells other hyenas not only the age and identity of the animal, but also its social status, according to a new UC Berkeley study.

By observing visible “light echoes,” astronomers have assembled one of the first 3-D perspectives of a cosmic object. The new view of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A confirms that it formed during a lopsided explosion.Astronomers see historical supernova from new angle

Most parts of the fruit fly brain, as well as the human brain, are devoid of neural stem cells, which means that once a nerve cell dies, it can't be replaced. A new study in fruit flies shows one way to keep these stem cells from disappearing as the brain matures.

When the Galileo probe descended through Jupiter's atmosphere in 1995, it found neon to be one-tenth as abundant as predicted. This unexpected finding has led two UC Berkeley researchers to propose that this is due to a rain of helium that depletes Jupiter's layers of neon as well as helium.