Science (Video)

UC Berkeley drills a 400-foot borehole to explore geothermal heating on campus.

UC Berkeley plans to decommission its 40-year-old cogeneration plant and replace its current steam heating system with a new system that uses water pipes to heat and cool buildings on campus. While the cogeneration plant burns natural gas to produce electricity and steam heat for the campus, the new system will use electricity for both power and thermal needs. By using clean energy sources, such as wind and solar, to produce this electricity, the campus’s future power, heating and cooling needs would be entirely carbon-free.

(Video: Roxanne Makasdjian, Alan Toth, Adam Lau) Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Public Affairs] [Science] [Show ID: 39224]

The human penchant for storytelling is universal, early-developing, and profoundly culture-shaping. Stories (folk tales, narratives and myths) influence the costs of social transactions and organize societies at every scale of human interaction. Story as a mode of communication is also unprecedented in the animal kingdom: although we are compelled to tell stories about other animals, they are not likewise compelled to tell stories about us (or anything else, for that matter). Even our ability to manage urgent human problems such as global health and climate change are affected by the stories and myths humans choose to tell. This symposium explores several stories about how the evolution of story-telling shaped, and continues to shape, the human epoch. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 39006]

Animals and tricksters are highly prominent beings in the mythology of the San Bushmen of southern Africa, as well as of hunter-gatherers in other regions of the world. Their actions and interactions provide the plot lines for most of the stories people tell about myth time. Why are these two beings so preeminent in San mythology and storytelling? Is there a connection between the two beings? Mathias Guenther discusses these two questions and the answer reveals a deep – and deep-rooted –mystical connection also between animals and humans. The hunting-gathering people that provide the cultural context for my talk are the San Bushmen of southern Africa, amongst whom I have done ethnographic field work. I will also consider hunter-gatherers from other parts of the world, both from present or recent times and from prehistory. These considerations may shed some light on certain aspects of prehistoric cave paintings. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 39004]

Political, financial and environmental crises coupled to the rise of social media have, in recent years, created a perfect storm of mis- and disinformation that leverage long standing reservoirs of belief within and across communities. These stories on social media mirror face-to-face storytelling and other storytelling environments in that they allow for the negotiation of cultural ideology (norms, beliefs, values), yet they also change the scope, speed and amplification of that storytelling. Importantly, storytelling has real world effects, and often motivates people to take action. We present a graphical model of the underlying narrative frameworks, estimated from the data itself, and show how various network based methods can form the basis for understanding the narrative coherence—and their possible outcomes—even when the discussions on social media are incomplete and noisy, as conversations in real life often are. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 39003]

Combating destructive effects of climate change, the Arboretum and Public Garden staff and Learning by Leading™ students plant test trees to cultivate a resilient and diverse urban tree canopy for the UC Davis community. Emily Griswold, Director of GATEways Horticulture and Teaching Gardens, outlines the tireless research and work of tending to mature trees and planting saplings.

Series: "UCTV Prime" [Science] [Show ID: 39214]

From the beautiful to the strange, the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology has one of the largest insect collections in North America. Take a tour through the collections and its highlights with director Lynn Kimsey in this behind-the-scenes video. The museum is free and open to UC Davis students, staff and faculty, as well as the public. Series: "UCTV Prime" [Science] [Show ID: 39209]

Wind turbine blades are a major source of environmental pollution and waste. Learn how UC Davis is creating an ecologically sound solution for their disposal. Students, faculty and researchers in the Advanced Composites Research, Engineering and Science (ACRES) lab in the UC Davis College of Engineering are building compostable wind turbine blades from bamboo and mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms. While the researchers are currently focused on building a wind turbine blade prototype, incorporating mycelium into building materials could have larger implications for sustainable structures. Series: "UCTV Prime" [Science] [Show ID: 39206]

Welcome to our wine processing course — a hands-on journey into the art and science of winemaking. Get a behind-the-scenes look at how students learn to taste, blend, age, fine, filter and package their own wines, all under the guidance of industry professionals and seasoned faculty. Our students’ coursework transforms into practical skills needed in the wine industry. The course, a part of the university’s viticulture and enology program, is held in our Teaching and Research Winery, the most advanced and sustainable winery in the world. Sustainability is a recurring theme, with students exploring every opportunity to make their process greener. Stay tuned for the opportunity to taste the fruits of our students’ hard work and innovation. With new state legislation that recently passed, UC Davis will soon be able to sell student-made wine, bringing the vineyard to your table. Series: "UCTV Prime" [Science] [Show ID: 39217]

Explore UC Davis discoveries that have improved modern life in unexpected ways. Series: "UCTV Prime" [Science] [Show ID: 39210]

In the foundational texts of Western civilisation (the Bible, Iliad), plagues are symbols of divine retribution, signifying Godly displeasure with human misdeeds. But in Thucydides’ classic account of the mysterious plague that swept Athens in 430 BC, Camus’s La Peste, and Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven, literary accounts of plagues and pandemics are also morality tales and metaphors for the dissolution of the social bonds necessary for the functioning of modern societies. In this talk, I bring the history of plague writing into dialogue with the history of trust, to examine what plague texts tell us about our foundational myths and our obsession with calamities and crises. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 39002]