News

In the Science of Happiness podcast episode, “Finding awe in every step,” Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor and co-director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, interviews musician and activist Diana Gameros. Gameros moved to the U.S. from Mexico at 13, and has spent years writing about the experience of undocumented immigrants in America and the heartbreak that accompanied the move.

Chancellor Carol Christ and Paul Alivisatos, executive vice chancellor and provost, issued the following message on Wednesday, August 7, 2019.

Two indigenous dance groups — Mirki Performing Arts from Australia and the Northern Pomo Dancers from California — will perform Bayal Kaymanen on UC Berkeley’s Memorial Glade on Aug. 2. Hosted by the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies, the dancers will perform a series of stories that explore the relationship of fire between the Yidinji Nation from Cairns, Australia, and the Northern Pomo from the Redwood Valley Rancheria, in California — two of the world’s oldest living cultures.

University of California astronomers have tested Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity in the crucible of the monstrous black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy and found it rock solid. The team, led by UCLA astronomer Andrea Ghez, and with key analyses by UC Berkeley’s Jessica Lu, an assistant professor of astronomy, followed a star orbiting so close to the black hole that the light it gives off is affected by the black hole’s intense gravity. The effect, a gravitational redshift, matched exactly what Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity predict.

A total of 14,668 high school students have been offered freshman admission to the University of California, Berkeley, for the 2019-2020 admitted class, 8% more than the 13,561 admitted last year. In addition, 4,882 transfer students were admitted for the coming school year, up from 4,504 last year.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has awarded a new patent to the University of California (UC), University of Vienna, and Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier covering methods of producing a genetically modified cell through the introduction of the Cas9 protein, or a nucleic acid encoding the Cas9 protein, as well as a single molecule DNA-targeting RNA. This patent (U.S. 10,351,878) covers the use of this method in a cell. 

People who report a declining quality of sleep as they age from their 50s to their 60s have more protein tangles in their brain, putting them at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease later in life, according to a new study by psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley.  “Insufficient sleep across the lifespan is significantly predictive of your development of Alzheimer’s disease pathology in the brain,” said lead author Matthew Walker, a sleep researcher and professor of psychology.

The Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive hosted Mildred Howard, a widely acclaimed artist and longtime Berkeley resident whose family has deep roots in the Bay Area’s African American community. In a conversation with Leigh Raiford, UC Berkeley associate professor of African American studies, and Lawrence Rinder, BAMPFA’s director and chief curator, she discussion touched on a range of topics, from South Berkeley’s ongoing struggles with gentrification, to the role of the university in supporting diverse communities, to Howard’s own work as an artist.