11 February 2011
Scientists Warn Against Stifling Effect of Widespread Patenting in Stem Cell Field
By: Michael Pena, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics
In an opinion piece published on Feb. 10 in the journal Science, a team of scholars led by a Johns Hopkins bioethicist urges the scientific community to act collectively to stem the negative effects of patenting and privatizing of stem cell lines, data and pioneering technologies. This means grappling with the ambiguity of several fundamental distinctions typically made in ethics, law, and common practice, the experts insist.
The team, led by Debra Mathews, Ph.D., M.A., of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, says failures to properly manage the widespread patenting by both private and public organizations threatens to obscure what is and what isn’t in the public domain. In addition, this disarray may well hinder progress toward breakthroughs that could lead to new treatments the public desperately wants.
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Posted by Pinar Aybar at 9:36
24 August 2010
Professor Receives Prestigious Young Investigator Award
Stephanie M. Carlson, assistant professor of environmental science, policy, and management, is among this year’s recipients of the American Society of Naturalists’ Young Investigator Award, which is awarded by the Society to recognize outstanding and promising work by early career researchers.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 1:18
21 April 2010
Howler Monkey Census Reveals Population Holding Steady
Long before dawn on March 19 and 20, Katie Milton and a group of stalwart volunteers, each armed with flashlight and compass, spread out into the jungle to find 35 predetermined listening stations marked on their maps of the island.
Just before sunrise, howler monkeys launch into a chorus of howls, roars and barks. From 5:15 am until 6:30 am, each volunteer recorded the time and direction of these vocalizations and estimated the distance to each group that they could hear from their stations. As they walked back to the lab in the early morning light they noted locations of any monkey groups they saw.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 9:58
16 February 2010
Professor Honored for Outstanding Contributions to Bird Conservation Biology
The American Orinthologists' Union has awarded Professor of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management Steven R. Beissinger the 2009 William Brewster Memorial Award for his innovative contributions, outstanding research productivity, and long-standing dedication to conservation biology of birds in the Western Hemisphere.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 1:00
04 February 2000
Patent filed on energy discovery: UC Berkeley and Colorado scientists find valuable new source of fuel
By Kathleen Scalise, Public Affairs
BERKELEY--A metabolic switch that triggers algae to turn sunlight into large quantities of hydrogen gas, a valuable fuel, is the subject of a new discovery reported for the first time by University of California, Berkeley, scientists and their Colorado colleagues. The news appears in this month's issue of the journal "Plant Physiology."
"I guess it's the equivalent of striking oil," said UC Berkeley plant and microbial biology professor Tasios Melis. "It was enormously exciting, it was unbelievable."
Melis and postdoctoral associate Liping Zhang of UC Berkeley made the discovery - funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Hydrogen Program - with Dr. Michael Seibert, Dr. Maria Ghirardi and postdoctoral associate Marc Forestier of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado.
Currently, hydrogen fuel is extracted from natural gas, a non-renewable energy source. The new discovery makes it possible to harness nature's own tool, photosynthesis, to produce the promising alternative fuel from sunlight and water. A joint patent on this new technique for capturing solar energy has been taken out by the two institutions.
So far, only small-scale cultures of the microscopic green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii have been examined in the laboratory for their hydrogen production capabilities, Melis said.
"In the future, both small-scale industrial and commercial operations and larger utility photobioreactor complexes can be envisioned using this process," Melis said.
While current production rates are not high enough to make the process immediately viable commercially, the researchers believe that yields could rise by at least tenfold with further research, someday making the technique an attractive fuel-producing option.
Preliminary rough estimates, for instance, suggest it is conceivable that a single, small commercial pond could produce enough hydrogen gas to meet the weekly fuel needs of a dozen or so automobiles, Melis said.
The scientific team is just beginning to test ways to maximize hydrogen production, including varying the particular type of microalga used and its growth conditions.
Many energy experts believe hydrogen gas one day could become the world's best renewable source of energy and an environmentally friendly replacement for fossil fuels.
"Hydrogen is so clean burning that what comes out of the exhaust pipe is pure water," Melis said. "You can drink it."
