SubscribeBerkeley physicist Steve Boggs leads a new gamma-ray experiment launched over Antarctica on Dec. 28 aboard the first of NASA’s new ‘super pressure’ balloons, which aim to keep experiments aloft for more than 100 days. The experiment, the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), searches for polarized gamma rays from exploding stars and other cosmic phenomena.
Science archive
Berkeley gamma-ray experiment tests new balloon technology over Antarctica
December 29, 2014:
Unique Sulawesi frog gives birth to tadpoles
December 31, 2014: Amid the amazing biodiversity of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi lives a 5-gram frog that gives direct birth to tadpoles, without ever laying eggs. This unique reproductive strategy, found in a group of fanged frogs endemic to the island, is described for the first time by UC Berkeley herpetologist Jim McGuire and colleagues from Indonesia and Canada.
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.
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.
Sensing distant tornadoes, birds flew the coop. What tipped them off?
December 18, 2014: A UC Berkeley-led research team found that golden-winged warblers in Tennessee fled the path of tornado-generating storms one to two days ahead, well before any local signs of troubling weather. Signs point to the use of infrasound as Mother Nature’s early warning system.
Students show off ‘autonomous vehicles’ at L.A. Drone Expo
December 16, 2014: UC Berkeley engineering students joined civil engineering professor Raja Sengupta at the first-ever Drone Expo in Los Angeles on Saturday, demonstrating their “unmanned autonomous vehicles” to a crowd of some 4,000 hobbyists and enthusiasts.
Berkeley innovators named fellows of National Academy of Inventors
December 16, 2014: Biochemist Jennifer Doudna, chemical engineer Jay Keasling and chemist Richard Mathies were among 170 people named fellows of the National Academy of Inventors. The organization honors innovators who have file patents in the United States.
Study reveals resilience of Roman architectural concrete
December 15, 2014: An international research team studying the mortar used to build such Roman architectural marvels as the Pantheon, Trajan’s Markets and the Colosseum has found a secret to the material’s resilience. Led by scientists at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab, the team found that as the mortar cures, it forms a crystalline binding hydrate that prevents microcracks from propagating.
Scientists measure speedy electrons in silicon
December 11, 2014: Attosecond lasers provide the shortest light pulses yet, allowing observation of nature’s most short-lived events. Berkeley researchers have used these lasers for the first time to take snapshots of electrons jumping from silicon atoms into the conduction band of a semiconductor, the key event behind the transistor.
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.
Food luminaries to light up spring semester
December 11, 2014: The Berkeley Food Institute is drawing food and agriculture experts to campus from across the country to address challenges and find solutions to problems in the food sector. Among the luminaries headed to campus this spring is New York Times columnist and writer Mark Bittman, who will co-host the popular Edible Education 101 course. Also: Q&A with Mark Bittman
Can organic crops compete with industrial agriculture?
December 9, 2014: An analysis of 115 studies comparing organic and conventional farming finds that the crop yields of organic agriculture are higher than previously thought. Researchers also found that taking into account methods that optimize the productivity of organic agriculture could minimize the yield gap between organic and conventional farming.
Lick supernova search gets critical instrument upgrade
December 9, 2014: The Kast spectrograph on the 3-meter Shane Telescope at UC’s Lick Observatory will receive a much-needed upgrade thanks to a $350,000 donation by the Kast family & the Heising-Simons Foundation. Berkeley astronomer Alex Filippenko says the upgrade will help the automated supernova search in the quest to understand dark energy & the accelerating expansion of the universe.
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.”
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.
Student searches for supernovas, secret to dark energy
November 30, 2014: Graduate student Danny Goldstein created a computer algorithm that can sort through thousands of 570-megapixel images taken each night in search of tiny points of light indicating a distant supernova explosion. He created the algorithm, which runs on the Energy Department’’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at Berkeley Lab, for the Dark Energy Survey.
Dodging a sixth mass extinction 
November 25, 2014: Integrative biology professor Anthony Barnosky not only has a new book out, Dodging Extinction, but also appears in a new documentary airing Nov. 30 on the Smithsonian Channel. The film, Mass Extinction, Life at the Brink, also features UC Berkeley geologist Walter Alvarez and Barnosky’s wife, Stanford ecologist Elizabeth Hadly.
‘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.
New mushroom discovered on campus — the first since 1985
November 21, 2014: For the first time in 30 years, a new species of mushroom has been discovered on the UC Berkeley campus, to the delight of the researchers who found it. Else Vellinga and Nhu Nguyen, the researchers, named it Helvella dryophila,
National Medal of Science ceremony streamed live from White House Nov. 20
November 19, 2014: President Barack Obama will honor three UC Berkeley faculty members on Thursday, Nov. 20, at a White House ceremony for the 19 new winners of the National Medals of Science and National Medals of Technology & Innovation.
Education professor Barbara White dies at age 64
November 18, 2014: Professor Barbara White, a faculty member at UC Berkeley for 25 years whose broad ranging academic background encompassed education, computer science, psychology, and mathematics, has died after a battle with cancer. She was 64.
$45 million in grants fund new cybersecurity centers at UC Berkeley, MIT and Stanford
November 18, 2014: Berkeley’s new Center for Long-Term CyberSecurity will map out what the cybersecurity problem will mean a few years down the road, and to stimulate interdisciplinary research efforts that will make a difference in resolving the threat.
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.
ICON satellite cleared for development to study ionosphere
November 13, 2014: NASA has given the go-ahead for UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory to develop the Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON, mission, which will explore a swath of Earth’s atmosphere where weather close to the ground impacts the dynamic space environment above. SSL’s Thomas Immel is mission leader .
Amateur, professional astronomers alike thrilled by extreme storms on Uranus
November 12, 2014: A team led by Berkeley astronomer Imke de Pater has been observing Uranus regularly for years, and recently found that the normally bland face of the planet has become increasingly stormy, with enormous cloud systems so bright that for the first time ever, amateur astronomers are able to see details in the planet’s hazy blue-green atmosphere.
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.
UC reverses engines on Lick Observatory funding
November 6, 2014: UC has changed its mind and will continue funding the 126-year-old Lick Observatory, used by students, faculty and international scientists alike.
