The online survey was launched in October 2012. The results were originally expected to be released in the summer and fall of 2013 but are now expected to be presented in early 2014, said UC spokesperson Shelly Meron.

The survey, which included participants from all 10 UC campuses, the UC Office of the President, the agriculture and natural resources department and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is the first of its scope on this topic in the university’s history, said Meron.

“The Campus Climate Survey has been a major undertaking — believed to be the largest study of institutional climate ever conducted — and everything has taken longer than had been anticipated,” Meron said in an emailed statement.

The survey included questions about institutional access, perceptions and experiences, academic and professional success, sexual and gender identity, spirituality and socioeconomic status, among others. UC Berkeley’s survey closed last spring.

There will be both an analysis of individual sites’ results and a systemwide report that will be presented to the UC Board of Regents in early 2014, said Meron.

“The results will help us develop future initiatives and action plans that build on past successes, address challenges and promote institutional change,” Meron said.

The results will not go public until they have been presented to the regents.

Contact Adrianna Dinolfo at adinolfo@dailycal.org.

The post Release of UC campus climate survey results to be delayed until early 2014 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Spencer Klein/Courtesy

Right now, UC Berkeley graduate Zigmund Kermish should be preparing to launch a balloon-based telescope from Antarctica. This instrument, which would rise 120,000 feet into the atmosphere, collects data that might provide insight into the physics behind the Big Bang.

He would be on the ice by Nov. 1 if the U.S. government hadn’t shut down.

But without a spending bill to fund government operations, the National Science Foundation ran out of funds for the U.S. Antarctic Program about Monday, forcing a delay on Kermish’s work as well as that of other campus researchers. The shutdown comes at a crucial time for these scientists — the start of Antarctic summer, when many researchers head south to upgrade or begin projects.

Even if the federal government were to reopen tomorrow, Kermish said, researchers would not fully recover from the delay.

The base out of which these balloons are launched opens only for this period of about three months, during which weather further limits the time available for preparation and launch. Kermish, who is working on this project as a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University, said this instrument has been developing since about 2008.

Now, they must wait another year to collect data.

In an Oct. 8 statement, the NSF said it will continue to staff research stations in Antarctica at the minimum level, called “caretaker status,” required to keep people and property safe. What constitutes caretaker status, however, is still unclear to researchers.

“The rule is only essential operations can continue,” said Elizabeth George, a UC Berkeley doctoral student working on another project, the South Pole Telescope. “So in principle, you can say, ‘My equipment’s going to freeze — that is essential,’ but the reality of the situation is those decisions about what’s essential are not really made by scientists.”

The South Pole Telescope detects remaining light from the Big Bang, according to George, which can be used to study the early universe. Regardless of what the NSF decides to do, she said, any delay can wreak logistical havoc on such a large enterprise.

“Anything you do in Antarctica is driven by logistics: You need food, you need fuel, you need transportation,” said Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory senior scientist Spencer Klein, who is involved with the Berkeley IceCube group, which also does work in Antarctica. “Things that are just minor details here are enormous down there.”

George fears that, because of the current delay, the fuel required by these research stations will not arrive in time to start them up for next year. In that case, South Pole Telescope researchers will lose a year of data.

Additionally, contract workers, who agree to work in Antarctica for a set period of time, will be out of a job if a lack of funding prevents their deployment.

Klein faces similar issues in his South Pole project. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory — one cubic kilometer in volume — detects subatomic particles called neutrinos, which possess incredibly high energies. Scientists hope they can see how the particles reached such high energies by tracking their direction.

Klein said the NSF is unlikely to risk damaging equipment, considering the organization has already invested $242 million in IceCube. According to Klein, the observatory needs at least two people at the South Pole to maintain the technology and collect data. If data collection continues but the shutdown prevents researchers from flying down to upgrade the hardware this Antarctic summer, he said, the sacrifice will be survivable but not ideal.

“I just feel pretty helpless about the situation,” Klein said. “Everybody’s kind of making this up as they go.”

