UC Science Today

The beauty of materials science is that it looks to nature for inspiration in designing materials. But there’s also just the merging of two different disciplines—engineering and biology. Materials scientist Robert Ritchie of the University of California, Berkeley says there’s a reason to be excited about combining these two fields.

"You’ve seen this in universities with all these bioengineering departments springing up. And I think it’s an interesting endeavor because my generation most engineers don’t know much biology. And most biologists don’t know engineering. And so it has been a difficult connection. But now the future generation is much more versed in both fields. So I think you’ll see a lot of interesting progress. And particularly in medicine, just think engineers have gotten into medicine now. And we have much more sophisticated ways of examining, these CAT scans and so forth; that has all come from the union of biology and engineering. So I think this is quite an exciting period for that."

A cerebral aneurysm is a blood-filled bulge that forms due to a weakness in the wall of arteries in the brain. If it bursts, it can cause a brain hemorrhage and because of the high rate of death in these cases, researchers want to understand how aneurysms form and evolve.

"The advantage is seeing how dynamic they are and then basically changing your practices for managing them to be a bit more aggressive than what has been done previously."

Physicist Bruce Buchholz of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was part of an international team that used radiocarbon dating of samples of ruptured and unruptured tissues. They found that a protein called collagen type 1 is distinctly younger than previously thought.

"People believe that they grew very slowly over time and then would break or that they would go through periodic cycles of being stable and grow. What we found is they appeared to be the same age regardless of how big they were, how old the person was, regardless if they were ruptured or not..."

And this can help with intervention.

Cool roofs are typically white coatings that provide energy cost savings by reflecting more sunlight than an ordinary dark roof. And while they’ve been well studied in the United States, most research in China has only happened within the last decade. Now, an international study led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has conducted the first comprehensive study of cool roofs in China.

"We were taking something that was well understood elsewhere in the world and extending it to a very important country with a very large population that’s actively seeking to save energy and reduce its carbon footprint."

Staff scientist Ronnen Levinson says that the team tested both residential and office buildings in seven Chinese cities in five climate zones.

“We hope to do two things: first, learn how roof reflectance changes over time in various climates in China; and we hope that this is going to jump start the use of cool roofs in that country.”

A virus that’s associated with bladder cancer has been detected by an international team of scientists using a biomedical detection technology developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Biologist Crystal Jaing explains that their Microbial Detection Array can analyze any of the sequenced viruses, bacteria, fungi and other organisms, within 24 hours.

"So, this is really a breakthrough technology because it is much faster and cheaper than DNA sequencing and it can analyze thousands of microbes all with one test."

In terms of bladder cancer, Jaing says the researchers involved had suspected a viral cause – as opposed to just smoking. They knew about the Lab’s technology and reached out to them for help. The technology found this viral link – human herpesvirus8.

"We’re pretty excited about applying this technology to the cancer field. This can help us through early detection, so we can use it potentially as a biomarker to detect bladder cancer early on."

Despite its crucial role in cancer, the process of cell immortalization is still poorly understood. Now, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have devised a new method for creating immortal human mammary epithelial cells. Senior scientist Martha Stampfer says that this allows them to study cell immortalization as it occurs in humans.

"There are two main tumor suppressor barriers for a normal cell to become abnormal. Then the question was, could we cleanly inactivate those two barriers so we could take a normal cell and have it become immortal cleanly. That is, not with all this instability and all these unknowns. So one, we could examine the process and two, to do it in a highly efficient way so you could examine it experimentally."

Stampfer says that this new procedure may lead to new cancer treatment options.

"That is, to identify processes that are essential for immortalization and then being able to devise pharmacological interventions that would prevent that from happening."

There’s been increasing research supporting that comprehensive palliative care, which is focused on improving quality of life for those with serious chronic illness, can significantly improve a patient’s daily life and in many cases, prolong it. Dr. Steve Pantilat directs the Palliative Care Program at the University of California, San Francisco, which was one of the first hospital-based programs of its kind when founded in 1999.

"Historically, we’ve only thought about palliative care as being for people who are at the end of life and so we’ve said, “oh, you know if you’re not at the end of life, you don’t need palliative care.” But what we understand and what we have seen in studies and in practices, the palliative care is both for people with serious illness and people that are at the end of life."

Now, UCSF’s School of Nursing has expanded their training to include a minor in palliative care.

"Their Master’s and PhD level nurses can get a minor in palliative care and study that as a focus. So, we’re recognizing this is an important area for training healthcare professionals."

Strength and toughness are two structural properties that tend to be mutually exclusive. Strong materials are usually brittle while tough ones are usually weak. But materials scientist Robert Ritchie of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says that teeth combine both properties surprisingly well.

"If the whole tooth were made of enamel it would break very quickly. So there’s an underlying tougher layer called dentin. And we looked at how cracks which form in the enamel never make it to the dentin because they get blunted out. And that’s how armor works. You need a hard layer to stop a bullet for example but if it was all made of that it would just shatter so you have got to have something underneath to absorb the energy. It is not as hard but it’s tougher."

That’s how teeth are able to withstand strong bite forces and millions of mastication cycles without shattering.

For some time, civil engineers have wondered if embankment dams – some built half a century ago – could fail days or weeks after an earthquake. Now, thanks to a new study co-led by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, researchers have demonstrated that design standards for dams are effective for seismic events. Mechanical and civil engineer, Lee Glascoe explains.

"We used multi-scale modeling, which means we modeled to different scales; down to the soil grain and we modeled all the way up to the dam and we scaled between the two. The good news is that we showed that the design criteria that was used in the past is good and that it is sufficient."

The Lab collaborated with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers using the Lab’s robust 3-D computer modeling and did physical experiments using the Army’s centrifuge – the most powerful one in the world.

"What’s really exciting is that such knowledge that we’ve learned in infrastructure resiliency for embankment dams can be extended for looking at levies, dikes, dams."

It’s no secret that sugar is one of the leading causes of obesity. But how we consume sugar also matters. Cindy Leung of the University of California, San Francisco says that taking in calories from sugary beverages has a different metabolic response than eating those same calories in food.

"Usually if we were to eat 200 calories of a sugary food, like a piece of cake or a doughnut, our body would tell us that we’re full and we would eat less at the next meal. What we are seeing with sugary beverages is that it is not happening. People drink the soda. It overrides our satiety signals. We don’t register that we’re full. So we end up eating more at the next meal or at the same meal we’re drinking a soda than if we were to eat those same calories from sugar."

Leung says that the rapid influx of carbohydrates from drinking soda can also lead to other diseases.

"Diabetes has been linked with soda consumption, as has coronary heart disease and stroke. So there’s many health outcomes that are linked with soda, not just obesity."

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station typically add water to their meals before they eat. But a new study at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says that bringing these types of food will be heavier to ship on longer flights such as missions to Mars. Study leader Amor Menezes says that synthetic biology could be the answer.

"What we're advocating is for dry food. So basically we would take these bioreactors. The microbes will produce, for example, Spirulina, which is basically kind of this nutritious biomass. It's got almost all of the nutrients that you would possibly require. And you would consume biomass instead of eating this kind of wet food."

Menezes says that this method could reduce the mass of food shipment by 38 percent. But it can also improve the taste.

"Where synthetic biology can go with respect to food in space is specifically to improve the quality of taste and texture and mouth feel, that kind of thing, for this particular biomass."