Skywatchers should get their binoculars and telescopes ready. Scientists at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab caught a supernova soon after its explosion. The supernova, located in the Big Dipper constellation, is appearing brighter than any other supernova of its type in the last 30 years. Earthlings might even be able to see it with good binoculars in 10 days’ time.
UC Berkeley is leading an effort to take information on the vertebrate collections in museums around the world and store it in the cloud for easy use by researchers and citizen scientists alike.
Pieter Abbeel, a UC Berkeley, professor known for his novel work in the field of machine learning in robotics – including robots that can fold laundry – has been named to a prestigious list of 35 of the world’s top young innovators by Technology Review magazine.
Born of financial crisis, Berkeley’s Institute for the Study of Societal Issues has cultivated a more collaborative, community-based approach to social-science research. In the process, a rickety old campus building has been transformed into a place where scholars can do more with less.
Billions of tons of carbon trapped in permafrost may be released into the atmosphere by the end of this century as the Earth’s climate changes, further accelerating global warming, a new computer modeling study led by a Berkeley Lab scientist indicates. The study also found that soil in high-latitude regions could shift from being a sink to a source of carbon dioxide by the end of the 21st century as the soil warms in response to climate change.
I-School student volunteers who evaluated a Disabled Students Program pilot test, which provided Livescribe computerized pens to students with learning disabilities, found that the smartpens had effects that extended well beyond note-taking abilities.
Researchers studying the birth of the universe are getting some of the most accurate measurements to date of neutrinos, electrically neutral particles that zip about close to the speed of light. They hope that the data, obtained from the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, an international collaboration led by U.S. and China scientists, will reveal how matter was formed immediately after the Big Bang. Physicists from Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley are leading the U.S. team.