Engineering advances for hydrogen storage, transportation and utilization, many sponsored by the U.S. DOE Hydrogen Program, are beginning to make the fuel feasible to power automobiles and buses and to generate electricity in this country, Seibert said.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 4:20
28 May 2000
UC Berkeley entomologists release parasitic wasp June 7 to control insects destroying California's red gum eucalyptus
Berkeley -- California's troubled red gum eucalyptus trees, under attack for the last two years from a fast-spreading insect infestation, may get some relief on Wednesday (June 7) from a tiny Australian wasp discovered by Professor Donald Dahlsten, an entomologist in the College of Natural Resources. The wasp, to be released in small numbers in North Hollywood on June 7, may be able to control the infestation and begin to save the endangered trees.
Trees are under attack in 30 California counties from the redgum lerp psyllid, Glycaspis brimblecombei, a small, flying insect that feeds on plant juices. It has caused much concern in the state since it was first found in June 1998 in Los Angeles County. Collected on 16 different varieties of eucalyptus in California, the psyllid is causing the most trouble on redgum, Eucalyptus camaldulensis, a common ornamental species in the state. After infestation, trees rapidly lose their leaves and begin to produce a sticky honeydew that dirties cars, buildings and sidewalks. It is not known how often the trees can defoliate and still survive.
Dahlsten has shown that certain species of Psyllaephagus parasitic wasps that he collected last summer in Australia may be able to bring the psyllid population under control by laying eggs within the insect bodies and destroying them. The wasps have been under surveillance for the last year at UC Berkeley. This week, 100 females will be released to treat 20 trees in Valley Village Park in North Hollywood.
"We have low numbers of parasites right now and are trying to build up our numbers," said Dahlsten, a professor of environmental science, policy and management and biological control in the UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources. "We will be releasing all summer, and we hope that the parasitoids will spread as rapidly as the other parasitoids that we have released to control other species of psyllids in the past, making multiple releases unnecessary."
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 4:19
15 October 2001
Soy protein prevents skin tumors from developing in mice
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 3:43
11 June 2002
Zach Perry reports on his murrelet research via campus summer journal project
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 3:12
12 May 2003
Chemical in Broccoli Blocks Growth of Human Prostate Cancer Cells
by Sarah Yang
Berkeley - 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.
"As far as we know, this is the first plant-derived chemical discovered that acts as an anti-androgen," said Leonard Bjeldanes, professor and chair of nutritional sciences and toxicology at UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources and principal investigator of the study. "This is of considerable interest in the development of therapeutics and preventive agents for prostate cancer."
Vegetables such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale and cauliflower are rich sources of indole-3-carbinol (I3C), which the body converts into DIM during digestion. Over the years, Bjeldanes has been researching the anti-cancer properties of dietary indoles with co-author Gary Firestone, UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology.
The new study will be published in the June 6 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, but is now available online.
Androgen is an important hormone for the normal development and function of the prostate, but it also plays a key role in the early stages of prostate cancer, which is typically treated with anti-androgen drugs.
In most cases of prostate cancer, the cancer cells develop resistance to androgen and grow independently of the hormone in later stages of the disease.
In the new study, the researchers conducted a series of tests comparing the effects of DIM on androgen-dependent human prostate cancer cells as well as on their androgen-independent counterparts.
They found that androgen-dependent cancer cells treated with a solution of DIM grew 70 percent less than the same type of cancer cells that had been left untreated. The same solution had no effect on the growth of androgen-independent cells, pointing to androgen inhibition as the key mechanism by which the DIM is acting.
This was confirmed with further tests showing that DIM inhibits the actions of dihydrotestosterone (DHT), the primary androgen involved in prostate cancer. DHT stimulates the expression of prostate specific antigen (PSA), which acts as a growth factor for prostate cancer. When androgen-dependent cells were treated with DIM, the researchers found a drop in the level of PSA.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 1:28
09 December 2003
A Scientists Fulfills His Dream: An Ecologist Goes to Space
by Kathryn Stelljes
Charismatic British-born astronaut Piers Sellers thrilled an audience of more than 150 on December 7 with photos and a video of his mission in October 2002 to help construct the International Space Station.
