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Innovations: Cutting-edge research
from Berkeley Engineering
Innovations is a regular column
featuring brief updates on the pioneering research done by Berkeley
College of Engineering faculty and students. See more at www.coe.berkeley.edu/newsroom.
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Computer-generated
models simplify the structural details to focus on why proteins
aggregate around nerve cells in diseases like Parkinson’s
and Alzheimer’s.
COURTESY OF TERESA HEAD-GORDON |
Boiling proteins down
to basics
BioE professor Teresa Head-Gordon has discovered an innovative
approach to imaging human proteins that may yield better information
about how they behave in disease states like Parkinson’s
and Alzheimer’s that involve protein aggregation.
Representing each amino acid and chain that make up a protein,
such as hemoglobin or collagen, is not only expensive but also
computationally difficult and time consuming. Instead, Head-Gordon’s
models boil down the protein structure to three basic components
modeling its behavior and shape rather than all its structural
details. These images may help biotechnology companies produce
proteins and may ultimately lead to gene therapies for some diseases.
“Sometimes when you have so much detail, you get lost in
the forest,” Head-Gordon says. “With minimalist models,
things are much easier to characterize, analyze, and understand.”
A better way
of forecasting water supply
CEE professor John Dracup is working on more probing methods for
predicting how climate trends could affect the world’s future
water supply. Water managers currently factor in expected flow
of surface water, predicted precipitation, and mean data from
previous years to make decisions about how much water to store
for the next crop irrigation season. Dracup uses computer-simulation
models to evaluate climate variables—like El Niño—and
more sweeping climate changes—like global warming—and
predict their effects on water supply, agricultural production,
salinity of rivers that yield drinking water, and other factors.
“Climate variability and climate change have been occurring
for thousands of years,” Dracup says, “but people
have only recently begun observing them.” Twenty years from
now, he predicts, scientists who are only now beginning their
research—among them his own students—will make significant
advances in hydrologic forecasting.
Computers that
visualize motion
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The
software captures moves from a videotaped soccer game and
finds the best match from its library, rendering the motions
as stick figures.
GRAPHIC COURTESY OF THE RESEARCHERS |
Jitendra Malik, EECS professor and associate chair for computer
science, has developed software that enables computers to classify
human motion, including everything from ballet movements to World
Cup soccer play. With graduate students Alyosha Efros, Greg Mori,
and Alex Berg, Malik has created a vocabulary of basic movement
patterns—steps, walks, jumps, dances, and other movements—from
different angles. When given a digitized video clip, the software
computes the “optical flow” of the movement and compares
it to the library of predetermined patterns.
“A big aspect of human intelligence is vision: how we, using
our eyes, understand the world around us,” says Malik, who
is also a researcher in CITRIS, the Center for Information Technology
Research in the Interest of Society. The software has many potential
applications, including criminal surveillance and safety monitoring
in areas like swimming pools.
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This
testbed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory enables
researchers to experiment with nuclear detection methods on
an actual cargo container.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DENNIS SLAUGHTER AND LLNL |
Protecting our ports
To detect possible transport of clandestine nuclear weapons materials
through U.S. ports, NE professor Stanley Prussin is working with
scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on a system
that, under some conditions, might offer 10,000 times the sensitivity
of others being tested.
Prussin and Eric Norman of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
have demonstrated that delayed fission gamma rays are a characteristic
signature of fissionable material. The research is in an early
stage, and many practical issues must be addressed before the
method could be applied for screening of large sea-going cargo
containers.
“We believe that, under the right conditions, this method
could provide the unequivocal signature of gamma radiation, indicating
that fission has occurred inside the container,” Prussin
says.
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FOREFRONT takes you into the
labs, classrooms, and lives of professors, students, and alumni
for an intimate look at the innovative research, teaching, and
campus life that define the College of Engineering at the University
of California, Berkeley.
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