UC Science Today

There are still many misconceptions about radiation. While radioactivity exists naturally in the background of our daily lives, it’s also a topic of fear since it’s linked to nuclear disasters like Fukushima and Chernobyl. But nuclear physicist Kai Vetter and his team at the University of California, Berkeley are trying to change that.

"We have established what we call the Berkeley DoseNet program, aiming at providing simple radiation sensors to communities and to high schools, to enable the broader public to learn about the world we’re living in. Because what they measure is naturally occurring radioactivity, and can use that to apply science and engineering concepts."

Currently, DoseNet is a network of high schools across Northern California.

"We’re also reaching out to other places across the world, because what we envision is to establish a global sensor network."

For those curious to learn more, these radiation measurements are now available online at https://radwatch.berkeley.edu/

There are still many misconceptions about radiation. While radioactivity exists naturally in the background of our daily lives, it’s also a topic of fear since it’s linked to nuclear disasters like Fukushima and Chernobyl. But nuclear physicist Kai Vetter and his team at the University of California, Berkeley are trying to change that.

"We have established what we call the Berkeley DoseNet program, aiming at providing simple radiation sensors to communities and to high schools, to enable the broader public to learn about the world we’re living in. Because what they measure is naturally occurring radioactivity, and can use that to apply science and engineering concepts."

Currently, DoseNet is a network of high schools across Northern California.

"We’re also reaching out to other places across the world, because what we envision is to establish a global sensor network."

For those curious to learn more, these radiation measurements are now available online at https://radwatch.berkeley.edu/

This week on Science Today. The liver is a resilient organ with the magical ability to regenerate itself, but when it’s damaged by liver cirrhosis, it can be pushed past the point of no return. Researcher Milad Rezvani of the University of California, San Francisco says that gene therapy could help restore patches of healthy tissue on a struggling liver. The successful experiments were run on a mouse model.

"Right now we have shown that we can turn this one cirrhosis causing cell type into normal liver cells that function."

And of course, we’d always prefer to prevent damage to our bodies before its irreparable. That’s why Dr. Cindy Leung of the University of California, San Francisco warns against giving children too much soda. She says that sugary drinks can actually accelerate aging by shortening our telomeres. These are the protective caps on our chromosomes that protect our DNA and if shortened, can lead to a range of maladies.

"Drinking less sugary beverages would be one way to either halt or slow down their telomere shortening process. We need to promote other health behaviors that would help to lengthen our telomeres."

We also venture into the physics realm this week with chemist Kevin Wilson of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He’s been working on predicting the size of cloud droplets.

"We were absolutely thrilled to be able to, from a physical chemistry perspective and a surface chemistry perspective, provide some insight into a process that is quite important for understanding cloud droplet formation and climate change in particular."

To hear these and other episodes about the latest University of California research, subscribe to UC Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Facebook. Thanks for listening, I’m Larissa Branin.

More information:

Subscribe to Science Today on iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD

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

Stories mentioned in this roundup:

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/cirrhosis_lab

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/kids_soda

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/clouds_climate

This week on Science Today. The liver is a resilient organ with the magical ability to regenerate itself, but when it’s damaged by liver cirrhosis, it can be pushed past the point of no return. Researcher Milad Rezvani of the University of California, San Francisco says that gene therapy could help restore patches of healthy tissue on a struggling liver. The successful experiments were run on a mouse model.

"Right now we have shown that we can turn this one cirrhosis causing cell type into normal liver cells that function."

And of course, we’d always prefer to prevent damage to our bodies before its irreparable. That’s why Dr. Cindy Leung of the University of California, San Francisco warns against giving children too much soda. She says that sugary drinks can actually accelerate aging by shortening our telomeres. These are the protective caps on our chromosomes that protect our DNA and if shortened, can lead to a range of maladies.

"Drinking less sugary beverages would be one way to either halt or slow down their telomere shortening process. We need to promote other health behaviors that would help to lengthen our telomeres."

We also venture into the physics realm this week with chemist Kevin Wilson of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He’s been working on predicting the size of cloud droplets.

"We were absolutely thrilled to be able to, from a physical chemistry perspective and a surface chemistry perspective, provide some insight into a process that is quite important for understanding cloud droplet formation and climate change in particular."

To hear these and other episodes about the latest University of California research, subscribe to UC Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Facebook. Thanks for listening, I’m Larissa Branin.

More information:

Subscribe to Science Today on iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD

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

Stories mentioned in this roundup:

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/cirrhosis_lab

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/kids_soda

https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/clouds_climate

Why are the majority of male infertility cases a mystery? While 80% of female infertility cases can be diagnosed and dealt with, the same percentage of male infertility cases are untreatable. Biologist Polina Lishko of the University of California, Berkeley says the key might be at the molecular level of the sperm. In a recent project, Lishko documented the proteins in a human sperm cell hoping to provide a starting point for research in this field.

