UC Science Today

To analyze what could be the first confirmed samples of interstellar space particles, a team of scientists led by the University of California, Berkeley used cutting edge instruments developed by NASA. Andrew Westphal, who leads the analysis at the Space Sciences Laboratory, credits these advancements to NASA’s commitment to research and development.

"When the Apollo moon rocks were coming back, the analytical community recognized that there was a lot of room for improvement and a need to develop techniques that were really sensitive and precise. The result of that development over the decades has been the development of these amazing machines that now can do what the analysis what used to take 1 gram of material, lets say, now can be done with one millionth of a gram."

Westphal says that NASA’s technologies have also benefitted society as a whole.

"There are a lot of spinoffs in general for these kinds of instruments, for example, semiconductor manufacturing and all kinds of things. This has been a tremendously successful investment on the part of NASA."

When it comes to bio-inspired materials, it seems there would be no end to inspiration and that’s been the case with materials scientist Joanna McKittrick of the University of California, San Diego. McKittrick has looked at everything from Narwhal tusks to abalone shells and seahorses to get a better sense of their microstructures at a molecular level.

"We section them and we look at them under the optical microscope; we look at them under the scanning electron microscope and we look at them under the transmission electron microscope and so we can characterize their structure details and do mechanical tests on that."

McKittrick has been looking at feathers and porcupine quills, both made of keratin, and both of interest due to their bending resistance.

"So, we would like to try to make tubes, energy absorbent tubes based on the structure of the feathers and porcupine quills. So, these would be lightweight and they would be resistant to bending and resistant to crushing."

In the near future, the Nutrition Facts label on the back of packaged foods will have a new look and more information. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has plans to include larger serving sizes and new ‘added sugars’ values in an effort to curb consumers’ risks of chronic disease.

"I am very excited for the new nutrition labels to actually have an added sugar component on the nutrition label, which differentiates between the sugars that are naturally occurring in the food versus the sugars that are added by the food processor."

Nutritional biologist Kimber Stanhope of the University of California, Davis says a perfect example of this would be a fruit yogurt.

"When I look at the amount of sugar on that small little 6-ounce carton of fruit yogurt, it's a very high number, but I don't even know how much is added sugar, and I'm a registered dietician, so obviously the general public doesn't know either."

Human faces are distinctive because we have evolved to look unique. Those were the findings of a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. Behavioral ecologist Michael Sheehan explains that they found there were more variations in facial traits than in the rest of the body.

"Traits tend to be correlated in size. So bigger animals have bigger traits, right? Tall people have long arms and long legs. But it’s not the case that tall people have large facial traits. Tall people don’t necessarily have big noses. So the face is doing something quite different not just from the rest of our body but sort of different from what other organismal traits do in general. This would be one way to create lots of different variation in the overall phenotype and make individuals more distinctive."

Sheehan says that the variation may have come from evolutionary pressures to make us easily recognizable.

"Recognition is a really important part of our social lives so therefore there may have been selection for individuals to be more recognizable and make recognition a little bit easier."

Superbugs are antibiotic-resistant bacteria and they've been on the rise ever since antibiotics were first introduced eighty years ago. Matthew Coleman, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, says one reason for this is the overprescribing of antibiotics has allowed pathogens to develop immunities against them.

"It’s a real problem because a lot of bacteria have come up with mechanisms in which they can overcome the antibiotic so they don’t die; they end up living and causing even more problems because in the end, they can actually develop a resistance to that antibiotic."

Coleman is part of a research team at the Livermore Lab that patented a technique that essentially reverses this trend by developing novel antibiotics that effectively kill superbugs.

"This is an enzyme that comes in and just removes and strips away the cell wall, making it impossible for the cells to survive. So, this is a unique mechanism at which to approach antimicrobials."

Dyslexia and other reading disorders may still be a long way from early diagnosis, but researchers at the University of California, San Francisco are getting closer. In a new study, BrainLENS lab manager Chelsea Myers says that combining brain imaging with traditional behavioral assessments significantly improved predictions in children’s reading outcomes.

"We did brain imaging on children at years five to six and again three years later. They were put in an MRI and then also did behavioral testing and what we found is that when you added imaging scans to that pre-literacy measure it was 60 percent more accurate than just the behavioral measure alone."

She says that one goal of the study is to facilitate early interventions.

"So our idea is trying to identify really early measures that can predict their reading outcome so that educators and clinicians can have on their radar this person is at high risk for developing a reading disability."

Integrated biologist Amy Rowat of UCLA is a self-described foodie, so it’s no surprise that she’s incorporated food into lessons about the material properties of biological materials, including her research into cancer cells. Rowat leads a popular Science and Food course at UCLA.

"There are many excellent aspects of food that make it really appealing as a tool for an educator. So, one is that everyone eats and so everyone touches, tastes and senses food on a daily basis. Two, is that many people are obsessed with food beyond just eating it every day. So, there are many people in my classes who are concerned about nutrition or athletes who pay attention to what they eat; the majority of students read ingredients labels; many students in the class have an even more, deeper awareness of food from the get-go. So, this makes food a very powerful tool, it enables us to do hands-on activities and enables them to start to piece together and see how science can play a role in their lives."

Photo credit: Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times

If you’ve ever had trouble telling the truth, that’s because lying may actually be impulsive. A study led by Ming Hsu at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business found that the brain’s prefrontal cortex is linked to how we control self-interest in group settings.

"Obviously, the prefrontal cortex has many different functions. One of the functions is to allow us to inhibit self-interested motives, and to sort of function in a group setting where you can’t just satisfy your self-interest, but you have to trade off a very large set of norms that the society as a group has agreed upon, so whether it’s honesty, whether it’s fairness, whether it’s reciprocity."

Hsu says this explains why our impulses, especially in children, are often at odds with societal norms of honesty.

"We have to remember that the prefrontal cortex is the last of the brain regions to fully mature, so it has a lot of interesting implications about why do adolescents commit the most number of crime and what can we do about it?"

As the nation deals with rising concerns about the spread of the deadly Ebola virus, tropical disease specialist Dr. G. Richard Olds of the University of California, Riverside says while the health problem is not insignificant, the fear it’s generated is greater than it need be.

"This is not as contagious as virus as people might think based on are movies about terrible illnesses and in internationals arenas. This is a virus that is not transmitted basically by aerosol so you can't basically just be in the room with the person that requires direct contact usually transmitted with body fluids or direct contact with the patient."

Olds says tightening up the already existing procedures of how to handle patients with contagious viruses is what’s needed now.

"On the other hand, we need to be diligent about the cases of Ebola that we don’t know are Ebola at the time. It’s the unexpected case, the one that originally presents that needs to be handled correctly."

The National Institutes of Health has launched a pilot program to help life science entrepreneurs translate their research for commercialization. It’s modeled after a successful course that was developed by the University of California, San Francisco. Stephanie Marrus, director of UCSF’s Entrepreneurship Center, says it was first taught last year and is based on a traditional business-plan course called Lean LaunchPad.

"So for context, Steve Blank is an extremely well-known entrepreneurship educator – a successful serial entrepreneur who teaches the Lean LauchPad, this very well-respected course that’s delivered online and has tens of thousands of people who’ve watched it globally."

Marrus’ course was the first to adapt the business model for the healthcare life sciences market.

"Entrepreneurship research has shown that if an entrepreneur works in a team, he’s more likely to be successful than one who works on their own. And this is a team-based program that absolutely takes advantage of that knowledge."