UC Science Today

In social groups, dominant mammals generally have the easiest access to resources that garner survival and reproductive success. Psychologist Sheri Johnson of the University of California, Berkeley describes that humans and other mammals respond accordingly to their place in these social hierarchies.

"Many of us are used to thinking about hierarchy in the animal world. Wolf packs have a hierarchy of who’s the chief wolf pack leader and on down from there. But in human context, we also have a hierarchy, and where you are in that hierarchy may even shift across different contexts. You might be the high-ranking person in one area of your life, like you might be captain of your sports team, but then you go to work, and maybe you’re not captain there."

Johnson says that feeling subordinated in these hierarchies is linked to poor mental health. Recent studies have found that people living in developed countries with the highest income inequality are three times as likely to develop depression.

"There are tons of studies out there showing that poverty is very bad for mental health."

When you share a video on Facebook, in the background there are huge data centers storing this information and ready to retrieve whenever you, or one of your 1200 Facebook friends, click on it. And what if it’s a funny cat video that goes viral? Graduate student Janelle Shane of the University of California, San Diego’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, says it takes lots of storage and speed and that’s why most of these big data centers are using fiber optics.

"As we are sending higher and higher data rates between your computer, your graphics card or different parts of your computer, we want to try and use those same advantages that we got from fiber optics on a computer chip. So, for sending data not only between computers, but now within computers as well."

Shane specializes in photonics, the study of light, and says as computers get faster and faster, they’re going to want to send that data with light, not electricity.

"We are trying to figure out how to make lasers that are so small that they fit well on these computer chips."

In social groups, dominant mammals generally have the easiest access to resources that garner survival and reproductive success. Psychologist Sheri Johnson of the University of California, Berkeley describes that humans and other mammals respond accordingly to their place in these social hierarchies.

"Many of us are used to thinking about hierarchy in the animal world. Wolf packs have a hierarchy of who’s the chief wolf pack leader and on down from there. But in human context, we also have a hierarchy, and where you are in that hierarchy may even shift across different contexts. You might be the high-ranking person in one area of your life, like you might be captain of your sports team, but then you go to work, and maybe you’re not captain there."

Johnson says that feeling subordinated in these hierarchies is linked to poor mental health. Recent studies have found that people living in developed countries with the highest income inequality are three times as likely to develop depression.

"There are tons of studies out there showing that poverty is very bad for mental health."

When you share a video on Facebook, in the background there are huge data centers storing this information and ready to retrieve whenever you, or one of your 1200 Facebook friends, click on it. And what if it’s a funny cat video that goes viral? Graduate student Janelle Shane of the University of California, San Diego’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, says it takes lots of storage and speed and that’s why most of these big data centers are using fiber optics.

"As we are sending higher and higher data rates between your computer, your graphics card or different parts of your computer, we want to try and use those same advantages that we got from fiber optics on a computer chip. So, for sending data not only between computers, but now within computers as well."

Shane specializes in photonics, the study of light, and says as computers get faster and faster, they’re going to want to send that data with light, not electricity.

"We are trying to figure out how to make lasers that are so small that they fit well on these computer chips."

Could helicopter parenting be effective for pets? In a nationwide survey analyzing the key personality traits of pet owners, those who expressed the greatest affection for their pets also rated among the most neurotic. Psychologist Mikel Delgado of the University of California, Berkeley explains that the positive association between neuroticism and affection suggests that the qualities of an overbearing parent might work better for pets than for kids.

"In human children, having a parent who scores high in neuroticism is not usually linked to good outcomes. They tend to have less consistent parenting, either overly permissive or maybe overly protective. And at some point, children grow up, and they need to be autonomous."

Delgado says that high levels of affection and dependence on their pets could be beneficial because pets require lifelong caregiving.

"This relationship to their pet may not be harmful to the pet because the pet never has to kind of graduate and leave home, right? The pet is always dependent on the owner."

