UC Science Today

Educators looking for a way to get kids interested in materials science and engineering may want to bring some superheroes into the mix. That’s what mechanical engineer Suveen Mathaudhu of the University of California, Riverside has been doing – and it seems to be working. He’s now regarded as an expert on the science of superheroes.

"The science portrayed in comic books is fairly diverse. From the metals work that you see in Captain America’s shield and in Thor’s metal hammer and in Wolverine’s claws; to bio-inspired materials, like Spiderman’s web; to magnetic materials and energy materials as manipulated by Magneto."

Mathaudhu, who studies how to make metallic materials lighter and stronger, started making connections between the superpowers of superheroes and real science.

"I started using these in my technical talks as an interest grabber and then slowly, I saw more and more connections to research, to STEM outreach, and to the kind of work that I’m doing. So, it’s been a fantastic outreach tool and continues to be interesting to me."

Wi-Fi signals are predominantly used for communication, but a team of engineers at the University of California, Santa Barbara are working to use Wi-Fi signals as a sensing mechanism. Yasamin Mostofi and her team have shown that a Wifi signal can be used to count the number of people in a given space, which can someday be used for energy efficiency.

"For instance, the current smart speakers, they have Wi-Fi cards, so we have a very rich environment in a smart home for Wi-Fi links. And so we can imagine they could be used in figuring out which areas are more crowded and optimizing all sorts of things, like heating and cooling based on where people are. We think of it as an additional way of sensing."

Mostofi’s lab is also working on other uses for Wi-Fi, including using at archeological sites.

"Where sometimes there’s part of a structure that’s, you know, you just don’t want to break and you want to sense something behind it and you just simply can’t use cameras – it’s not visible."

Almost all animals with vocalizations have pretty innate ones. In other words, if a dog never met another dog, he will still bark exactly the same. But no so with birds. Hamish Mehaffey, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, studies how birds learn to sing.

"In birds, if they don’t hear other birds sing, they will sing a terrible, nonsensical song that will make them very unpopular when they finally meet other birds and they usually try to mimic the songs that they hear around them. So, even within the exact same species, there are differences in the songs."

Mehaffey and his colleagues have discovered the specific neurological mechanism by which songbirds can experiment and refine their songs as they become adults.

"We were looking at how two different pathways interact in order to allow birds to sing; one is required for the bird to sing a normal adult song and the other one was required for any kind of changes."

Understanding this mechanism in birds can help explain how the human brain learns complex motor skills and may even someday help treat neurological conditions like Parkinson’s disease.

Almost all animals with vocalizations have pretty innate ones. In other words, if a dog never met another dog, he will still bark exactly the same. But no so with birds. Hamish Mehaffey, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, studies how birds learn to sing.

"In birds, if they don’t hear other birds sing, they will sing a terrible, nonsensical song that will make them very unpopular when they finally meet other birds and they usually try to mimic the songs that they hear around them. So, even within the exact same species, there are differences in the songs."

Mehaffey and his colleagues have discovered the specific neurological mechanism by which songbirds can experiment and refine their songs as they become adults.

"We were looking at how two different pathways interact in order to allow birds to sing; one is required for the bird to sing a normal adult song and the other one was required for any kind of changes."

Understanding this mechanism in birds can help explain how the human brain learns complex motor skills and may even someday help treat neurological conditions like Parkinson’s disease.

Almost all animals with vocalizations have pretty innate ones. In other words, if a dog never met another dog, he will still bark exactly the same. But no so with birds. Hamish Mehaffey, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, studies how birds learn to sing.

"In birds, if they don’t hear other birds sing, they will sing a terrible, nonsensical song that will make them very unpopular when they finally meet other birds and they usually try to mimic the songs that they hear around them. So, even within the exact same species, there are differences in the songs."

Mehaffey and his colleagues have discovered the specific neurological mechanism by which songbirds can experiment and refine their songs as they become adults.