"The thing that impressed me the most was being outside in a space suit and listening to my breathing. It was dark. " said Sellers of his impressions from space. "Pam [Pam Melroy, Shuttle pilot] said, 'Sun up in one minute.' I had lost track of where the horizon was going to be. I turned I think forward, and the horizon suddenly appeared as a very thin blue line, at right angles, and went all the way across. The sun came up in the middle of it, just shooting up like a rocket. The earth lit up below me and I could see it moving toward me below my boots. What I could not believe was how big it is. When you looked at the horizon, you could see the atmosphere as a
thin layer with thunderstorms half way up. The whole thing was rotating, almost rumbling beneath you. I was not ready for the scale of it, to see the Earth as a planet, not the place you're on, but to be away from it and to see it as a planet. It is really amazing. "
An ecologist and biometeorologist by training, Sellers acknowledged the scientific value of the space station, but said its greater benefits are in moving us ahead towards manned space exploration and in fostering international relationships among 16 nations.
"The space station is the most useful, peaceful, scientific collaboration ever done," he said.
Sellers presented his experiences at the invitation of Inez Fung, director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center and professor of atmospheric sciences in the College of Natural Resources' Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 1:35
14 December 2003
New at CNR v1
This week (12-8-03 to 12-12-03) at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco
College of Natural Resources scientists are presenting 19 papers and posters on topics including the benefit of exercise on the reduction of oil consumption, the emission of terpenes from forest thinning, the diversity of organisms in acid mine drainage, and the influence of plant and microbial interactions on nitrogen retention in Puerto Rican forest soils.
This month (December) in Applied and Environmental Microbiology
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 1:32
13 December 2004
Survey: Undergrads give Cal high marks
by Bonnie Azab Powell
BERKELEY – Everybody knows that UC Berkeley is a top-ranked research university. (If you haven't heard, a London newspaper recently decided we're No. 2 in the world.) And everybody also knows that for Berkeley undergraduates, that means a miserably impersonal education with large lecture classes conducted by teaching assistants, since professors are locked in their labs – right? Well, no…at least not according to the actual students.
In fact, 84.3 percent of Cal students in a massive annual survey declared themselves "somewhat" to "very" satisfied with their overall academic experience at Berkeley. On question after question about the details of their education, the positive responses outweiged the negative.
College of Natural Resources offers small-college benefits within a large research university
Of the 9,595 undergraduates who responded to the 2004 University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES), 53.5 percent had taken classes in the past year (either "occasionally," "often" or "very often") with a professor who knew the respondent's name. Only 16.2 percent of respondents had never been called on by name; 30.2 percent had rarely had that experience. Nor were those professors invisible outside of class: more than half of respondents — 54.6 percent — said they had met with faculty members in person (such as during office hours), either occasionally, often, or very often in the past year, while 15.2 percent had never done so and 30.1 percent had done so rarely.
Browse the full results of the 2004 University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES)
The image of the chilly research factory is just one of the under-examined stereotypes about UC Berkeley that this large, detailed survey puts to rest annually. In an article earlier this year, called "Bye-bye, Berzerkeley: Surveys provide a peek at the real UC Berkeley students," we wrote about how the 2003 UCUES dispatched many long-held social stereotypes, such as that all Berkeley students were activist liberals who studied all the time, and confirmed at least one: this campus does indeed embrace cultural and religious diversity.
The 2004 UCUES doesn't show any significant changes on these points, but since this year's survey added a number of new questions, there are new insights to be found. A somewhat surprising example, given Berkeley's reputation for civic engagement: large numbers of UCUES respondents said they were "not that well-informed" when it came to campus issues and politics (53.1 percent), California state issues and politics (48.1 percent), or international issues and politics (43.3 percent). Only on the topic of national issues and politics did a sizable percentage (41.2 percent) consider themselves "well-informed"; another 37.6 percent admitted to being rather clueless on national matters as well as local.
That may or may not be related to where UC Berkeley students find their news. Most respondents said they get their information primarily from the Internet (including online newspapers). Over a third, 37.7 percent, turn to the Web every day and another 27.8 percent several times a week for news, versus the 7.8 percent who watch televised national news daily and the 17.4 percent who do so several times a week. The most popular online news sites are CNN, The New York Times, Yahoo, and MSN/MSNBC (see box, right). The Daily Cal apparently trumps the San Francisco Chronicle and other national newspapers in popularity: 48.4 percent of respondents said they read the "campus newspaper" every day or several times a week, compared with 26 percent for "other print newspaper."
