Dont blink or you may miss the salamanders leap UC Berkeley 2022-05-18 | Also see "Skydiving salamanders!": youtu.be/tbLFbyjVLYYFor full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/05/23/skydiving-salamanders-live-in-worlds-tallest-trees/Video courtesy Christian Brownhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Molecular 3D chainmail COFs UC Berkeley 2023-01-18 | University of California, Berkeley, chemists have created a new type of material from millions of identical, interlocking molecules that for the first time allows the synthesis of extensive 2D or 3D structures that are flexible, strong and resilient, like the chain mail that protected medieval knights.The material, called an infinite catenane, can be synthesized in a single chemical step.French chemist Jean-Pierre Sauvage shared the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for synthesizing the first catenane — two linked rings. These structures served as the foundation for making molecular structures capable of moving, which are often referred to as molecular machines.But the chemical synthesis of catenanes has remained laborious. Adding each additional ring to a catenane requires another round of chemical synthesis. In the 24 years since Sauvage created a two-ring catenane, chemists have achieved, at most, a mere 130 interwoven rings in quantities too small to see without an electron microscope.The new type of catenane, produced in the laboratory of Omar Yaghi, UC Berkeley professor of chemistry, can be produced with an unlimited number of linked units in three dimensions. Because the individual units interlock mechanically and are not connected by chemical bonds, the structures can be flexed without breaking.“We think that this has really important implications, not just in terms of making tough materials that don’t fracture, but also materials that would go into robotics and aerospace and armored suits and things like this,” said Yaghi, the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry, co-director of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute and the California Research Alliance by BASF, and chief scientist at UC Berkeley’s Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet.Yaghi and his colleagues, including first author Tianqiong Ma, a UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow, reported details of the chemical process this week in the journal Nature Synthesis.CONT'D....For the full story: https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/01/18/new-chain-mail-material-of-interlocking-molecules-is-tough-flexible-and-easy-to-make/http://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Meet Yogananda Pittman, UC Berkeleys next chief of police UC Berkeley 2022-12-05 | Meet Yogananda Pittman, UC Berkeley's next chief of police. To learn more about Pittman, visit news.berkeley.edu.For full story, visit: news.berkeley.eduUC Berkeley video by Alan Tothhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Massive field test showing how AI smooths traffic flow UC Berkeley 2022-11-23 | Researchers deployed a fleet of 100 semi-autonomous vehicles to test whether a new AI-powered cruise control system can help smooth the flow of traffic and improve fuel economy. Many traffic jams are caused by human behavior: a slight tap on the brakes can ripple through a line of cars, triggering a slowdown — or complete gridlock — for no apparent reason. But in a massive traffic experiment that occurred outside of Nashville last week, scientists tested whether introducing just a few AI-equipped vehicles to the road can help ease these “phantom” jams and reduce fuel consumption for everyone. The answer seems to be yes.Over the course of five days, researchers conducted one of the largest traffic experiments of its kind in the world, deploying a fleet of 100 Nissan Rogue, Toyota RAV4 and Cadillac XT5 vehicles onto a busy stretch of Nashville’s I-24 during the morning commute. Each vehicle was equipped with an AI-powered cruise control system designed to automatically adjust the speed of the vehicle to improve the overall flow of traffic — essentially turning each car into its own “robot traffic manager.” “Driving is very intuitive. If there’s a gap in front of you, you accelerate. If someone brakes, you slow down. But it turns out that this very normal reaction can lead to stop-and-go traffic and energy inefficiency,” said Alexandre Bayen, associate provost and Liao-Cho Professor of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. “That’s precisely what AI technology is able to fix — it can direct the vehicle to things that are not intuitive to humans, but are overall more efficient.”Bayen is principal investigator of the CIRCLES Consortium, a multi-university research collaboration dedicated to using machine learning to improve traffic flow and increase energy efficiency. Last week’s experiment, which was carried out in coordination with Nissan North America, Toyota, General Motors and the Tennessee Department of Transportation, was the first time the AI technology pioneered by CIRCLES has been tested at this scale. “By conducting the experiment at this large of a scale, we hope to show that our results can be reproduced at the societal level,” said CIRCLES co-PI Maria Laura Delle Monache, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley. “Even when only a few vehicles behave differently, the overall system can be impacted, making it better for everyone on the road and not only for those with AI-equipped vehicles.”CONT'DFor full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/11/22/massive-traffic-experiment-pits-machine-learning-against-phantom-jams/Video by Roxanne Makasdjian, Alan Toth, and CIRCLES ConsortiumMusic: Dyalla - Organic Guitar House, youtube.com/watch?v=09Uw_OaLsX0http://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
OUTCRY: Berkeley students join scream session UC Berkeley 2022-11-02 | For full story, visit: news.berkeley.eduVideo by Clare Major, Alan Toth, Roxanne Makasdjianhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Reducing toxic levels of arsenic in drinking water UC Berkeley 2022-09-21 | UC Berkeley engineers have created a simple and low-cost new arsenic treatment system tohelp low-income communities access safer water.In many areas throughout California, the groundwater is tainted with dangerous levels of arsenic, a highly carcinogenic element that can seep into the water table from deposits in the soil and bedrock. While cities and larger municipalities can afford to remove arsenic from their water, many people living in small and rural communities are forced to choose between drinking contaminated tap water or purchasing bottled water — and those with private wells may not even know that their water is unsafe. In collaboration with Rev. Dennis Hutson, Kayode Kadara, and other Allensworth, CA community leaders, engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, are currently field testing a simple and low-cost new arsenic treatment system that is designed to help small, rural communities like Allensworth access arsenic-safe drinking water.Since early June, the system — housed within a small grey shed on Hutson’s farm — has beendrawing groundwater from Hutson’s agricultural well and reducing its arsenic levels from anextremely toxic 250 ppb to well below the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) limit of 10ppb. If the field test continues to be successful, the team hopes to obtain the funding to launch apilot plant in the Central Valley...“An estimated 300,000 people in California are exposed to arsenic concentrations higher than 10 ppb in their drinking water,” said research team leader Ashok Gadgil, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley and senior faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “For the first time, we’ll be treating groundwater with high levels of arsenic at a price local people can afford and in a way that they can operate.”...(Cont'd)For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/09/21/bringing-arsenic-safe-drinking-water-to-rural-california/Video by Roxanne Makasdjian, Alan Toth, Adam Lauhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Arsenic removal facility demonstration UC Berkeley 2022-09-21 | UC Berkeley engineers have created a simple and low-cost new arsenic treatment system tohelp low-income communities access safer water.In many areas throughout California, the groundwater is tainted with dangerous levels of arsenic, a highly carcinogenic element that can seep into the water table from deposits in the soil and bedrock. While cities and larger municipalities can afford to remove arsenic from their water, many people living in small and rural communities are forced to choose between drinking contaminated tap water or purchasing bottled water — and those with private wells may not even know that their water is unsafe. In collaboration with Rev. Dennis Hutson, Kayode Kadara, and other Allensworth, CA community leaders, engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, are currently field testing a simple and low-cost new arsenic treatment system that is designed to help small, rural communities like Allensworth access arsenic-safe drinking water.Since early June, the system — housed within a small grey shed on Hutson’s farm — has beendrawing groundwater from Hutson’s agricultural well and reducing its arsenic levels from anextremely toxic 250 ppb to well below the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) limit of 10ppb. If the field test continues to be successful, the team hopes to obtain the funding to launch apilot plant in the Central Valley. (Cont'd)For full story, visit: news.berkeley.eduFor full story, visit: news.berkeley.eduVideo by Roxanne Makasdjian, Alan Toth, Adam Lauhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
