Open clusters like Orion have low fertility rate
A detailed survey of stars in the Orion Nebula has found that fewer than 10 percent have enough surrounding dust to make Jupiter-sized planets. The study, one of the first using the new CARMA radio array, was conducted by astronomers at UC Berkeley, Caltech and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
(07 July)

First images of solar system's invisible frontier
NASA's STEREO spacecraft unexpectedly detected particles from the edge of the solar system last year, allowing UC Berkeley scientists to map for the first time the energized particles in the region where the hot solar wind slams into the cold interstellar medium.
(02 July)

Bringing 'tools of the west' to sub-Saharan healthcare
"Compassion" and "computer networking" rarely appear in the same sentence. But they coexist easily for grad student Melissa Ho, whose networking innovations in developing nations have brought her the "Foundations of Change" Thomas I. Yamashita Award.
(24 June)

Joseph Frisch professor of mechanical engineering and pioneer in computer-aided design, dies at 87
Joseph Frisch, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of mechanical engineering, who was known as a pioneer in computer-aided design, died June 15 at his home in Berkeley after a prolonged illness. He was 87.
(20 June)

Richard Karp, renowned computer theorist, wins 2008 Kyoto Prize
Richard Karp, UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, has been named a laureate of the 2008 Kyoto Prize, Japan's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, in recognition of his lifetime's achievements in the field of computer theory. Karp is credited with significantly advancing the theory of NP-completeness — a cornerstone of modern theoretical computer science — that had been developed a year earlier by former UC Berkeley math professor Stephen Cook.
(20 June)

Lancelet genome shows how genes quadrupled during vertebrate evolution
The ancestor of all chordates, a group that includes humans and other vertebrates, probably looked like a sand-dwelling invertebrate called the lancelet or amphioxus. Its newly sequenced genome confirms that, and shows how vertebrates evolved over the past 550 million years — through a four-fold duplication of the genes of our primitive ancestors.
(18 June)

Low-cost EUV satellite shut down
A $14.5 million satellite launched just five years ago by NASA to study the sun's local environment has outlived its usefulness — and its funding — and was shut down in April by its UC Berkeley operators.
(02 June)

New Hubble, Keck images show turbulent Jupiter
The first images of Jupiter since it came out from behind the sun show that the turbulence and storms that have plagued the planet for the past two years continue. Whether or not this is a sign of global warming on the planet, the turbulence does seem to be spawning new spots.
(22 May)

X-ray outburst leads to all-out study of supernova
NASA's Swift satellite caught the rare birth of a supernova earlier this year, allowing astronomers to rapidly deploy ground-based telescopes to follow its evolution and learn about normal stellar explosions. UC Berkeley astronomers have analyzed the data to conclude that the original star was more than 30 times the mass of the sun, but only slightly larger, when its core ran out of fuel and imploded, blowing the star to smithereens.
(21 May)

Technology, biotech ventures tie for first in Business Plan Competition
New search technology provider Implicit Interfaces and biotech venture Titan Medical tied for first place at the 10th annual UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business.
(07 May)

Glowing sugars light up zebrafish
Using artificial sugar and some clever chemistry, UC Berkeley researchers have made glow-in-the-dark zebrafish whose internal light comes from the sugar coating on their cells. The technique is a new tool for researchers, and will lead to a better understanding of the role of cell-surface sugars in health and disease.
(02 May)

Engineers harness cell phone technology for use in medical imaging
With an innovative concept developed by UC Berkeley engineers, the ubiquitous cell phone could one day be used to make medical imaging accessible to billions of people around the world. Using off-the-shelf components, the researchers demonstrated the feasibility of using a mobile phone to transmit raw data from a medical scan to a central server for processing, and then receiving the final image for display on its screen.
(29 April)

Refining the date of dinosaur extinction
Thanks to a recalibration of the argon-argon dating technique, geochronologists at UC Berkeley and the Berkeley Geochronology Center have established a more precise date for the dinosaur dieoff at the end of the Cretaceous period: 65.95 million years ago, give or take 40,000 years.
(24 April)

Intel and Microsoft launch parallel computing research center at UC Berkeley
Microsoft and Intel announced Tuesday, March 18, the creation of two Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers, the first at UC Berkeley and another at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The two centers comprise what is considered the nation's first joint industry and university research alliance of this magnitude that is focused on mainstream parallel computing.
(18 March)

