UC Science Today

Despite their amazing ability to change color and camouflage, cephalopods like octopus and cuttlefish only have one type of light receptor in their eyes, giving them black and white vision. But a new theory proposed by graduate student Alexander Stubbs of the University of California, Berkeley explains how cephalopods might still have the ability to detect color through the manipulation of light.

"There’s a variety of pupil shapes in organisms in general. So you can have a vertical slit pupil, a dot pupil, like you or I might have, and that’s generally speaking the best for overall image sharpness. If you have a pupil that has more off-axis distance, so a bigger aperture in photographic terms, then that narrows your depth of field. You have to really pay attention to what’s going to be in focus and what’s going to be out of focus. Now, with cephalopods, when you have that off-axis pupil, it actually splits the image colors into constituent wavelengths, much like a prism. They could use this to be able to effectively focus through colors instead of focusing through distance."

Despite their amazing ability to change color and camouflage, cephalopods like octopus and cuttlefish only have one type of light receptor in their eyes, giving them black and white vision. But a new theory proposed by graduate student Alexander Stubbs of the University of California, Berkeley explains how cephalopods might still have the ability to detect color through the manipulation of light.

"There’s a variety of pupil shapes in organisms in general. So you can have a vertical slit pupil, a dot pupil, like you or I might have, and that’s generally speaking the best for overall image sharpness. If you have a pupil that has more off-axis distance, so a bigger aperture in photographic terms, then that narrows your depth of field. You have to really pay attention to what’s going to be in focus and what’s going to be out of focus. Now, with cephalopods, when you have that off-axis pupil, it actually splits the image colors into constituent wavelengths, much like a prism. They could use this to be able to effectively focus through colors instead of focusing through distance."

If you or a loved one are putting off that colonoscopy because the thought of the procedure is off-putting, there’s a less invasive one that University of California, San Francisco’s Dr. Judy Yee helped pioneer. It’s called the virtual colonoscopy.

"This is a new test that employs low radiation dose CT scan to acquire data that we can then view on advanced graphical workstations to create two-dimensional and three-dimensional views of the colon, to help physicians screen for colorectal cancer."

And while we’re on the subject of three-dimensional work, we also meet up with lab engineer Chen Zhu of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Zhu was part of a team of scientists at the Livermore Lab and the University of California, Santa Cruz who successfully 3D-printed ultralight supercapacitors using an aerogel made out of the ‘miracle material’, graphene. So what does this breakthrough mean for you in the future? Well, how about a highly efficient energy storage system for your smartphone?

"If you have iPhone in the future, it can store the energy very quickly and release the energy very fast. So it has very wide applications."

Finally, we head back to UCSF to chat with epidemiologist Janet Wojcicki . In an obesity study that focused on Latino children, she found a connection between breastfeeding and telomere length. These are the protective caps on your DNA that are linked to a higher risk of health problems like heart disease and diabetes later in life.

"Exclusive breastfeeding at 4 to 6 weeks of age and breastfeeding at six months were associated with longer telomere length in children at 4 to 5 years age."

This study may open up a whole new way to predict and prevent conditions early in a child’s life. Hear these and other stories about University of California research by subscribing to UC Science Today on iTunes or Stitcher. Thanks for listening, I’m Larissa Branin.

Subscribe to Science Today:

iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD

Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/science-today

Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday

Stories mentioned in this roundup:

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/virtual_colonoscopy

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/energy_storage

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/telomere_breastfeeding

If you or a loved one are putting off that colonoscopy because the thought of the procedure is off-putting, there’s a less invasive one that University of California, San Francisco’s Dr. Judy Yee helped pioneer. It’s called the virtual colonoscopy.

"This is a new test that employs low radiation dose CT scan to acquire data that we can then view on advanced graphical workstations to create two-dimensional and three-dimensional views of the colon, to help physicians screen for colorectal cancer."

And while we’re on the subject of three-dimensional work, we also meet up with lab engineer Chen Zhu of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Zhu was part of a team of scientists at the Livermore Lab and the University of California, Santa Cruz who successfully 3D-printed ultralight supercapacitors using an aerogel made out of the ‘miracle material’, graphene. So what does this breakthrough mean for you in the future? Well, how about a highly efficient energy storage system for your smartphone?

"If you have iPhone in the future, it can store the energy very quickly and release the energy very fast. So it has very wide applications."

Finally, we head back to UCSF to chat with epidemiologist Janet Wojcicki . In an obesity study that focused on Latino children, she found a connection between breastfeeding and telomere length. These are the protective caps on your DNA that are linked to a higher risk of health problems like heart disease and diabetes later in life.

"Exclusive breastfeeding at 4 to 6 weeks of age and breastfeeding at six months were associated with longer telomere length in children at 4 to 5 years age."