And... we have take off! Cals falcon chicks take first flight UC Berkeley 2022-06-19 | Two siblings sired by the late Grinnell and nurtured by their mom, Annie, and her new beau, Alden, successfully took their first flights on Saturday, June 18, 2022 from UC Berkeley's Sather Tower (the Campanile) about six weeks after they hatched. The female, Lindsay, took wing around 6 a.m., while her brother, Grinnell Jr., lagged behind by about 12 hours. For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/06/18/fledged-falcon-chicks-take-to-the-skies/For more information about the new falcons born and raised on the Campanile at UC Berkeley, check out the most recent story about them: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/05/09/its-two-falcon-babies-for-uc-berkeleys-annie-and-her-new-mate-alden/UC Berkeley video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Alan Toth. Additional photography courtesy of Bridget Ahern & Mary Malechttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Berkeley scientists find a way to see invisible black holes UC Berkeley 2022-06-10 | Astronomers at UC Berkeleymay have discovered the first free-floating black hole in the Milky Way galaxy, thanks to a technique called gravitational microlensing. Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Alan Toth, with microlensing animations from Casey Lam and Sean Terry of UC Berkeley’s Moving Universe Lab. Microlensing image data courtesy the OGLE collaboration. Additional images courtesy the National Science Foundation and NASA.Read full story: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/06/10/astronomers-may-have-detected-a-dark-free-floating-black-hole/________________Berkeley — If, as astronomers believe, the death of large stars leave behind black holes, there should be hundreds of millions of them scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy. The problem is, isolated black holes are invisible.Now, a team led by University of California, Berkeley, astronomers has for the first time discovered what may be a free-floating black hole by observing the brightening of a more distant star as its light was distorted by the object's strong gravitational field — so-called gravitational microlensing.The team, led by graduate student Casey Lam and Jessica Lu, a UC Berkeley associate professor of astronomy, estimates that the mass of the invisible compact object is between 1.6 and 4.4 times that of the sun. Because astronomers think that the leftover remnant of a dead star must be heavier than 2.2 solar masses in order to collapse to a black hole, the UC Berkeley researchers caution that the object could be a neutron star instead of a black hole. Neutron stars are also dense, highly compact objects, but their gravity is balanced by internal neutron pressure, which prevents further collapse to a black hole.Whether a black hole or a neutron star, the object is the first dark stellar remnant — a stellar “ghost” — discovered wandering through the galaxy unpaired with another star."This is the first free-floating black hole or neutron star discovered with gravitational microlensing," Lu said. "With microlensing, we're able to probe these lonely, compact objects and weigh them. I think we have opened a new window onto these dark objects, which can’t be seen any other way."CONT'D @ https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/06/10/astronomers-may-have-detected-a-dark-free-floating-black-hole/http://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Hidden Civil War memoir found in Berkeleys Herbarium UC Berkeley 2022-06-06 | A chance discovery on her first day at the University and Jepson Herbaria in 2005 changed Kelly Agnew’s life, leading her down a rabbit hole of Civil War battles and prison camps, gold rush settlements, the exploits and foibles of California’s earliest botanists, the founding of the Sierra Club and ultimately the establishment at UC Berkeley of the largest plant collection at any public university in the world.An evolutionary biologist and lecturer in the Department of Integrative Biology, Agnew packs all of this into a 550-page biography she wrote with her father, Brad Agnew, a retired professor of American history at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.John Gill Lemmon: Andersonville survivor and California botanist, details the life of Lemmon and his wife Sara, who collected and described plants around California, the Western U.S. and Mexico in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that included a flower common in high altitude meadows, Lemmon’s paintbrush (Castilleja lemmonii). Many of the couple’s curated specimens, as well as John’s photographs and Sara’s wildflower and conifer cone paintings, were among the earliest of the herbaria’s collections. ...CONT'DFor full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/05/26/buried-in-archives-civil-war-diary-inspires-biography-of-pioneering-botanist/Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Alan Tothhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Fun during Berkeleys zero gravity 3D printing experiment UC Berkeley 2022-05-23 | For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/05/20/berkeley-students-flip-float-and-experiment-on-zero-gravity-flight/Video by Paul Gramaglia/Zero-Ghttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Skydiving salamanders! UC Berkeley 2022-05-18 | Research from UC Berkeley and University of South Florida: High-speed video reveals a big difference in how salamanders react to falling. While ground-dwelling (nonarboreal) salamanders seem helpless during freefall in a vertical wind tunnel, arboreal salamanders maneuver confidently. This suggests that the tree-dwellers have adapted to routine falls, and perhaps use falling as a way to quickly move around in the canopies of the world’s tallest trees. The white spots are paper disks attached with water in order to track the motion of the head, body and tail.For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/05/23/skydiving-salamanders-live-in-worlds-tallest-trees/Video courtesy Christian Brown; edited by Roxanne Makasdjianhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Can Berkeley go geothermal? UC Berkeley 2022-03-30 | UC Berkeley, March 30, 2022 – Early this past Monday morning, a small team of University of California, Berkeley, engineers gathered around a two-story-tall drilling rig parked at an out-of-the-way spot on the north side of campus. As the overnight rain turned to drizzle, the team watched as a drilling crew used a massive 8-inch-wide drill bit to start punching a new borehole in the soil.By the end of the week, this borehole will extend 400 feet below ground, becoming the deepest borehole on campus and providing engineers with the first opportunity to study the properties of the bedrock that sits below UC Berkeley. They will use the information that they gather from the borehole to help determine whether a geothermal heat pump system — which uses the thermal properties of subsurface rock to help heat and cool buildings more efficiently — could be integrated into UC Berkeley’s long-term plans for decarbonizing its energy system.“Nobody has ever drilled this deep beneath the campus,” said Kenichi Soga, the Chancellor’s Professor and Donald H. McLaughlin Chair in Mineral Engineering at UC Berkeley. “Most of the boreholes that we have on campus are used for designing new buildings and typically only go down to 60 or 80 feet. Now, we’re going to 400 feet. It’s going to let us see what is happening at that depth and better understand the possibility of using geothermal heat pumps on campus.”Unlike deep geothermal energy systems, which use boreholes as deep as 10,000 feet or more to harvest heat from Earth’s core, geothermal heat pump systems use the thermal properties of the near underground. In these systems, the heating and cooling needs for a community are provided by a network of water pipes, which run through shallow boreholes that extend approximately 400 to 500 feet below the surface. Ideally, these systems take heat that is generated by cooling buildings during the summer and store it underground, where it can be used to heat buildings during the winter.As part of the Clean Energy Campus Initiative, UC Berkeley plans to decommission its 40-year-old cogeneration plant and replace its current steam heating system with a new system that uses water pipes to heat and cool buildings on campus. While the cogeneration plant burns natural gas to produce electricity and steam heat for the campus, the new system will use electricity for both power and thermal needs. By using clean energy sources, such as wind and solar, to produce this electricity, the campus’s future power, heating and cooling needs would be entirely carbon-free.The borehole will provide the research team with the first detailed measurements of the geological conditions hundreds of feet below the campus, a necessary first step in determining whether geothermal technologies can be used to make this heating and cooling system even more energy efficient. The primary support for this initial borehole was provided by The Green Initiative Fund, a grant program funded by UC Berkeley student fees and administered by a student-majority committee.“We need to replace this cogeneration plant because its useful life is almost over, and we want to pivot and build something for the future,” said Kira Stoll, chief sustainability and carbon solutions officer at UC Berkeley. “Our goal is to have the campus transition to using 100% clean energy to heat and cool our buildings by 2028. I’m looking forward to finding whether we do have geothermal potential on the campus and whether we can integrate that into our plans to make a very efficient clean energy system.”Many of the devices that we use to keep things cool rely on heat pumps, which work by redistributing heat energy from one location to another. For example, air conditioning systems work by transferring heat energy from the inside of a building to the outside of a building.Because rock and soil have a much larger heat capacity than air — they can absorb and store more heat energy without letting it diffuse away — the ground underneath our feet can essentially act as a storage tank for heat. Geothermal heat pumps, also known as ground source heat pumps, are designed to pump excess heat underground into boreholes, where it can be stored.