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From the increased legalization of marijuana for medical use to the Ebola epidemic to the re-emergence of nearly vanquished infectious diseases preventable by vaccines, 2014 has had more than its share of major public-health stories. Berkeley Wellness offers its list of the Top 10.
Health & medicine archive
UC Berkeley 2014: The year in pictures
December 23, 2014: Marked by a monthlong celebration of the Free Speech Movement and the unveiling of plans for an ambitious new Berkeley Global Campus, 2014 at UC Berkeley was both a year to remember and a time to reimagine the future.
Is it lonelier at the bottom or at the top? Psychologist links ambition to mental health
December 19, 2014: The indomitable human quest for power, influence and a foothold in the social hierarchy has long been a subject of fascination and study for UC Berkeley psychologist Sheri Johnson. “Some people really want to get to the top and others are happy in the middle, and others are just trying to avoid being at the bottom,” says Johnson in a Q & A just published in The Huffington Post.
Berkeley researchers develop new standard for sharing neuroscience data
December 19, 2014: Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a computational framework for standardizing neuroscience data to assist data sharing among neuroscientists worldwide, much as the jpeg and TIFF standards have made sharing digital images easy. The researchers are part of the UC Berkeley, Berkeley Lab and UCSF partnership called BRAINSeed.
Roberto Zoncu profile: Starving cancer
December 18, 2014: In a profile by The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2014 Pew Scholar Roberto Zoncu discusses the adventure of science and his own research to find a way to starve cancer of nutrients. A native of Sardinia, Italy, Zoncu is an assistant professor of molecular cell biology and a recipient of a NIH Innovator Award.
Mark Bittman’s menu to include UC Berkeley
December 11, 2014: Mark Bittman, popular food writer and New York Times columnist, will be a distinguished visiting fellow on campus during spring semester, collaborating with faculty, staff and students connected to the Berkeley Food Institute.
UC’s first crop of ‘global food’ fellows includes three Berkeley students
December 10, 2014: Three UC Berkeley students are among 54 fellows announced Dec. 9 by the University of California’s Global Food Initiative, launched earlier this year to address food security, health and sustainability issues.
Wealth, power or lack thereof at heart of many mental disorders
December 9, 2014: Donald Trump’s ego may be the size of his financial empire, but that doesn’t mean he’s the picture of mental health. The same can be said about the self-esteem of people who are living from paycheck to paycheck, or unemployed. New research underscores this mind-wallet connection, showing a strong link between self-worth and mental illness.
New therapy holds promise for restoring vision
December 8, 2014: A new genetic therapy developed by UC Berkeley scientists has not only helped blind mice regain light sensitivity sufficient to distinguish flashing from non-flashing lights, but also restored light response to the retinas of dogs, setting the stage for future clinical trials of the therapy in humans. The therapy involves inserting photoswitches into retinal cells that are normally “blind.”
Study links revitalized public housing to fewer ER visits
December 8, 2014: Children living in revitalized public housing are significantly less likely to take repeated trips to the emergency room, according to a new study by researchers at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. The study suggests that improvements in public housing could potentially yield a big return on investment through the reduction in emergency room visits.
Scientists detect brain network that gives humans superior reasoning skills
December 3, 2014: When it comes to getting out of a tricky situation, we humans have an evolutionary edge over other primates. UC Berkeley scientists have found mounting brain evidence that helps explain how humans have excelled at “relational reasoning,” a cognitive skill we use to solve problems.
Project uses tech to help boost vaccination rates in India
December 2, 2014: As part of a project called Emmunify, students at UC Berkeley are simplifying medical record-keeping by storing patient vaccination records on a portable chip. The goal of the project is to make it easier for healthcare providers to access patient records without the need for Internet access, and ultimately to boost vaccination rates in developing nations.
Greater income inequality linked to more deaths for black Americans
December 1, 2014: Income inequality matters for everyone, but it matters differently for different groups of people, conclude the authors of a new UC Berkeley study. Researchers linked greater gaps in wealth to more deaths among black Americans, but fewer deaths among white Americans.
‘Sleepless in America’ documentary to feature Berkeley research 
November 24, 2014: UC Berkeley neuroscientist and sleep researcher Matthew Walker will be featured Nov. 30 in Sleepless in America, a documentary on the National Geographic Channel that lays out in gripping detail the perils of getting too little sleep.
Foragers find bounty of edibles in urban food deserts
November 17, 2014: Urban residents in neighborhoods lacking stores with fresh, affordable produce need to look no further than their own yards to find wild edibles to add to the dinner table. Two Berkeley professors and a team of students are foraging in three East Bay communities as part of a unique project that is surveying, logging data, testing soil and aiming to educate neighborhoods about the value of these greens.