Gecko's tail key to preventing falls, aerial maneuvers
While recent research has focused on the gecko's unusual toes as the key to climbing walls and hanging from ceilings, UC Berkeley biologists have found that its tail plays a critical role in preventing it from falling when it slips and maneuvering to solid surfaces when it does fall.
(17 March)

So an EECS prof and an undergrad walk into a computer lab …
Beneath its jokey exterior, Jester 4.0 is serious research, a recommender system that employs complex mathematics to match users with others of similar tastes and preferences. Someday soon, Eigentaste 5.0 — the sophisticated algorithm on which it's based — could even help Chuck Norris find a portfolio of charities to support.
(13 February)

Three faculty elected to National Academy of Engineering
Three UC Berkeley faculty are among 65 new members elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Membership in the academy is considered one of the highest professional distinctions accorded an American engineer.
(12 February)

Joint Nokia research project to capture traffic data using GPS-enabled cell phones
Researchers from UC Berkeley and Nokia are testing technology that could soon transform the way drivers navigate through congested highways. In the unprecedented field experiment, transportation researchers tested the feasibility of using GPS-enabled mobile phones to monitor real-time traffic flow while preserving the privacy of the phones’ users.
(08 February)

Tracking gliding behavior in the "flying" lemur
Among the gliding animals, the colugo or "flying" lemur of Southeast Asia is the champ. It's able to glide the length of two football fields with its doormat-sized skin flaps. UC Berkeley researchers are strapping backpacks to these animals to find out how they do it.
(07 February)

Engineers create new adhesive that mimics gecko toe hairs
A new anti-sliding adhesive developed by UC Berkeley engineers may be the closest man-made material yet to mimic the remarkable gecko toe hairs that allow the tiny lizard to scamper along vertical surfaces and ceilings. The researchers say that such an adhesive could one day be used to outfit a small robot that could climb up walls.
(29 January)

Frances Allen: A pioneer in high-performance computing
The explorer, adventurer, and renowned computer scientist will be on campus to deliver a Regents’ Lecture, “The Challenge of the Multi-Cores: Think Sequential, Run Parallel,” at 4 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 31, in Sibley Auditorium, Bechtel Engineering Center. The Berkeleyan caught up with her last week for a conversation.
(23 January)

Antoni K. Oppenheim, world expert on combustion and heat transfer, dies at 92
Antoni Kazimierz Oppenheim, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of mechanical engineering and one of the world's leading experts on combustion and radiation heat transfer, died Saturday, Jan. 12, at the age of 92.
(22 January)

Obituary
Paul Plouffe, a longtime lecturer for chemical engineering’s undergraduate writing program, has died. He was 68.
(16 January)

SETI@home looking for more volunteers
The longest-running search for radio signals from alien civilizations is getting a burst of new data from an upgraded Arecibo telescope, which means the SETI@home project needs more desktop computers to help crunch the data.
(02 January)

New biochip could replace animal testing
The drug industry, the cosmetic industry and the chemical industry in general generate scads of new products each year, and each must be tested for human toxicity. Since animal testing of some products, like cosmetics, will soon be banned, a rapid and inexpensive way to test new chemicals for toxicity is needed. Enter the DataChip and MetaChip, two quarter-sized biochips developed by chemical engineers at UC Berkeley and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
(18 December)

THEMIS probes view auroral substorms, bowshock explosions
As the five THEMIS probes approach an optimal lineup for studying magnetic substorms that tickle the Northern Lights, they already have revealed new information about how solar energy leaks into the Earth's magnetosphere and about explosions generated at the magnetosphere's bowshock.
(11 December)

Early warning system predicted shaking from Oct. 30 quake
An earthquake early warning system now being testing throughout the state correctly predicted ground shaking in San Francisco from October's 5.4 magnitude Alum Rock quake a few seconds before the ground started moving.
(10 December)

Fin whales' big gulp
When it comes to big gulps, baleen whales take the prize. Scientists have measured the volume of water engulfed when fin whales lunge after prey, and calculate it to be about the size of a bus.
(27 November)

New technique captures chemical reactions in a single living cell for the first time
A team of UC Berkeley bioengineers have developed a technique that for the first time enables the detection of chemical signals from biomolecules in a single living cell with unprecedented resolution. By coupling metallic nanoparticles with biomolecules, researchers can obtain information critical to cell-based drug discovery, early disease detection and biomedical diagnostics.
(19 November)

