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One of the most controversial debates in the well-being literature is about money. While it seems obvious that money can buy us many of the things that make life more enjoyable, most of us (myself included) shudder to think that a material object can have such a strong influence on our well-being. So, how important is wealth to happiness?

In an effort to understand how economic hardships could affect well-being, Gallup Polls—one of the largest polling agencies in the country—collected one million responses assessing Americans happiness, well-being, and how much individuals felt they were thriving, struggling, or suffering. They looked at the period from 2008 until 2010, with a particular focus on the effect of the 2009 economic recession.

Modified from Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index

Overall, the poll tells us a few things we already knew:
1) People are happier during the weekends (happiness fluctuated by 10% or more from weekdays to weekends!)
2) Americans have relatively, but not incredibly high well-being on average.

We rank 15^th out of 97 countries that have been measured for well-being, according to the World Values Index. With a mean of about 60-70%, we show room for improvement, but overall, most Americans seem pretty happy and satisfied with their lives. During the recession, the polls show a slight dip in well-being (about 4%) in conjunction with a greater number of individuals who reported struggling compared to thriving. (Important note—always read your graphs carefully—the results for this measure are on a scale ranging from 1-10; the authors categorized thriving as scores 7-10, and struggling as 5-6, which is a bit sneaky).

So how do we interpret these findings, and where do they fit into what we know about money and well-being? Research in this area provides mixed results. In a comprehensive review of the literature, Diener and Biswas-Diener showed that while nations with greater wealth generally have higher well-being, wealth within a nation correlates very little with well-being. In fact, countries that show economic growth do not show increases in well-being. Even more telling, individuals who focus on material wealth show lower levels of well-being. On the other hand, one life event consistently associated with decreases in happiness is losing your job, which certainly occurred as the recession took full force.

Gallup suggests that their results reflect significant changes in the well-being and the happiness of the American people during the recession. However, it appears that although small drops in well-being were certainly associated with the economic recession, well-being was fairly robust even in the face of economic hardship. If anything, the poll suggests that although the economy was plummeting, individuals were able to find happiness in other areas like social support, which is one of the strongest predictors of well-being. These results help remind us that money doesn’t buy happiness, and that even in the face of economic hardship we can find joy amongst friends and family.

Jennifer Stellar is a graduate student in social psychology at UC Berkeley.

Diener, E. (2000). Subjective well-being: The science of happiness and a proposal for a national index. American Psychologist, 55 (1), 34-43 DOI: 10.1037//0003-066X.55.1.34

Turner, R. (1981). Social Support as a Contingency in Psychological Well-Being Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 22 (4) DOI: 10.2307/2136677

John Matsui, The Chairman of the Coalition, and Director of the Biology Scholars Program

If the traditional path to joining the UC Berkeley faculty is a well-traveled, strenuous uphill climb, John Matsui hacked his way up the side of K2 with a machete. “No matter where I’ve gone, I’ve had to create what I wanted to see in education,” he says. Some of the places John has gone, few of his faculty peers have ever been.

“My educational pathway has been anything but a straight line. The way they taught science in high school wasn’t in a way I was able to learn. So I came out disinterested in science and generally unprepared for a four-year college,” says John. So instead he spent three and a half years at community college before transferring to a four-year university. He would go on to earn a Master’s degree in Biology from UC Berkeley and a Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara, but during that time he took another unusual detour.

While finishing his dissertation at UC Santa Barbara, John took a teaching position at a local community college. Noticing a glaring lack of support for scientifically-inclined Latino students, John founded a bilingual biology program at the college, despite speaking no Spanish himself. This knack for taking the initiative, for creating, didn’t come naturally to John Matsui. “I’d always been told ‘You can’t. You’re not capable. That’ll never work.’ And I believed them because I was afraid, and I didn’t trust myself. But at some point I started saying ‘No, they’re wrong.’”

Impressed with his vision and his passion for addressing the needs of underserved populations, the Student Learning Center at UC Berkeley hired John to help run their academic programs. His work there grabbed the attention of the Dean of Biology, (now Emeritus) Professor Caroline Kane, and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. They recruited John in 1991 to help develop what would become the nationally-renowned Biology Scholars Program (BSP).