Diana Bautista receives Young Investigator Award from neuroscience society
November 17, 2014: The Society for Neuroscience presented a Young Investigator Award to Diana Bautista, UC Berkeley assistant professor of integrative biology, at its annual meeting Nov. 17 in Washington, DC. The $15,000 award recognizes outstanding achievements and contributions by young neuroscientists who have recently received advanced professional degree.
Lightning expected to increase by 50 percent with global warming
November 13, 2014: UC Berkeley atmospheric scientist David Romps and his colleagues looked at predictions of precipitation and cloud buoyancy in 11 different climate models and concluded that global warming will generate 50 percent more lightning strikes across the U.S. by the end of the 21st century.
Jennifer Doudna, cosmology teams named 2015 Breakthrough Prize winners
November 10, 2014: Jennifer Doudna was named a winner of the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences at a star-studded gala in Silicon Valley on Nov. 9, while Saul Perlmutter and former Berkeley post-doc Adam Riess accepted the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics on behalf of the two teams they led.
Live streaming of Breakthrough Prize symposia Nov. 10
November 7, 2014: Students, faculty and staff are invited to watch a streaming webcast of the Breakthrough Prize Symposia on Monday, Nov. 10, where more than 20 scientific luminaries will discuss the latest discoveries in fundamental physics, mathematics and the life sciences. UC Berkeley, Stanford and UC San Francisco are symposia partners.
Helping parents navigate the ‘New Puberty’ for today’s girls
November 6, 2014: What happens when a girl has the mind of an 8-year-old and the body of a 13-year-old? Girls today are developing faster and entering puberty earlier than ever before. Julianna Deardorff, a UC Berkeley expert in adolescent health and co-author of The New Puberty, discusses this trend, and how parents can deal with it.
How important is long-distance travel in the spread of epidemics?
November 4, 2014: A new model of epidemic spread by biophysicists Oskar Hallatschek of UC Berkeley and Daniel Fisher of Stanford shows that how common long-range jumps are makes a big difference in the dispersal of a disease, that is, whether you get slow, rippling spread or metastatic spread.
Arsenic in drinking water linked to 50 percent drop in breast cancer deaths
October 28, 2014: A new study by researchers from UC Berkeley and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile has linked arsenic to a 50 percent drop in breast cancer deaths among people inadvertently exposed to high levels of the contaminant in their drinking water,
How Brittany Maynard decided to ‘go with dignity’ — and to go public
October 27, 2014: Diagnosed with terminal brain cancer earlier this year, the 29-year-old UC Berkeley psychology graduate has uprooted her life in the Bay Area and moved to Oregon so that when her symptoms grow intolerable, she can legally swallow a lethal dose of medication. Her story is in California Magazine.
How do chemicals affect breast-cancer risk?
October 23, 2014: Improved testing of the multitude of chemicals we encounter daily will help us understand if and how these exposures contribute to development of breast cancer, says Megan Schwarzman, a research scientist at the School of Public Health’s Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. She and two coauthors offer commentary in the journal Reproductive Toxicology.
Open Enrollment for 2015 UC benefits begins Oct. 30
October 22, 2014: Open Enrollment for 2015 UC health and welfare benefits begins Thursday, Oct. 30. The campus’s Human Resources unit will offer informational sessions for faculty, staff, emeriti and retirees; an article from UC details plan offerings.
Hospital mergers and acquisitions leading to increased patient costs
October 21, 2014: The trend of hospitals consolidating medical groups and physician practices in an effort to improve the coordination of patient care is backfiring when it comes to lowering the cost of patient care, according to a new study. Researchers find that patient costs are significantly higher in hospital-owned physician groups compared with physician-owned groups.
Randy Schekman named to Institute of Medicine
October 21, 2014: Nobelist Randy Schekman, a UC Berkeley professor of cell and developmental biology, has been named to the prestigious Institute of Medicine, one of the highest national honors in the fields of health and medicine.
New front in war on Alzheimer’s, other protein-folding diseases
October 16, 2014: Many neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, have been linked to the accumulation of improperly folded proteins in the brain. How they collect is a mystery, but Andrew Dillin and his lab have found a new mechanism cells use to prevent misfolding that could lead to new types of therapies for these diseases.
UC Berkeley/UCSF center to focus on aging, prion diseases
October 10, 2014: Andy Dillin of UC Berkeley & Nobelist Stan Prusiner of UCSF will lead a new integrated center for research on neurodegenerative diseases, focusing on the ways proteins can malfunction within cells. Funded by $3 million from the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, the center will pave the way for novel treatments for diseases linked to misfolded proteins and/or prions.
Grapefruit juice stems weight gain in mice fed a high-fat diet
October 8, 2014: Fad diets come and go, but might there be something to the ones that involve consuming grapefruit and grapefruit juice? New research found that mice fed a high-fat diet gained less weight when they drank grapefruit juice instead of water.
