UC Science Today

Mechanical engineer Suveen Mathaudhu of the University of California, Riverside is an unabashed fan of comics – he’s even called an expert on the science of superheroes. Take his favorite, Spiderman, for example.

"In the original Spiderman comics, he did not have webs shooting out of any specific glands or any powers that let him make web inside his body. As a chemistry student, he was forced to experiment and make his own super-strong web-like material. What’s very interesting about it is there’s a lot of research that’s now showing that real spider web is extremely strong. So in a way, Spiderman was ahead of his time in designing some of the these materials that just now we’re trying to duplicate with carbon nanotube wires and other high-strength fiber-like materials."

Mathaudhu explains that these types of materials are lighter, too and that can benefit transportation applications.

"If we can get lighter and stronger, then we get more fuel-efficient as we move to a more energy sustainable economy."

Did you know we can produce an energy-burning ‘good fat’? It’s called brown fat and the catch is, adults don’t have a lot of it because it’s an adaptive process that’s related to exposure to cold temperatures. Kevin Tharp, a Ph.D student at the University of California, Berkeley explains that this ‘browning’ process occurs when white fat-derived cells evolve to become brown-fat-like, or beige fat cells.

"This occurs for humans when they experience prolonged periods of cold. But when summer comes around, that beige fat that you had generated to survive through winter will actually dissipate because you have no need for it anymore."

Tharp and his colleagues created a synthetic implant that can ‘brown’ for a short period of time. The hope is that this could someday be used therapeutically for obesity disorders. So far, it’s been tested in mice.

"The implant lasts about three to four weeks and over that period of time, you can clearly see that there’s a reduction in terms of weight gain for the mice that received the implant and were fed the high fat diet."

Did you know we can produce an energy-burning ‘good fat’? It’s called brown fat and the catch is, adults don’t have a lot of it because it’s an adaptive process that’s related to exposure to cold temperatures. Kevin Tharp, a Ph.D student at the University of California, Berkeley explains that this ‘browning’ process occurs when white fat-derived cells evolve to become brown-fat-like, or beige fat cells.

"This occurs for humans when they experience prolonged periods of cold. But when summer comes around, that beige fat that you had generated to survive through winter will actually dissipate because you have no need for it anymore."

Tharp and his colleagues created a synthetic implant that can ‘brown’ for a short period of time. The hope is that this could someday be used therapeutically for obesity disorders. So far, it’s been tested in mice.

"The implant lasts about three to four weeks and over that period of time, you can clearly see that there’s a reduction in terms of weight gain for the mice that received the implant and were fed the high fat diet."

Did you know we can produce an energy-burning ‘good fat’? It’s called brown fat and the catch is, adults don’t have a lot of it because it’s an adaptive process that’s related to exposure to cold temperatures. Kevin Tharp, a Ph.D student at the University of California, Berkeley explains that this ‘browning’ process occurs when white fat-derived cells evolve to become brown-fat-like, or beige fat cells.

"This occurs for humans when they experience prolonged periods of cold. But when summer comes around, that beige fat that you had generated to survive through winter will actually dissipate because you have no need for it anymore."

Tharp and his colleagues created a synthetic implant that can ‘brown’ for a short period of time. The hope is that this could someday be used therapeutically for obesity disorders. So far, it’s been tested in mice.

"The implant lasts about three to four weeks and over that period of time, you can clearly see that there’s a reduction in terms of weight gain for the mice that received the implant and were fed the high fat diet."

When California’s catastrophic Rim Fire destroyed her study plots in the Sierra Nevada region, graduate student Sydney Glassman of the University of California, Berkeley found a nutrient-rich layer of fungi, known as ectomycorrhizal, had survived beneath the soil.

"All of North America is covered with trees that are associated with ectomycorhizzal fungi. This is an obligate symbiosis, meaning that the fungus needs the plant and the plant needs the fungus, and neither will survive in nature without each other."

Glassman had a rare opportunity to document this symbiotic relationship in the aftermath of a fire.

"Fires are obviously really important to study but they’re just really difficult to study, because you don’t know when a fire’s going to occur. Some fungi can make spores, and they can persist in the soil and survive. Once water comes and once a plant comes for them to colonize, then they’ll germinate. We were able to actually access our plots and resample the exact same locations that we had sampled before the fire, within 3 weeks of the fire. And that was really remarkable. The fungi that I thought were going to survive the disturbance, did. I think that there’s a lot of natural resilience built into forests."