"We were looking at how two different pathways interact in order to allow birds to sing; one is required for the bird to sing a normal adult song and the other one was required for any kind of changes."

Understanding this mechanism in birds can help explain how the human brain learns complex motor skills and may even someday help treat neurological conditions like Parkinson’s disease.

When it comes to movement, there’s still a lot that’s unknown about what’s actually being mapped in the brain, but researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Action Lab are working to decode the cognitive architecture that underlies what’s called goal-directed movement. Graduate student Deborah Barany is part of the team.

"My research broadly focuses on the neuromechanisms that underlie our goal directed action. So, basically anything that involves the brain when you move – your brain is planning in some way, whether you know it or not. So I’m basically trying to ask the question, “how is the brain organized so that we can make these successful movements?”

Barany developed a new analysis tool that allows researchers to zoom in on active regions of the brain during specific movements. This understanding may help advance neural prosthetics or even enhance the field of robotics.

"Being able to adapt through the environment and move around obstacles and make these fast changes."

How does the brain of a schizophrenic patient differ, functionally, from others? Researchers at the University of California, San Diego’s Multimodal Imaging Lab are able to use computational modeling and brain imaging methods to investigate neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. For graduate student Chun Chieh Fan working in this lab has been especially enlightening.

"I was always interested in how human brain work. Back in my hometown, I’m a psychiatrist. I can only talk; I can only try to understand where the problem come from. I hope with the advance of brain imaging technology, we can actually begin to understand what happened to human’s mind and human’s brain. And with better resolution instead of only talk."

Fan recently used the labs imaging techniques to discover that the three-dimensional shape of the cerebral cortex strongly correlates with one’s ancestral background. And this may lead to a more personalized medicine approach for diagnosing and treating brain diseases.

When it comes to movement, there’s still a lot that’s unknown about what’s actually being mapped in the brain, but researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Action Lab are working to decode the cognitive architecture that underlies what’s called goal-directed movement. Graduate student Deborah Barany is part of the team.

"My research broadly focuses on the neuromechanisms that underlie our goal directed action. So, basically anything that involves the brain when you move – your brain is planning in some way, whether you know it or not. So I’m basically trying to ask the question, “how is the brain organized so that we can make these successful movements?”

Barany developed a new analysis tool that allows researchers to zoom in on active regions of the brain during specific movements. This understanding may help advance neural prosthetics or even enhance the field of robotics.

"Being able to adapt through the environment and move around obstacles and make these fast changes."

How does the brain of a schizophrenic patient differ, functionally, from others? Researchers at the University of California, San Diego’s Multimodal Imaging Lab are able to use computational modeling and brain imaging methods to investigate neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. For graduate student Chun Chieh Fan working in this lab has been especially enlightening.

"I was always interested in how human brain work. Back in my hometown, I’m a psychiatrist. I can only talk; I can only try to understand where the problem come from. I hope with the advance of brain imaging technology, we can actually begin to understand what happened to human’s mind and human’s brain. And with better resolution instead of only talk."

Fan recently used the labs imaging techniques to discover that the three-dimensional shape of the cerebral cortex strongly correlates with one’s ancestral background. And this may lead to a more personalized medicine approach for diagnosing and treating brain diseases.

When it comes to movement, there’s still a lot that’s unknown about what’s actually being mapped in the brain, but researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Action Lab are working to decode the cognitive architecture that underlies what’s called goal-directed movement. Graduate student Deborah Barany is part of the team.

"My research broadly focuses on the neuromechanisms that underlie our goal directed action. So, basically anything that involves the brain when you move – your brain is planning in some way, whether you know it or not. So I’m basically trying to ask the question, “how is the brain organized so that we can make these successful movements?”

Barany developed a new analysis tool that allows researchers to zoom in on active regions of the brain during specific movements. This understanding may help advance neural prosthetics or even enhance the field of robotics.

"Being able to adapt through the environment and move around obstacles and make these fast changes."