Science News

"We need to learn not only what is encoded in the genome – the blueprint of life – but how that actually translates into protein function in health and disease," says Amy Herr, a Berkeley associate professor of bioengineering. Her research is supported by the campus’s Bakar Fellows Program, which helps early-career faculty pursue innovative research with commercial promise.

President Barack Obama has announced a major national initiative to understand how the brain works and how it goes awry. Neuroscientist John Ngai, chemist Paul Alivisatos and chemical engineer Jay Keasling were on hand at the White House to lend support to the so-called BRAIN initiative, which Ngai termed "our moon project."

UC Berkeley climatologist John Chiang, geography graduate student Andrew Friedman and colleagues from the University of Washington found that changes in the temperature difference between the Northern and Southern hemispheres during the 20th century were linked to catastrophic changes in tropical rainfall. As the difference rises, the tropics could see future rainfall disruptions.

Wired writer Daniela Hernandez profiles UC Berkeley's David Anderson, creator of the BOINC platform that runs SETI@home and other crowd-sourced projects, and efforts to capture the computing power of smart phones. Anderson is now testing software on the Android phone that would allow anyone to plug into Einstein@home, another crowd-sourced project, to search for black holes.

A dozen of the pioneers of synthetic biology gathered on campus March 25 to discuss the revolutionary potential of "programming life," which some compared to the digital revolution. The event was co-hosted by SynBERC and Discover magazine.

Neuroengineer Jose Carmena and bioengineer Michel Maharbiz are working to develop a brain-machine interface, an emerging technology for retraining the brain to operate a prosthetic device such as an artificial limb. They are supported by the campus’s Bakar Fellows Program, which helps early-career faculty pursue innovative research with commercial promise. The program is currently accepting applications for 2013/14.

The European Space Agency's Planck satellite, supported in part by NASA, has obtained the most precise picture yet of the temperature of the early universe, from which they've updated the age of the universe and the proportions of normal and dark matter and dark energy. At a Mar. 21 NASA press conference, UC Berkeley physicist Martin White called the Planck data "stunning."

Scientists have developed a computer model of integrin, a protein that helps cells interact with their surroundings. The virtual integrin snippet is about the same length and behaves in similar ways to its biological counterpart. The result is a new way to explore how the protein connects a cell’s inner and outer environments.

Engineers at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab have created a 2D sheet of gold nanoantennas to get the strongest signal yet of the photonic spin Hall effect, an optical phenomenon of quantum mechanics that could play a prominent role in how information is encoded and processed in computing.

UC Berkeley's David Wake and colleague Kathryn Elmer at the University of Glasgow analyzed the genetic variability of salamanders that had moved from Central to South America and concluded that they could not have diversified within the 3 million years geologists think the two continents have been connected. They think the Panamanian land bridge formed 23 million years ago.

Traditionally, the holy grail for doctoral students has been a professorship at a prestigious university. But in a sign of changing times, many Ph.D. students are now seeking jobs outside higher ed. Enter "Beyond Academia," a career conference organized by Ph.D. students and postdocs.

Ann Brody Guy, College of Natural Resources A group of doctors and public health experts are urging the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take immediate action to protect young people from the effects of caffeinated energy drinks. In a... Ann Guy

UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner is the next speaker (Sat., Mar. 23, 10 a.m.) in the Nano-High series of talks sponsored by Berkeley Lab. Any high school student or teacher can sign up online and drop in to hear about cutting-edge scientific issues of the day. Keltner's talk is titled "The Compassionate Instinct: A Darwinian Tale of Survival of the Kindest."

By Rachel Nuwer, Smithsonian.com Anyone who has gone scuba diving or snorkeling in a coral reef will likely never forget the dazzling colors and other-worldly shapes of these underwater communities. Home to some of the world’s most diverse wildlife hotspots,... Ann Guy

An article published by Howard Hughes Investigator and Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology Eva Nogales in Nature titled "Structural visualization of key steps in human transcription initiation" has been selected as the Director's Featured Research Advance by NIGMS.

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Just three miles from the site of the future Richmond Bay Campus, the Northern California Workshop for Energy Technologies underscored the need for partnerships, and featured a keynote address from former Michigan governor (and current Berkeley faculty member) Jennifer Granholm.

A team of scientists has produced high-quality standardized biological parts that can be mixed and matched by biotech researchers creating new drugs, fuels or chemicals. The DNA sequences that encode all the parts are free and available online. The project, detailed in three research papers, is the work of researchers at the International Open Facility Advancing Biotechnology (BIOFAB), a collaboration led by UC Berkeley and Stanford University and funded by the National Science Foundation.

UC Berkeley once again ranks in fifth place in global reputation in survey of more than 16,600 academics worldwide by the Times Higher Education.

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Berkeley physicist Michael Crommie has demonstrated in graphene a strange behavior predicted more than 60 years ago and which holds important implications for the future of graphene-based electronic devices. He and colleagues have imaged the “atomic collapse” states theorized to occur around super-large atomic nuclei.

The American Chemical Society awarded UC Berkeley chemist John Hartwig its Herbert C. Brown Award For Creative Research In Synthetic Methods “for the creative discovery and insightful development of fundamentally new, broadly utilized" chemical reactions, such as syntheses using transition metals as catalysts.