Dozens of paleontologists around the world – all of them women – to glue on beards for photos now being exhibited at the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) at the University of California, Berkeley.
The 400th anniversary of the beginning of slavery in North America will be observed at UC Berkeley throughout the entire 2019-2020 school year, starting with a daylong symposium Friday, Aug. 30. Berkeley’s commemoration is in the spirit of “The 400 Years of African American History Commission Act,” federal legislation signed last year. It acknowledged the impact of slavery in the United States and called for a national commission to commemorate the anniversary of the forced arrival of Africans in the English colonies in 1619.
The Maya of Central America are often thought to have been a peaceaful civilization, practicing limited ritual warfare until drought caused increased conflict and led to the collapse of its Classical civilization. However, new evidence unearthed by a researcher from the University of California, Berkeley, and the U.S. Geological Survey calls all this into question, suggesting that the Maya engaged in scorched-earth military campaigns — a strategy that aims to destroy anything of use, including cropland — even at the height of their prosperity and artistic sophistication.
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.
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.
Latanya Tigner teaches a class at UC Berkeley called “African Dance in Hip-Hop” in the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies. It explores how African dance forms are found in hip-hop movement and African American social dance forms throughout the ages. In this photo, she’s performing “South African Can Dance,” choreographed by Dingani Lelokoane, at the 2012 Malcom X Jazz Festival.
A new collection of eight oral history interviews recounts little-known details of the Port Chicago disaster, a harrowing munitions explosion on July 17, 1944, at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, a major shore-to-ship weapons distribution center near Concord, California.
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.