✴︎ The
Hypothesis
The Online Edition of the Berkeley Scientific Journal
Research & Blogs Department
There is something tantalizingly romantic to me about the objectivity of science. There is something about how the structure of a tail of a twirling galaxy, and that of a hurricane hurdling around its eye, is fundamentally the same. One could even say these entropic laws provide the crystal resolution of an inevitable architecture at…
“Why can’t we write the entire twenty-four volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin?” Richard Feynman offered up this daunting challenge (with a rather paltry $1000 prize) at his famous 1959 Caltech lecture “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” – a seminal event in the history of nanotechnology. In 1985,…
Archaeopteryx, found in 1861, was the first transitional fossil discovered that suggested intermediate forms between feathered dinosaurs and modern birds. Unearthed just years after Darwin published “On the Origin of Species”, Archaeopteryx seemed to support Darwin’s theories about evolution. Since then, 28 other transitional species between birds and dinosaurs have been discovered, as well as…
This post is cross-posted with the PLOS Student Blog If you’ve recently taken a glimpse at the front page of any major science news outlet, it is likely you are no stranger to an emerging genome editing technology known as CRISPR/Cas9. With the help of RNA, Cas9 (a bacterial enzyme) can be programmed to target specific…
Every year, the Townsend Center for the Humanities invites a cultural icon to campus as the Avenali Chair in the Humanities, and every year, the Avenali Chair in the Humanities delivers a lecture. It’s an amazing opportunity to hear from fascinating individuals, but I found about this only because last year’s speaker was none other…
This is a review of biological stress from interviews with UC Berkeley’s Department of Integrative Biology professors, Dr. Michael Shapira and Dr. George Bentley, for Berkeley Scientific Journal’s 18th volume. The information below summarizes what I learned not only from talking with the researchers but also from the pre-interview preparation. Combined, of course, with what…
Whether it’s for the Big C or the Fire Trails, the Berkeley Hills find their way onto every Berkeley student’s list of token destinations. However, when we commit ourselves to trekking those ridiculous slopes, we often only look to the sky to catch the west coast sunsets, the stars on a clear night, the sprawling…
var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-47846382-1’]); _gaq.push([‘_trackPageview’]); (function() { var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true; ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); What makes us a human? Walking on two legs? Language? Empathy? Our large prefrontal cortex, which…
Richard Feynman, one of the most brilliant and influential scientists of the 20th century, asked in his book The Meaning of It All, Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist: “Is science of any value?” This is not a question to be taken lightly. One might recall that Richard Feynman, 1965 Nobel laureate in Physics, contributed to the…
With Halloween behind us and the beginning of the holiday season ahead, many folks are beginning a preemptive diet to ward off seasonal bellies. But with diet sodas and sugar-free desserts, are you really going to keep off those holiday pounds? Or could there be even more sinister consequences of turning to sugar-free products to avoid weight gain?…
This post is cross-posted with The PLoS Student Blog We have all taken aspirin for minor aches, known someone who takes simvastatin to control elevated cholesterol, or are related to someone with hypertension who is prescribed ACE inhibitors for treatment. Most medications and over-the-counter drugs like these target enzymes (specialized proteins) that are directly involved in…