Campus Science News
The following news items are from various campus, college and department sources.
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By Professor David Zilberman, Agricultural and Resource Economics As the world is preparing for a big environmental summit in Copenhagen, knowing that an agreement is very unlikely, it’s become apparent how difficult it is to reach an environmental agreement that...
Eva St. Clair
http://nature.berkeley.edu/
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Could it be that the generous Mother Teresa and the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol were influenced by their genes? Researchers at the UC Berkeley have found compelling evidence that people who are more empathetic possess a particular variation of the oxytocin receptor gene. Published: 16 November
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Abby Dernburg and colleagues have looked at the amazingly precise choreography of chromosomes as they pair up during meiosis - the process by which cells create egg and sperm with half the normal number of chromosomes - and found a critical role played by the cytoskeleton. Published: 12 November
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Post-doc Dovi Poznanski was looking through seven-year-old data when he chanced upon a very strange supernova that flashed and was gone in less than a month, when 3-4 months is typical. The unusually rapid supernova appears to match the predicted behavior of a thermonuclear explosion on a white dwarf that has drawn helium from its companion. Published: 05 November
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Green fluorescent protein (GFP) has invaded thousands of research labs around the world, thanks to its versatility in labeling cells and organisms. Now, UC Berkeley chemists have discovered why GFP is such an efficient emitter of green light. Published: 12 November
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A team of 13 prominent scientists and land-use experts has identified an important but fixable error in legal accounting rules for bioenergy that could, if uncorrected, undermine efforts to reduce greenhouse gases by encouraging deforestation. Published: 22 October
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UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate Stacy Jackson argues in Science that policymakers should plan a summit now to look at short- and medium-lived greenhouse pollutants, which range from soot to ozone and methane, and their near term impact on climate. Published: 22 October
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Paleontologists Mark Goodwin and Jack Horner have dug for 11 years in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana in search of every dinosaur fossil they can find, accumulating specimens of all ages and stages of development. Their new report on the growth stages of dome-headed dinosaurs shows that two named species are really just young pachycephalosaurs. They say that perhaps one-third of all named dinosaurs may not be separate species, but juvenile or subadult stages of other known dinosaurs. Published: 30 October
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The College of Chemistry is moving toward sustainable "green" chemistry with a new emphasis on sustainability in its undergraduate courses, a new endowed chair in sustainable chemistry, and its participation in the campuswide Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry. Published: 08 October
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Women in the sciences must often choose between family and academic careers, according to a new report authored by researchers at the Berkeley Center on Health, Economic & Family Security (Berkeley CHEFS) at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Published: 12 November
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