This study may open up a whole new way to predict and prevent conditions early in a child’s life. Hear these and other stories about University of California research by subscribing to UC Science Today on iTunes or Stitcher. Thanks for listening, I’m Larissa Branin.

Subscribe to Science Today:

iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD

Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/science-today

Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday

Stories mentioned in this roundup:

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/virtual_colonoscopy

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/energy_storage

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/telomere_breastfeeding

Can exclusively breastfeeding a baby lengthen their telomeres, or the protective caps on their DNA? Shorter telomeres are linked to a higher risk of health problems like heart disease and diabetes later on in life. While studying obesity in a group of Latino children, epidemiologist Janet Wojcicki of the University of California, San Francisco noticed a connection between telomere length and breastfeeding habits.

"Exclusive breastfeeding at 4 to 6 weeks of age and breastfeeding at 6 months were associated with longer telomere length in children at 4 to 5 years of age."

Telomeres protect our cells as they divide and help prevent chronic disease. This is the first study linking breastfeeding and diet to early telomere shortening, and may help researchers predict and work to prevent conditions early in a child’s life.

"This can be seen as in the realm of precision medicine – how do we use this particular tool, maybe, to help the risk prediction for future development of metabolic disease?"

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have created a novel simulation visualizing over 700,000 years of star formation. The project took several months on NASA’s supercomputer, for a total of 1 million hours across thousands of processors. Since this sort of simulation is so computationally intensive, astrophysicist Richard Klein used a mathematical technique called “adaptive mesh refinement” to focus in on certain aspects of the evolving stars.

"This enables you to select what regions of a large-scale computational domain you want to focus on in a simulation, and enable you in a dynamic way to have high resolution in those areas that are critically important for understanding the astrophysical phenomenon, while letting other regions of the computation be at much lower resolution and therefore lower cost."

Before this technique, Klein says this type of simulation would have been computationally impossible.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have created a novel simulation visualizing over 700,000 years of star formation. The project took several months on NASA’s supercomputer, for a total of 1 million hours across thousands of processors. Since this sort of simulation is so computationally intensive, astrophysicist Richard Klein used a mathematical technique called “adaptive mesh refinement” to focus in on certain aspects of the evolving stars.

"This enables you to select what regions of a large-scale computational domain you want to focus on in a simulation, and enable you in a dynamic way to have high resolution in those areas that are critically important for understanding the astrophysical phenomenon, while letting other regions of the computation be at much lower resolution and therefore lower cost."

Before this technique, Klein says this type of simulation would have been computationally impossible.

Can exclusively breastfeeding a baby lengthen their telomeres, or the protective caps on their DNA? Shorter telomeres are linked to a higher risk of health problems like heart disease and diabetes later on in life. While studying obesity in a group of Latino children, epidemiologist Janet Wojcicki of the University of California, San Francisco noticed a connection between telomere length and breastfeeding habits.

"Exclusive breastfeeding at 4 to 6 weeks of age and breastfeeding at 6 months were associated with longer telomere length in children at 4 to 5 years of age."

Telomeres protect our cells as they divide and help prevent chronic disease. This is the first study linking breastfeeding and diet to early telomere shortening, and may help researchers predict and work to prevent conditions early in a child’s life.

"This can be seen as in the realm of precision medicine – how do we use this particular tool, maybe, to help the risk prediction for future development of metabolic disease?"

Have you been putting off that colonoscopy? The prospect of abstaining from food, drinking a gallon of laxative, then taking a day off work can be a deterrent. But Dr. Judy Yee of the University of California, San Francisco is working towards a less invasive option – virtual colonoscopies. These are scans that can be viewed as holograms, allowing doctors to digitally zoom in on parts of the colon and detect issues without the traditional scope.

"This is a new test that employs low radiation dose CT scan to acquire data that we can then view on advanced graphical workstations to create 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional views of the colon, to help physicians screen for colorectal cancer."

Yee says this technique could be used to image other parts of the body as well.

"I think the wonderful part of the virtual holography method is that you can apply it to pretty much any part of the body – the brain, the liver, the musculoskeletal system, the heart. And I think that it’s really limitless."

Have you been putting off that colonoscopy? The prospect of abstaining from food, drinking a gallon of laxative, then taking a day off work can be a deterrent. But Dr. Judy Yee of the University of California, San Francisco is working towards a less invasive option – virtual colonoscopies. These are scans that can be viewed as holograms, allowing doctors to digitally zoom in on parts of the colon and detect issues without the traditional scope.

"This is a new test that employs low radiation dose CT scan to acquire data that we can then view on advanced graphical workstations to create 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional views of the colon, to help physicians screen for colorectal cancer."

Yee says this technique could be used to image other parts of the body as well.

"I think the wonderful part of the virtual holography method is that you can apply it to pretty much any part of the body – the brain, the liver, the musculoskeletal system, the heart. And I think that it’s really limitless."