Poli Shy majors
UC Berkeley undergraduates seemed to have moved slightly to the left politically in the year since the last UCUES survey. Of the 7,967 students who answered the political beliefs question, those who identified themselves as "liberal" accounted for 46.5 percent of respondents, compared with 42.2 percent last year. The "far left" contingent also saw a slight bump, from 6.1 percent to 7.9 percent. Those with "middle of the road" political beliefs went from 39.4 percent to 34.5 percent, while the portion identifying themselves as "conservative" and "far right" went from 11.8 percent and 0.5 percent to 10.5 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively.
The Office of Student Research was able to analyze these results further, tracking individual (but anonymous) respondents, and confirmed that this slight shift to the left appears to be consistent across all class levels. For those 3,374 Berkeley students who answered the political identification item both this year and last year, 69.9 percent had not changed their political stance, while 11.5 percent had inched right and 18.6 percent had moved left. But nearly all (95.1 percent) of those shifting their views had only moved one step over, for example, from "middle-of-the road" to "liberal."
Despite this being an election year, students' political beliefs once again did not exactly translate into action. Although 16.9 percent characterized their political views as "very strong" and another 48.9 percent called theirs "strong," the overwhelming majority of respondents had not participated in a single political meeting or rally (62.8 percent), protest or demonstration (73.4 percent), or political campaign (81 percent) in the past year. Fewer than 5 percent of respondents had participated in any of these political activities "often or very often." One should take this with an enormous grain of salt, however; responses to the UCUES questionnaire were collected from March to August of this heated political year, so we'll never know how many students went on voter registration drives after giving their answers.
Only 35 percent of respondents said that both of their parents were born in the United States, while 54.2 percent said that neither parent had been.
Still, at the time the survey was conducted, 73.6 percent were registered to vote, while 11.9 percent said they were not registered because they weren't citizens. As we discussed last year, many Berkeley undergraduates are first-generation Americans or permanent residents: only 35 percent of respondents said that both their parents had been born in the United States, while 54.2 percent said that neither parent had been.
Want 2 talk f2f?
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 8:40
19 November 2009
CNR Entomology Alums Honored by Cal Academy
Maurice and Catherine Tauber, alumni of the doctoral program in Entomology at CNR, have been elected honorary fellows of the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco.
Maurice and Catherine met in the 1960s as graduate students, receiving their doctorates in 1967 and 1968 respectively. They went on to enjoy a long and successful partnership studying insect seasonality, evolutionary biology and speciation, biological control, and systematics at Cornell.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 2:12
05 November 2009
Physical education key to improving health in low-income adolescents
School-based physical education plays a key role in curbing obesity and improving fitness among adolescents from low-income communities, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and UC Berkeley.
The study, which identifies opportunities for adolescents to improve their health based on routine daily activities, finds that regular participation in PE class is significantly associated with greater cardiovascular fitness and lower body mass index.
“We took an incredibly comprehensive look at all of the opportunities kids have throughout their day to engage in physical activity and determined which are the most strongly linked to fitness and weight status,†said first author Kristine Madsen, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of pediatrics at UCSF Children’s Hospital. “Obesity continues to be a major public health concern, particularly in low-income communities, so it is imperative that we develop targeted interventions to improve the health of at-risk youth.â€
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 1:17
04 November 2009
War of the Ants, Berkeley Style!
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Posted by Susan Sabry at 2:24
24 August 2005
Mexican woods offer a look at California forests’ past
by UC Division of Agriculture & Natural Resources
A largely unmanaged forest in Mexico holds lessons for improving the health of California wildlands, according to UC Berkeley fire science professor Scott Stephens.
His twice yearly research expeditions to the unspoiled Sierra de San Pedro Martir have convinced him that the forest management plans in California should be revised to improve the ecosystem’s resilience to insects, diseases, drought and catastrophic fires.
For seven years, Stephens has studied the Jeffrey Pine-mixed conifer forests in the mountainous national park of Baja California, named after the Christian martyr St. Peter. The mountain range is connected to the Laguna and San Jacinto Mountains of southwest California. The flora and fauna are similar to Southern California and eastern Sierra Nevada forests. The greatest difference is the time of the forests’ fire seasons. The majority of fires occur in summer in the Mexican forests, but fires are more common in California forests in the late summer and fall.