"The current situation with male fertility is quite dramatic. And part of the reason why we are so low on our good diagnostics of male infertility is that we don’t know what makes the human sperm cell fertile. So that’s why it’s absolutely important to understand what’s going on, how they work, then we can help to design better diagnostics, and we can help infertile couples boost sperm fertility, if you understand why they’re infertile."

By unraveling the molecular nuances of fertilization, Lishko hopes researchers can finally explain the technicalities of human reproduction.

How do researchers study the transient phenomenon of a cloud? In a recent experiment, physical chemist Kevin Wilson of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory used a kind of chamber to simulate cloud conditions in nature, which meant that cloud droplets could form on aerosolized particles.

"We have an instrument in our lab that creates the atmospheric conditions that a cloud would form. And so the experiments are rather straightforward. With the right amount of relative humidity or water vapor in the gas phase and the right temperature, we just put in a known size of aerosol and then we measure the droplet that’s formed on the other end of this instrument."

Wilson and his team used different types of particles, from simple salts to complex mixtures of molecules, to see if they could predict the size of the resulting droplets.

"We were absolutely thrilled to be able to, from a physical chemistry perspective and a surface chemistry perspective, provide some insight into a process that is quite important for understanding cloud droplet formation and climate change in particular."

How do researchers study the transient phenomenon of a cloud? In a recent experiment, physical chemist Kevin Wilson of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory used a kind of chamber to simulate cloud conditions in nature, which meant that cloud droplets could form on aerosolized particles.

"We have an instrument in our lab that creates the atmospheric conditions that a cloud would form. And so the experiments are rather straightforward. With the right amount of relative humidity or water vapor in the gas phase and the right temperature, we just put in a known size of aerosol and then we measure the droplet that’s formed on the other end of this instrument."

Wilson and his team used different types of particles, from simple salts to complex mixtures of molecules, to see if they could predict the size of the resulting droplets.

"We were absolutely thrilled to be able to, from a physical chemistry perspective and a surface chemistry perspective, provide some insight into a process that is quite important for understanding cloud droplet formation and climate change in particular."

Why are the majority of male infertility cases a mystery? While 80% of female infertility cases can be diagnosed and dealt with, the same percentage of male infertility cases are untreatable. Biologist Polina Lishko of the University of California, Berkeley says the key might be at the molecular level of the sperm. In a recent project, Lishko documented the proteins in a human sperm cell hoping to provide a starting point for research in this field.

"The current situation with male fertility is quite dramatic. And part of the reason why we are so low on our good diagnostics of male infertility is that we don’t know what makes the human sperm cell fertile. So that’s why it’s absolutely important to understand what’s going on, how they work, then we can help to design better diagnostics, and we can help infertile couples boost sperm fertility, if you understand why they’re infertile."

By unraveling the molecular nuances of fertilization, Lishko hopes researchers can finally explain the technicalities of human reproduction.

The brain is a mysterious organ, but it might not be as unpredictable as scientists once thought. Alexander Huth of the University of California, Berkeley recently ran an experiment measuring the brain activity of subjects while they listened to podcasts. Huth expected the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for some higher-order functions like personality and decision making, to register words in a mish mash of locations. Instead, the brain region seemed to respond in a very structured manner, displaying distinct patches of activity for similar words.

"One thing I was honestly surprised by was the degree of involvement in the prefrontal context. Sure, neuroscientists see things in the prefrontal cortex, but usually in specific areas that are very tied to language production and language comprehension. We saw responses everywhere. We also saw organization everywhere."

His next steps will involve building more of these connections.

"One thing I really want to do now is look at the relationship between the visual representations and the linguistic representations, seeing a thing and hearing the word for that thing. So sort of, where do these two things collide?"

The brain is a mysterious organ, but it might not be as unpredictable as scientists once thought. Alexander Huth of the University of California, Berkeley recently ran an experiment measuring the brain activity of subjects while they listened to podcasts. Huth expected the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for some higher-order functions like personality and decision making, to register words in a mish mash of locations. Instead, the brain region seemed to respond in a very structured manner, displaying distinct patches of activity for similar words.

"One thing I was honestly surprised by was the degree of involvement in the prefrontal context. Sure, neuroscientists see things in the prefrontal cortex, but usually in specific areas that are very tied to language production and language comprehension. We saw responses everywhere. We also saw organization everywhere."

His next steps will involve building more of these connections.

"One thing I really want to do now is look at the relationship between the visual representations and the linguistic representations, seeing a thing and hearing the word for that thing. So sort of, where do these two things collide?"