Nature

Can We Learn to Grow Color? Butterfly Wings May Hold the Answer

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, humans have been buttering up the natural world for a long time. It’s often called biomimicry. Think Olympic swimmers in sharkskin-inspired suits, bullet trains shaped like kingfisher beaks, or the ubiquitous Velcro, which was famously modeled after plant burrs.  

Yet all of these examples depend on man-made materials and processes. What if we took biomimicry one step further and learned how to grow structures the way they grow in nature?

From the Summer 2017 Adaptation issue of California.

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 level of sentience unique among invertebrates.

From the Fall 2016 The Greatest Show On Earth issue of California.

The Case for Blind Analysis: In Research, What You Know Can Hurt You

Determining reality can be a confounding business. It’s hard to separate subjective sensory impressions, cultural imperatives, religious epiphanies, social mores, and gut feelings from what objectively is. No surprise, then, that many of us rely on scientists to tell us what’s what. And scientists, in turn, rely on the vetted and published results of significant research to both aid them in their own inquiries and derive an accurate sense of the cosmos and everything in it and beyond it.

Posted on October 14, 2015 - 5:33pm

Bones of Contention: Cal Paleo Expert Doubts Homo Naledi Is New Species

The popular science press went bonkers last month with news that fossilized bones of a previously unknown hominid had been discovered in a cave system in South Africa. Dubbed Homo naledi by lead researcher and University of the Witwatersrand paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, these proto-humans appeared to have lived somewhere between 1 to 3 million years ago, used tools, walked upright, and may have buried their dead, a practice that has only been attributed to our own species, Homo sapiens, and Neanderthals.

Posted on October 1, 2015 - 1:55pm

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