It’s no page-turner, but . . .
The Disabled Students' Program's Assistive Technology Center matches students who are blind, visually impaired, physically limited, or learning-disabled with the software and hardware they need to make their careers at Berkeley less fraught and more successful.
(14 November)

Record 5th planet found around nearby star
A record-breaking fifth planet has been discovered around 55 Cancri, a yellowish star only 41 light years from Earth. The discovery implies that the star has even more planets that are smaller than the gas giants found so far and possibly include a rocky, Earth-like planet.
(06 November)

Single nanotube makes world's smallest radio
Wielding a single carbon nanotube 10,000 times smaller than a human hair, UC Berkeley and LBNL physicists have constructed the smallest radio yet. With such a small receiver or transmitter, you could put a tracking collar on a bacterium.
(31 October)

Ten scientists named fellows of AAAS
Ten UC Berkeley faculty members have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the nation's premier scientific organization and publisher of the weekly journal Science. This brings the campus total to 205.
(26 October)

UC Berkeley: Virgil E. Schrock, thermal hydraulics expert who helped improve safety of nuclear reactors, dies at 81
Virgil Schrock, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of nuclear engineering and an internationally recognized expert in thermal hydraulics, died of cancer on Monday, Oct. 1. He was 81.
(17 October)

At Zellerbach, visions of the technological
Charlie Rose, Laura Tyson, and leaders in high tech chart a course on education, immigration, globalization, innovation, and the coming green revolution.
(17 October)

Methane drizzle on Saturn's moon Titan
Near-infrared images from Hawaii's Keck Observatory and Chile's Very Large Telescope show for the first time a nearly global cloud cover at high elevations on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and a widespread and persistent morning drizzle of methane on the flanks of Titan's major continent, Xanadu.
(11 October)

Campus launches YouTube channel
Further expanding public access to its intellectual riches through the most popular Web destinations, UC Berkeley announced today (Wednesday, Oct. 3) that it is making entire course lectures and special events available, free of charge, on YouTube.
(03 October)

NASA resurrects NuSTAR mission to image massive black holes
NuSTAR, a NASA mission canceled in 2006 a year before its planned launch, has been resurrected by the agency as it moves toward more small class explorer missions. UC Berkeley will collaborate with Caltech in building the black hole imager, and will serve as mission operations center.
(21 September)

New grants to help researchers improve nuclear detection, domestic security
A pair of grants from the Academic Research Initiative, a partnership between the National Science Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, will help UC Berkeley researchers improve domestic security by developing better methods of detecting nuclear material.
(14 September)

Physicists pin down atomic spin for spintronics
UC Berkeley physicists have successfully measured the atomic spin of an isolated atom, one of the necessary steps on the road to quantum computers and spintronic devices.
(12 September)

Astronomers eager to add to Sky in Google Earth
Since Sky in Google Earth debuted two weeks ago to let the public explore the heavens from their computers, two UC Berkeley astronomers have jumped at the chance to populate Google's sky with the most recently discovered heavenly objects, including new exoplanets, gamma-ray bursts and supernovas.
(06 September)

Alexander C. Scordelis, renowned structural engineer, dies at 83
Alexander C. Scordelis, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of structural engineering and among the world's most influential experts on long-span bridges and pre-stressed concrete, has died at the age of 83.
(29 August)

Keck, Hubble provide new view of Uranus' rings
Astronomers discovered 30 years ago that Uranus, like Saturn, has a set of rings comprised of rocks, pebbles and dust, and Voyager 2 snapped the first and best pictures of the rings in 1986. With more powerful ground based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers are now primed to learn even more about the rings as they swing edge-on to Earth, a perspective that Earth gets only once in 42 years.
(23 August)

Scientists honored by technology magazines for scientific and technological innovation
Chemical engineer Rachel Segalman, synthetic biologist J. Christopher Anderson and Tapan Parikh, who is bringing high-tech to the developing world, are among Technology Review's top innovators over the age of 35, while chemist Alex Pines was named one of R&D Magazine's top 100 innovators of the year.
(15 August)

Students to learn new Internet piracy rules
As part of their fall semester 2007 orientation, thousands of students moving into UC Berkeley residence halls, starting this weekend, will learn that if they use campus computer networks to download copyrighted music, they'll find themselves surfing without a Net. Under UC Berkeley's new "Learn before you Burn" campaign, residence hall denizens caught illegally downloading music will automatically lose their in-room Internet connection for one week or longer.
(15 August)