“When you are over there, with all the familiar shrubs and soils and trees, sometimes you have to remind yourself you’re in Mexico,†Stephens said.
A large portion of the 100,000-acre Mexican forest has never been harvested and has survived through centuries of natural fire cycles, making it a living example of what many California forests would be without the exploitive logging practices of earlier generations, fragmentation by development and disruption of natural fire cycles.
Fires burned naturally in Sierra San Pedro Martir
Until 1970, there was no fire suppression at all in the Sierra de San Pedro Martir. Today, only eight people are assigned to put out blazes by going in when smoke is spotted and cutting a line around the fire. In contrast, most California forest fires are managed aggressively with armies of firefighters, sophisticated equipment, helicopters and air tankers.
Vacation homes, developed camp grounds, lavish lodges, museums and shopping centers are not to be found in Mexico’s Martir. In California, many mountain areas have become populous tourist destinations. Twelve thousand people live in the vicinity of Big Bear Lake, where a local Web site, http://bigbear.us, claims there are more Mexican restaurants per capita than in the average Baja peninsula city. The population at Mammoth Lakes, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, is nearly 8,000 year round. The average cabin in Lake Arrowhead, known locally as the Alps of Southern California, costs more than $200,000.
Another influence on current California forest ecosystem is historical timber harvesting practices. Some 125 years ago, California and Nevada pioneers began logging the eastern Sierra Nevada and the San Jacinto, San Bernardino and Laguna mountains for mining and development.
“In the late 19th century, most of the trees in the eastern Sierra Nevada were used to support silver mining,†Stephens said. “The logging that took place before early Californians understood sustainable timber harvest practices created huge disturbances in the forest ecosystems that still affect those forests today.â€
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 0:34
16 November 2005
Rosemary Gillespie receives Presidential Award for Excellence in Mentoring
by National Science Foundation
Rosemary Gillespie, professor of Insect Biology in ESPM, is one of 10 individuals who were awarded the 2005 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) on Nov. 16. The award includes a $10,000 grant for continued mentoring work.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 9:33
10 December 2005
Student research: different perspectives, common goals
The first joint undergraduate poster session with CNR and the College of Engineering was a hit with students, faculty, and staff.
Taking on the theme of Natural Bridges: Different Perspectives, Common Goals, the forum gave students in a variety of disciplines to showcase their work, which ranged from projects in progress, to completed honors projects.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 9:26
19 December 2005
Overfishing may drive endangered seabird to rely upon lower quality food
by Sarah Yang
The effects of overfishing may have driven marbled murrelets, an endangered seabird found along the Pacific coast, to increasingly rely upon less nutritious food sources, according to a new study by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 9:21
14 October 2009
Scott Stephens: The Bright Side of Fire
Fire, once a key phenomenon in the balance of forest ecosystems, has gone rogue, thanks to years of detrimental land-use policy. Now, Scott Stephens and his band of pyromaniacs are restoring forests and setting the record straight.
Scott Stephens didn’t listen when they told him not to play with fire. Now he does it for a living. With wildfires blazing a path of destruction through Southern California recently, Stephens’ work on fire management has never been so relevant. An associate professor in ESPM, Stephens studies how fires affect forest ecosystems and how forests can be managed to maximize the benefits that wildfires provide while minimizing habitat destruction.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 0:48
05 October 2009
CNR Student Helps Keep Water Fresh in Uganda
CNR student David Dinh is helping rural Ugandans to have access to safe drinking water.
"In every home in Uganda, drinking water is traditionally stored in a clay pot and culturally, there is a tremendous preference for this method of water storage. Unfortunately, water stored through this method can become quickly contaminated from repeated hand contact," Dinh writes. Because of the need for safe water storage, Dinh has helped to create improved clay pots with plastic spigots. They are "an affordable, accessible, and culturally appropriate safe water storage approach for rural Ugandan communities, " says Dinh.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 1:39
14 September 2009
Sierra Nevada birds move in response to warmer, wetter climate
If the climate is not quite right, birds will up and move rather than stick around and sweat it out, according to a new study led by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.