Imagine if the sound of a vacuum cleaner or blender caused your child to cover his or her ears and run out of the room. Or if the mere sensation of your touch were so uncomfortable that your child avoided physical contact completely.

These are just some of the distressful symptoms of Sensory Processing Disorder, or SPD. Now, if you’ve never heard SPD, you’re probably not alone. It hasn’t been until fairly recently that the condition has gained recognition as a distinct brain-based disorder, and that’s thanks in part to a team of University of California, San Francisco researchers, including child neurologist Elysa Marco.

In this interview, Marco describes SPD in depth and explains how their groundbreaking research may lead to a greater understanding of the condition, as well as better diagnosis and treatment.

Additional information: http://anp.ucsf.edu/overview/spd

When California’s catastrophic Rim Fire destroyed her study plots in the Sierra Nevada region, graduate student Sydney Glassman of the University of California, Berkeley found a nutrient-rich layer of fungi, known as ectomycorrhizal, had survived beneath the soil.

"All of North America is covered with trees that are associated with ectomycorhizzal fungi. This is an obligate symbiosis, meaning that the fungus needs the plant and the plant needs the fungus, and neither will survive in nature without each other."

Glassman had a rare opportunity to document this symbiotic relationship in the aftermath of a fire.

"Fires are obviously really important to study but they’re just really difficult to study, because you don’t know when a fire’s going to occur. Some fungi can make spores, and they can persist in the soil and survive. Once water comes and once a plant comes for them to colonize, then they’ll germinate. We were able to actually access our plots and resample the exact same locations that we had sampled before the fire, within 3 weeks of the fire. And that was really remarkable. The fungi that I thought were going to survive the disturbance, did. I think that there’s a lot of natural resilience built into forests."

Imagine if the sound of a vacuum cleaner or blender caused your child to cover his or her ears and run out of the room. Or if the mere sensation of your touch were so uncomfortable that your child avoided physical contact completely.

These are just some of the distressful symptoms of Sensory Processing Disorder, or SPD. Now, if you’ve never heard SPD, you’re probably not alone. It hasn’t been until fairly recently that the condition has gained recognition as a distinct brain-based disorder, and that’s thanks in part to a team of University of California, San Francisco researchers, including child neurologist Elysa Marco.

In this interview, Marco describes SPD in depth and explains how their groundbreaking research may lead to a greater understanding of the condition, as well as better diagnosis and treatment.

Additional information: http://anp.ucsf.edu/overview/spd

Imagine if the sound of a vacuum cleaner or blender caused your child to cover his or her ears and run out of the room. Or if the mere sensation of your touch were so uncomfortable that your child avoided physical contact completely.

These are just some of the distressful symptoms of Sensory Processing Disorder, or SPD. Now, if you’ve never heard SPD, you’re probably not alone. It hasn’t been until fairly recently that the condition has gained recognition as a distinct brain-based disorder, and that’s thanks in part to a team of University of California, San Francisco researchers, including child neurologist Elysa Marco.

In this interview, Marco describes SPD in depth and explains how their groundbreaking research may lead to a greater understanding of the condition, as well as better diagnosis and treatment.

Additional information: http://anp.ucsf.edu/overview/spd

When California’s catastrophic Rim Fire destroyed her study plots in the Sierra Nevada region, graduate student Sydney Glassman of the University of California, Berkeley found a nutrient-rich layer of fungi, known as ectomycorrhizal, had survived beneath the soil.

"All of North America is covered with trees that are associated with ectomycorhizzal fungi. This is an obligate symbiosis, meaning that the fungus needs the plant and the plant needs the fungus, and neither will survive in nature without each other."

Glassman had a rare opportunity to document this symbiotic relationship in the aftermath of a fire.

"Fires are obviously really important to study but they’re just really difficult to study, because you don’t know when a fire’s going to occur. Some fungi can make spores, and they can persist in the soil and survive. Once water comes and once a plant comes for them to colonize, then they’ll germinate. We were able to actually access our plots and resample the exact same locations that we had sampled before the fire, within 3 weeks of the fire. And that was really remarkable. The fungi that I thought were going to survive the disturbance, did. I think that there’s a lot of natural resilience built into forests."