“If you pump heat outside into the air, it will quickly dissipate, whereas if you heat or cool down a large amount of rock, then it will stay hot or cold for a much longer period of time, and you can potentially get the hot or cold back,” said Peter Nico, soil and environmental biogeochemist and acting division director for the Energy Geosciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).CONT'D....For full article by Kara Manke, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/03/30/uc-berkeley-drills-400-foot-borehole-to-explore-geothermal-heating-on-campus/Video by Roxanne Makasdjian, Alan Toth, Adam Lauhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Andrew Schwartz: Life at Berkeleys Snow Lab UC Berkeley 2022-03-29 | Andrew Schwartz lives and works at UC Berkeley's Snow Lab, high up on Donner Pass in California's Sierra mountains. In this video, he gives a taste of his new life there.For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/03/21/with-climate-change-berkeley-snow-labs-mission-remains-critical/Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Jason Blalockhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Berkeley Snow Labs critical climate change mission UC Berkeley 2022-03-21 | For someone who admits to "childlike excitement" at the prospect of a snowstorm, Andrew Schwartz has the perfect job. He's the new manager of the University of California, Berkeley's Central Sierra Snow Laboratory (CSSL), the only continuously manned snow research outpost in the Western U.S. CONT'D:For full story, visit: news.berkeley.eduVideo by Roxanne Makasdjian and Jason Blalockhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Electrical signals of a beating heart UC Berkeley 2022-02-23 | UC Berkeley researchers have invented a a sensor to detect the electrical signals produced by a beating heart.For full story, visit: news.berkeley.eduhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Stars aligned: An atlas of binary stars UC Berkeley 2022-02-23 | The latest star data from the Gaia space observatory has for the first time allowed astronomers to generate a massive 3D atlas of widely separated binary stars within about 3,000 light years of Earth — 1.3 million of them.The one-of-a-kind atlas, created by Kareem El-Badry, an astrophysics Ph.D. student from the University of California, Berkeley, should be a boon for those who study binary stars — which make up at least half of all sunlike stars — and white dwarfs, exoplanets and stellar evolution, in general. Before Gaia, the last compilation of nearby binary stars, assembled using data from the now-defunct Hipparcos satellite, included about 200 likely pairs.For full story, visit: news.berkeley.eduhttps://news.berkeley.edu/2021/02/22/binary-stars-are-all-around-us-new-map-of-solar-neighborhood-shows/Video animation: Jackie Faherity, AMNH, and data by Kareem El-BadryEdited by Roxanne Makasdjianmusic: Glacier by Patrick Patrikioshttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Berkeleys forestry research on preventing extreme wildfires UC Berkeley 2022-02-01 | For more than 50 years, UC Berkeley forestry researchers have used Blodgett Forest Research Station as a living laboratory to study how different land management treatments — including prescribed burning, restoration thinning and timber harvesting — can reduce the risk of severe wildfire and improve a forest’s resilience to the impacts of climate change. For full story, visit: news.berkeley.eduVideo by Roxanne Makasdjian and Jason Blalockhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
These sunbirds keep singin their song UC Berkeley 2022-01-12 | Sky-island populations of East African double-collared sunbirds have been isolated from one another for hundreds of thousands if not a million years, but still look very similar. While almost indistinguishable in plumage, however, some of these bird lineages have altered their songs a lot while others have not — their songs differ little from the songs of related populations they’ve not encountered for millennia. A new study by biologists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Missouri State University in Springfield, however, documents songs in East African sunbirds that have remained nearly unchanged for more than 500,000 years, and perhaps for as long as 1 million years, making the songs nearly indistinguishable from those of relatives from which they’ve long been separated.The amazingly static nature of their songs may be due to a lack of change in these birds’ environments, which are stable mountain forests — so-called sky islands — isolated from other sky island populations of the same or similar species for tens of thousands to millions of years. The coloration of the birds’ feathers has changed little, as well, making their plumage nearly indistinguishable from each other, even though some are separate, but closely related, species.“If you isolate humans, their dialects quite often change; you can tell after a while where somebody comes from. And song has been interpreted in that same way,” said senior author Rauri Bowie, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology and a curator in the campus’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. “What our paper shows is that it’s not necessarily the case for birds. Even in traits that should be very labile, such as song or plumage, you can have long periods of stasis.” CONT'D...For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/01/12/some-birds-sing-the-same-song-for-hundreds-of-thousands-of-years/Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Alan TothAudio courtesy Jay McEnteeSunbird video clip, 00-:22, courtesy Oliver Fowler Thanks to Macaulay Library, Cornell Universityhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Bakar Bioenginuity Hub tour UC Berkeley 2021-12-21 | Videography: Jenny ChuEditing: Alan TothFor full story, visit: news.berkeley.eduhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Berkeleys Lilia Xie named LOréal Women in Science Fellow UC Berkeley 2021-11-16 | Nov. 15, 2021 - L'Oréal USA announced the recipients of its 2021 For Women in Science (FWIS) Fellowship, an annual program that awards five female postdoctoral scientists $60,000 grants to advance their research. This year’s Fellows unclude Lilia Xie, whose research in materials chemistry at the University of California Berkeley focuses on creating new materials at the atomic level to support the next-generation technologies by processing and storing information more efficiently.loreal.com/en/usa/news/commitments/lusa-announces-2021-for-women-in-science-fellowshttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
The 200 year rockfish lifespan UC Berkeley 2021-11-08 | Video courtesy Peter Sudmant http://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Wellness Check for Tilden Park Turtles UC Berkeley 2021-11-04 | Tilden Park’s Jewel Lake is home to a community of Western pond turtles, a species that is struggling to survive the combined threats of climate change, habitat loss and competition from red-eared slider turtles. Former UC Berkeley postdoctoral scholar Max Lambert is part of a team of wildlife experts who spent much of the pandemic checking in on the health of the Bay Area’s Western pond turtles, including those at Jewel Lake.For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/11/04/a-wellness-check-for-tilden-parks-turtles/Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Jeremy Snowdenhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Ron Cohen on BEACO2N Climate Change Sensors UC Berkeley 2021-11-04 | Prof. Ron Cohen is participating in the 2021 Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland. He leads UC Berkeley's BEACO2N, a new strategy for understanding green house gases (GHGs) and air quality at street level. He proposes that cities all over the world use it to help meet their climate goals.http://beacon.berkeley.edu/about/Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Alan Tothhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Students build air purifiers for wildfire smoke victims UC Berkeley 2021-10-28 | The DIY air purifier is the latest project of the Common Humanity Collective, a Bay Area mutual aid organization which was launched in March 2020, near the start of the COVID-19 crisis, by UC Berkeley graduate student Abrar Abidi and campus research assistant Yvonne Hao to help make life safer for those most at risk in the pandemic.This fall, as wildfire season continues, nearly 70 volunteers show up every other Saturday at an Emeryville parking lot on Doyle Street to attach MERV-13 filters to basic 20-by-20-inch, three-speed box fans with PVC foam weather stripping, hot glue and large, elastic silicone bands. So far, the collective has given 970 air purifiers to local low-income residents whose neighborhoods have both high air quality index (AQI) readings and high asthma rates.“More than anything we’ve done in the past, the DIY purifier project has blown us away,” said Abidi, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in molecular and cell biology. “We’ve been doing this every other week since July. There’s just so much momentum. People show up, get to know each other, self-organize into different stations, and joyfully assemble between 120 and 200 purifiers in a few hours. It’s astonishing to see, and it unfolds so organically.” CONT'D...For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/10/28/as-wildfire-season-advances-so-does-major-diy-air-purifier-effort/Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Alan TothVolunteer air purifier building event courtesy Common Humanity CollectiveWildfire footage courtesy CAL FIREhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
