Category: Spring 2020

  • Metal-Organic Frameworks show promise for a hydrogen-centric fuel economy

    Metal-Organic Frameworks show promise for a hydrogen-centric fuel economy

    By Noah Bussell With parts of California locked in a smoky haze for much of the fall and other regions of the world facing climate catastrophes of their own, the negative effects of fossil fuel dependence continue to reveal themselves in full force. As such, with the byproducts of fossil fuel-based processes leading to potentially…

  • Predicting Empathy Unconventionally

    Predicting Empathy Unconventionally

    By Tiffany Liang How would you tell how empathetic someone is? You might base it off of how they react to emotional situations, how caring they are, how well they pick up on the feelings of others, and so on. Here’s a brain teaser: how would you tell how empathetic someone is, without asking them…

  • COVID-19: Insights from UC Berkeley’s Infectious Disease Experts

    COVID-19: Insights from UC Berkeley’s Infectious Disease Experts

    COVID-19: Insights from UC Berkeley’s Infectious Disease Experts By Sharon Binoy, Ananya Krishnapura, Esther Lim, Elettra Preosti, Melanie Russo, Michael Xiong, Katheryn Zhou, Matthew Colbert, and Rosa Lee As published in Berkeley Scientific Journal Volume 24, Issue 2 Intersections, pg. 4-7 COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has spread rapidly across our…

  • Awe in nature and its therapeutic effects

    Awe in nature and its therapeutic effects

    By Erin Fernwood   During these months spent in quarantine during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, never before have we had more pressure to find alternatives to our everyday routines that we can no longer execute. Every single person across the globe has had to rearrange their lives in some way in order to accommodate for…

  • Perfecting the Rabies Vaccine Formula

    Perfecting the Rabies Vaccine Formula

    By Sarea Nizami You may often associate the word “rabies” with dogs. But, did you know that 70% of rabies infections among humans in the United States are because of bats?  In the United States, rabies is much more prevalent among wildlife than domestic animals. Thanks to pet vaccination programs, dogs don’t have to worry…

  • Born to Kill? The story of ‘Serial Killer’ genes

    Born to Kill?  The story of ‘Serial Killer’ genes

    By Anusha Subramanian All the way back in 2010, an Italian judge made legal history by decreasing the already reduced sentence of a male convict accused of murder, after the convict was found to be a carrier of genetic variants that were thought to be associated with a predisposition for aggression (Forzano et al., 2010).…

  • New experiments can predict occurrences of quantum jumps and may require scientists to reevaluate old theories

    New experiments can predict occurrences of quantum jumps and may require scientists to reevaluate old theories

    By Amar Shah When the mathematical rules for quantum mechanical theory were first created, Niels Böhr and Werner Heisenberg proposed a way to interpret these rules and explain their physical implications: this became known as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The idea of superposition is instrumental in this: that until the property of a…

  • The mysterious culprit of cancer

    The mysterious culprit of cancer

    By Joshua Wu   Cancer, often described as the emperor of all maladies, is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth and proliferation. Cancer is expected to cause the death of 606,520  Americans this year, according to the American Cancer Society’s 2020 Facts & Figures. Due to the variety of cell types from which cancers…

  • In a galaxy far, far away…extragalactic oxygen sighted for the first time

    In a galaxy far, far away…extragalactic oxygen sighted for the first time

    By Nanda Nayak   On June 27th 2019, Matty Roberts listened to an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where conspiracy theorist Bob Lazar talked about aliens hidden in a United States Air Force facility. Roberts, inspired by the podcast, decided to jokingly create a Facebook event, and so the Area 51 raid ––…

  • New wave sanitation

    New wave sanitation

    By Nicole Xu   In light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most commonly proposed safety precautions is to wash your hands thoroughly. This is true for many other diseases as well. The CDC states that proper hand hygiene can prevent 1 out of 3 children who get diarrheal diseases and 1 out…