Building a scholarly community

Currently, BSP supports 650 scholars, many of whom have aspirations to go on and serve their communities as doctors, researchers, and policy advocates. The program offers tutoring, study groups, research opportunities, personally-tailored advising, and, most importantly, a diverse and supportive community. BSP also boasts a staggering set of statistics. To give just two: 90% of BSP students applying to medical school are admitted (versus only 50% nation-wide), and 10% of all African-Americans enrolled in a medical program in California between 2006 and 2009 came from BSP.

This highly successful, comprehensive program began in 1991 with John and Caroline, the principal co-authors of the original BSP proposal, and a blank sheet of paper. “When we were working on the original proposal, we didn’t have a map,” says John. “We were in the woods, in the wilderness. So I started constructing my own map, informed by the reality of what I had to deal with as a different learner. I was looking for the gaps—the places where students who came from different backgrounds or learned in different ways would fall.”

Where John found gaps, he designed BSP to plug them with techniques informed by his years of experience in student support. Rather than simply provide services, John wanted the program to focus on helping students develop themselves and fulfill their potential. “My goal with BSP is to create independent problem-solvers,” he says. “We don’t have much in the way of ‘on-a-platter’ help. When we started out, it was just a lot of personally-tailored, quality student advising. It was about, ‘Here’s your responsibility; here’s my responsibility. Let’s build something together.’”

John recalls conversations with some of his first students as they were building BSP: “My students said ‘We need tutoring, John.’ So I told them, ‘Ok, I’ll set you up with some tutoring on campus.’  But my students came back and said, ‘We go over there, and it’s like discussion section. We’re afraid to ask questions because we’re the only black and brown ones in the room. Everyone thinks we’re stupid to begin with, and if we ask a question, that’s just going to reinforce the stereotype.’” So John hired a tutor specifically for BSP, and he provided a space for tutoring and eventually group study sessions led by upper-division undergraduates in BSP—another innovation generated by discussions with students.

The relationships that BSP nurtures between students, faculty and staff are the core of the program. Current fourth-year student and BSP scholar, Verenice Bravo, describes herself as “just your average low-income, first-generation student and daughter of recent immigrants.” Though the word “average” really doesn’t belong in that description. “At a place like UC Berkeley, I can go into a lecture hall with 700 other people, and the majority of them won’t look like me,” she says. “The majority of them won’t look at me, won’t talk to me, and definitely won’t ask me for help. But in BSP, I’m surrounded by people like me, with the same types of goals, driven by the same types of experiences, and coming from similar backgrounds. It’s nice to be able to come home to BSP.”

A growing success

Over the course of its first decade, BSP closed the achievement gap for low-income, first-generation, and under-represented minority students in biology at UC Berkeley. “We published a paper in 2003 showing that although our students came in less well-prepared than biology majors at large, they finished with equivalent grade-point averages. And, an equal percentage of our students who came in intending to major in biology finished as biology majors, as compared to those entering UC Berkeley at large. We reached parity! This was huge! It meant our students could go on to graduate school and medical school.”

John (center) with BSP Scholars after accepting the Educational Initiatives Award in 2008

The landmark study grabbed the multi-million dollar attention of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which is interested in diversifying the medical field to address health disparities that often correlate with race and socioeconomic status. The foundation awarded BSP $5.6 million to continue and expand their work preparing a diverse population for the medical fields. About 20% of that money was given explicitly for disseminating the successful BSP model around the country.

The influx of cash gave John the opportunity to hire staff the program so desperately needed, but it also meant John had to spend a lot of time away from Berkeley, planting the seeds of BSP far and wide. In John’s absence, the program drifted away from helping students develop their own problem-solving skills and towards more service providing. “We had started creating opportunities for students instead of helping them create their own opportunities,” says John. “Our students became consumers instead of independent, problem-solving scholars, through no fault of their own.”

These days, John is back in Berkeley as much as possible, interacting with the students he’s loved to serve for so many years and getting the program back to what he likes to call “BSP Classic.” As a BSP student, Verenice knows just what it means to have John more present in the daily activities of the program. “John is so inspirational to me. He just motivates me to do good things. He cares about the program and about each and every one of us so much. If I’m feeling down about school, or anything really, all I have to do is come to an advisory meeting with John. That’s all I need to get motivated.”

