UC Science Today

To get a better sense of how the brain is organized to allow us to make successful movements, cognitive neuroscientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Action Lab are using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. Graduate student Deborah Barany studies the brain dynamics of goal-directed action.

"A goal-directed action is basically anything that involves the brain when you move. And so you can think of this in contrast to an involuntary movement or a reflex, where these can happen just with your spinal cord’s involvement."

Using fMRI, Barany says they can get a better sense of this whole network of brain regions and how they’re involved in movements.

"If my goal is to try to see how the brain differentially represents say, a right movement from a left movement. I can’t answer that question with a standard analysis because you would see the same amount of brain activation in both cases. So we can use these more advanced techniques to try and parse that out and figure out exactly what’s going on in these underlying patterns of brain activity."

Bioengineers at the University of California, Berkeley made headlines when they developed a “heart-on-a-chip”. This silicone device, which houses human heart tissue derived from adult stem cells, could someday replace animal models as a drug safety screening tool. But how does something like this actually work? We asked bioengineer Kevin Healy, who led the research.

"The chip is made similarly to how one makes a computer chip and that’s called microfabrication. So, we use microfabrication technology to make a small portion that’s like a chamber to hold cells; and then another portion that’s like a blood vessel to allow fluid to bathe the cells and deliver the drug and also nutrients and removal of waste."

The team has tested about six or seven cardiac drugs using their chip.

"Now it’s starting to look at a much wider array of drugs that would be known to cause a clinical failure and seeing if we can pick that up with the cardiac chip."

Bioengineers at the University of California, Berkeley made headlines when they developed a “heart-on-a-chip”. This silicone device, which houses human heart tissue derived from adult stem cells, could someday replace animal models as a drug safety screening tool. But how does something like this actually work? We asked bioengineer Kevin Healy, who led the research.

"The chip is made similarly to how one makes a computer chip and that’s called microfabrication. So, we use microfabrication technology to make a small portion that’s like a chamber to hold cells; and then another portion that’s like a blood vessel to allow fluid to bathe the cells and deliver the drug and also nutrients and removal of waste."

The team has tested about six or seven cardiac drugs using their chip.

"Now it’s starting to look at a much wider array of drugs that would be known to cause a clinical failure and seeing if we can pick that up with the cardiac chip."

Bioengineers at the University of California, Berkeley made headlines when they developed a “heart-on-a-chip”. This silicone device, which houses human heart tissue derived from adult stem cells, could someday replace animal models as a drug safety screening tool. But how does something like this actually work? We asked bioengineer Kevin Healy, who led the research.

"The chip is made similarly to how one makes a computer chip and that’s called microfabrication. So, we use microfabrication technology to make a small portion that’s like a chamber to hold cells; and then another portion that’s like a blood vessel to allow fluid to bathe the cells and deliver the drug and also nutrients and removal of waste."

The team has tested about six or seven cardiac drugs using their chip.

"Now it’s starting to look at a much wider array of drugs that would be known to cause a clinical failure and seeing if we can pick that up with the cardiac chip."

The universe is expanding at a rate faster than expected, possibly due to an invisible force in space called dark energy. Astrophysicist David Schlegel of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says they’re looking to the sky for answers using a new sky mapping survey.

"This is a project that’s designed to try to understand the nature of dark energy. We can look at a small patch of the sky and count how many galaxies that we see. And then assuming that every place that you look in the sky is approximately the same, then you just add up."

The team is mapping one third of the visible sky by stitching together images taken by a telescope fit with a new wide-view camera. The data will eventually be used for what’s called the DESI project. The goal is to create the largest and most detailed 3D map of the universe. Until then, the public can view a current online collection of 400,000 galaxies, stars, and quasars at Legacysurvey.org.

The universe is expanding at a rate faster than expected, possibly due to an invisible force in space called dark energy. Astrophysicist David Schlegel of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says they’re looking to the sky for answers using a new sky mapping survey.

"This is a project that’s designed to try to understand the nature of dark energy. We can look at a small patch of the sky and count how many galaxies that we see. And then assuming that every place that you look in the sky is approximately the same, then you just add up."

The team is mapping one third of the visible sky by stitching together images taken by a telescope fit with a new wide-view camera. The data will eventually be used for what’s called the DESI project. The goal is to create the largest and most detailed 3D map of the universe. Until then, the public can view a current online collection of 400,000 galaxies, stars, and quasars at Legacysurvey.org.

The universe is expanding at a rate faster than expected, possibly due to an invisible force in space called dark energy. Astrophysicist David Schlegel of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says they’re looking to the sky for answers using a new sky mapping survey.

"This is a project that’s designed to try to understand the nature of dark energy. We can look at a small patch of the sky and count how many galaxies that we see. And then assuming that every place that you look in the sky is approximately the same, then you just add up."

The team is mapping one third of the visible sky by stitching together images taken by a telescope fit with a new wide-view camera. The data will eventually be used for what’s called the DESI project. The goal is to create the largest and most detailed 3D map of the universe. Until then, the public can view a current online collection of 400,000 galaxies, stars, and quasars at Legacysurvey.org.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness for over half of the world’s population. And while it can be successfully reversed with surgery, what if this age-related eye disease could be treated simply using eye drops? A team of scientists led by the University of California, San Francisco’s Jason Gestwicki is working on just that. They’ve isolated a compound in a chemical class known as sterols that’s more soluble than previously-identified chemicals. So far, it’s reversed cataracts topically in a mouse model.

"But we are currently trying to improve that formulation, use fewer drops that last longer periods of time and to really make sure this is an incredibly safe procedure. And only then will you be able to test the molecule in humans and pet animals to see if it can reverse cataract."

Cataracts are a major source of blindness in developing countries because surgery is often not an option.

"If we could come up with a non-surgical solution to this problem, maybe we’d have a better time accessing rural parts of the world."

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness for over half of the world’s population. And while it can be successfully reversed with surgery, what if this age-related eye disease could be treated simply using eye drops? A team of scientists led by the University of California, San Francisco’s Jason Gestwicki is working on just that. They’ve isolated a compound in a chemical class known as sterols that’s more soluble than previously-identified chemicals. So far, it’s reversed cataracts topically in a mouse model.

"But we are currently trying to improve that formulation, use fewer drops that last longer periods of time and to really make sure this is an incredibly safe procedure. And only then will you be able to test the molecule in humans and pet animals to see if it can reverse cataract."

Cataracts are a major source of blindness in developing countries because surgery is often not an option.

"If we could come up with a non-surgical solution to this problem, maybe we’d have a better time accessing rural parts of the world."

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness for over half of the world’s population. And while it can be successfully reversed with surgery, what if this age-related eye disease could be treated simply using eye drops? A team of scientists led by the University of California, San Francisco’s Jason Gestwicki is working on just that. They’ve isolated a compound in a chemical class known as sterols that’s more soluble than previously-identified chemicals. So far, it’s reversed cataracts topically in a mouse model.

"But we are currently trying to improve that formulation, use fewer drops that last longer periods of time and to really make sure this is an incredibly safe procedure. And only then will you be able to test the molecule in humans and pet animals to see if it can reverse cataract."

Cataracts are a major source of blindness in developing countries because surgery is often not an option.

"If we could come up with a non-surgical solution to this problem, maybe we’d have a better time accessing rural parts of the world."