Contact Melissa Wen at mwen@dailycal.org.

The post Government shutdown puts Antarctica research on thin ice appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Nathaniel Solley/File

Two national laboratories in the Bay Area are set to furlough employees and halt research operations by Oct. 21 if the government shutdown remains unresolved.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — the second-largest employer in Alameda County behind UC Berkeley — is set to close along with Sandia National Laboratories, also located in Livermore. The furlough would affect roughly 6,500 and 1,000 employees at the two labs, respectively. Both labs conduct research and development in nuclear arms control and nonproliferation technologies.

In a statement released Friday, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin, said, “The 7,500 employees at risk of being furloughed … are among the best scientists and researchers in our country, and through no fault of their own they face the possibility of not receiving their paycheck at the end of the month.”

Swalwell, along with 10 other members of Congress from California including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, sent a letter Friday to U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz requesting back pay for furloughed laboratory employees after the shutdown is over.

Oct. 1 marked the beginning of the government shutdown due to an impasse over the federal budget.

Sandia spokesperson Michael Janes said the lab is in the process of developing contingency plans around the possibility of “a safe, secure and orderly shutdown of the labs.”

Previously appropriated funds from government contracts will allow Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, located in the Berkeley Hills, to remain open and operational, Berkeley lab spokesperson John Weiner said. The Berkeley lab employs an estimated 4,200 researchers and support staff.

Weiner said in an email that the lab is analyzing how and when programs and operations will have to adapt, adding that if the impasse over the federal budget is prolonged, impacts to research and employees would be “unavoidable.”

Peter Nugent, adjunct professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley and senior scientist at the Berkeley lab, confirmed the lab will stay open as long as funds from existing contracts are available.

“For most divisions, this (goes) into November or December due to carryover,” Nugent said. “Then all bets are off.”

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, another national lab in the Bay Area that employs more than 1,500 researchers, will also remain open past Oct. 21.

At a town hall meeting held Sunday in Livermore, Swalwell addressed more than 200 employees from the two labs in Livermore.

“Not only will the labs’ cutting-edge scientific research be put on hold during a furlough period, our national labs could face an irreparable brain drain as our bright young scientists opt for the private sector,” Swalwell said in a press release.

Contact Jeff Landa at jlanda@dailycal.org.

The post Two Bay Area national laboratories to close if government shutdown continues appeared first on The Daily Californian.

John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation/Courtesy

A scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory won a MacArthur “genius grant” on Wednesday for his efforts to restore historic audio recordings.

Carl Haber, an experimental physicist at the Berkeley lab, won the award for his research on recovering century-old sound files to make them playable. He was one of 24 chosen this year to become a MacArthur Fellow, an honor for which scholars who have demonstrated originality and dedication to their work are nominated.

Haber is the fourth scientist from the Berkeley lab to be named a MacArthur Fellow, according to the lab’s website. He regularly collaborates with both the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress to find recordings to repair.

“The whole thing is a bit of a shock,” Haber said. “Even if you’re doing something great, (receiving the award) is still so unlikely, because there are many other people you can think of who could be nominated. You hope that your research is innovative, but you never know if that’s how other people view it.”

Haber has worked with antique, damaged sound files for more than a decade, ever since he heard an NPR report about delicate audio the Library of Congress could not play.

While doing physics research and using light to measure the shapes of objects, Haber discovered a noncontact method to restore sound using light optics instead of tactile instruments.

Haber’s method allows for the recovery of previously unusable sound files without causing any damage to the audio. He takes high-resolution images of the surface of the material on which the sound was recorded and then converts the images into digital audio, which can be played on most electronic devices.

“This isn’t some exotic laboratory sound that can only be heard in these labs,” said Carlene Stephens, a curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. “We can hear these voices that have been lost anywhere in the world, and that’s thrilling. A door has been opened, and on the other side are people, places, things and ideas we didn’t have the imagination to know existed.”

