UC Science Today

Women are lied to significantly more than men are when it comes to negotiations. Those were the findings of a University of California, Berkeley study, which involved MBA students vying for the best deal in a simulated real estate negotiation.

"What we found is that when people are representing the buyer and negotiating with a female agent representing the seller they were actually more likely to enter into a deal and they did so by deceiving her. And so we found that they were four times as likely to blatantly lie to a female as they were to a male. And when we looked just at the men who were acting as the buyer’s agents, they were eight times more likely to lie to a female than they were to a male."

Lead author Laura Kray says part of the reason for this is that women are perceived to be less competent, but warmer than men in negotiations.

"If people perceive women as less competent then it’s going to be easier to get away with a lie. In negotiations people get into what we call an opportunistic mindset and where they seize upon it."

It’s long been thought that the Tibetans acquired the genes for high-altitude tolerance through thousands of years of evolution. Now, an international team of scientists led by the University of California, Berkeley has shown that the Tibetans actually acquired the gene when their ancestors mated with an extinct human cousin, the Denisovans. Study leader Rasmus Nielsen says that this is quite different from the usual process of evolution.

"What’s different here is that the genetic variant didn’t come by mutation. It came from another species from interbreeding with another species. At some point there was a hybrid between Denisovans and modern humans. They could get the genetic variant that allowed them to live there by interbreeding with another species that was already adapted to that environment. It’s what population geneticists call adaptive integration."

He says that adaptive integration may have been more important in human evolution than previously thought.

"Now, we know that there was another process that was really important and maybe one of the keys to explain why humans could adapt to so many different environments so fast."

Oncologists at the University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center were the first in San Diego to use a new tool that allows them to improve prostate cancer diagnosis.

"We’re using a new technology that takes MRI and it merges it with the kind of pictures that we normally do when we do a prostate biopsy, which is an ultrasound. But ultrasound is imperfect and it doesn’t allow us in a very sophisticated way to see growths in the prostate that are suspicious for cancer – we took the most sophisticated technology available – an MRI – and merging that with the ultrasound machine when we do the biopsies so that I’m able to do a more sophisticated biopsy that uses the MRI images."

Urologic oncologist J. Kellogg Parsons adds that they were able to view growths in a patient that were previously undetectable.

"We were able to detect this cancer at a time where it is completely curable and we were only able to do that because of the MRI."

In an effort to better study fleeting cosmic events such as supernovae, scientists are using an innovative process called the Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory. Peter Nugent, who heads the project’s division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, explains that this new surveying technique relies on follow-up observations from other telescopes across the world.

"The way the survey goes is we have a telescope which surveys about 20 percent of the visible sky every single night. And then once we find something, then we trigger, many, many telescopes upwards of 10 to 15 different telescopes all across the world and in space."

Nugent says that using this collaborative process has allowed his team to identify the chemical composition of various supernovae.

"An alert goes out and to anybody who’s on a telescope we ask them to swing over and try to take a spectrum of this object where we can actually look to see what chemicals are being produced in the supernova."

As California's drought continues, the state has placed mandatory restrictions on outdoor water use such as watering lawns and gardens if it causes excess runoff. Horticulture specialist Loren Oki at the University of California, Davis describes a few ways to avoid excess runoff caused by sprinkler systems.

"So, what you have to do is to slow down that precipitation rate either by improving the system by putting in a different sprinkler system—the typical sprinkler system are fan sprays they put on water pretty fast, the new spray heads all have these new systems and they put on water slower more closely to how fast the soil can absorb the water. The other thing you can do is pulse the system put on a few minutes, wait thirty minutes, sixty minutes put another few minutes on and you can avoid run off that way."

Oki says runoff occurs because typical irrigation systems overwater the soil.

"Most typical irrigation systems put on water faster than the soil can absorb it. Just think about that, if the soil can’t absorb it, then the excess is going to go in the gutter."

Dopamine deficiency can lead to a variety of diseases including Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and depression. While we may not know the full extent that dopamine has on these diseases, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley are optimistic about their studies looking into how dopamine regulation affects social behavior. Dr. Ming Hsu says that’s because the dopamine system can be targeted by drugs.

"Unlike a lot of systems that are affected, the dopamine system is very targetable or can be targetable. If I give you something that you can treat, that’s exciting, even if it’s not the ultimate cause."

Hsu’s team is studying how behavior is affected by using dopamine drugs.

"So that’s why so much action is on dopamine because we are giving people drugs that manipulate dopamine levels and see how that influences behavior."

A team led by scientists at UCSF has used a novel screening tool to identify eight drugs that may stimulate nervous system repair in multiple sclerosis, or MS. Since all of the compounds, including antihistamine, have been previously approved by the FDA, clinical trials are already underway. Dr. Ari Green, who co-authored the study, is leading the Phase 2 trial called ReBUILD.

"Its using one of these medications and testing in people both how well is the medication tolerated, are their side effects that are difficult for people? How long do we need to use these therapies? Is there benefit to using it for a longer period or shorter period and then trying to figure out how do we best measure this?"

In the lab, these eight drugs stimulated remyelination of nerve cells. Myelin is often likened to the plastic sheath around electrical wires. In MS, when myelin deteriorates, nerve cells slow up and die.

"So, what we would like to do is recover or restore that myelin."

Using a novel screening method to rapidly evaluate the cellular effects of 1,000 chemical compounds, a team led by UC San Francisco scientists has identified eight drugs, including antihistamine, that may stimulate nervous system repair in MS. We chatted with study co-author, Dr. Ari Green, who is also leading a Phase 2 trial* with patients.

*MS patients interested in participating in this trial can contact [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Special thanks to Debbie and Andy Rachleff for their support of this study.

Combining magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, technology with a traditional ultrasound prostate exam has resulted in a three-dimensional map of the prostate that allows doctors to view growths that were previously undetectable. Urologic oncologist J. Kellogg Parsons of the University of California, San Diego Health System was the first to use the technology in the San Diego region.

"We just had a patient – he had several prostate biopsies using the ultrasound machine and we never detected the cancer and yet his PSA blood level kept going up, which was very concerning and anxiety-provoking for him and then the MRI technology became available to us, we did the MRI-guided prostate biopsy and in fact we diagnosed a fairly aggressive prostate cancer at a time where it is completely curable and we were only able to do that because of the MRI."

Astronomer Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz of the University of California, Santa Cruz is one of 50 scholars selected to spend a year as a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. A renowned expert on stellar explosions and black holes, Ramirez-Ruiz is also a champion of aspiring undergraduate researchers.

"Doing research early on is very, very important. I think it’s essential for them if they want to go to grad school to do these projects early on to get basically acquainted with what it takes to do research to start becoming young researchers."

Ramirez-Ruiz founded a UC Santa Cruz lab internship that’s designed for physics and astrophysics majors who want to learn to become independent scientists. In a way, he’s paying it forward.

You know, I went to undergraduate school in Mexico and I had the opportunity to go and do an internship at Los Alamos National Laboratory and that changed my life. It opened the doors; I had a wonderful mentor. He filled me with the confidence which is what we try to do with our undergrads.