The findings, to be published the week of Sept. 14 in an online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that 48 out of 53 bird species studied in California's Sierra Nevada mountains have adjusted to climate change over the last century by moving to sites with the temperature and precipitation conditions they favored.
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Posted by Eva St. Clair at 0:51
29 June 2009
Non-hominid CSI? Identifying species using tracking tunnels, footprints and computers
ESPM postdoc James Russell and his colleague Reinhard Klette discuss the use of pattern recognition technology to identify the geographical distributions of species, by using tracking cards and tunnels. Their research, just published in the journal Ecology, represents a cheap and non-labour intensive way of assessing the spatial patterns of species in their environments.
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Posted by Cyril at 5:55
19 May 2009
Summer haze cools southeastern United States
Global warming may include some periods of local cooling, according to a new study by researchers at the College of Natural Resources. Results from satellite and ground-based sensor data show that sweltering summers can, paradoxically, lead to the temporary formation of a cooling haze in the southeastern United States.
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Posted by Cyril at 2:50
02 January 2009
Double Trouble for Hemlock Forests
From Science Now;
Hemlock forests are in a world of hurt. Across the eastern United States, an aphid-like pest is ravaging the trees, while booming populations of deer devour other native plants. Now, researchers have shown that the combination of these two threats adds up to even more trouble for the native ecosystem by favoring the invasion of weeds.Researchers first noticed the hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae), a 1.5-millimeter-long insect from Asia, in an arboretum near Richmond, Virginia, in 1951. The bugs feed on starch in new twigs and can kill trees in just 3 years. As the hemlocks die, exotic plants such as garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) have been spreading and altering the habitat that native species rely on. Anne Eschtruth, then a graduate student in ESPM and now a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Forestry, wondered how the two phenomena were linked.
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Posted by Cyril at 3:53
12 December 2008
Sustaining the Harvest: Creating Fine Wines on a Warming Planet
On Dec. 11, CNR hosted "Creating Fine Wines on a Warming Planet," a panel discussion on the future of the wine industry in the face of global warming. The panel featured College faculty Miguel Altieri, professor of agroecology, and Kent Daane, CE specialist in insect biology, as well as industry experts David Graves, co-founder of Saintsbury Vineyard, and Caleb Mosley, viticulturist at Ridge Vineyards. The panel discussion was followed by a special wine-tasting event.
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Posted by Cyril at 1:05
07 November 2008
Collaborative Research on the Navajo Reservation
by Carl Wilmsen
Director, Community Forestry and Environmental Research Partnerships
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Posted by Cyril at 1:24
17 October 2008
Todd Dawson on the Blue Oak Ranch Reserve
Managed by UC Berkeley, the the Blue Oak Ranch Reserve is home to mature, gnarled blue oaks, valley oaks and two species of live oak, not to mention endangered California tiger salamanders, Foothill yellow-legged frogs, native trout and river otters. It is the newest of 36 California reserves overseen by the 10-campus UC system's Natural Reserve System for research and education.
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Posted by Cyril at 4:11
08 September 2008
A Nobel Cause
Professor Barbara Allen-Diaz has always been a little ahead of the curve. After fast-tracking
through her M.S./Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in 4 years, Allen-Diaz was snapped up by the U.S. Forest Service, only to be lured back to Cal to become the first female range management faculty in the country. In the mid-1990s, she was tapped to participate in the second installment of a massive, international research effort called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which had the prescient hunch that humans were having a significant impact on global climate.
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Posted by Cyril at 2:58
22 July 2008
Tracking Raindrops
Everyone relies on the water cycle, but how does it really work? This episode of KQED's science program Quest focuses on UC Berkeley scientists, including Inez Fung, professor of environmental science, policy and management, and their project to learn how global warming is affecting our fresh water supply.
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Posted by Cyril at 9:44
21 July 2008
Outdoor enthusiasts scaring off native carnivores in parks
BERKELEY — Even a quiet stroll in the park can dramatically change natural ecosystems, according to a new study by conservation biologists. These findings could have important implications for land management policies.
The study compared parks in the San Francisco Bay Area that allow only quiet recreation such as hiking or dog walking with nearby nature reserves that allow no public access. Evidence of some native carnivore populations - coyote and bobcat - was more than five times lower in parks that allow public access than in neighboring reserves where humans don't tread, the researchers report.
