 | Watching the Watershed: Wireless sensor networks uncover the real water cycle | May 14 2008 | "Water, water, everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink." These words, written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the 18th century, may soon describe the 21st. In fact, access to fresh water is already an issue of global concern. Scientists involved in UC Berkeley's Keck HydroWatch Center, established in 2006, are hoping to correct our sketchy comprehension of the water cycle by delving into a study so detailed that the water will have nowhere to hide.
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 | New study analyzes why endangered parrot population isn't recovering | May 6 2008 | A new study led by a UC Berkeley biologist sheds light on the factors influencing the stalled growth of the severely endangered Puerto Rican parrot, and in turn, provides an analytical tool that could help pinpoint the biggest factors hindering the recovery of other endangered species.
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 | Berkeley Lab Researchers Propose a New Breed of Supercomputers for Improving Global Climate Predictions | May 5 2008 | Three researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have proposed an innovative way to improve global climate change predictions by using a supercomputer with low-power embedded microprocessors, an approach that would overcome limitations posed by today’s conventional supercomputers.
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 | Energy Biosciences Institute Funds First 49 Projects | May 5 2008 | The Energy Biosciences Institute, the world’s largest public/private consortium dedicated to the application of biosciences to the energy sector, has announced an initial set of 49 research projects for funding during the first year of EBI’s 10-year program.
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| $2 million for sustainability projects designed by students and faculty | May 1 2008 | Twenty-three projects aimed at helping people live more sustainably have been granted a total of $2 million through a new program at the University of California, Berkeley, that is funded by the Dow Chemical Co. Foundation.
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 | High Environmental Certification for Child Care Center | Apr 29 2008 | Officials will gather today (Tuesday, April 29) to celebrate the University of California, Berkeley's first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-silver certified building - the Haste Street Child Development Center - which also is the state's first freestanding LEED-silver certified child care center.
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 | Mother Nature's Engineering | Apr 28 2008 | Using high-speed video, Integrative Biology Professor Mimi Koehl recorded live lobsters as they sniffed using their stick-like antennules bearing rows of odor-sensing hairs. Koehl is studying how structures such as hairy limbs help organisms survive in demanding environments. Gleaning design principles from living things is her stock in trade. |
 | On the Energy Trail: Berkeley Researchers Find New Details Following the Path of Solar Energy During Photosynthesis | Apr 25 2008 | Imagine a technology that would not only provide a green and renewable source of electrical energy, but could also help scrub the atmosphere of excessive carbon dioxide resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. That’s the promise of artificial versions of photosynthesis, the process by which green plants have been converting solar energy into electrochemical energy for millions of years. To get there, however, scientists need a far better understanding of how Nature does it, starting with the harvesting of sunlight and the transporting of this energy to electrochemical reaction centers.
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 | Campus Sustainability Summit Turns 5 | Apr 22 2008 | In a half-day meeting, more than 500 participants take stock of progress and challenges, small and large, in the student-fueled movement to green the UC Berkeley campus |
| The Solar Century | Apr 21 2008 | The debate over solar power centers on the economic costs and benefits of rooftop solar home systems specifically, such as the 3,200-watt system on my family roof in Oakland, which meets our total annual electricity needs. The argument is that solar power mounted on individual family roofs typically costs 25¢ per kilowatt hour or more (and sometimes more than 40¢ per kWh) - far more than many other options to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions - and thus state and local solar photovoltaic subsidy plans are not the best use of scarce resources.
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 | Sudden Oak Death Pathogen is Evolving, Says New Study that Reconstructs the Epidemic | Apr 16 2008 | A new UC Berkeley-led study finds that the pathogen responsible for Sudden Oak Death, a disease that has felled millions of oaks and tanoaks along the Pacific Coast, is evolving, suggesting that movement of infected plants between different quarantined regions should be minimized. The study also revealed that the pathogen got its first toehold in California's forests outside a nursery in Santa Cruz and at Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County. |
 | This Year's Sustainability Summit Definitely has an Agenda | Apr 16 2008 | Reflecting the growing importance of sustainability on campus, Berkeley’s fifth annual summit on the issue is expanding to a half-day, with workshops on everything from greening your own life to the energy frontier far beyond fossil fuels.
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 | Ecology Law Currents | Apr 15 2008 | After 35+ years of publishing some of the best (and first) legal scholarship
on environmental topics, Boalt Hall's environmental law journal, Ecology Law
Quarterly, just released its first issue of a free online publication,
Ecology Law Currents. This debut issue deals with the topic of nuclear
energy. |
 | New Madagascar conservation map protects maximum number of species in biodiversity hot spot | Apr 10 2008 | An international team of researchers led by UC Berkeley biologists has developed a remarkable new roadmap for finding and protecting the best remaining holdouts for thousands of rare species that live only in Madagascar, an island nation considered one of the world's jewels of biodiversity. The new plan not only includes lemurs – those large-eyed, tree-hopping primates that have become poster children for conservation – but also species of ants, butterflies, frogs, geckos and plants.
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 | Birgeneau testifies before U.S. Senate panel examining greenhouse gas emissions | Apr 3 2008 | UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau outlined for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday the efforts underway on campus to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and discussed research initiatives that have made Berkeley a leading center on energy research and education. |