Haber’s work has made it possible for extremely rare and old audio recordings to be heard for the first time. His method has been used to play a wax-and-cardboard disc of Alexander Graham Bell speaking, as well as the oldest known recording of a person’s voice, dating to 1860 — even earlier than Thomas Edison’s first sound clip.

With the award, Haber will receive $625,000, dispersed over five years, to continue his research. The money will be used to travel to foreign countries to recover the lost voices of other cultures, he said.

Haber is poised to revolutionize the preservation of rare, damaged and deteriorating sound recordings of immense value to our cultural heritage, the MacArthur Foundation stated on its website.

Claire Chiara covers research and ideas. Contact her at cchiara@dailycal.org.

The post Berkeley lab scientist receives MacArthur ‘genius grant’ for audio restoration works appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The federal jury found David Busby, a 60-year-old Richmond resident, guilty after a three-day trial where US Attorney Melinda Haag’s office revealed that roughly 1,400 sexually explicit images were discovered on Busby’s two work computers, one of which belonged to the Berkeley lab.

According to a court document, the images were found in unallocated space on his computers, meaning that they had been deleted but were not completely removed and were still detectable under examination.

Busby’s actions were initially detected on April 20, 2010, when a network security analyst determined that someone on the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center computer network was accessing and downloading illegal child pornography. At the time, Busby was working at the Berkeley lab and part-time at NERSC, an affiliate of the Berkeley lab.

The analyst pinpointed the behavior to the work laptop Busby was using in the office, and both his laptop and other work computers were later confiscated, according to a press release from the district attorney’s office.

In the wake of the incident, Busby confessed to law enforcement officers that he had in fact downloaded child pornography onto the two computers. He said that he would keep the images on the computers for a brief period and then delete them from his computers’ hard drives, a court document states.

However, during the trial, Busby recanted his previous statements by saying that the child pornography was unintentionally downloaded while he was visiting legal child modeling sites, according to a court document.

US attorneys pointed to documentation of computer downloads and used Busby’s previous confessions to law enforcement as proof that he did, in fact, access the images prior to deleting them.

Busby’s attorneys used the statutory affirmative defense, through which a defendant is found innocent of child pornography allegations based on two main criteria: having possessed fewer than three “matters” containing visual depictions and “promptly and in good faith” destroying the files without retaining or allowing others to retain any remnants of them.

They said that since the images were concentrated on only two computers, they qualified for fewer than three “matters,” according to a court document. They also stated that Busby deleted the files well before law enforcement discovered them.

The prosecution, however, stated that the defense’s interpretation of “matters” was inherently inaccurate and that the quantity of files disproved the claim that Busby chose to remove the files “in good faith.”

Each count of possession of child pornography is subject to a minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum of 20 years, the press release states.

Busby’s sentencing hearing will take place on Dec. 17 in Oakland.

Claire Chiara covers research and ideas. Contact her at cchiara@dailycal.org.

The post Former Berkeley lab employee convicted of possessing child pornography appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The exposure to radiation in the mammary glands during puberty enriches mammary stem cells, ultimately increasing the probability of developing tumors that lack estrogen receptors. These tumors, also known as estrogen-receptor negative tumors, are typically aggressive and have a poor prognosis compared to the other breast cancer subtypes.

“What our study did was to provide a biological mechanism for this observation and also explain why ER-negative cancer is more prevalent in young women,” said Mary Helen Barcellos-Hoff, corresponding author of the paper and a professor in the departments of radiation oncology and cell biology at New York University.

The researchers used an original integrative approach incorporating multiscale computer models, in vitro experiments with human breast cell lines and other techniques.

According to Barcellos-Hoff, this is the first multiscale model created for mammary glands to simulate their growth from puberty to adulthood. This method simulated the effects of ionizing radiation on the mammary gland at various stages of development.

“We ran thousands of simulations of our model on the Lawrencium supercomputer in order to validate the model,” said Jonathan Tang, lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral student at UC Berkeley, in an email. “The multi-scale computer models played an essential role in linking the data across all of the experiments to identify the most likely mechanism.”

