Subscribe
Whether we’re listening to Bach or the blues, our brains are wired to make music-color connections depending on how the melodies make us feel, according to new research from UC Berkeley. For instance, Mozart’s jaunty Flute Concerto No. 1 in G major is most often associated with bright yellow and orange, whereas his dour Requiem in D minor is more likely to be linked to dark, bluish gray.
Technology & engineering archive
Wireless signals could transform brain trauma diagnostics
May 14, 2013: New technology developed at UC Berkeley is using wireless signals to provide real-time, non-invasive diagnoses of brain swelling or bleeding. The device could potentially become a cost-effective tool for medical diagnostics and to triage injuries in areas where access to medical care, especially medical imaging, is limited.
Douglas Clark appointed new College of Chemistry dean
May 9, 2013: Douglas Clark, the current chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Warren and Katharine Schlinger Distinguished Professor in Chemical Engineering, has been designated the new dean of the College of Chemistry.
Hit a 95 mph baseball? Scientists pinpoint how we see it coming
May 8, 2013: How does San Francisco Giants slugger Pablo Sandoval swat a 95 mph fastball, or tennis icon Venus Williams see the oncoming ball, let alone return her sister Serena’s 120 mph serves? For the first time, vision scientists at UC Berkeley have pinpointed how the brain tracks fast-moving objects.
Building an LGBT community for STEM majors
April 30, 2013: An appreciation for diversity and a passion for energizing student life led Paul Zarate,a senior majoring in mechanical engineering, to found the Berkeley chapter of Out in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (oSTEM), a national organization dedicated to the professional development of LGBT students.
Emoticons get more emotional, thanks to Berkeley psychologists
April 26, 2013: Emoticons not expressing the full complexity of your feelings? UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner and his team at the campus’s Greater Good Science Center can help. They have assisted in creating a nuanced Facebook sticker package based on a character named “Finch,” inspired by scientist Charles Darwin.
Malaria milestone ‘took a village’ 
April 25, 2013: On April 25, World Malaria Day, the non-profit Zagaya released a video Illustrating why, in the words of UC Berkeley synthetic biologist Jay Keasling, “it took a village” to create an accessible treatment for malaria that will be essential to eradicating the disease.
Ten Berkeley faculty named to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
April 24, 2013: Ten Berkeley professors have been named members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a prestigious 233-year-old honorary society of national leaders from academia, business, public affairs and the humanities.
Bakar Fellows Program: Packing power
April 24, 2013: Tanja Cuk (pronounced “chook”), an assistant professor of chemistry, is testing how to optimize new devices for both power delivery and energy storage. Her focus is an alternative to conventional batteries called a “supercapacitor.”
Lost your keys? Your cat? The brain can rapidly mobilize a search party
April 21, 2013: A contact lens on the bathroom floor, an escaped hamster in the backyard, a car key in a bed of gravel: How are we able to focus so sharply to find that proverbial needle in a haystack? UC Berkeley scientists have discovered that when we embark on a targeted search, various visual and non-visual regions of the brain mobilize to track down a person, animal or thing.
Haas faculty turn to crowdfunding for solar light research in Uganda
April 19, 2013: Three Haas professors are bypassing traditional grants and going straight to crowdfunding to raise money for a study on how to get people in rural Uganda to replace dangerous kerosene lanterns with life-changing solar lamps.
Cal Day launched graduating senior’s Berkeley experience
April 19, 2013: Senior Ahn-Thi Le’s UC Berkeley journey began with Cal Day, when she fell in love with the campus. Now, after following a path that took her to India to work with rural artisans and to a place in the CellScope initiative improving health care in Vietnam, Le is about to graduate.
Disaster expert cites ‘failure to learn’ for Deepwater Horizon blowout
April 18, 2013: Bob Bea, UC Berkeley professor of civil engineering and an internationally recognized veteran of disaster investigations, shared his assessment of the Deepwater Horizon blowout at an April 17 talk on campus. He called the event a “system disaster” that exemplified a “failure to learn” from past mistakes.