The students in BSP, like Verenice, aspire to be role models. “Once I went through Summer Bridge, and I was exposed to all the social injustices my community faces, it totally changed my outlook,” she says. “When deciding what major to pursue, I decided to go the more difficult science route because I felt like, ‘I want to be a Latina with a biology degree.’ I want to be able to go to graduate school or medical school and then come back and help these underserved populations.”

The Summer Bridge program that began Verenice’s change in outlook is one that helps fill in the educational gaps faced by many under-represented minority, first-generation, and low-income students; it also has close ties to the Coalition. And it’s no accident that Verenice found her way from one Coalition program to another. In John’s view, “The Coalition really, truly connects the dots. Across four different colleges and many different departments, the Coalition helps us support students in every facet of their educational experience.”

As I spoke with John, it struck me that the principles and skills BSP nurtures in its students are ones that anyone can benefit from. What student wouldn’t be better off with the support and guidance of educated staff and faculty who dedicate their time to helping that student develop? Beyond just the constraints of resources, John says, “We keep doing the experiment with the marginalized group of students because the gap between preparation and expectation is huge for them. And if we can improve this institution for a marginalized student, we can improve education for all students. And then we’re asking the question of how does the tail wag the dog? How does a program like BSP change the institution? That’s what’s next.”

Matsui, J., Liu, R., & Kane, C. (2003). Evaluating a Science Diversity Program at UC Berkeley: More Questions Than Answers Cell Biology Education, 2 (2), 117-121 DOI: 10.1187/cbe.02-10-0050

The questioning voices of the exhibit are intended to invoke the practice of questioning within the Jewish faith. The engineers who designed the technical scaffolding to achieve this vision also started with a question. “How do you accurately tell the difference between the sun’s reflection on the floor and a person’s bright white shirt, if you’re a computer?” asks UC Berkeley Electrical Engineering graduate student Andrew Godbehere. As he explains it, his tracking system is kind of like Watson, the computer that recently won Jeopardy. “Anomalies in an image are identified as possible objects of interest, which are then tracked frame-by-frame using statistical methods to predict the object’s motion,” says Godbehere. Once the computer identifies an object that could be a moving person, the system uses a confidence model to determine the likelihood the object is a person. The program is adaptive, and will continue to improve as the exhibit is open.

The engineers responsible for this innovation answered another question: how do you create art that relies on technology but is not overwhelmed by it? One of the most striking aspects of this sound exhibit is that the viewer doesn’t realize how integral technology is. As Godbehere puts it, “The hard work of the computer can be taken for granted, and the space itself, the beautiful architecture of Daniel Libeskind, comes alive.” I highly recommend seeing this fascinating piece of artwork from an unlikely place, the UC Berkeley College of Engineering.

In case you were living under a rock for the second half of 2010, let’s briefly review the facts of the WikiLeaks scandal. WikiLeaks is an organization whose stated goal is to “publish material of ethical, political and historical significance while keeping the identity of our sources anonymous.” Since 2006, they have been publishing previously secret information on their website, helping whistle-blowers either outrage or embarrass various military and political figures. In late November of last year, the group began releasing a slew of classified diplomatic cables sent by US State Department representatives since 1966.

Despite massive amounts of media attention given to WikiLeaks and its spokesperson Julian Assange, I found myself wondering why this release of information upset so many people. In an effort to find some personal connection to the scandal, or at least to share in the sense of mystery and espionage surrounding the cables, I did a quick search for one word: “science”. I’d like to share with you the most interesting result of that search, which was a cable sent on February 2, 2010 from the US embassy in Beijing, China.

The content of the cable describes an ambassador’s visit to several research institutes run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). At each of these places, the ambassador had some interesting comments on the observed research activities. The first section covers the ambassador’s visit to the Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP) in Hefei.

In 2009, IIP [sic] successfully maintained a 10 million degree Celsius plasma nuclear fusion reaction for 400 seconds. IIP also successfully maintained a 100 million degree Celsius plasma nuclear fusion reaction for 60 seconds. One of IIP’s immediate goals is now to maintain a 100 million degree Celsius plasma nuclear fusion reaction for over 400 seconds.

So a research lab in China got something really hot for a few minutes… why was this such a big secret? It turns out that this cable was actually ranked fairly low in terms of security. It was labeled “Confidential”, meaning that its release “could be expected to cause damage to the national security.” The two higher levels of security are “Secret” and “Top Secret”: information which would cause “serious damage” and “exceptionally grave damage”, respectively.