The research results indicated radiation induces certain proteins and transforms the regulation of certain cellular processes. These two factors cooperate to stimulate stem-cell self-renewal, the molecular mechanism behind the increase in mammary gland stem cells resulting from ionizing radiation. The researchers showed the mechanism is effective only when there is active proliferation, such as during puberty, when the mammary gland is developing.

“By understanding the mechanism at some point down the line, we will be able to protect people who are treated with radiation,” Barcellos-Hoff said. “One would hope we will be able to intervene and treat that.”

Radiotherapy is used to treat cancer, but using this treatment on young girls increases their risk of developing a second cancer in later years, according to Barcellos-Hoff.

Sylvain Costes, a co-corresponding author on the study and a biophysicist at the Berkeley lab, said previous studies showed that ionizing radiation causes cancer only by inducing DNA damage and gene mutations. Costes noted, however, that other factors may be at play.

He said increased stem cell frequency at doses of ionizing radiation similar to those received from head and cardiac X-ray computed tomography may trigger the development of aggressive tumors.

In an effort to continue their research, Costes and Tang have co-founded a startup, Exogen Biotechnology Inc., that strives to use biomarkers to identify young girls who are at risk of developing cancer after exposure to ionizing radiation therapy.

Mark Tan covers research and ideas. Contact him at mtan@dailycal.org.

Clarification(s):
A previous version of this article may have implied that radiotherapy increases the risk of prepubescent females developing breast cancer. It increases the risk of prepubescent females developing breast cancer decades later.

A previous version of this article may have also implied that x-ray and CT scan procedures can trigger the development of aggressive tumors. It is the increased stem cell frequency at doses of ionizing radiation that may be given during these procedures that may do so.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the researchers’ model worked by monitoring different characteristics of the mammary gland at various stages of development. In fact, the model simulated the effects of ionizing radiation on the mammary gland at various stages of development.

A previous version of this article also incorrectly stated that estrogen-receptor negative tumors impede the healthy development of the female body. In fact, these tumors are typically aggressive and have a poor prognosis compared to the other breast cancer subtypes, according to the research.

The post UC Berkeley researchers find correlation between radiotherapy and breast cancer in young girls appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Nathaniel Solley/Staff

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has been denied a large contract from the U.S. Department of Energy to build the world’s most advanced X-ray microscope.

The Berkeley lab had set aside 200 acres of UC-owned Berkeley hillside land, on which it would have built an innovative X-ray light source, in hopes of receiving the $1.5 billion contract. Although the lab has been planning to expand to a new Richmond campus, the city of Richmond is concerned the lab now may choose to build on the Berkeley land instead.

In a July 25 report, a DOE advisory committee denied the Berkeley lab the contract because of the lab’s failure to meet the criteria for building the microscope.

The loss of the contract could affect the lab’s expansion to a second campus in Richmond, as the Berkeley hillside acreage previously allocated for the X-ray project has been freed up for use.

The Berkeley lab has planned to expand for years, as it is currently leasing off-site facilities to conduct some of its research. The University of California chose the Richmond Field Station as its preferred site in January 2012.

Changing the potential location of the campus extension and attempting to start construction in the Berkeley Hills would be much more complicated and difficult to accomplish than in Richmond, said Bill Lindsay, Richmond’s city manager.

“I understand that it is getting more and more difficult for (the Berkeley lab) to actually design and build and get more community approval for projects in their hillside location,” he said. “In Richmond, development could be less expensive or less problematic.”

The Richmond campus project also faced trouble when sequestration caused the DOE to limit its funding of the Berkeley lab, which it operates, in July. Since then, the lab has sought alternative funding sources.

In response to the cuts, the Berkeley lab and the University of California continued to work on the Long Range Development Plan, a timeline for the Richmond project that aims to complete construction by 2017. The Berkeley lab also is finalizing an environmental impact report for the proposed Richmond site.

