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Today UC Berkeley scientists are announcing that they have probably identified, in samples returned from a NASA probe, particles of interstellar matter—the first samples of “stardust” from beyond our solar system. Obtaining the dust motes has been an achievement of staggering technical proficiency in extracting the infinitesimal from the infinite. Imagine the largest swimming pool […]
The two robots spin and lurch, their little electric motors whirring against each other as a bevy of kids look on, their eyes bulging and their shoulders scrunched almost up to their ears in rapt attention. A girl of about 12 with long black hair scratches her chin, smiling nervously—a smile that twists into a […]
Silicon is so passé. Those who are truly au courant in the coding world are working with carbon—specifically DNA, that most ancient and elegant of codes. Such biohacking is central to the rapidly expanding field of synthetic biology, a term that somehow seems a little threatening to many of us who are the products of […]
This year, groundwater is serving as California’s pinch hitter, supplying about 60 percent of the state’s needs during this historic drought. But until now, it’s been an impossible resource to manage. We don’t have enough data to know just how much groundwater is hanging out below any given house or farm. Because it’s unregulated by […]
Women are much more likely to be lied to than men during a business transaction, says a new UC Berkeley study. And we’re not talking about the clichéd stories of the car salesman selling the “little lady” the lemon on the lot or the oil-change guy talking a female customer into buying a new fan […]
On Tuesday the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition celebrated its 22nd annual “Golden Wheel Awards”—a waterfront event that gave the city’s bike boosters the opportunity to bust out their best Lycra and give themselves a collective pat on the back for another year well done. By all accounts, they had a lot of patting to do. […]
Remember in 2012 when the City of Berkeley decided to redraw its electoral map so that students would be better represented at City Hall? And remember when, a year later, a group of Cal student politicos submitted their own map which bumped the quotient of students in campus-capped District 7 to a whopping 86 percent, […]
Let the bull market for college-level economics continue. Despite its daunting math, its abstract models, and its 0-for-1 track record in predicting recent worldwide financial catastrophes, economics remains one of the top 10 college majors across the country, according to the Princeton Review. That trend certainly holds at UC Berkeley where, last fall, econ was […]
Why do we fight? Soldiers and Marines will have varied secondary answers: for national security, or a patriotic ideal, or even because your peers were enlisting. But there is another, overriding reason. You fight for those ahead of you or behind you on patrol, for the people in your squad or platoon, for the people […]
Update: The federal government has just given special permission to a team of Marin County therapists to study whether the party drug Molly or Ecstasy—both street names for the illegal psychoactive drug MDMA—is able to reduce anxiety in people with life-threatening illnesses. (Experts caution that much of the contraban sold as Ecstasy now is mixed […]
What would be the ideal place to hone one’s skills as a poker player—the type of high-stakes player capable of winning the most prestigious tournament in the world? Vegas, you might imagine, or perhaps Monte Carlo. Odds are you didn’t think of the UC Berkeley campus. And what would that player be likely to do […]
Lisa White scrunches her nose and holds a magnifying glass up to one eye to inspect a peanut-sized vial seemingly full of large tan and ivory sand grains. But a closer look reveals rods, stars and corkscrews—the 50-million-year-old fossilized shells of forams, creatures that still populate the oceans today. “You’re gonna see some cool stuff […]
It went so immediately and intensely viral that it probably gave the Internet a case of breakbone fever. We’re speaking, of course, of the recording of a Comcast “retention” representative pleading with, browbeating and haranguing customer Ryan Block to stay with the cable service giant. The eight-minute audio clip engendered a sense of rueful recognition […]
Long before Lassie fished Timmy out of a well, dogs have been heroically bailing us humans out of sticky situations. In the post 9/11 era that’s never been truer, with bomb-sniffing dogs scouring our airports and cities for deadly explosives. So it’s a shame to say that man’s best friend may be out of a […]
The latest front in the Culture War busted wide open at the Marriot in downtown Oakland Thursday night. Those expecting the assembly of regional transportation officials and municipal bureaucrats to be a dull affair, poorly attended and governed by Robert’s Rules of Order, haven’t been paying attention to the political paroxysm stirred up by Plan […]
Math rock fans of the 1990s will remember A Minor Forest, the trio of Bay Area musicians renowned for their aggressive, rhythmically technical style of playing and intense live shows. (Not to mention imaginatively crass song titles like “No One Likes an Old Baby” and “Jacking Off George Lucas.”) This week, the trio will reunite […]
Want to live forever? Be a tumor. We may eventually download analogs of our brains into computers and thus achieve a certain kind of immortality, but dramatically extending the functionality of the human body is looking problematic. Cancer cells, on the other hand, can propagate endlessly. Which once again shows that life is inherently unfair, […]
Some scientific studies come as revelations—biological investigations unlocking keys hidden within the human genome, statistical analyses that identify shocking trends between disparate data sets, and explorations of the cosmos that reveal truths about the very fabric of existence. And then there are scientific studies that tell us what most of us probably knew all along. […]
For anyone who suspected the tech sector is a boys’ club, this summer has piled up one bleak affirmation after another. Following Google’s lead, Yahoo, Facebook, and LinkedIn released data confirming their work forces to be overwhelmingly male (also white or Asian). The 23-year-old CEO of Snapchat had to apologize after emails from his fraternity […]