Nuclear fusion can be a powerful source of destruction, but can it also become an abundant source of usable energy?

My guess is that diplomats are allowed to tour foreign government research facilities, with the understanding that the things they see will not be spread to the media or the greater scientific community. So the IPP’s fusion results are not necessarily dangerous secrets, but they are scientifically interesting. We’ve covered recently the workings of a nuclear fission reactor, where large atoms are split apart to release energy. For lighter elements like hydrogen, two atoms can actually be fused to release energy. This energy can be extremely beneficial (see: sunlight) or extremely harmful (see: thermonuclear weapons), depending on how it is contained.

To give you a sense of how much energy we’re talking about, let’s compare the energy released by fusion to the energy released by hydrogen combustion, which is also a potentially explosive reaction (see: Hindenburg disaster). Fusing two atoms of hydrogen isotopes (tritium and deuterium, specifically) to form a helium atom will give you almost 6000 times more energy than you would get from burning a single molecule of hydrogen gas (H₂). The activation barrier for the fusion reaction is very large, which explains why the reaction temperatures are in the millions of degrees, but if fusion could be done without such a huge energetic cost, it would revolutionize the energy industry. Excitement over this prospect has spawned a great deal of controversy in the past, and the search continues at IPP and elsewhere for a way to harness energy from fusion safely and efficiently.

Cable 10BEIJING263 also describes research at other CAS institutes, including the University of Science and Technology (USTC), on the topics of biometrics, nanotechnology, optical fibers, and quantum communication. I’ll be back with more information on each of these subjects. In the mean time, why don’t you try reading a few diplomatic cables on your own? Play the Mission Impossible theme song in the background, and I guarantee you’ll feel like a secret agent in no time.

Amy Cook combines the creativity of theater with the rigor of cognitive science

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Amy Cook, a professor at Indiana University, about some interesting new inroads that are being made between psychology and art. Professor Cook exists at the intersection of two fields that have historically been very far apart: theater and cognitive science.

She explained to me that both of these fields are ultimately touching on the same kinds of ideas, albeit from very different directions. While it is quite obvious that cognitive science is concerned with understanding the mind, theater is driven by our knowledge of the human psyche as well. Put the two together, and you have a very powerful combination. In a talk she gave at UC Berkeley, Professor Cook used a cognitive science perspective to look at Henry V, one of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays. It turns out that The Bard was actually quite crafty about weaving a story that plays with your mind and deals with some pretty sophisticated mental concepts.

One of the fundamental themes that Dr. Cook sees embodied in Henry V is emergence. The play tells the story of how a small group of men (a “band of brothers”, to use the famous quote) performed feats that were far greater than the simple sum of each member’s contribution to the group. Through the leadership and charisma of King Henry, they manage to defeat the French against all odds. Such events have been written about for hundreds of years, but they were mostly attributed to the superhuman abilities of a select few leaders, known only in lore and tall tales. However, there’s something very real about the ability of a holistic unit of people to synthesize their abilities in an emergent way. One might even argue that such a process is fundamental to the natural world. If the brain is anything, it is a complex system of simple units, producing a chorus of activity and sensation that would be impossible to describe with a picture of only one neuron.

On a more general level, Cook points to the importance of imagination and metaphor in our experience of theater and other forms of imaginative participation. Obviously, we cannot import an entire army onto a stage (nor would we want to watch an actual battle unfold before our eyes), and yet as we watch actors and props, we synthesize a rich representation of a battle in our minds. Taking Cook’s cognitive science approach, we can describe this phenomenon as “mental blending,” the act of allowing two idea spaces in our minds to briefly overlap, and enjoying the often surprising and powerful synthesis that occurs at their intersection. Understanding this process has implications for our ability to capture people’s attention and imagination in other contexts as well. What teacher wouldn’t love to have a set of practices designed to stimulate their students and get their imaginations working?

At the end of the day, there is much ground to cover before we can truly appreciate the cognitive/psychological implications of works of art such as Henry V. Creative works have the benefit of being interpreted in a nearly infinite number of ways, but this can make it difficult to take the rigorous empirical approach that modern psychology demands. I am excited about the things that people like Professor Cook will discover by taking a hybrid approach to art and the mind.

