Berkeley ethnomusicologist Ben Brinner traveled to Israel and the West Bank to study the lives of Palestinian musicians. He found the coalescing of a new musical scene, a creative response by both Palestinian and Israeli musicians to the musical and political circumstances of their region.
Does the language we speak influence the way we think? Alice Gaby, a professor of linguistics at Berkeley, became particularly interested in this question as she studied an Aborignal language.
In research that gives literal meaning to the term "power suit," UC Berkeley engineers have created energy-scavenging nanofibers that could one day be woven into clothing and textiles. The technology could eventually lead to wearable 'smart clothes' that can power hand-held electronics through ordinary body movements.
New data provide the strongest evidence to date that the world's biggest mud volcano, which killed 13 people in 2006 and so far has displaced 30,000 people in East Java, Indonesia, was not caused by an earthquake, according to an international scientific team that includes researchers from Durham University and the UC Berkeley.
Pyrethroid pesticides were supposed to be a benign replacement for organophosphate use around the home, but UC Berkeley studies show that these insecticdes are showing up at toxic levels in storm runoff and even in the effluent from sewage treatment plants. While the levels are not high enough to harm fish, they may be enough to kill the mayfly, caddisfly and stonefly larvae upon which the fish feed.
Bioengineers from the UC Berkeley and Stanford University are ramping up efforts to characterize the thousands of control elements critical to the engineering of microbes so that eventually, researchers can mix and match these "DNA parts" in synthetic organisms to produce new drugs, fuels or chemicals.
The Lawrence Hall of Science is hosting a 50th-anniversary exhibit on the laser, Jan. 23-25, highlighted by a free public talk on Jan. 25 by Nobel Laureate Charles Townes, who conceived the idea of a laser in the 1950s.
Marcia Linn, a University of California, Berkeley, professor of education known for exploring the teaching and learning of science and their connection to gender, is offering proof once again that girls' math abilities are just as good as boys'.