The First Day in a Nobel Life: David Card UC Berkeley 2021-10-12 | David Card, a labor economist and professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, has won the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.(Note: At 1:42 in the video, the correct spelling of the student interviewed is: is Arlen Guarin Galeano.)Prof. Card won the Nobel Prize for work that challenged orthodoxy and dramatically shifted understanding of inequality and the social and economic forces that impact low-wage workers. He was awarded half the prize, with the other half shared by economists Joshua Angrist of MIT and Guido Imbens of Stanford University.Card is best known for pioneering studies in the 1990s that remain acutely relevant today, as they questioned the prevailing assumptions about the impact of immigration on native-born U.S. workers and the effect of minimum wage increases on domestic job growth.Card, 65, a native of Ontario, Canada, is UC Berkeley’s sixth economist to win the Nobel Prize in economics and the campus’s 26th Nobel laureate overall. His predecessors are Oliver Williamson, (2009), George Akerlof (2001), Daniel McFadden (2000), John Harsanyi (1994) and Gérard Debreu (1983). Imbens, one of Card’s two co-winners, was a member of UC Berkeley’s faculty from 2002 to 2006, as a professor of economics and of agricultural and resource economics, before he left for Harvard University and then Stanford.Announcing the award today in Stockholm, Sweden, the Economic Sciences Prize Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences credited Card for his impact on policy debates over immigration, welfare reform and inequality.Card’s work “helped to answer important questions for society,” said Peter Fredriksson, chair of the committee at a news conference in Sweden. Card’s work, he added, “challenged conventional wisdom, which led to new studies and additional insights.”Taken together, the work by the three economists “revolutionized empirical work” in economics, the committee said.Card learned of the award early Monday morning at his family’s home in Santa Rosa — and thought it was a practical joke being played by mischievous colleagues. He had just arrived after a day of travel from a family event near, Guelph, Ontario, in Canada. The initial call from the Nobel committee came to his family’s home in Berkeley, and a voice message was forwarded to Santa Rosa.“The message said the call was coming from Sweden,” he said just after winning the award. “I have a couple of friends who would pull a stunt like that.”He welcomed the news with a self-effacing assessment of his work and its impact.My contributions are pretty modest,” he said. “It’s about trying to get more scientific tie-in and evidence-based analysis in economics.“Most old-fashioned economists are very theoretical, but these days, a large fraction of economics is really very nuts-and-bolts, looking at subjects like education or health, or at the effects of immigration or the effects of wage policies. These are really very, very simple things. So, my big contribution was to oversimplify the field.”And in the process to make it more useful in application?“Well, that was my belief, but you would probably get a mixed vote on that.”This is the second year in a row for UC Berkeley faculty to win a Nobel Prize. Last year, Jennifer Doudna was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and Richard Genzel won the Nobel Prize in Physics.UC Berkeley’s Class of 1950 Professor of Economics, Card has co-authored and edited several books and more than 100 journal articles and book chapters. He directs UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Economics, the campus’s Econometrics Laboratory and previously served as director of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Labor Studies Program.In 1995, Card received the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded annually to an American economist under 40 who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. It is widely viewed as a precursor to a Nobel Prize.He currently serves as president of the American Economic Association.Starting in the early 1990s, Card teamed up with Princeton University economist Alan Krueger on path-breaking research on the minimum wage. Krueger eventually chaired President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers before his death in 2019. Writing on the minimum wage, they posed a challenge to the economic orthodoxy that had prevailed for decades.In a 1993 paper, they found that a 1992 minimum wage increase in New Jersey did not hurt — and may have actually boosted — job growth at fast-food restaurants that were the focus of his study.Cont'd...For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/10/11/uc-berkeleys-david-card-wins-2021-nobel-prize-in-economics/Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Alan Tothhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Students Applaud Prof. Card for Nobel Win UC Berkeley 2021-10-11 | UC Berkeley students visited Prof. David Card to congratulate him on the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics. * NOTE: The correct name of the student at :54 sec. is Arlen Guarin Galeano.David Card, a labor economist and professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, has won the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for work that challenged orthodoxy and dramatically shifted understanding of inequality and the social and economic forces that impact low-wage workers. He was awarded half the prize, with the other half shared by economists Joshua Angrist of MIT and Guido Imbens of Stanford University.Card is best known for pioneering studies in the 1990s that remain acutely relevant today, as they questioned the prevailing assumptions about the impact of immigration on native-born U.S. workers and the effect of minimum wage increases on domestic job growth.Card, 65, a native of Ontario, Canada, is UC Berkeley’s sixth economist to win the Nobel Prize in economics and the campus’s 26th Nobel laureate overall. His predecessors are Oliver Williamson, (2009), George Akerlof (2001), Daniel McFadden (2000), John Harsanyi (1994) and Gérard Debreu (1983). Imbens, one of Card’s two co-winners, was a member of UC Berkeley’s faculty from 2002 to 2006, as a professor of economics and of agricultural and resource economics, before he left for Harvard University and then Stanford.Announcing the award today in Stockholm, Sweden, the Economic Sciences Prize Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences credited Card for his impact on policy debates over immigration, welfare reform and inequality.Card’s work “helped to answer important questions for society,” said Peter Fredriksson, chair of the committee at a news conference in Sweden. Card’s work, he added, “challenged conventional wisdom, which led to new studies and additional insights.”Taken together, the work by the three economists “revolutionized empirical work” in economics, the committee said.Card learned of the award early Monday morning at his family’s home in Santa Rosa — and thought it was a practical joke being played by mischievous colleagues. He had just arrived after a day of travel from a family event near, Guelph, Ontario, in Canada. The initial call from the Nobel committee came to his family’s home in Berkeley, and a voice message was forwarded to Santa Rosa.“The message said the call was coming from Sweden,” he said just after winning the award. “I have a couple of friends who would pull a stunt like that.”He welcomed the news with a self-effacing assessment of his work and its impact.“My contributions are pretty modest,” he said. “It’s about trying to get more scientific tie-in and evidence-based analysis in economics.“Most old-fashioned economists are very theoretical, but these days, a large fraction of economics is really very nuts-and-bolts, looking at subjects like education or health, or at the effects of immigration or the effects of wage policies. These are really very, very simple things. So, my big contribution was to oversimplify the field.”And in the process to make it more useful in application?“Well, that was my belief, but you would probably get a mixed vote on that.”Cont'd...For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/10/11/uc-berkeleys-david-card-wins-2021-nobel-prize-in-economics/Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Alan Tothhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Im just an ordinary guy: 2021 Nobelist David Card UC Berkeley 2021-10-11 | David Card, a labor economist and professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, has won the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for work that challenged orthodoxy and dramatically shifted understanding of inequality and the social and economic forces that impact low-wage workers. He was awarded half the prize, with the other half shared by economists Joshua Angrist of MIT and Guido Imbens of Stanford University.Card is best known for pioneering studies in the 1990s that remain acutely relevant today, as they questioned the prevailing assumptions about the impact of immigration on native-born U.S. workers and the effect of minimum wage increases on domestic job growth.Card, 65, a native of Ontario, Canada, is UC Berkeley’s sixth economist to win the Nobel Prize in economics and the campus’s 26th Nobel laureate overall. His predecessors are Oliver Williamson, (2009), George Akerlof (2001), Daniel McFadden (2000), John Harsanyi (1994) and Gérard Debreu (1983). Imbens, one of Card’s two co-winners, was a member of UC Berkeley’s faculty from 2002 to 2006, as a professor of economics and of agricultural and resource economics, before he left for Harvard University and then Stanford.Announcing the award today in Stockholm, Sweden, the Economic Sciences Prize Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences credited Card for his impact on policy debates over immigration, welfare reform and inequality.Card’s work “helped to answer important questions for society,” said Peter Fredriksson, chair of the committee at a news conference in Sweden. Card’s work, he added, “challenged conventional wisdom, which led to new studies and additional insights.”Taken together, the work by the three economists “revolutionized empirical work” in economics, the committee said. (Cont'd...)For full story: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/10/11/uc-berkeleys-david-card-wins-2021-nobel-prize-in-economics/Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Alan Tothhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Berkeley #InThisGen UC Berkeley 2021-09-24 | At Berkeley, we're looking ahead and asking ourselves a simple question: what can we change in a single generation? We’re imagining a future where the projects we’re working on today have become real, changed lives and changed the world.From health to water, food systems to climate, energy to economic equality – our researchers are working to radically improve life for everyone. Explore our journey at http://www.berkeley.edu/InThisGen.http://www.news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficialplus.google.com/+berkeley
