Electrostatic effects on nature are so ubiquitous that they commonly play tricks on us: restyling our hair like a porcupine’s, emitting “firefly” flashes while we put on clothes, dusting our computer screens, sticking book pages and even producing a painful electric shock after a handshake. These amusing experiences, however, can Read More…
Sixteen months after advocates for community urban farming took over the university’s Gill Tract agricultural experiment station on Earth Day, April 22, 2012, community members are back in the land and farming a portion of it — but this time by invitation to members of the community to get involved Read More…
A new application developed by UC Berkeley researchers will harness mobile phones — thousands of mini-computers that often lie idle — to be used in tandem as the equivalent of a multimillion-dollar supercomputer. Read More…
A different look at why the humanities matters Many thanks to Martin Jay for his defense of the humanities (“Why the humanities,” July 8). Alongside a halfhearted suggestion, half-abandoned in the penultimate sentence, that a humanities major is good for the career, he suggests that the humanities are about critical Read More…
The University of California has done the right thing in joining the nationwide open access movement by officially coming out April 26 in support of California state assembly bill AB 609. AB 609, which was introduced to the state assembly in February, aims to make results of government-funded research freely Read More…
President Barack Obama officially announced an expansive new brain research initiative in a press conference Tuesday, after weighing input from top U.S. scientists including three from UC Berkeley. Read More…
Here at Cal, we like to tackle the big questions. After all, we are one of the world’s premier research universities. Continuing with this tradition, UC Berkeley scientists are now attempting to answer one of the biggest questions in existence: how did life on earth begin? Told you it was Read More…
With less than 48 hours until the sequester spending cuts are set to take effect, UC Berkeley administrators are estimating that the campus could lose about $49 million in federal funding for research. Read More…
Apparently, Gov. Jerry Brown doesn’t understand the critical role of research at the University of California. In an article published last week in The Washington Post, Brown said professors should spend more time in the classroom and less time doing research, claiming that “the faculty’s primary role is teaching.” He Read More…
For more than 30 years, UC Berkeley has been at the forefront of GMO research and development. Many faculty members have been divided between work to bring genetically modified products to the marketplace and attempts to challenge their dispersal in the environment. Read More…