UC Science Today

Could taking a pill make us more compassionate? In a new study at the University of California, Berkeley, researchers found people were more willing to distribute money equally when they were given tolcapone, an FDA-approved drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease. Co-author Dr. Andrew Kayser says that participants were given either tolcapone or a placebo and played a simple economic game in which they divided money between themselves and an anonymous partner.

"When people took the tolcapone, as compared to when they took the sugar pill, they didn't change how much money they gave away, but they did change how equal the distributions were. So we found that when people were on tolcapone, they wanted the distribution of the money to be more equal than when they were on the sugar pill."

Kayser says he hopes the study could potentially lead to better treatments for mental illnesses and other disabling conditions.

"Social dysfunction is reasonably widespread and we don’t have great treatments for it. And so our hope is that we can add another arrow to the quiver, so to speak."

Traditional MRI technology uses a large magnetic field to produce very high quality diagnostic images.

"And that’s one of the appeals, but what my team is trying to do is kind of work at the other end of the spectrum with regard to the magnetic field and drop it to very, very weak magnetic fields."

Physicist Michelle Espy of the Los Alamos National Laboratory says that’s because large magnetic fields require multi-million dollar infrastructure and many Third World countries and combat support hospitals for our troops do not have access to MRI.

"So if an MRI is required to someone who’s injured in the battlefield, for example, they have to be transported often thousands of miles to a major medical center. We’ve also been talking about a more humanitarian direction to take the system in Third World countries. So, we’re trying to do MRI at much, much lower fields because it’s cheaper, lighter, easier to move these systems around, which should make them more accessible to a lot of people."

While it might be too late for seniors to learn to play a musical instrument, singing in a choir could be an easy and effective way for older adults to stay sharp. University of California, San Francisco’s Julene Johnson is currently running a study on the health benefits of seniors singing in choirs. She’s focusing on choirs because they’re easy for almost anyone to join.

"Singing in a choir is very accessible. And by that I mean you have your instrument, your voice, in your body. You don’t have to buy a musical instrument; you don’t have to take a few beginner lessons to get yourself up and going. You can essentially join a choir, whatever your musical background is."

Johnson says that implementing community choirs could also be relatively cheaper compared to other creative arts programs.

"We’re also doing a cost effective analysis with the idea that singing in a community choir might be a cost-effective way to promote health in the community. And the nice thing is, it’s something that can be easily translated into different cultures, into different centers, and places in the city."

Large bodied fish like bumphead parrot fish are the largest coral reef plant eaters – performing important scraping and removing functions that keep coral reefs healthy. But overfishing has reduced these vital seaweed eaters by more than half. According to Jennifer Smith of the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, that’s because a lot of places don’t have proper fishing regulations.

"All of these parrot fish, which are super important for coral reef health, they sleep at night by making a little cocoon around themselves and then kind of wedging themselves onto the bottom of the reef. And so people who are avid fisherman obviously know that strategy and so they can go on suba at night and just shoot them all with spear guns and in a few hours, wipe out an entire population across one reef."

While Smith realizes some countries need to subsist on the fish, her study calls for better management and conservation strategies for the coral reef ecosystem across the Pacific and Caribbean.

Humans have been broadcasting radio and television signals into deep space for about a hundred years. And if anyone is listening, they might send something back. Dan Werthimer directs the University of California, Berkeley’s search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, and he says that our broadcasts have already gone past thousands of stars.

"The early radio shows and early television have gone past 10,000 stars. The nearby stars have seen the "Simpsons" and the distant stars have seen "I Love Lucy," and "Ed Sullivan." So we're sending off all of this radio and television, and radar, and maybe E.T. does something like that, or if we're very lucky, maybe they send us a deliberate signal."

Werthimer says that unlike radio and television signals, laser signals are for point-to-point communication, and receiving one could mean that E.T. knows where we are. His team has recently started looking for these signals in infrared.