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Posted by Cyril at 9:08
10 April 2008
New Madagascar conservation map protects maximum number of species in biodiversity hot spot
BERKELEY – An international team of researchers has developed a remarkable new roadmap for finding and protecting the best remaining holdouts for thousands of rare species that live only in Madagascar, considered one of the most significant biodiversity hot spots in the world.
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Posted by Cyril at 0:45
16 April 2008
Sudden Oak Death pathogen is evolving, says new study that reconstructs the epidemic
BERKELEY – The pathogen responsible for Sudden Oak Death first got its grip in California's forests outside a nursery in Santa Cruz and at Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County before spreading out to eventually kill millions of oaks and tanoaks along the Pacific Coast, according to a new study led by researchers. It provides, for the first time, evidence of how the epidemic unfolded in this state.
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Posted by Cyril at 0:33
03 July 2008
Nature reserves attract humans, but at a cost to biodiversity, says study
BERKELEY – Rather than suppressing local communities in developing nations, nature reserves attract human settlement, according to a new study by researchers.
In an analysis of 306 rural protected areas in 45 countries in Africa and Latin America, the researchers found that, on average, the rate of human population growth along the borders of protected areas was nearly twice that of neighboring rural areas.
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Posted by Cyril at 9:26
10 July 2008
Genes could solve pollution mysteries
Researchers have for the first time identified environmental pollutants by looking at the genes of a small, freshwater crustacean. This new gene-based technique could lead to better and faster lab tests for pinpointing pollutants in contaminated ecosystems.
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Posted by Cyril at 9:14
06 December 2007
$5.2 million grant from Moore Foundation funds ambitious project to barcode an entire ecosystem
In the middle of the South Pacific, about 12 miles west of Tahiti, is a tropical island that soon will emerge as a model ecosystem, thanks to the efforts of a U.S.-French research team led by University of California, Berkeley, biologists.
Video: Cataloging an ecosystem |
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Posted by Cyril at 0:24
26 April 2007
Video: Sudden Oak Death expert on KQED Quest
Devastating over 1 million oak trees across Northern California in the past 10 years, Sudden Oak Death is a killer with no cure. But biologists including CNR's Matteo Garbelotto are looking to the trees' genetics for a solution.
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Posted by Cyril at 9:30
13 November 2007
Spotlight On Scott Stephens
Fire, once a key phenomenon in the balance of forest ecosystems, has gone rogue, thanks to years of detrimental land-use policy. Now, Scott Stephens and his band of pyromaniacs are restoring forests and setting the record straight.
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Posted by Cyril at 1:13
24 October 2007
Workshop Cultivates Grad Students' Interest in Vegetation Mapping
Two flora enthusiasts got the chance learn about cutting edge technology during a Geospatial Imaging and Informatics Facility workshop last week.
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Posted by Stephanie Ludwig at 0:11
27 September 2007
Tracing a spidery family tree
"A professor of environmental science, policy, and management, insect biologist Rosemary Gillespie’s studies of spider evolution have carried her from the misty moors of Scotland to islands across the Pacific. Her analyses of island colonization, spider-style, have demonstrated that organisms invade virgin territory, blossom into new species, and establish communities in a predictable pattern."
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Posted by Cyril at 3:23
05 September 2007
CNR Students Share Experiences with WWF Fellowship
Desirae Early and Ky Ngo were chosen last spring to participate in the 2007 Nissan-World Wildlife Fund Environmental Leadership Program which took them to Nashville, Washington D.C., and Brazil. Here, they share their experiences.
Ky Ngo:
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Posted by Stephanie Ludwig at 2:41
16 July 2007
VIDEO: Claire Kremen and Gordon Frankie on Better Bees
California farmers depend on bees to pollinate the state's multi-million dollar fruit and nut crops, but last season thousands of bee colonies disappeared around the country.
The KQED science program Quest recently featured CNR ecologist Claire Kremen, and her research on bee pollination. In addition, an online-only special features the urban bees of entomologist Gordon Frankie.