Truly biodegradable plastic UC Berkeley 2021-08-31 | Berkeley researchers make their more "truly" biodegradable plastic.https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/08/31/video-how-to-make-plastic-truly-biodegradable/Also see how the whole process is done: youtu.be/3RXcipJsU-QThe world produces more than 380 million tons of plastic every year, and by some reports, more than a third of that is for products used once and then tossed away, ending up as litter or landfill. Some 10 million tons of this plastic end up in the oceans each year, littering beaches and killing sea life.UC Berkeley’s Ting Xu and her students have come up with one solution for the global problem of single-use plastics: embed enzymes in the plastic, so that once the bag or cup is no longer wanted, it will self-destruct with a little heat and water.In a study published this spring, they showed that this method could make some plastics — the polylactic acid and polycaprolactone plastics used in many so-called compostable plastic bags — dissolve within days. This occurs without producing microplastics; instead, the plastic is broken down into its chemical constituents, which feed the microbes in the soil.Biodegradable plastics have been advertised as one solution to the plastic pollution problem bedeviling the world, but today’s “compostable” plastic bags, utensils and cup lids don’t break down during typical composting and contaminate other recyclable plastics, creating headaches for recyclers. Most compostable plastics, made primarily of the polyester known as polylactic acid, or PLA, end up in landfills and last as long as forever plastics.University of California, Berkeley, scientists have now invented a way to make these compostable plastics break down more easily, with just heat and water, within a few weeks, solving a problem that has flummoxed the plastics industry and environmentalists.“People are now prepared to move into biodegradable polymers for single-use plastics, but if it turns out that it creates more problems than it’s worth, then the policy might revert back,” said Ting Xu, UC Berkeley professor of materials science and engineering and of chemistry. “We are basically saying that we are on the right track. We can solve this continuing problem of single-use plastics not being biodegradable.”Xu is the senior author of a paper describing the process that will appear in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.The new technology should theoretically be applicable to other types of polyester plastics, perhaps allowing the creation of compostable plastic containers, which currently are made of polyethylene, a type of polyolefin that does not degrade. Xu thinks that polyolefin plastics are best turned into higher value products, not compost, and is working on ways to transform recycled polyolefin plastics for reuse. The new process involves embedding polyester-eating enzymes in the plastic as it’s made. These enzymes are protected by a simple polymer wrapping that prevents the enzyme from untangling and becoming useless. When exposed to heat and water, the enzyme shrugs off its polymer shroud and starts chomping the plastic polymer into its building blocks — in the case of PLA, reducing it to lactic acid, which can feed the soil microbes in compost. The polymer wrapping also degrades.The process eliminates microplastics, a byproduct of many chemical degradation processes and a pollutant in its own right. Up to 98% of the plastic made using Xu’s technique degrades into small molecules.One of the study’s co-authors, former UC Berkeley doctoral student Aaron Hall, has spun off a company to further develop these biodegradable plastics.Plastics are designed not to break down during normal use, but that also means they don’t break down after they’re discarded. The most durable plastics have an almost crystal-like molecular structure, with polymer fibers aligned so tightly that water can’t penetrate them, let alone microbes that might chew up the polymers, which are organic molecules.Xu’s idea was to embed nanoscale polymer-eating enzymes directly in a plastic or other material in a way that sequesters and protects them until the right conditions unleash them... ... Her key innovation was a way to protect the enzyme from falling apart, which proteins typically do outside of their normal environment, such as a living cell. She designed molecules she called random heteropolymers, or RHPs, that wrap around the enzyme and gently hold it together without restricting its natural flexibility. CONT'D...For full story, visit these two Berkeley News webpages: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/08/31/video-how-to-make-plastic-truly-biodegradable/https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/04/21/new-process-makes-biodegradable-plastics-truly-compostable/.Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Jeremy Snowdenhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
How we make it: Better biodegradable plastic UC Berkeley 2021-08-31 | Here's how Berkeley researchers make their more "truly" biodegradable plastic.Also see the accompanying video: youtu.be/WxpsHlR_izQBiodegradable plastics have been advertised as one solution to the plastic pollution problem bedeviling the world, but today’s “compostable” plastic bags, utensils and cup lids don’t break down during typical composting and contaminate other recyclable plastics, creating headaches for recyclers. Most compostable plastics, made primarily of the polyester known as polylactic acid, or PLA, end up in landfills and last as long as forever plastics.University of California, Berkeley, scientists have now invented a way to make these compostable plastics break down more easily, with just heat and water, within a few weeks, solving a problem that has flummoxed the plastics industry and environmentalists.“People are now prepared to move into biodegradable polymers for single-use plastics, but if it turns out that it creates more problems than it’s worth, then the policy might revert back,” said Ting Xu, UC Berkeley professor of materials science and engineering and of chemistry. “We are basically saying that we are on the right track. We can solve this continuing problem of single-use plastics not being biodegradable.”Xu is the senior author of a paper describing the process that will appear in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.The new technology should theoretically be applicable to other types of polyester plastics, perhaps allowing the creation of compostable plastic containers, which currently are made of polyethylene, a type of polyolefin that does not degrade. Xu thinks that polyolefin plastics are best turned into higher value products, not compost, and is working on ways to transform recycled polyolefin plastics for reuse. The new process involves embedding polyester-eating enzymes in the plastic as it’s made. These enzymes are protected by a simple polymer wrapping that prevents the enzyme from untangling and becoming useless. When exposed to heat and water, the enzyme shrugs off its polymer shroud and starts chomping the plastic polymer into its building blocks — in the case of PLA, reducing it to lactic acid, which can feed the soil microbes in compost. The polymer wrapping also degrades.The process eliminates microplastics, a byproduct of many chemical degradation processes and a pollutant in its own right. Up to 98% of the plastic made using Xu’s technique degrades into small molecules.One of the study’s co-authors, former UC Berkeley doctoral student Aaron Hall, has spun off a company to further develop these biodegradable plastics.Plastics are designed not to break down during normal use, but that also means they don’t break down after they’re discarded. The most durable plastics have an almost crystal-like molecular structure, with polymer fibers aligned so tightly that water can’t penetrate them, let alone microbes that might chew up the polymers, which are organic molecules.Xu’s idea was to embed nanoscale polymer-eating enzymes directly in a plastic or other material in a way that sequesters and protects them until the right conditions unleash them. In 2018, she showed how this works in practice. She and her UC Berkeley team embedded in a fiber mat an enzyme that degrades toxic organophosphate chemicals, like those in insecticides and chemical warfare agents. When the mat was immersed in the chemical, the embedded enzyme broke down the organophosphate.Her key innovation was a way to protect the enzyme from falling apart, which proteins typically do outside of their normal environment, such as a living cell. She designed molecules she called random heteropolymers, or RHPs, that wrap around the enzyme and gently hold it together without restricting its natural flexibility. The RHPs are composed of four types of monomer subunits, each with chemical properties designed to interact with chemical groups on the surface of the specific enzyme. They degrade under ultraviolet light and are present at a concentration of less than 1% of the weight of the plastic — low enough not to be a problem.For the research reported in the Nature paper, Xu and her team used a similar technique, enshrouding the enzyme in RHPs and embedding billions of these nanoparticles throughout plastic resin beads that are the starting point for all plastic manufacturing. CONT'D...For full story, visit these two Berkeley News webpages: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/08/31/video-how-to-make-plastic-truly-biodegradable/https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/04/21/new-process-makes-biodegradable-plastics-truly-compostable/.Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Jeremy Snowdenhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Can squirrelly skills be built into robots? UC Berkeley 2021-08-06 | Squirrels leaping from wobbly perches across impossibly large gaps, parkouring off walls, scrambling to recover from tricky landings. Just another YouTube video documenting the crazy antics of squirrels hell-bent on reaching peanuts?No, these videos are part of a study to understand the split-second decisions squirrels make routinely as they race through the tree canopy, jumping from branch to branch, using skills honed to elude deadly predators.The payoff to understanding how squirrels learn the limits of their agility could be better robots with better control to nimbly move through varied landscapes, such as the rubble of a collapsed building in search of survivors. It could also lead to a better understanding of movement problems that come with age.Biologists like Robert Full at the University of California, Berkeley, have shown over the last few decades how animals like geckos, cockroaches and squirrels physically move and how their reflexes help them in sticky situations — all of which have been applied to making more agile robots — but now they are tackling a harder problem: How does an animal decide whether or not to take a leap? How do they assess their biomechanical abilities to know whether they can stick the landing?CONT'D at news.berkeley.eduVideo by Roxanne Makasdjian and Jeremy SnowdenResearch footage courtesy Professor Robert Fullhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
