2016 Fall The Greatest Show on Earth
Breathing Easier: A New Device Could Help Detect Asthma Attacks Before They Start
To a very real degree, Charvi Shetty’s future was molded by her college roommate. Or rather, her roommate’s health. “She had asthma,” says Shetty, who graduated from UC Berkeley with a bioengineering degree in 2012 and took a master’s in biomedical imaging from UCSF in 2013. “She had to use an inhaler six times a […]
Step Right Up: Shaking Up Facebook
Like every other voter preparing for the upcoming election, I often cruise Facebook to gauge the mood of my fellow citizens. Not that I’m a fan of the site. To me, Facebook has always seemed like an inversion of the old “banality of evil” trope: It is the evil of banality, a fount of never-ending […]
Eyes on the Octopus: In Trio of Studies, Berkeley Scientists Strive to Make Sense of the Cephalopods
It is a curious thing to consider that UC Berkeley, a school notably lacking a marine biology program, has produced not one, not two, but three published studies on the venerable octopus within the last year. But then octopuses, too, are curious to consider. They have three hearts; blue, copper-based blood; regenerating tentacles; and a […]
Nobelist Randy Schekman Is Not Resting on His Laurels
When Randy Schekman looks up from his computer screen, which he now spends more time staring at than petri dishes, his eyes sometimes fall on a faded copy of Cell displayed nearby. The issue is dated June 17, 1994, and the cover depicts a swarm of magnified vesicles—tiny sacs that transport molecules inside cells—resembling a […]
The Revolution Will Be Tweeted: In Politics, TV Still Matters, but Social Media Matters More and More
Not long ago, they were the pulse of the American political campaign: Mom and Dad, sitting in front of the nightly news broadcast on TV, armed with a dog-eared copy of the daily newspaper. The ads, the daily coverage and editorials, televised debates, polls and TV ratings—over dinner-table discourse, it all mattered. Now check the […]
Coded and Loaded: How Politicians Talk About Race and Gender Without Really Talking About Race and Gender
Richard Nixon had always been more of a rat-catcher than a heartthrob. All jowls and forehead, and sporting that rictus of a smile, he was a perennial runner-up. Willy Loman by way of Yorba Linda. In the summer of 1968, though, with the country in flames, Nixon rolled out the strategy that would vault him […]
The Great White Mope: How White America’s Declining Status Gave Rise to the Latest Surge in Populism
White America seems to be in a funk these days.
Crazy Love: Cal Performances Brings Arabia’s Iconic Love Story to the West
The epic poem Layla and Majnun is arguably the most famous love story in the Middle East, and yet many Westerners have never heard of it. It is the tale of two teenagers who fall deeply in love but are tragically kept apart, even until death. After Layla’s father rejects Qays’s request for her hand […]
Step Right Up: How to Feign Political Competence in Your 20s
In the Internet age, saying “I don’t know” about a political issue is considered socially unacceptable. After all, if we have all this information at our fingertips, the least we can do is a quick Google search. Like, really. It’s the least we can do. And the least is what most people do. It’s hard […]
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