The creation of these two documents, in conjunction with a possible community meeting within the next two months, shows the Berkeley lab is still dedicated to its plans for the Richmond campus, said Berkeley lab spokesperson Jon Weiner in an email.

“This is a long-term development effort, which could occur over a 40-year period,” he said in the email. “We’re just laying the groundwork now.”

UC Berkeley has also hired a development manager who will work on an overall financing strategy for the project and find multiple funding sources for the campus, which will primarily conduct biosciences research.

“The lab is still committed to the project,” Lindsay said. “They’re still very happy with their choice of Richmond as a second location.”

The Richmond location is conducive to the lab’s goal of research expansion and growth because it is close to the lab’s UC Berkeley location and the city of Richmond supports the project, according to the Berkeley lab’s website.

The Richmond location, however, will remain “preferred” and not definite until the environmental report is completed and the university and DOE approve the project plans, the website said.

“It’s a great, very important project for the Richmond community,” Lindsay said. “Our hope is that the dollars that are spent on both construction and servicing (the facility) go to jobs that can help in the local community.”

Claire Chiara covers research and ideas. Contact her at cchiara@dailycal.org.

The post Lawrence Berkeley Lab denied $1.5 billion contract for X-ray microscope appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Anna Llordes/Courtesy

As concerns about global warming and unsustainable electricity usage continue to grow, researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory say they have produced a window coating that can separate heat from light and may promote significant reductions in a building’s energy usage.

In 2011, the researchers published a study demonstrating that such a technology was possible, and they are now looking to commercialize it. In March 2012, Delia Milliron, a staff scientist at Berkeley Lab whose lab oversaw the research, along with Guillermo Garcia, a former UC Berkeley graduate student who worked on the project as part of his doctorate, helped found Heliotrope Technologies. The company is moving to bring this technology to the marketplace. Garcia said the company hopes to achieve this in three to five years.

The researchers published an article about these “smart windows” Aug. 15 in Nature, and they say that once applied, this coating will allow windows to perform in three modes, depending on weather and sunlight conditions. In its “cool” mode, a window allows light, but not heat, to enter. While in its “dark” mode, it blocks both light and heat. The window can also exist in a “bright mode,” letting in both light and heat.

While windows that can transition from transparent to opaque already exist, this new coating is unique in that it allows a user to control both visible light and near-infrared light, which produces heat. A window with this coating can thus selectively accept one but not necessarily the other.

“What makes this a promising business is the fact that its a lot cheaper than other companies,” Garcia said. “When it comes to this smart window, we’re creating the second generation.”

Garcia completed his doctorate in 2012 and is now Heliotrope’s chief technology officer.

The company has already garnered significant interest and has raised approximately $2 million from investors in addition to grants from the federal government, Garcia said.

In 2010, the team at Berkeley Lab received $3 million from the Department of Energy to support development of a coating that could be sprayed on windows to allow them to adjust to weather conditions. The department’s Better Buildings Initiative, which funds projects such as this one, aims to promote development of energy-saving technologies. Indeed, while Garcia could not say exactly how much energy was saved, he said that “the preliminary data has showed it is beneficial.”

Anna Llordes, a co-author on the paper and a project scientist at the Molecular Foundry, said she was pleasantly surprised by the attention the technology has received.

“People are excited because in one single piece of work, you can find science, material processing, fundamentals of electronic materials and an application to the real market,” she said. “When you work in a lab, you never know what’s going to be interesting.”

Contact Sara Grossman at sgrossman@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @saragrossman.

The post Berkeley Lab researchers move to bring ‘smart window’ technology to market appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The new magnet can operate at higher magnetic fields and at a wider temperature range than conventional high-field magnets can, because it is made out of niobium tin rather than niobium titanium. Because more data points can be collected using the new technology, scientists aim to use the new magnet with the Large Hadron Collider in order to make more detailed observations of particle behavior.