The big bite of the teenage T. rex UC Berkeley 2021-06-02 | UC Berkeley associate professor, Jack Tseng, explains his research on juvenile T. rexes and what the findings tell us about the lifestyle of the teenage tyrannosaur. Tseng loves bone-crunching animals — hyenas are his favorite — so when paleontologist Joseph Peterson discovered fossilized dinosaur bones that had teeth marks from a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex, Tseng decided to try to replicate the bite marks and measure how hard those kids could actually chomp down.Last year, he and Peterson made a metal replica of a scimitar-shaped tooth of a 13-year-old juvie T. rex, mounted it on a mechanical testing frame commonly used in engineering and materials science, and tried to crack a cow legbone with it.Based on 17 successful attempts to match the depth and shape of the bite marks on the fossils — he had to toss out some trials because the fresh bone slid around too much — he determined that a juvenile could have exerted up to 5,641 newtons of force, somewhere between the jaw forces exerted by a hyena and a crocodile.Compare that to the bite force of an adult T. rex — about 35,000 newtons — or to the puny biting power of humans: 300 newtons.Previous bite force estimates for juvenile T. rexes — based on reconstruction of the jaw muscles or from mathematically scaling down the bite force of adult T. rexes — were considerably less, about 4,000 newtons. CONT'D...For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/06/02/young-t-rexes-had-a-powerful-bite-even-if-only-one-sixth-that-of-their-parents/Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Jeremy SnowdenAdditional media courtesy of:Robert De Palma, Paleontologist (sketches) — 1:05 to 1:11, and 34 to 40 secsLive Science (digital art)— 52 secs to 1 minBrian Engh, Paleo Artist (sketches) — 1:01 to 1:04 and 1:11 to 1:17Eric Snively (Cal ’93), Associate Professor of Anatomy, Oklahoma State University (T. Rex models and X rays) — 1:18 to 1:21Joseph E. Peterson Ph.D., Associate Professor of Geology, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh (photos) — 1:50 to 1:56Raphtor, Creative Commons (digital art) — 2:25 to 2:34Chipp Kidd (background art) — 3:07 to 3:12http://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Berkeleys 2021 University Medalist: Leyla Kabuli UC Berkeley 2021-05-11 | If Leyla Kabuli, a gifted musician and tech whiz, sets the bar for winning the University of California, Berkeley’s highest honor for a graduating senior, future contenders for the University Medal may find themselves shooting for the moon. At 7, Kabuli began mastering the piano. At 10, she was accepted to the pre-college division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with a scholarship, where she studied piano, violin, bassoon and chamber music.In junior high, she played violin with the UC Davis Symphony. In high school, she played piano, harpsichord, celeste and organ with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra.And that’s before she got to UC Berkeley on a prestigious Regents’ and Chancellor’s scholarship and directed her laser focus to electrical engineering and computer sciences (EECS). By her senior year, she was fielding offers of full graduate fellowships from Berkeley, Stanford and MIT. She’s sticking with Berkeley for graduate school.“I might be biased, but Berkeley has the best electrical engineering program in the country,” says Kabuli, who was born in Berkeley and raised in Davis, California. She also credits the campus’s culture, diversity and grit for her decision to accept the Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Study, which provides financial support for five years. As top graduating senior, Kabuli, 21, a simultaneous degree student in EECS and music, with a perfect 4.0 GPA, will speak this Saturday, May 15, to thousands of her peers, in cap and gown, and most likely on Zoom.The 150-year-old University Medal recognizes a graduating student’s outstanding research, public service and strength of character, and comes with a cash prize. (CONT'D)https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/05/10/top-graduating-senior-a-tech-whiz-and-gifted-musician/Video by Berkeley New Video: Roxanne Makasdjian and Jeremy Snowdenhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Code Breaker: New book on Jennifer Doudna & Gene Editing UC Berkeley 2021-05-11 | For full story, visit: news.berkeley.eduVideo by Roxanne Makasdjian and Steve McNallyhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
UCSF, Berkeley, UCLA to launch sickle cell trial using CRISPR UC Berkeley 2021-03-30 | UC Consortium Launches First Clinical Trial Using CRISPR to Correct Gene Defect That Causes Sickle Cell DiseaseProject Uses Nobel-Prize-Winning Technology to Directly Correct Sickle Mutation in Blood Stem Cells, Addressing Underlying Cause of Debilitating DisorderIn this video, Dr. Mark Walters of UCSF talks about how those who suffer from sickle cell disease, could be helped by a new CRISPR gene therapy developed by scientists and physicians at UC Berkeley, UCSF and UCLA. Scientists at UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley and UCLA have received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to jointly launch an early phase, first-in-human clinical trial of a CRISPR gene correction therapy in patients with sickle cell disease using the patient’s own blood-forming stem cells.The trial will combine CRISPR technology developed at Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) – a joint UC Berkeley-UCSF initiative founded by Berkeley’s Nobel Prize-winning scientist Jennifer Doudna, PhD – with UCLA’s expertise in genetic analysis and cell manufacturing, and the decades-long expertise at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland in cord blood and marrow transplantation and in gene therapy for sickle cell disease. The 4-year study will include six adults and three adolescents with severe sickle cell disease. It is planned to begin this summer in Oakland and Los Angeles.The trial aims to directly correct the sickle mutation in blood stem cells that causes them to create deformed red blood cells, leading to the debilitating and painful disease, according to Mark Walters, MD, a professor of pediatrics at UCSF and principal investigator of the clinical trial and gene editing project. It will be the first time clinical researchers attempt to correct the faulty beta-globin gene in a patient's own cells with non-virally delivered CRISPR gene correction tools. Previously, researchers have used more costly and indirect approaches such as reactivating fetal hemoglobin or using viral vectors to suppress the gene that turns off the fetal globin production at birth.“This therapy has the potential to transform sickle cell disease care by producing an accessible, curative treatment that is safer than the current therapy of stem cell transplant from a healthy bone marrow donor,” said Walters, who is also the Jordan Family Director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. “If this is successfully applied in young patients, it has the potential to prevent irreversible complications of the disease.”Sickle cell disease is a genetic blood disorder that affects the structure and function of hemoglobin, reduces the ability of red blood cells to transport oxygen efficiently, and progresses to a chronic vascular disease that affects approximately 100,000 Americans and millions worldwide, with a disproportionate effect on the Black community.The disease is caused by a single-letter change, or mutation, in human DNA. This trial will use CRISPR genome editing to correct this mutation directly. The project team from UCSF, the IGI, and UCLA have developed CRISPR_SCD001, a patient-specific blood stem cell therapy that has been modified by a CRISPR-Cas9 nuclease to stimulate repair of the sickle mutation. In this approach, the patient’s blood stem cells will be extracted and sent to UCLA’s gene manufacturing lab to undergo a process known as electroporation, in which cells are exposed to electrical pulses that create temporary pores in their membranes. These pores allow the CRISPR-Cas9 platform to enter the blood stem cells and travel to the cells’ nuclei, where it corrects the sickle cell mutation before the cells are reintroduced to the patient.“The goal of this form of genome-editing therapy is to correct the mutation in enough stem cells so the resulting blood in circulation has corrected red blood cells,” Walters said. “Based on our experience with bone marrow transplants, we predict that correcting 20% of the genes should be sufficient to out-compete the native sickle cells and have a strong clinical benefit.”Electroporation combined with CRISPR is a virus-free method to edit blood stem cells, and has been validated in pre-clinical safety/toxicology studies performed after consultation with the FDA.Physician-scientist Donald Kohn, MD, has developed gene therapies for several genetic blood disorders, including a cure for a form of severe combined immunodeficiency. He will lead the laboratory and clinical trial activities at UCLA and oversee all manufacturing of the CRISPR_SCD001 drug product for the clinical trial. CONT'D: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/03/30/fda-approves-first-test-of-crispr-to-correct-genetic-defect-causing-sickle-cell-disease/(Video produced, edited by Roxanne Makasdjian, UC Berkeley; Dr. Walters videotaped by Stephen McNally, UC Berkeley; video of Evie Junior by Colin Weatherby, courtesy UCLA's Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research)