"These are colors that you and I can’t see, but they’re very good for interstellar communication and we’re hoping E.T. might send us a laser signal."

For several years, there’s been a big push to have alternatives to animal testing of drugs. Scientist Rashi Iyer of the Los Alamos National Laboratory says it’s a very slow and expensive process, so they’re developing the ATHENA system, which simulates human organs.

"It’s artificial human organs that is a bench top platform that you can use to screen drugs. There are two strengths. One is that you’re actually developing a system that simulates a human system. So we hope that our lung, for example, would breathe; liver that metabolizes; a heart that pumps. The other strength is you get very deep analysis and also in real-time. So, if you do a drug exposure you know exactly where your system is crashing."

The Los Alamos Lab, or LANL, is the lead institute in this collaborative effort.

"LANL is primarily responsible for the lung; Harvard is doing the heart system and LANL and Vanderbilt are engaged in the kidney development and all the integration. At the end of every organ completion it gets integrated at LANL."

It’s been commonly assumed that electric vehicles are not as useful to daily commuters because of their battery’s limited energy storage capacity. But a new study led by research scientist Samveg Saxena of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that electric vehicles can still meet the daily travel needs of drivers even after they’ve lost substantial battery capacity.

"Even well beyond having lost 20 percent of a battery's energy storage capacity, the needs of so many drivers all across the country will still be met. And so as a result, these batteries will last a lot longer than just having lost 20 percent of their energy storage capacity."

Saxena’s team simulated different scenarios based on real data about people’s driving behaviors across the U.S. using a Nissan Leaf, a car with similar energy storage capacity to many other EVs on the market.

"We looked at so many "what would happen if" types of scenarios, to come to the conclusions that we ultimately came to, that EV's will meet the needs of so many more people than is commonly assumed."

For the first time, scientists have expanded the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, using new infrared detectors. Director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center Dan Werthimer says that infrared adds to the search that already includes optical and radio signals.

"We think the best strategy is a multi-prong strategy. You want to look at radio, you want to look at infrared, you want to look at visible—as many different searches—because we don’t know what E.T. might be doing. Infrared is kind of cool because it can go right through all of the dust in the galaxy. These are colors that are good for interstellar communication. And we think if E.T’s out there and they’re using laser signals, they’ll probably use an infrared laser."

Werthimer says that the idea of searching for infrared signals dates back several decades, but the technology has not been available until now.

"The infrared SETI is a big step in looking for other civilizations because we’ve never looked at infrared wavelengths. We wanted to do a search for infrared lasers a long time ago, but there weren’t detectors available. They recently became available, so we looked for in the infrared signals."

What can a country that supports lifelong involvement in music tell us about the importance of creative arts? That’s what University of California, San Francisco cognitive neuroscientist Julene Johnson hopes to answer after spending six months as a Fulbright Scholar in Jyväskylä, Finland. Johnson found a strong correlation between community choirs and the well being of older Fins.

"The older Fins who reported the greatest benefit from singing in a choir, also have the highest ratings on the quality of life measure. So although this was just a cross-sectional study, there was a strong relationship between those who told us that they had a high benefit from the choir, and also those who had reported a high quality of life."

Johnson is now conducting a study on seniors singing in community choirs in the U.S.

"Participating in the creative arts might decrease loneliness and improve your mood, but it almost might have some other impacts, such as making somebody physically stronger or also helping them keep their brain and their mind engaged."

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist Dick Post passed away recently at age 96. We met with him several months ago to chat about his most recent work - that's right, he was STILL working. In fact, Dick had some of the most productive years of his career after he reached 90 years of age.

Few scientists have had a career as long as Post's. He joined the Livermore Lab within weeks of its founding and then worked faithfully, day in and day out, for 63 years — the Laboratory’s entire history.

Even fewer scientists can be said to be one of the three founders of magnetic fusion energy research in the United States.

In our final interview with Dick, he told us what made him tick all these years.

RIP to a wonderful man and a great mind.