“The goal of the U.S. LHC Accelerator Research Program is to enable more powerful colliders,” said GianLuca Sabbi, who is affiliated with the Berkeley lab and coordinated the project. “Higher field and larger bore will translate in stronger beam focusing and more proton collisions. This is a key element of the upgrade plan to increase the LHC integrated luminosity by 10 times.”

Although niobium tin is often used in superconducting magnets, the material is not commonly used in accelerators, because it is naturally brittle and can easily snap when bent into the coil shapes necessary for accelerators. Niobium tin also cannot withstand the disruptive and high energy activities of particle collision.

The breakthrough in this project was implementing the material for use in accelerators, specifically with the LHC. Researchers developed a technology that adopts a thick, aluminum-based support structure pretensioned at room temperature to increase the malleability and durability of the material rather than directly using the material.

The construction of this technology was a collaborative effort among Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in partnership with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The new U.S. magnets will be implemented in CERN’s LHC in the future.

Niobium tin has a 60 to 70 percent higher critical field than niobium titanium, which was also part of the project.

“This study proved that the technology works,” said Eric Prebys of Fermilab, who has been the director of LARP for the past five years. “The next step is to build a prototype. The actual magnet is only about 1 meter long. For it to be implemented in the LHC, it needs to be much longer.”

Researchers said their main goal in the future is to build a prototype for the magnet. The program is currently transitioning from the research and development phases to the construction of the new focusing system for LHC.

But the HQ02a’s usage is not only restricted to the LHC. According to Sabbi, all types of accelerators can benefit from this magnet technology, including those used in the medical and industrial fields. It can also enhance machines such as MRI scanners, which apply superconducting magnets.

Contact Mark Tan at mtan@dailycal.org

The post New magnet technology developed by researchers appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Yi Zhong/File

Scientists at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory published research last Wednesday showing that a deficiency in vitamin D can accelerate premature bone aging by increasing the risk of fracture.

By examining bone structure and toughness, researchers concluded that a lack of vitamin D causes bones to prematurely age, as they are more brittle. The results of the research may lead to adapted treatment options for individuals with cases of vitamin D deficiency.

The body produces vitamin D when directly exposed to the sun, which is needed for bone growth and remodeling. Vitamin D can also be found in certain foods, such as fatty fish, beef liver, cheese and egg yolk.

The results of the research were published in an article entitled “Vitamin D Deficiency Induces Early Signs of Aging in Human Bone, Increasing the Risk of Fracture.” The research was conducted by scientists at UC Berkeley and scientists from the department of osteology and biomechanics at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany.

Robert Ritchie, a professor of materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley and a faculty senior scientist at the Berkeley lab, headed the Berkeley portion of the collaboration, while Bjorn Busse headed the German portion.

“We were able to show that biomechanical properties do not only change through a reduction of bone mass but also that the remaining bone shows effects of aging with losses of its quality and fracture resistance,” Busse wrote in an email.

The research team discovered that vitamin D deficiency increases the proneness to cracks from 22 to 31 percent. According to Ritchie, one in four men and two in four women over the age of 50 will experience a bone fracture in their remaining lifetime.

The risk of bone fracture — which can be fatal — increases dramatically as people age, especially in menopausal women.

Ritchie was able to discover bones deficient in vitamin D resembled bones of the elderly through his unique access to an extensive collection of bone sections taken from living and deceased persons.

“We were able to use our past experience in high resolution 3D to visualize the crack and were able to clearly observe the differences in interactions of the crack and microstructure,” said Hrishikesh Bale, who worked closely with Ritchie in the research, in an email.

Bale said that the research was conducted in the hope of eventually finding a treatment for affected bones and preventing fractures among older people.

According to Ritchie, the research was interdisciplinary in approach and utilized both engineering and medical knowledge.

“This kind of work represents a boundary between the physical and biological sciences,” Ritchie said. “There’s a lot to be gained by engineers getting involved in medicine.”

Contact Lydia Tuan at ltuan@dailycal.org.

The post UC Berkeley researchers link vitamin D deficiency with bone aging appeared first on The Daily Californian.