Waving Frog, aka Sachatamia orejuela UC Berkeley 2021-02-04 | Most frogs emit a characteristic croak to attract the attention of a potential mate.But a few frog species that call near loud streams—where the noise may obscure those cruciallove songs—add to their calls by visually showing off: with the flap of a hand, a wave of a foot,or a bop of the head. Frogs who “dance” near rushing streams have been documented in therainforests of India, Borneo Brazil, and now, Ecuador.Conservation ecologist Rebecca Brunner, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California,Berkeley, has discovered that the glass frog Sachatamia orejuela can be added to the list ofspecies that make use of visual cues in response to their acoustic environments. This is the firsttime a member of the glass frog family (Centrolenidae) has been observed using visualcommunication in this manner.“A handful of other frog species around the world use visual signaling, in addition to high-pitchedcalls, to communicate in really loud environments,” Brunner said. “What's interesting is thatthese species are not closely related to each other, which means that these behaviors likelyevolved independently, but in response to similar environments—a concept called convergentevolution.”Sachatamia orejuela glass frogs are native to the rainforests of Ecuador and Colombia. Theyare especially unique because they are almost exclusively found on rocks and boulders withinthe spray zones of waterfalls, where rushing water and slippery surfaces offer some protectionagainst predators, and their green-gray color and semi-transparent skin makes them nearlyimpossible to spot. As a result, little is known about this species’ mating and breeding behavior.CONT'D in the full story, at news.berkeley.eduThe research described here can be found in "Brunner & Guayasamin 2020, Behaviour" http://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Watch a neuron fire! UC Berkeley 2021-02-03 | March 19, 2020 - UC Berkeley research: High speed microscope captures fleeting brain signalsFor full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/03/19/high-speed-microscope-captures-fleeting-brain-signals/http://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Neuron fires UC Berkeley 2021-02-03 | March 19, 2020 - UC Berkeley research: High speed microscope captures fleeting brain signalsFor full story: https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/03/19/high-speed-microscope-captures-fleeting-brain-signals/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Berkeley removes name from Kroeber Hall UC Berkeley 2021-01-26 | For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/01/26/kroeber-hall-unnamed/Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Clare MajorJanuary 26, 2020 - UC Berkeley’s Kroeber Hall became the fourth building on campus to be stripped of its name in a year’s time. The decision by Berkeley officials capped a formal review process and was made, in large part, because the building’s namesake — Alfred Louis Kroeber, born in 1876 and the founder of the study of anthropology in the American West — is a powerful symbol that continues to evoke exclusion and erasure for Native Americans.A proposal to unname the hall was received in July 2020 by Chancellor Carol Christ’s Building Name Review Committee. The committee reached a unanimous vote last fall in support of removing the name, following an analysis of the proposal and a solicitation and review of comments from the campus community. Of the 595 responses received, 85% favored unnaming Kroeber Hall, home of the Department of Anthropology, Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Department of Art Practice and Worth Ryder Art Gallery.Christ supported the decision, then sought and received necessary approval from UC President Michael Drake.In her letter to Drake, Christ added that some of Kroeber’s views and writings “clearly stand in opposition to our university’s values of inclusion and our belief in promoting diversity and excellence.” She added that removing Kroeber’s name would “help Berkeley recognize a challenging part of our history, while better supporting the diversity of today’s academic community.”Among the key reasons highlighted in the proposal and in the review committee’s recommendation to Christ was that Kroeber collected or authorized the collection of the remains of Native American ancestors and curated a repository of them for study. While the research practice was not illegal then, the review committee wrote, “it was immoral and unethical, even for the time.”In 1911, Kroeber also took custody of a Native American man, a genocide survivor he named Ishi, and allowed him to live at the UC’s anthropology museum, where the proposal states that he ‘”performed’ as a living exhibit for museum visitors,” making Native crafts, such a stone tools. After dying of tuberculosis in 1916, his body was autopsied, against the wishes he’d expressed to Kroeber for cremation and burial without autopsy.Additionally, Kroeber’s pronouncement that the Ohlone people were culturally extinct contributed to the federal government not recognizing the Ohlone and “leading to the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe having no land and no political power,” according to the committee.Phenocia Bauerle, a member of the Apsáalooke tribe of Native Americans who is director of Native American student development at Berkeley and is on the campus’s Native American Advisory Council, said today’s announcement “may seem like just political correctness, just a gesture, but it is a big gesture, because, for so long, names like Kroeber were untouchable. He signified a particular version of history, and if Berkeley is willing to make room for other histories, different experiences, to be brought into the fold, this will allow societal change to happen.”Removing Kroeber’s name, added Ataya Cesspooch, a Berkeley Ph.D. student who is Northern Ute, Assiniboine and Lakota, is a “first step” that Berkeley must take to acknowledge that “influential scholars, such as Kroeber, participated in the dehumanization of Native Americans.”Boalt Hall, at Berkeley Law, had its name removed in January 2020, and last November, Barrows and LeConte halls also were unnamed on the same day. Like Kroeber Hall, each had a controversial namesake whose legacy clashes with Berkeley’s mission and values. Kroeber Hall will temporarily be called the Anthropology and Art Practice Building.Founder of anthropology in the WestAlfred Louis Kroeber, raised in New York City, attended Columbia University, earning a B.A. in 1896 and an M.A. in 1897, both in English literature. At Columbia, he also met anthropologist Franz Boas, in Boas’ seminar on American Indian languages, and “was so affected by the encounter that he went on to obtain his anthropology doctorate in 1901, the first supervised by Boas at Columbia,” wrote Ira Jacknis, a Berkeley research anthropologist at the Hearst museum and a leading historian on Kroeber’s work, in Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopedia.After getting his Ph.D., Kroeber moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where the University of California was initiating a department and museum of anthropology. He was hired and began teaching anthropology in 1901, when he was 25, became a full professor in 1919 and retired in 1946. (CONT'D: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/01/26/kroeber-hall-unnamed/)http://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
UC Berkeley gives its first COVID-19 vaccines UC Berkeley 2021-01-15 | UC Berkeley began its COVID vaccination program Thursday, January 14, 2020.For more information, visit: uhs.berkeley.edu/coronavirusVideo by Roxanne Makasdjian and Clare Majorhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
An armband to control prosthetic hands UC Berkeley 2020-12-21 | UC Berkeley researchers have created a new device that combines wearable biosensors with artificial intelligence software to help recognize what hand gesture a person intends to make based on electrical signal patterns in the forearm. The device paves the way for better prosthetic control and seamless interaction with electronic devices.Story excerpts:“Prosthetics are one important application of this technology, but besides that, it also offers a very intuitive way of communicating with computers.” said Ali Moin, who helped design the device as a doctoral student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. “Reading hand gestures is one way of improving human-computer interaction. And, while there are other ways of doing that, by, for instance, using cameras and computer vision, this is a good solution that also maintains an individual’s privacy.”...Moin is co-first author of a new paper describing the device, which appeared online Dec. 21, 2020 in the journal Nature Electronics....Andy Zhou is co-first author of this paper. Other authors include Abbas Rahimi, Alisha Menon, George Alexandrov, Senam Tamakloe, Jonathan Ting, Natasha Yamamoto, Yasser Khan and Fred Burghardt of UC Berkeley; Simone Benatti of the University of Bologna; and Luca Benini of ETH Zürich and the University of Bologna....“When Amazon or Apple creates their algorithms, they run a bunch of software in the cloud that creates the model, and then the model gets downloaded onto your device,” said Jan Rabaey, the Donald O. Pedersen Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering at UC Berkeley and senior author of the paper. “The problem is that then you’re stuck with that particular model. In our approach, we implemented a process where the learning is done on the device itself. And it is extremely quick: You only have to do it one time, and it starts doing the job. But if you do it more times, it can get better. So, it is continuously learning, which is how humans do it.”