I School’s Drone Lab looks at positive uses of unpiloted aircraft
April 16, 2013: Don’t be surprised to spot small, unpiloted machines buzzing in the air around South Hall and environs. They’re part of the Drone Lab, a small team of School of Information students who are exploring drones’ positive uses — and reinventing them in the public eye as something other than high-tech killing machines. With video.
New report: California lags in fracking regs
April 12, 2013: A new report on fracking in California warns of potentially irreversible contamination of surface and groundwater near oil drilling sites, unless the technique is carefully monitored and controlled. “Regulation of Hydraulic Fracturing in California: A Wastewater and Water Quality Perspective” is an independent analysis produced by Berkeley Law scholars.
Free software award for wrestling a Python
April 11, 2013: Physicist and applied mathematician Fernando Pérez has received the Free Software Foundation’s 2012 Award for the Advancement of Free Software for his open-source application iPython, which makes it easier for scientists to use the powerful Python programming language to crunch Big Data.
Campus’s ‘socially responsible licensing’ receives Patents for Humanity award
April 11, 2013: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office honored UC Berkeley’s technology transfer office for its socially responsible licensing to provide low-cost treatments and technologies to people in developing countries, highlighted by the successful licensing of a discovery leading to a newly launched yeast-derived malaria drug. Other projects are nutritionally fortified sorghum & disease-resistant crops.
Launch of antimalarial drug a triumph for UC Berkeley, synthetic biology
April 11, 2013: The best therapy today for malaria is a drug combination that includes a derivative of artemisinin, now solely available from plants. On April 11, Sanofi began production of the first semi-synthetic version of artemisinin, derived from yeast developed by biotech company Amyris based on discoveries in the laboratory of Jay Keasling at UC Berkeley.
Hot tech-startup idea? Apply to Venture Lab contest
April 10, 2013: Campus students and post docs who seek to launch and grow a tech startup are invited to apply for funding, workspace and guidance from the Venture Lab competition. The contest deadline is April 17.
Campus poised to join Obama’s BRAIN initiative
April 2, 2013: 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.”
Enlisting Android phones to find black holes
March 27, 2013: 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.
Making living matter programmable
March 26, 2013: 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.
Bakar Fellows explore brain-machine interface
March 26, 2013: 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.
Artificial intelligence expert Robert Wilensky dies at 61
March 25, 2013: Robert Wilensky, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of computer science and one of the campus’s first faculty members in the field of artificial intelligence, has died at age 61.
Computer simulations reveal clues to cell interaction
March 21, 2013: 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 watch photons going out for a spin
March 21, 2013: 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.
Ph.D. students rethink the tenure track, scope out non-academic jobs
March 20, 2013: 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.
Connected Corridors aims to up efficiency of existing roadways
March 18, 2013: Connected Corridors, a project led by engineering profs Alex Bayen and Roberto Horowitz, is developing technologies to help Caltrans gather and analyze traffic data. A goal of the research: to make existing roadways more efficient, rather than launching new highway-construction projects.
ChronoZoom wins Interactive Award at SXSW conference
March 13, 2013: ChronoZoom, innovative software that allows you to zoom through the whole of cosmic history, won a 2013 Interactive Award in the Educational Resource category at the 16th annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, on Mar. 13. Roland Saekow, who developed ChronoZoom with emeritus geology professor Walter Alvarez, displayed a new interactive AIDS timeline.
Physics Nobelist and biotech pioneer Donald Glaser dies at 86
March 1, 2013: Donald Glaser, a Nobel-prize winning physicist who reinvented himself as a biotech pioneer and later dove into the field of neurobiology, died in his sleep Thursday morning, Feb. 28, at his home in Berkeley. Glaser, a professor emeritus of physics and of molecular and cell biology, was 86.
