Berkeley — Girls in homes without a biological father are more likely to hit puberty at an earlier age, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health.
The findings, to be publis…
Berkeley — Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a pressure-sensitive electronic material from semiconductor nanowires that could one day give new meaning to the term “thin-skinned.”
“The idea is to have a materi…
A portable, laser backpack for 3D mapping has been developed at the University of California, Berkeley, where it is being hailed as a breakthrough technology capable of producing fast, automatic and realistic 3D mapping of difficult interior env…
Berkeley — Children who were exposed to organophosphate pesticides while still in their mother’s womb were more likely to develop attention disorders years later, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. …
The epidemic of HIV/AIDS in India is following the same pattern as that of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s, and it could become just as devastating unless preventive action is taken now, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, in a paper to be published Saturday (June 21) in the British Medical Journal. “In hindsight, opportunities were missed to stem the explosive growth of AIDS in Africa,” says Dr. Malcolm Potts, professor of population and family planning at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and lead author of the paper. “It would be a tragedy if we don’t apply the lessons learned from the failure to control the spread of HIV in Africa to the current situation in India. It is very painful to watch history repeating itself.”
Three months after SARS began its spread out of southern China, it is clear that a country’s response to the epidemic can have a major impact on the percentage of infected people who die, according to epidemiologists at the University of California, Berkeley. An analysis accepted for August publication in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases indicates that countries that quickly initiated control measures against SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) saw a slower spread and a lower fatality rate.
Minorities living in relatively wealthy New York City neighborhoods are more likely to receive mental health care in emergency rooms and hospitals than white people living in the same areas, a new study concludes. The trend may suggest that minorities in these neighborhoods are receiving sporadic “crisis” care rather than regular mental health care. Blacks and Hispanics who live in low-poverty areas are also more likely to be referred to public mental health services by police or social services personnel rather than family or friends, as is the case for white residents.
Those seeking yet another reason to eat their veggies, take note. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that a chemical produced when digesting such greens as broccoli and kale can stifle the growth of human prostate cancer cells. The findings show that 3,3′-diindolylmethane (DIM), which is obtained by eating cruciferous vegetables in the Brassica genus, acts as a powerful anti-androgen that inhibits the proliferation of human prostate cancer cells in culture tests.
A simple method of shuttling proteins into cells via microscopic polymer beads shows promise as a general way of carrying vaccines or bits of DNA for gene therapy, according to chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The polymer beads are imbedded with a protein – a vaccine antigen, for example – and made large enough to attract the attention of the immune system’s scavenger cells, which engulf them and try to digest them with acid.
NASA has awarded the University of California, Berkeley, a $173 million contract to build and operate a fleet of five satellites to pinpoint the event in Earth’s magnetic neighborhood that triggers violent but colorful eruptions in the Northern and Southern lights. The aurora borealis and aurora australis are shimmering light shows that brighten the polar nights, generated by showers of electrons descending along magnetic field lines onto the poles. These high-speed electrons spark colored lights as they hit the atmosphere, much like a color TV lights up when an electron beam hits the phosphorescent screen.
After one day of re-observing promising radio sources at the Arecibo radio telescope, the SETI@home project has been bumped from the telescope’s observing schedule until next Monday, March 24, so that researchers can observe a rare solar flare. Dan Werthimer, chief scientist of SETI@home and a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, said, “It happens about once every two years at Arecibo that they have to bump everyone so they can observe a flare.” The change in plans was caused by the eruption of two solar flares on Monday and Tuesday (March 17 and 18). Similar events in the past have been known to interfere with communications and global positioning satellites.
New findings by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, could significantly improve the resolution of scans from functional magnetic resonance imaging, one of neuroscience’s most powerful research tools to date. Functional MRI (fMRI) is a non-invasive procedure that detects increased levels of blood flow into certain areas of the brain to infer neural activity. But in a study published Feb. 14 in the journal Science, researchers from UC Berkeley’s Group in Vision Science show that an initial decrease in oxygen levels is an earlier and more spatially precise signal of nerve cell activity.