...While the device is not ready to be a commercial product yet, Rabaey said that it could likely get there with a few tweaks....This work was supported, in part, by the CONIX Research Center, one of six centers in JUMP, a Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The work is also based, in part, on research sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory under agreement number FA8650-15-2-5401, as conducted through the Flexible Hybrid Electronics Manufacturing Innovation Institute, NextFlex. Additional support was received from sponsors of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center; the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, under grant number 1106400; the ETH Zurich Postdoctoral Fellowship program and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions for People COFUND program....For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/12/21/high-five-or-thumbs-up-new-device-detects-which-hand-gesture-you-want-to-make/Video courtesy Nature journals and the Rabaey Labhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Making masks for those in need: 20,000 and counting... UC Berkeley 2020-12-15 | December 15, 2020 - As COVID-19 cases rise, so does mutual aid effort launched at UC Berkeley. Students and community members have established the Common Humanity Collective, producing and distributing hand sanitizer and face masks to help the needy during the pandemic. To date, the group has already dispatched enough sanitizer for more than 120,000 people and nearly 20,000 high-grade face masks of its own design, including to Central Valley farmworkers, Louisiana hurricane victims and the Navajo Nation in Arizona and Utah.For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/12/15/as-covid-19-cases-rise-so-does-mutual-aid-effort-launched-at-uc-berkeley/Video by Clare Major and Roxanne Makasdjianhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Jennifer Doudna on her students, staff UC Berkeley 2020-12-12 | High-powered, but supportive, environment draws students to UC Berkeley Nobel winners’ labsFor the full story about the experiences of the lab members of UC Berkeley's Nobel Prize-winning professors, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/12/10/high-powered-but-supportive-environment-draws-students-to-nobel-winners-labs/Video by Clare Major and Roxanne Makasdjianhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Nobel Prize medal presented to Jennifer Doudna at her Berkeley home UC Berkeley 2020-12-12 | For Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, the highlight of Nobel Week was a socially distanced award ceremony on Tuesday, Dec. 8, on her patio in Berkeley with 11 people in attendance, followed by takeout. But if the glow in her face was any indication, she could have been receiving the medal and citation from the King of Sweden on the stage at Stockholm Concert Hall. The traditional celebration will have to wait until next year.A videographer and photographer captured the intimate gathering on Dec. 8 and the presentation of the gold medal by Barbro Osher, Sweden’s Honorary Consul General in San Francisco, with Anna Sjöström Douagi representing the Nobel Foundation. Doudna, the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences at UC Berkeley, was joined by her husband, Jamie Cate, UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology, son, Andrew, and sister Ellen Doudna of Berkeley.For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/12/10/jennifer-doudnas-nobel-prize-ceremony-was-a-day-to-remember/Video by Clare Major and Roxanne Makasdjianhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Jennifer Doudna reflects on the Nobel Prize on presentation day UC Berkeley 2020-12-11 | For Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, the highlight of Nobel Week was a socially distanced award ceremony on Tuesday, Dec. 8, on her patio in Berkeley with 11 people in attendance, followed by takeout. But if the glow in her face was any indication, she could have been receiving the medal and citation from the King of Sweden on the stage at Stockholm Concert Hall. The traditional celebration will have to wait.A videographer and photographer captured the intimate gathering on Dec. 8 and the presentation of the gold medal by Barbro Osher, Sweden’s Honorary Consul General in San Francisco, with Anna Sjöström Douagi representing the Nobel Foundation. Doudna, the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences at UC Berkeley, was joined by her husband, Jamie Cate, UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology, son, Andrew, and sister Ellen Doudna of Berkeley.For the full story and videos, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/12/10/jennifer-doudnas-nobel-prize-ceremony-was-a-day-to-remember/Video by Clare Major and Roxanne Makasdjianhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Full ceremony: Nobel Prize medal presentation to Jennifer Doudna UC Berkeley 2020-12-11 | For Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, the highlight of Nobel Week was a socially distanced award ceremony on Tuesday, Dec. 8, on her patio in Berkeley with 11 people in attendance, followed by takeout. But if the glow in her face was any indication, she could have been receiving the medal and citation from the King of Sweden on the stage at Stockholm Concert Hall. The traditional celebration will have to wait.A videographer and photographer captured the intimate gathering on Dec. 8 and the presentation of the gold medal by Barbro Osher, Sweden’s Honorary Consul General in San Francisco, with Anna Sjöström Douagi representing the Nobel Foundation. Doudna, the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences at UC Berkeley, was joined by her husband, Jamie Cate, UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology, son, Andrew, and sister Ellen Doudna of Berkeley.For the full story and videos, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/12/10/jennifer-doudnas-nobel-prize-ceremony-was-a-day-to-remember/Video by Clare Major and Roxanne Makasdjianhttp://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Why did Berkeley decide to remove building names? UC Berkeley 2020-11-19 | ASUC President Victoria Vera, a student representative of the UC Berkeley's Building Name Review Committee, talks about the significance of un-naming Barrows Hall and Le Conte Hall. Video produced by Roxanne Makasdjian and Clare MajorFor the full story, video, and photos: https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/11/18/uc-berkeleys-leconte-and-barrows-halls-lose-their-names/The names of the University of California, Berkeley’s LeConte Hall and Barrows Hall will be removed, campus officials announced today. The decision, capping a formal review process, was made in response to growing awareness of the controversial legacies of the halls’ namesakes — all of them early, prominent members of the UC faculty — that clash with UC Berkeley’s mission and values.Brothers John and Joseph LeConte came to Berkeley in 1869 from a Southern slave-holding family, fleeing post-civil war Reconstruction; Joseph LeConte, who, like his brother, served in the Confederacy, used scientific language to promote racist ideas. David Prescott Barrows, UC president from 1919 to 1923, was a colonizer of the Philippines’ education system in the early 1900s and wrote, reflecting the U.S. “humanitarian imperialism” of his time, that “the white, or European, race is, above all others, the great historical race.”Chancellor Carol Christ, in letters sent to UC President Michael V. Drake, whose consent, along with hers, was required — and given — to undo each honorific naming, said removing the names and acknowledging the university’s past ties to these individuals and their beliefs “will be historically and socially valuable to our campus, … and we hope to strengthen inclusion and belonging” at UC Berkeley.The decisions reflect a new urgency being felt by U.S. civic and higher education leaders to remove building names and monuments that memorialize individuals who expressed racist and dehumanizing views. They resulted from an assessment of two unnaming proposals — one for LeConte Hall, the other for Barrows Hall — submitted in July by members of the campus community to the chancellor’s Building Name Review Committee. This fall, the 12-member committee of students, staff and faculty unanimously approved dropping the names and sent its recommendations to Christ. (CONT'D at https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/11/18/uc-berkeleys-leconte-and-barrows-halls-lose-their-names/)For full story and video: https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/11/18/uc-berkeleys-leconte-and-barrows-halls-lose-their-names/http://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
Berkeley building names removed UC Berkeley 2020-11-18 | Nov. 18, 2020 - UC Berkeley removed the names of Le Conte Hall and Barrows Hall. For the full story, video, and photos: https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/11/18/uc-berkeleys-leconte-and-barrows-halls-lose-their-names/Video produced by Roxanne MakasdjianThe names of the University of California, Berkeley’s LeConte Hall and Barrows Hall were removed today. The decision, capping a formal review process, was made in response to growing awareness of the controversial legacies of the halls’ namesakes — all of them early, prominent members of the UC faculty — that clash with UC Berkeley’s mission and values.Brothers John and Joseph LeConte came to Berkeley in 1869 from a Southern slave-holding family, fleeing post-civil war Reconstruction; Joseph LeConte, who, like his brother, served in the Confederacy, used scientific language to promote racist ideas. David Prescott Barrows, UC president from 1919 to 1923, was a colonizer of the Philippines’ education system in the early 1900s and wrote, reflecting the U.S. “humanitarian imperialism” of his time, that “the white, or European, race is, above all others, the great historical race.”Chancellor Carol Christ, in letters sent to UC President Michael V. Drake, whose consent, along with hers, was required — and given — to undo each honorific naming, said removing the names and acknowledging the university’s past ties to these individuals and their beliefs “will be historically and socially valuable to our campus, … and we hope to strengthen inclusion and belonging” at UC Berkeley.The decisions reflect a new urgency being felt by U.S. civic and higher education leaders to remove building names and monuments that memorialize individuals who expressed racist and dehumanizing views. They resulted from an assessment of two unnaming proposals — one for LeConte Hall, the other for Barrows Hall — submitted in July by members of the campus community to the chancellor’s Building Name Review Committee. This fall, the 12-member committee of students, staff and faculty unanimously approved dropping the names and sent its recommendations to Christ. (CONT'D at https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/11/18/uc-berkeleys-leconte-and-barrows-halls-lose-their-names/)http://news.berkeley.edu/http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://twitter.com/UCBerkeleyhttp://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial