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Posted by Cyril at 3:28
11 April 2007
Bees keep her busy as a, well, a bee
Public curiosity about bees kept UC Berkeley graduate student Alex Harmon-Threatt on her toes at an annual wildflower festival at the Sunol-Ohlone Regional Wilderness, south of Livermore, on April 7. Kids and adults alike peered through her magnifying glass at a collection of native wild bee species on display: bumblebees, mining bees, sunflower bees, leaf-cutter bees, yellow-faced bees — even bees that "land on you lightly and drink your sweat," she told incredulous young visitors.
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Posted by Cyril at 4:45
09 April 2007
Forestry Student’s Senior Project Applies New Technology to Old Data
John Dingman’s three-ring binder for his senior honors project overflows with data ranging from topographic maps to digital elevation models to tree cores. Dingman, a senior forestry major at CNR, spent the summer of 2006 trekking through Mount Diablo State Park to collect firsthand data for his project on vegetation type mapping using GIS.
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Posted by Stephanie Ludwig at 4:32
09 April 2007
Turning back the demographic hands of time for an endangered species
In the News & Views blog of the Ecological Society of America, Professor Steve Beissinger discusses his and Zachariah Peery’s Feb 07article Reconstructing the historic demography of an endangered seabird.
He writes:
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Posted by Cyril at 1:40
14 March 2007
Mine Runoff Continues To Provide Clues To Microbial Diversification
Pink slime at the surface of water trickling through an old mine in California is proving to be a treasure for researchers in their quest to learn more about how bacterial communities exist in nature.
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Posted by Cyril at 0:44
07 March 2007
A world without bees is a world without chocolate
From The San Francisco Chronicle [original URL]
By Alison Rood
When Professor Gordon Frankie wants to impress schoolchildren with the importance of bees, he lays out an array of foods such as berries, grapes, pears and chocolate alongside a couple of dried-out tortillas and rice cakes and asks them which foods they prefer.
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Posted by Cyril at 3:33
22 January 2007
How the Earth breathes is key to climate change
Looking out across an expanse of oak-grass savanna from the top of a 65-foot research tower near Ione in Amador County, biometeorologist Dennis Baldocchi [professor of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at] UC Berkeley sums up his part in the effort to get a more accurate picture of climate change.
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Posted by Cyril at 4:50
18 January 2007
Study of rotting leaves could lead to more accurate climate models
Over the past decade, in numerous field sites throughout the world, mesh bags of leaf and root litter sat exposed to the elements, day and night, throughout the four seasons, gradually rotting away.
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Posted by Cyril at 6:44
02 January 2007
Shotgun sequencing finds nanoorganisms
 |
| The smallest form of life known to science could fit into the period at the end of this sentence. |
For 11 years, Jill Banfield has collected and studied the microbes that slime the floors of mines and convert iron to acid, a common source of stream pollution around the world.
Imagine her surprise, then, when research scientist Brett Baker discovered three new microbes living amidst the bacteria she thought she knew well. All three were so small - the size of large viruses - as to be virtually invisible under a microscope, and belonged to a totally new phylum of Archaea, microorganisms that have been around for billions of years.
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Posted by Cyril at 6:24
25 October 2006
Pollinators help one-third of world's crop production
Pollinators such as bees, birds and bats affect 35 percent of the world's crop production, increasing the output of 87 of the leading food crops worldwide, finds a new study published Oct. 25 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences and co-authored by a conservation biologist from ESPM.
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Posted by Cyril at 6:11
01 September 2006
The Efficiency of Bees
One of the practices that many modern cultivation mutualists (that is, farmers) do to help their crops grow is provide domesticated honeybees to pollinate them. The bees flit from male to female flowers, carrying pollen between them. Without such pollination, crops like hybrid sunflowers, grown for their seed, would fail.
Farmers often rent honeybee colonies from apiculturists. But honeybees aren’t particularly efficient pollinators. For one thing, they don’t always flit enough between male and female. And the number of managed honeybee colonies is in decline in the United States and elsewhere because of overuse of pesticides and other problems. So one goal for researchers is to see if honeybee pollination can be enhanced.
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Posted by Cyril at 3:40
15 August 2006
California's New Experimental Forest (with video)
The U.S. Forest Service has dedicated the first new experimental forest in California in 40 years. The Sagehen Forest is in the Lake Tahoe Basin, eight miles outside of Truckee. Bay Area ABC affiliate KGO-7 looks at what it is all about.
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Posted by Cyril at 6:22
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