Graduate students find no match in evening cell phone use spike and crash data
It's conventional wisdom that talking on cell phones while driving is risky business, but two University of California, Berkeley, graduate student economists report that a spike in cell phone use in recent years and on weekday evenings is not matched by an increase in fatal or non-fatal car crashes from 2002-2005.
(13 August)

UC Berkeley: Seismologists confirm mine collapse caused temblor
A 3.9 magnitude temblor recorded at the time of a mine collapse in southern Utah on Aug. 6 was not caused by an earthquake, but more likely was the result of the collapse itself, according to an analysis by UC Berkeley seismologists.
(09 August)

R. Brady Williamson, pioneer in fire safety engineering science, dies at 73
Robert Brady Williamson, a pioneer in fire safety engineering science education and a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley, died of melanoma on Wednesday, Aug. 1. He was 73.
(09 August)

Details announced of new vehicle-fuel standard
UC energy experts release their much-anticipated blueprint for fighting global warming by reducing the amount of carbon emitted when transportation fuels are used in California. This "low carbon fuel standard," designed to stimulate improvements in transportation-fuel technologies, is expected to become the foundation for similar initiatives in other states, as well as nationally and internationally.
(02 August)

Experts available to comment on Minnesota bridge collapse

(02 August)

Researchers recommend tougher post-election audits
Two UC Berkeley researchers are among the four authors of a report released today (Wednesday, Aug. 1) that recommends more targeted and rigorous audits of paper records produced by electronic voting machines.
(01 August)

Transportation researchers to test Toyota plug-in hybrid vehicles
UC Berkeley transportation researchers have been given a $750,000 grant to conduct, along with project partner groups, the first real-world testing of an automaker-produced, plug-in hybrid electric passenger vehicle (PHEV). The campus's Institute of Transportation Studies announced the award July 25.
(25 July)

S. Shankar Sastry named new dean of engineering
S. Shankar Sastry, NEC Distinguished Professor and former chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, has been appointed the campus's new dean of the College of Engineering. His appointment was approved July 19 by the UC Board of Regents and is retroactive to July 1.
(19 July)

Ken Goldberg named new director of Center for New Media
Ken Goldberg, a UC Berkeley professor of engineering and an artist, has been named the new director of the UC Berkeley Center for New Media, effective July 1. The center, established in 2004, is dedicated to exploring the impacts of digital media on people and society.
(28 June)

DOE awards LBNL, UC Berkeley and partners $125 million for biofuels research
Berkeley and the Bay Area cemented their position as the nation's center of alternative "green" energy research with the announcement June 26 by the Department of Energy of a $125 million, five-year grant to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley, and four other partners to develop better biofuels.
(26 June)

Seismic study clears site of future athlete training center
A follow-up geologic study of the planned building site for a new student-athlete training center has confirmed earlier conclusions that there is no active earthquake fault running through it. This removes one barrier to construction of the center, though pending lawsuits challenge other aspects of the project.
(31 May)

Team reports 28 new exoplanets
The world's largest and most prolific team of planet hunters announced on May 28 the discovery of 28 new planets outside our solar system, increasing to 236 the total number of known exoplanets. The bounty of new planets, not to mention 7 new brown dwarfs, allows the astronomers to draw conclusions about how planets form and how planet systems evolve.
(29 May)

UC Berkeley's Alex Farrell joins governor in introducing low-carbon fuel standard for state
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced a proposed new low-carbon fuel standard for the state and praised the University of California scientists who worked intensively over the past four months to put it together.
(18 May)

Ultra-cold gas makes great magnetometer
The universe's coldest state of matter is the Bose-Einstein condensate, a 50 nanoKelvin-above-absolute-zero gas of frigid atoms that behaves like a superfluid. UC Berkeley physicists have found a way to use these ultra-cold atoms to measure very small magnetic fields, which could be applied to mapping brain waves.
(18 May)

Chemist Peidong Yang wins NSF Waterman Award
Peidong Yang, a 36-year-old chemist who is a pioneer in the creation of nanowires, has been awarded the $500,000 Waterman Award, the National Science Foundation's top prize for young researchers. Yang's work could lead to miniaturized labs-on-a-chip, nano-scale electronic circuits and inexpensive, flexible solar cells.
(15 May)

