UC Science Today

Social connections are important and can make you happier, according to psychologist Iris Mauss of the University of California, Berkeley. But how can those who are, shall we say, not so easy going build such a network? Mauss says – just be yourself, and open up to others.

“People who are perceived to be more authentic are better liked by others and have better social connections. And we have found that if you hold in your emotions, you stifle them, then others tend to perceive that as.. on average, finding you less authentic.”

Mauss says accepting your negative emotions could also help you become more personable.

“Having that accepting attitudes about your own emotions will make you be more open about your own emotions which I believe would be perceived by others as greater authenticity.”

So, if you shy away from sharing your feelings, just give it another try!

Will software engineers ever be able to outsmart hackers and build an unbreakable wall of defense? Dawn Song, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley says it’s possible, but don’t expect results in the near future. Part of the reason is due to artificial intelligence, or AI.

“On one hand AI – these techniques can really help us to enhance our capabilities for defenders to build stronger defenses, but also on the other hand unfortunately it could be misused by attackers. In the long run, we do hope that the defenders will win, but in the short term it could make it easier for attackers to develop new attacks, but can be much, much harder for defenders to build sufficient defenses.”

So, what will it take for programmers to win this cat-and-mouse game? According to Song, the advancement of artificial intelligence allows researchers to better identify vulnerable spots in software installed on our smartphones, laptops and tablets.

It seems there’s more to high-density lipoproteins, or HDLs, than we previously thought. Nutrition researcher Angela Zivkovic of the University of California, Davis, led an analyses of how the composition of complex sugars attached to HDLs called glycans are linked to the body’s inflammatory response. Traditional markers like LDL cholesterol, body mass index and blood pressure are not able to predict whose HDL is pro- or anti-inflammatory.

"That’s something that had not really been looked at very extensively before. So, how can we actually start to look at people to see what their metabolic phenotype might be like that’s something other than how we’ve categorized them so far?”

Being a nutrition researcher, Zivkovic is looking into which diets are pro- or anti-inflammatory.

"I think we can actually start to think about the possibility of giving people recommendations to improve their health that take into account both who they are as genetically, but also what they choose."

Medical students at the University of California, San Francisco, are learning about the human body in a new, experimental setting. Anatomy professor Derek Harmon is piloting a virtual reality class. But as exciting as it sounds - not every student is thrilled about the 3D experience.

"I think one potential negative with virtual reality is that some studies quote that something like 20 percent of people or 1 out of 5 have this motion sickness."

So, Harmon says for that reason some of his anatomy students opted out. But the class is optional, designed in addition to the traditional mandatory classes taught on cadavers.

"Virtual reality is one way we are looking at it. We are looking at augmented reality concepts too. Potentially mixed reality like a HoloLens, to try to make sure that we can get as many students involved in this type of space as possible."

According to Harmon, the concept of spatial building that three-dimension provides is a very important skill for medical students. And it’s easier to understand using virtual reality.

When you accept your own negative emotions – you will likely have a more positive outlook on mood swings than people around you have. That’s according to Iris Mauss, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley.

“If you have an accepting attitude for other people’s emotions that tend to make those other people feel better and it helps you respond to their distress in a more constructive way.”

Mauss says this mindset is invaluable for parents who often deal with their little ones’ tantrums.

“Small children have difficulty regulating their emotions because, they are - children."

But if their moms and dads are responsive and understanding –

“We believe that over time that might actually help children develop better emotion-regulatory skills. ”

And not only that. Mauss says if you learn how to accept your negative emotions, you’ll become a better role model for your kids.

Artificial Intelligence has been developing fast – and it’s making more and more decisions on humans’ behalf. From simple web searches to e-commerce to self-driving cars. But researchers like Dawn Song, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, are struggling to find the best ways to protect this technology from hackers.

“One thing we are looking at how we can use AI and deep learning techniques to develop stronger security capabilities to enable us to build better defenses. One of our recent works uses advanced deep learning techniques to try to identify software vulnerabilities in IOT devises.”

Deep learning techniques are advanced algorithms, which allow researchers to process massive amounts of data.

“The advantage of deep learning is that it can enable us to build very large data sets. And now we have very good computation framework and hardware to perform a variety of tasks.”

But as machines becomes smarter, so do viruses that attack them, so scientists are challenged to stay one step ahead of hackers.

Sleep disorders during pregnancy can lead to a preterm birth.

To improve sleeping patterns of mothers-to-be, Jennifer Felder, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, is running an intervention research.

“So we are doing a research on expecting moms and it is a digital intervention for sleep during pregnancies, so we are able to recruit women across the nation and in Canada. So we are hoping to have a really broad reach with that."

Besides pre-term birth outcomes, Insomnia is linked to other problems in pregnant women.

“Poor sleep during pregnancy may also increase risk of perinatal depression and there are some data that suggests that it might increase risk of suicidal ideation, gestational diabetes, cesarean section births. So it does appear to have really broad consequences both psychologically and physically."

Treating sleep disorders might help reduce the rate of pre-term births, which affect 1 in 10 women in the United States.

Virtual Reality becomes a reality in medical research. Derek Harmon, a professor of anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco, is working with software companies to develop 3D brain scan visualization tools.

“With your two hand-held controllers of the virtual space you can slice with one axes and then the other and see a view of a head CT scan. In real time you can see all these different angles and again, build on special arrangement of the body, which I don’t know where else you can even do something like that.”

Harmon has just started a pilot curriculum that offers virtual reality anatomy classes to medical students, so a 360-degree view of a digital human body using Google glasses. Harmon says lessons like these will help students become better physicians in the future.

“If you have a company that built the software for you, you have pre-selected layers of tissue, organs and whatever you want to learn from, which does a lot of legwork for you and because of that people can start experimenting with it. I think it is so early on in the technology, but there is a lot of promise on things that you really can’t do on another type of medium."

A couple of decades ago flame retardants – or PBDEs - were widely used in furniture because of the fire safety standards. But that policy has since changed in many states, including California.

“Because of concern about increasing exposures as well as the facts that people were concerned about in terms of how they may be affecting neurodevelopment, PBDE were phased out for use.”

That’s Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco. She has run a study measuring pregnant women’s exposure to PBDEs that can affect children’s neurodevelopment and lower IQ. Woodruff found that despite a series of bans, these chemicals are still ubiquitous in our homes.

“So we see decline in some of the exposures, but we see that we still going to have exposures for a while because they are still hanging around, they probably still in a lot of furniture."

Woodruff urges policymakers not to weaken environmental health laws.

Medical students at the University of California, San Francisco, are learning about human anatomy not only on cadavers, but also in virtual reality. This is part of a new pilot curriculum led by anatomy professor Derek Harmon.

"The students, as soon as they learn the material on actual cadavers, on skeletons, or in the lab itself, they could go into the space where we had virtual reality set up and they could do the exact same type of lesson, but they could take it piece-by-piece off of the model in the virtual space, which means they could physically walk around the virtual model getting this kind of 360 degree view that they could not get in the lab."

This way, even though students can’t feel the virtual body, they can explore its every little detail.

"You can really quickly see that it helped more with the depth level and by that I mean from the superficial skin level down to the deepest part in the body, because they can take every piece layer-by-layer off."

Harmon says in just a couple of years VR's popularity will likely skyrocket among medical doctors.