UC Berkeley
Pasadena, Calif. -- The red supergiant star Betelgeuse, the bright reddish star in the constellation Orion, has steadily shrunk over the past 15 years, according to University of California, Berkeley, researchers.
Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's biggest explosions, capable of producing so much light that ground-based telescopes easily detect it billions of light-years away. Yet, for more than a decade, astronomers have puzzled over the nature of so-called dark bursts, which produce gamma rays and X-rays but little or no visible light.
Pasadena, Calif. -- Gamma-ray bursts, with their ability to pierce through gas and dust to shine brightly across the universe, are revealing areas of intense star formation and stellar death where astronomers have been unable to look - the dusty corners of otherwise dust-free galaxies.
Berkeley -- In the famed Sharktooth Hill Bone Bed near Bakersfield, Calif., shark teeth as big as a hand and weighing a pound each, intermixed with copious bones from extinct seals and whales, seem to tell of a 15-million-year-old killing ground.
When it comes to data storage, density and durability have always moved in opposite directions -- the greater the density the shorter the durability. For example, information carved in stone is not dense but can last thousands of years, whereas today's silicon memory chips can hold their information for only a few decades. Researchers with the U.S.
President Barack Obama and Energy Secretary Steve Chu are consistent in their message that when it comes to transportation fuels, carbon-neutral biofuels as an alternative to gasoline are coming. While the focus of a shift from gasoline to biofuels has been on global warming, such a shift could also impact human health.
Berkeley -- Trying to quit cigarettes but don't know how? A new analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, suggests that Web- and computer-based smoking cessation programs are worth a try, and fortunately during these tough economic times, many of them are free.
BERKELEY, CA ? Multiferroics are materials in which unique combinations of electric and magnetic properties can simultaneously coexist. They are potential cornerstones in future magnetic data storage and spintronic devices provided a simple and fast way can be found to turn their electric and magnetic properties on and off. In a promising new development, researchers with the U.S.
Berkeley -- Move over, Y chromosome - it's time X got some attention.
Berkeley -- Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have identified a gene that plays a critical regulatory role in the process of converting dietary carbohydrates to fat. In a new study, they disabled this gene in mice, which consequently had lower levels of body fat than their normal counterparts, despite being fed the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat pasta buffet.
Even as debate rages over the safety of Australia's "Prepare, stay and defend, or leave early" policy of wildfire defense, fire researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and in Australia say that the strategy is worth consideration in California and other regions in the United States.
Shift workers and travelers who pop melatonin pills to stave off drowsiness or jetlag have another reason to be cautious about taking the supplement, say Japanese and University of California, Berkeley, researchers. A new study shows that melatonin, a hormone available without prescription, has broader effects in the brain than once thought. In experiments on the Japanese quail, the researchers found that melatonin switches on a recently discovered hormone called gonadotropin inhibitory hormone (GnIH), which has been found to have the opposite effect to the key hormone priming the body for sex -- gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH). In birds, switching off GnRH causes the gonads -- testes and ovary -- to shrink as part of the birds' yearly cycle.
A type of vegetation that can often be found washed ashore on beaches may soon emerge as a new player in the field of cancer-fighting foods. A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that a diet containing kelp seaweed lowered levels of the potent sex hormone estradiol in rats, and raised hopes that it might decrease the risk of estrogen-dependent diseases such as breast cancer in humans.
A group of four-footed mammals that flourished worldwide for 40 million years and then died out in the ice ages is the missing link between the whale and its not-so-obvious nearest relative, the hippopotamus. The conclusion by University of California, Berkeley, post-doctoral fellow Jean-Renaud Boisserie and his French colleagues finally puts to rest the long-standing notion that the hippo is actually related to the pig or to its close relative, the South American peccary. In doing so, the finding reconciles the fossil record with the 20-year-old claim that molecular evidence points to the whale as the closest relative of the hippo.
Another important piece to the photosynthesis puzzle is now in place. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have identified one of the key molecules that help protect plants from oxidation damage as the result of absorbing too much light. The researchers determined that when chlorophyll molecules in green plants take in more solar energy than they are able to immediately use, molecules of zeaxanthin, a member of the carotenoid family of pigment molecules, carry away the excess energy.