Largest, brightest supernova announced
UC Berkeley astronomers report the most luminous supernova ever detected, the result of the explosion of a super-massive star in a galaxy 250 million light years away. The scientists estimate the star was 150 times larger than our sun, and argue that it is similar to the massive stars that populated the universe shortly after its birth.
(07 May)

Francis Moffitt, leading figure in photogrammetry, dies at 84
Francis H. Moffitt, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering and a prominent name in the field of surveying and photogrammetry, has died at the age of 84. Moffitt died of complications from pneumonia on Saturday, April 21, at his home in Berkeley.
(03 May)

Generating pressures at the cores of giant planets
UC Berkeley, LLNL researchers have developed a technique that could generate pressures of more than a billion atmospheres, the equivalent of the pressure at the center of a supergiant planet.
(02 May)

Engineer receives NSF grant to study MacArthur Maze freeway collapse
Abolhassan Astaneh, a UC Berkeley civil engineering professor, has received funding from the National Science Foundation to investigate the collapse of the MacArthur Maze freeway ramps after last Sunday's fiery tanker truck crash. He has formed a team to collect evidence from the site, including samples of the steel support beams and photographs of the collapsed roadways.
(01 May)

Birdwatching goes hi-tech with online video camera game
Researchers from UC Berkeley and Texas A&M University have developed a new online game that will allow players to earn points by taking live photos using a remotely controllable robotic video camera and classifying the wild birds they see. The game, to be launched April 23, will be free and open to the public.
(19 April)

What does it mean to be present?
A cross-disciplinary performance uses dance and technology to explore this provocative question.
(18 April)

Policy expert appointed to intl. biofuels panel
As biofuels take over more of the marketplace, nations around the world are struggling to deal with the environmental and societal effects of producing large quantities of plants for fuel. A UC Berkeley energy expert has been appointed to a new international roundtable to develop guidelines for assessing the impact of biofuels production.
(17 April)

Massive star burps, then explodes
Two and a half years ago, a distant star burped - producing a bright flash called a supernova imposter - then two years later, exploded for real. With the help of two NASA satellites, astronomers have now determined that when the star initially hiccupped, it spewed a shell of gas that the supernova shock wave later rammed, producing copious X-rays.
(04 April)

Weighing the financial risks of nuclear power
Power companies are rushing to invest in new nuclear power plants, thanks to promised government subsidies, but a new study warns that unexpected costs often arise that may not make such plants a good financial investment.
(02 April)

Binary asteroid revealed as twin rubble piles
The asteroid Antiope is among the few known binary asteroids discovered in recent years, visible through even the Earth's largest telescopes as merely two bright blobs orbiting one another endlessly. By harnessing the power of larger telescopes and the eagerness of amateurs with smaller instruments, UC Berkeley and Paris Observatory astronomers have constructed a detailed picture of two rubble-piles in a perpetual pas de deux.
(29 March)

Chemists strike gold with gold catalysts
Few people look beyond gold's glitter and rarity, but chemists have found that its chemical properties are just as interesting, making it a unique catalyst for producing unusual organic molecules. A UC Berkeley leader in the area of gold catalysis attributes these properties to relativistic effects in the gold atom.
(22 March)

Goal of nanoscale optical imaging gets boost with new hyperlens
UC Berkeley scientists have created a hyperlens capable of projecting a magnified image of a pair of nanowires spaced 150 nanometers apart onto a plane up to a meter away. The development brings them a giant step closer to the goal of nanoscale optical imaging.
(22 March)

Galaxy survey focuses on "pre-teen" years
A massive project to generate an all-color map of the galaxies in a small area of sky is yielding new information about the universe's "pre-teen" years and the early evolution of galaxies and galaxy clusters.
(06 March)

What's the frequency, Bill?
Journalism-school professor William Drummond tunes in to satellite radio, and likes what he hears.
(28 February)

Looking for life on Jupiter's moon Europa
If life exists on other planets, it almost certainly will be found where there's water. While many scientists pin their hopes on Mars, paleobiologist Jere Lipps yearns to probe Jupiter's moon Europa, because its jumbled ice cover reminds him of the Antarctic ice sheets that are home to abundant life on Earth.
(22 February)

Robotic cameras search for ivory-billed woodpecker, "Holy Grail of birdwatching"
A robotic video system developed by researchers at UC Berkeley and Texas A&M University has been installed in the Arkansas bayous, waiting to capture video of the ivory-billed woodpecker, an elusive bird once thought to be extinct. If the researchers obtain conclusive photographic evidence of the woodpecker, it will settle a debate that has become heated in recent years and fascinated millions of people around the world.
(20 February)

