Artificial intelligence is invading many fields, most recently astronomy and the search for intelligent life in the universe, or SETI. Researchers at Breakthrough Listen, a SETI project led by the University of California, Berkeley, have now used machine learning to discover 72 new fast radio bursts from a mysterious source some 3 billion light years…
Engineers Develop Origami Electronics From Cheap, Foldable Paper
UC Berkeley engineers have given new meaning to the term “working paper.” Using inexpensive materials, they have fabricated foldable electronic switches and sensors directly onto paper, along with prototype generators, supercapacitors and other electronic devices for a range of applications. Research to develop paper electronics has accelerated in the last 10 years. Besides its availability…
The Search for Smarter Energy and Water Strategies
As the changing climate disrupts familiar weather patterns, many countries face a dual threat: swamping along the coasts, but also unexpected shrinking freshwater supplies in many regions. “Water has never been evenly distributed around the world, but droughts and an alarming decrease in groundwater create potentially catastrophic conditions,” says Ashok Gadgil, Deputy for Science and…
Supermassive Black Holes May Be Lurking Everywhere in the Universe
A near-record supermassive black hole discovered in a sparse area of the local universe indicates that these monster objects – this one equal to 17 billion suns – may be more common than once thought, according to University of California, Berkeley, astronomers. Until now, the biggest supermassive black holes – those with masses around 10…
Exoskeleton Helps the Paralyzed to Walk
Until recently, being paralyzed from the waist down meant using a wheelchair to get around. And although daily life is more accessible to wheelchair users, they still face physical and social limitations. But UC Berkeley’s Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory has been working to change that. The robotics lab, a team of graduate students led…
What New Wearable Sensors Can Reveal From Perspiration
When engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, say they are going to make you sweat, it is all in the name of science. Specifically, it is for a flexible sensor system that can measure metabolites and electrolytes in sweat, calibrate the data based upon skin temperature and sync the results in real time to…
Exiled Exoplanet Likely Kicked Out Of Star’s Neighborhood
A planet discovered last year sitting at an unusually large distance from its star – 16 times farther than Pluto is from the sun – may have been kicked out of its birthplace close to the star in a process similar to what may have happened early in our own solar system’s history. Images from…
Missing Link Found Between Turbulence In Collapsing Star And Hypernova, Gamma-ray Burst
A supercomputer simulation of a mere 10 milliseconds in the collapse of a massive star into a neutron star proves that these catastrophic events, often called hypernovae, can generate the enormous magnetic fields needed to explode the star and fire off bursts of gamma rays visible halfway across the universe. The results of the simulation,…
Mars To Lose Its Largest Moon, Phobos, But Gain A Ring
Mars’ largest moon, Phobos, is slowly falling toward the planet, but rather than smash into the surface, it likely will be shredded and the pieces strewn about the planet in a ring like the rings encircling Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. Though inevitable, the demise of Phobos is not imminent. It will probably happen in…
‘Smart Bandage’ Detects Bed Sores
Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, are developing a new type of bandage that does far more than stanch the bleeding from a paper cut or scraped knee. Thanks to advances in flexible electronics, the researchers, in collaboration with colleagues at UC San Francisco, have created a new “smart bandage” that uses electrical currents…
New Tool Makes a Single Picture Worth a Thousand – and More – Images
Berkeley — A photo is worth a thousand words, but what if the image could also represent thousands of other images? New software developed by UC Berkeley computer scientists seeks to tame the vast amount of visual data in the world by generating a single photo that can represent massive clusters of images. This tool…
Vision-Correcting Display Makes Reading Glasses So Yesterday
Berkeley — What if computer screens had glasses instead of the people staring at the monitors? That concept is not too far afield from technology being developed by UC Berkeley computer and vision scientists. The researchers are developing computer algorithms to compensate for an individual’s visual impairment, and creating vision-correcting displays that enable users to…