2008 January February 25 Ideas on the Verge
If You Like It, I Want It
When a toddler walks over to another tot, grabs their Thomas the Tank Engine caboose and makes off with it, the thief is not simply being spiteful. The toddler has reason to believe, based on surprisingly sophisticated decision-making processes, that the caboose is fun to play with. Far from being little tyrants acting on base […]
Rhymes with Tag
Early in her masculinity research at a Northern California high school, sociologist C.J. Pascoe witnessed a disturbing scene. A senior approached a group of visiting elementary school boys, yelling "There’s a faggot over there! Watch out! He’ll get you!" as his friend sauntered over, hips swaying and arms flailing theatrically. The young boys ran away […]
Picking Up a Stink
Say that you’re blindfolded and something odorous is wafted under your nose: burnt paper, molasses, the scent of mouse, or any of the tens of thousands of documented smells. Chances are it will take you a few seconds to figure out what it is, and even then you might guess wrong. But within half a […]
SpongeBob SmartyPants
The marine sponge’s dull facade masks a surprisingly complex creature. Just ask Detmer Sipkema, a lanky, 6’6″ post-doctoral chemical engineering student from the Netherlands, who looks beyond the sponge’s quotidian uses to the medicinal. “They sit on the bottom of the sea and look like they do nothing, but they’re really doing a lot,” says […]
Last Frog Standing
Almost a hundred years ago, legendary Berkeley biologist Joseph Grinnell took his first cataloguing trip to the Sierra Nevadas. In those days, mountain lions and bighorn sheep were plentiful. Wolves and California grizzlies had not yet been driven out. And, according to Grinnell, the most common creature was the mountain yellow-legged frog. Today, mountain yellow-legged […]
Fleeing Low Self-esteem
The primal “fight or flight” response ensured the survival of our earliest ancestors, but for today’s socially anxious folks, it may do more harm than good. A new study by assistant professor of psychology Özlem Ayduk and graduate student Anett Gyurak finds that people with low self-esteem have a stronger than normal reaction to rejection, […]
Raise Me, Boss
How and when to talk money When Ian Sherr decided to ask for a raise a year ago, he carefully considered the circumstances: His boss had just eaten lunch, had recently received a bonus check, and it was the holiday season. “I figured there might be some trickle-down goodness,” says Sherr, 25, now a graduate student […]
Patents Gone Wild
Technology is changing faster than our patent system can keep up. “We’re not patenting a new mousetrap,” declares Haas professor of economics Richard Gilbert, “but the idea of putting a mouse in a mousetrap. Today it is possible to patent business methods, software, genetically modified life forms, education methods, and surgical techniques.” Patents, which grant up […]
From a Generation that Keeps on Giving
The late Flora Hewlett reconnects to Cal 73 years after she graduated The news in September that the Hewlett Foundation was awarding $113 million—the largest private gift in university history—to Berkeley may have surprised many who think of Stanford as the sole academic recipient of largesse from the founders of Hewlett-Packard. In fact, the story behind […]
Black Venus and her Rainbow Tribe
Southwest France’s central Dordogne River valley is filled with imposing medieval castles built not for pleasure, but to defend the region during the Hundred Years’ War. However, as you make your way down the valley, just west of the village of Sarlat, you may catch sight of something a little different: a Renaissance castle with […]
Groupthink
In an era of technological triumph, a physicist-turned-philosopher dared to argue that science routinely rewards conformists and rejects real innovators. The intellectual revolution he sparked is still being fought today. Thomas S. Kuhn transformed the way we think about science, revealing it as a messier, less logical, and occasionally more sordid process than your high school […]
Applied Kuhn: The Berkeley/BP Project
If it’s to escape the fate of so many normal sciences, the Energy Biosciences Institute must be continually monitored by outside observers, including non-scientists. It’s too early to tell whether the joint Berkeley-BP project represents a potential scientific and technological paradigm shift, or is a version of the same old paradigm of the automotive sciences. It […]
What it Was Really Like to Be the First Black Lawyer in Justice Dept’s Civil Rights Division
Thelton Eugene Henderson didn’t study the civil rights movement; he lived it. After earning his law degree from UC Berkeley in 1962, he joined the Justice Department as the first African-American lawyer in its civil rights division. Working with his mentor and fellow Cal grad, John Doar, Henderson traveled often to the South to monitor […]
Simple Idea, Huge Difference
Increasing cooking efficiency for Darfur refugees saves lives There’s a certain aura of mystery surrounding the birth of an idea, but rarely is the question asked: What’s next? Ashok Gadgil, Ph.D. ’80, knows that the “eureka!” moment is just the beginning; developing and implementing an idea is the hardest part. The senior staff scientist at Lawrence […]
Bad Science
Spotting the Darwins in a field of Lamarcks Every day scientists announce frontier discoveries or breakthroughs. Some signal new technologies, others life-improving or life-saving medicines. Most never pan out. In March of 1989, a pair of chemists announced a discovery that essentially took a sandblaster to modern physics. But rather than publish in the journal Nature, […]
No.9 Molecular Healing
The big idea: Nanotech is handing medical science a scalpel in place of a chemical sledgehammer. At the molecular (as opposed to cellular) level, chemical elements change radically. Bouncy elements become hard; sticky ones become slick. In the macro world, gold is used to fill cavities. In the nanoworld, gold can be bonded to a […]
No.8 Microscopic Dance Party
The big idea: Physics professor Alex Zettl and a team of solid-state physics researchers have created the world’s smallest radio. It has all the major parts of a conventional radio—tuner, antenna, amplifier, and demodulator—but, remarkably, all in one tiny tube that’s 10,000 times thinner than the width of a single hair. Traditional radios receive electromagnetic […]
No.7 Bad Bugs with the Best of Intentions
Cancer-eating bacteria The big idea: J. Christopher Anderson is building a new version of E. coli and endowing it with special abilities: a sugar coating that acts as a cloaking device against the human immune system, a tool that busts through cell walls, a computer-like sensory system that locates tumors. The idea is to build a […]
No.6 Grandma’s Little Helper
Eldertech The big idea: “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”—the cheesy TV-ad catchphrase should reach its final resting place shortly. For elders needing help, at-home support is in the works. The players: The goal of Eldertech is simple: Use medical monitoring with wireless sensors to improve quality of life among the elderly. A project […]
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