Despite delay, prospects good for Friday's launch of THEMIS
A storm front that moved off the Gulf of Mexico through northern Florida on Tuesday, forcing a 24-hour delay in the scheduled launch of five UC Berkeley-built THEMIS satellites, was a mild inconvenience for many space scientists. But it proved a boon for their families, who spent Thursday further exploring the John F. Kennedy Space Center or splashing in the hotel pool in sunny, 70-degree weather.
(16 February)

Researchers convert heat to electricity using organic molecules, could lead to new energy source
UC Berkeley researchers have successfully generated electricity from heat by trapping organic molecules between metal nanoparticles, an achievement that could pave the way toward the development of a new source for energy.
(15 February)

Three faculty elected to National Academy of Engineering
Three UC Berkeley faculty members have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), one of the highest professional distinctions for an American engineer. This brings to 85 the total number of UC Berkeley faculty members in the society.
(14 February)

Engineers create new mirror for high-performance optics
Engineers at UC Berkeley have created a new high-performance mirror that packs the same 99.9 percent reflective punch as current high-grade mirrors, but in a package that is 20 times thinner and easier to manufacture. The new mirror could dramatically improve the design and efficiency next generation laser optics for such devices as high-definition DVD players, computer circuits and laser printers.
(13 February)

New medical technique punches holes in cells, could treat tumors
A large animal study has shown that certain microsecond electrical pulses can punch nanoscale holes in the membranes of target cells without harming collagen fibers and other vascular tissue structures. The new medical technique, called irreversible electroporation (IRE) and developed at UC Berkeley, is a potential breakthrough in minimally invasive surgical treatments of tumors.
(12 February)

Chemist Paul Alivisatos named Lawrence Award winner
Paul Alivisatos, a chemist and materials scientist, has been named one of eight winners of this year's E. O. Lawrence Award of the U.S. Dept. of Energy. Alivisatos is one of the pioneers of nanotechnology, working with nanocrystals, nanorods and aggregates of nanorods that have promise as inexpensive and flexible solar panels.
(07 February)

NASA to launch THEMIS probes Feb. 15
Substorms in the Earth's magnetosphere turn the shimmering Northern and Southern lights into a dancing light show. A new NASA mission called THEMIS, designed and built by UC Berkeley scientists and scheduled for a Feb. 15 launch from Cape Canaveral, will field five probes that will lurk in Earth's shadow to determine where and how these substorms are triggered.
(17 January)

NASA funds instrument to probe life on Mars
A joint UC San Diego/UC Berkeley experiment to detect life on Mars that is scheduled to fly aboard the European ExoMars rover mission in 2013 will receive $750,000 in development funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), according to a NASA announcement this week.
(11 January)

Campus leads state study of low-carbon alternatives
UC Berkeley will play a key role in California's strategy to combat global warming, with scientists here and at UC Davis researching ways to lower vehicle emissions in order to reduce the state's carbon footprint.
(10 January)

Noted civil engineer dies at age 87
Ben C. Gerwick Jr., a civil engineer and University of California, Berkeley, professor emeritus known for his pioneering contributions to deep foundation construction and for making heavy construction engineering a part of scholarly research, died at age 87 on Dec. 25.
(09 January)

Rethinking last century's closest, brightest supernova
February will be the 20th anniversary of the nearest and brightest supernova humans have seen in 400 years. Called SN1987A, it burned for weeks in the Large Magellanic Cloud, and provided astronomers with new information that forced them to rethink theories of how massive stars explode. Now a UC Berkeley astronomer says that theory needs rethinking again.
(09 January)

Dust around nearby star like powder snow
A nearby star a mere 12 million years old is surrounded by a dusty disk reminiscent of the disk from which the Earth and other planets formed around our sun more than 4.5 billion years ago. Peering into this dusty disk, UC Berkeley astronomers have found that the dust is as fluffy as powder snow.
(08 January)

Richard Newton, engineering dean and technology visionary, dies at 55
A. Richard Newton, UC Berkeley professor and dean of the College of Engineering, a pioneer in integrated circuit design and electronic systems architecture, and a visionary leader in the technology industry, died Tuesday, Jan. 2, at the UC San Francisco Medical Center, less than two months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was 55.
(04 January)