Could helicopter parenting be effective for pets? In a nationwide survey analyzing the key personality traits of pet owners, those who expressed the greatest affection for their pets also rated among the most neurotic. Psychologist Mikel Delgado of the University of California, Berkeley explains that the positive association between neuroticism and affection suggests that the qualities of an overbearing parent might work better for pets than for kids.

"In human children, having a parent who scores high in neuroticism is not usually linked to good outcomes. They tend to have less consistent parenting, either overly permissive or maybe overly protective. And at some point, children grow up, and they need to be autonomous."

Delgado says that high levels of affection and dependence on their pets could be beneficial because pets require lifelong caregiving.

"This relationship to their pet may not be harmful to the pet because the pet never has to kind of graduate and leave home, right? The pet is always dependent on the owner."

For decades, physicians have assumed that cerebral aneurysms rarely undergo structural change and some earlier theories speculated that they grow at a constant rate. Now an international consortium of scientists has used radiocarbon dating to date samples of ruptured and unruptured cerebral aneurysm tissue.

"What we did was actually measure how old the collagen, or basically the structure of a aneurysm is, by measuring the carbon-14 content of the protein that makes up the aneurysm."

That’s physicist Bruce Buchholz of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who was part of the consortium. He says they found that cerebral aneurysms are significantly younger than once thought and that this type of research increases the knowledge of how the body works.

"We're looking at the intrinsic behavior of cells or proteins without adding any other trace of what's already there in nature. So we're not perturbing the system to look at it. We're seeing how the system behaves naturally, which I think is really important."

For decades, physicians have assumed that cerebral aneurysms rarely undergo structural change and some earlier theories speculated that they grow at a constant rate. Now an international consortium of scientists has used radiocarbon dating to date samples of ruptured and unruptured cerebral aneurysm tissue.

"What we did was actually measure how old the collagen, or basically the structure of a aneurysm is, by measuring the carbon-14 content of the protein that makes up the aneurysm."

That’s physicist Bruce Buchholz of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who was part of the consortium. He says they found that cerebral aneurysms are significantly younger than once thought and that this type of research increases the knowledge of how the body works.

"We're looking at the intrinsic behavior of cells or proteins without adding any other trace of what's already there in nature. So we're not perturbing the system to look at it. We're seeing how the system behaves naturally, which I think is really important."

While it’s still a mystery how the brain hones into specific sounds in noisy environments, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a hearing aid algorithm that replicates how we processes sound. Neuroscientist Frederic Theunissen describes what he calls the “auditory spotlight”.

"If you're listening to the orchestra with your eyes closed, you can listen to the violin, and then you decide, "Oh, I'm going to listen to the flute," and then, "I'm going to, you know, listen to the cello" and so forth, and you can basically jump from one instrument to the other one so that you can just see your auditory spotlight going from one instrument to the other one. And when you focus on one of them, you don’t hear the other ones anymore."

To replicate this process, Thuenissen’s team studied songbird brain imagery and identified the exact neurons that tune into auditory signals.

"The idea is let’s make a set of these detectors, which are kind of like auditory neurons, that are specialized for different features, and then let’s see if we can use the response of these detectors to amplify the signal at the right time."

While it’s still a mystery how the brain hones into specific sounds in noisy environments, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a hearing aid algorithm that replicates how we processes sound. Neuroscientist Frederic Theunissen describes what he calls the “auditory spotlight”.

"If you're listening to the orchestra with your eyes closed, you can listen to the violin, and then you decide, "Oh, I'm going to listen to the flute," and then, "I'm going to, you know, listen to the cello" and so forth, and you can basically jump from one instrument to the other one so that you can just see your auditory spotlight going from one instrument to the other one. And when you focus on one of them, you don’t hear the other ones anymore."

To replicate this process, Thuenissen’s team studied songbird brain imagery and identified the exact neurons that tune into auditory signals.

"The idea is let’s make a set of these detectors, which are kind of like auditory neurons, that are specialized for different features, and then let’s see if we can use the response of these detectors to amplify the signal at the right time."