By: Kara Manke | UC Berkeley | September 2, 2021 Though overall air quality in the U.S. has improved dramatically in recent decades, smoke from catastrophic wildfires is now creating spells of extremely hazardous air pollution in the Western U.S. And, while many people have learned to reduce their exposure by staying inside, keeping windows closed and running air filtration ... Continue Reading »
UC Berkeley
Using machine learning to detect early-stage cancers
By: Ashleen Knutsen | UC Berkeley | August 16, 2021 Diagnosing cancer early on can improve a patient’s treatment and prognosis. But detecting cancer in its first stage can be difficult, and current screening methods often require invasive procedures or expensive imaging equipment to identify the initial signs of disease. But now, an international group of medical ... Continue Reading »
With drop in LA’s vehicular aerosol pollution, plants emerge as major source
Rober Sanders, UC Berkeley | March 23, 2021 California’s restrictions on vehicle emissions have been so effective that in at least one urban area, Los Angeles, the most concerning source of dangerous aerosol pollution may well be trees and other green plants, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, chemists. Aerosols — particles of hydrocarbons ... Continue Reading »
Light unbound: Data limits could vanish with new optical antennas
Sarah Yang, UC Berkeley | February 25, 2021 Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a new way to harness properties of light waves that can radically increase the amount of data they carry. They demonstrated the emission of discrete twisting laser beams from antennas made up of concentric rings roughly equal to the diameter of a human hair, small ... Continue Reading »
A mass exodus from California? Not exactly
By Sean Coffey, UC Berkeley | March 4, 2021 New research released today by the UC Berkeley California Policy Lab finds that, contrary to some news media reports suggesting a mass exodus from California, most moves in 2020 happened within the state. Exits from California in 2020 largely mirrored historical patterns, while the biggest change was a decrease in people ... Continue Reading »
Prioritizing oldest for COVID-19 vaccines saves more lives, years of life
By Yasmin Anwar, UC Berkeley | February 25, 2021 Challenging the idea that older people with shorter life expectancies should rank lower in coronavirus immunization efforts, new UC Berkeley research shows that giving vaccine priority to those most at risk of dying from COVID-19 will save the maximum number of lives, and their potential or future years of life. The ... Continue Reading »
Our earliest primate ancestors rapidly spread after dinosaur extinction
By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley | February 24, 2021 The small, furry ancestors of all primates — a group that includes humans and other apes — were already taking to the trees a mere 100,000 years after the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and most other terrestrial animals, according to a new analysis of fossil teeth in the collections of the University of ... Continue Reading »
Binary stars are all around us, new map of solar neighborhood shows
By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley | February 22, 2021 The latest star data from the Gaia space observatory has for the first time allowed astronomers to generate a massive 3D atlas of widely separated binary stars within about 3,000 light years of Earth — 1.3 million of them. The one-of-a-kind atlas, created by Kareem El-Badry, an astrophysics Ph.D. student from the ... Continue Reading »
Latinx, Native Americans carry heavier pandemic burden, new poll reports
By Edward Lempinen, UC Berkeley | February 23, 2021 Voters of color in California — especially Latinx and Native American people — face disproportionate risks during the coronavirus pandemic and are far more worried than white voters about job and income loss and access to medical care, according to a new poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies ... Continue Reading »
Buyer beware: Massive experiment shows why ticket sellers hit you with last-second fees
By Morgan Foy, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley | February 9, 2021 There’s a reason that online ticket sellers hit you with those extra fees after you’ve picked your seats and are ready to click “buy.” Pure profit. A massive field experiment by Berkeley Haas Prof. Steven Tadelis with the online ticket marketplace StubHub concluded that so-called ... Continue Reading »