Science & Tech
Spotlight
By Anabel SosaBlind thinkers, scientists, and artists showing us the way.
Workingman’s Economist
By Kweku Opoku-AgyemangWhen Cal professor and labor economist David Card got the early-morning phone call from Sweden last October informing him that he’d won the 2021 Nobel Prize in economics, he thought it was a buddy back home in Ontario pulling his leg. “My old friend, Tim, who lives in Guelph, I thought it was one of his practical jokes,” Card told the Canadian news media.
Sight Unseen
By Leah Worthington and Illustration by David JunkinThe paradox of blindsight might unlock the mystery of consciousness.
The View from the Trenches
By Glen Martin and Photos by Marcus HanschenTwo years into the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 continues to defy predictions. At the date of this writing, the Omicron variant—as contagious as ultra-transmissible viruses such as measles, if somewhat less severe than earlier COVID variants—continues to spread rapidly. While the surge appears to be ebbing in some areas of the United States, hospitalizations remain high and, nationally, about 2,500 deaths are reported daily.
Peregrines in Love
By Hayden RoysterIf Berkeley has a celebrity couple, it’s Annie and Grinnell, the peregrine falcons who alighted on the Campanile and have called it home since late 2016. Year after year, the lovebirds have nested and fledged their chicks, generating 24/7 entertainment for those tuning in to the Cal Falcons live cams (first installed in 2019). Viewers have had unprecedented access to the daily lives of a falcon family: first meals, first flights, the one kid who just won’t leave the nest. It was like Jon & Kate Plus 8, but with a lot more dead pigeons and doves.
Unpacking PTSD
By Dhoha BarecheA study led by researchers from Berkeley and UCSF may help explain why some people are more resilient to traumatic stress than others and lead to possible therapies. Published in December in the journal Translational Psychiatry, the study found a link between increased myelination in the brain’s gray matter and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Running Start for Perlmutter
By Hayden RoysterNamed after Cal’s Nobel-winning cosmologist Saul Perlmutter, Ph.D. ’86, Berkeley’s newest supercomputer was launched in May 2021 by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and hailed as one of the fastest ever. The next month, it ranked fifth on the coveted TOP500 list, the biannual record of the world’s most powerful commercially available supercomputers.
Out with a Bang
By Margie CullenIf a star dies in the universe and no one is around to see it, does it make an explosion? Scientists can now confirm that it does.
Making Forest Thinning Work
By Anabel SosaAmid a string of record-setting wildfire years in the state, California and the U.S. Forest Service have set an ambitious goal of “treating” 1 million acres of forest annually in order to reduce fire risk and increase forest resilience. It’s a costly proposition.
Our No- to Low-Snow Future
By Krissy WaiteThe Sierra Nevada—the “Snowy Range”—is about to get a lot less snowy according to a study co-led by Berkeley Lab researchers. Published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment in October, the study concludes that certain mountain ranges in California and the western United States could be nearly snowless for years at a time in a matter of decades.
FIRST PERSON
By Robin Dellabough, as told to Anabel SosaI was 66. It was 2018, and a friend of mine said she had done 23andMe. So I thought oh, what the hell.
Editor’s Note
By Pat JosephEyes open, eyes closed, it didn’t matter, I saw the same thing: an ant venturing deeper and deeper into a fern. Then somehow I became that ant, in the fern, going deeper and deeper.