Each year, the departments and museums of UC Berkeley open their doors to share all sorts of Cal-tastic projects, research, and activities with thousands of visitors. With the beautiful sunny weather, this year’s crowd nearly exhausted the hundreds of Cal students who volunteered their time… exhausted with fun, that is!

Outside McLaughlin Hall, a dedicated team of undergraduate students (CalSol) showed off their recently completed, street-legal solar car. With a price tag of $200k for the final product, this project brought together engineering undergrads from throughout the college, providing them with practical, hands-on experience in design. Meanwhile, in Hearst Mining Circle another group of undergrad engineers spent the afternoon grilling up hot dogs for hungry passersby. On Memorial Glade, kids posed for pictures with a larger-than-life Oski. And Sproul Plaza was packed.

The real fun, though, was in the Valley Life Sciences Building. At the Science@Cal tent, integrative biology graduate students taught small tykes how to “fish” for lizards with tiny lizard loops on poles–just like real biologists do in their field work. A few steps away, visitors posed for photos with a 10-foot-long albino python. Indoors, all of the life science museums were open to the public, which is a very special treat. Inside the Jepson Herbarium, visitors learned about pine cones large and small, and they had the opportunity to view some of the weirdest looking fungi around. The kids were very excited about pressing their own flower specimens to take home.

Across the hall, the Museum of Paleontology drew crowds so large that guests had to line up for tickets! As usual, T-rex was a wonderful family photo opportunity. Upstairs in VLSB, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology opened its doors to let the public see some of their most precious specimens, including whale skulls and preserved fanged frogs. Volunteers also staffed a table with live rescued bats, where visitors could watch these adorable little guys have mealworm snacks and stretch their tiny membrane wings.

On behalf of science and Cal, I’d like to say a special thanks to the hundreds of volunteers who made this day possible. And to all of our special visitors from off-campus, thanks for joining us and see you next year!

The Berkeley Science Review invites you to our second science writing seminar of the year, featuring Brian Mossop and Ruchir Shah. Brian is a science writer who works for the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Ruchir is the associate editor of PLoS Biology. Come hear about open-source publishing, establishing a career as a science writer, and how editors view your articles and manuscripts. Brian and Ruchir will present both sides of scientific publishing, as well as suggestions for those looking to join the field.

Wednesday, April 27th, 6-7pm
421 Stanley Hall, UC Berkeley campus

The so-called brain-machine interface (BMI) technology has not yet been perfected to the point that we need to worry about hackers stealing our secrets or erasing our memories. But it has come far enough that researchers may soon be able to restore physical and sensory functionality to patients with immobilizing conditions such as paralysis and Parkinson’s Disease. Scientists at UC Berkeley and UCSF’s Center for Neural Engineering and Prostheses (CNEP) are among the pioneers in developing this sort of brain repair technology. Over the next few years, CNEP investigators hope to begin human clinical trials for neural prosthetics – robotic limbs that are controlled just like natural ones, by two-way communication with the brain. The center, which launched in December and is co-directed by UC Berkeley Professor Jose Carmena and UCSF neurosurgeon Edward Chang, consists of over a dozen research groups across engineering, medicine, and computer science (see the press release here). CNEP will use its team’s wide range of expertise to efficiently tackle the challenges that must be overcome for neural prosthetics to become a reality.

Edward Chang

Jose Carmena

Any doubts about the technological feasibility of CNEP’s goals have largely been erased by recent results from experiments with animals. Carmena spent part of the last decade working with Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University, where they implemented some of the first BMI technologies on primate subjects. In one groundbreaking experiment, they trained macaque monkeys to perform manipulations such as reaching and grabbing using a robotic arm controlled only by their thoughts. An array of electrodes was implanted into the monkeys’ brains to read their thoughts into a computer, while a projector screen gave visual feedback (their real arms did not move in the experiment and were hidden from their view by a neck brace). The study showed that, with practice, subjects could even control a real (as opposed to virtual) robotic arm once they had time to adapt to its non-idealities, like mechanical delay.

Current research at CNEP is focused on several key goals. One is to increase the number of simultaneous commands that can be distinguished by signal processing software so that the prosthetics can access the full complexity of natural human motion. Another is to improve the precision and accuracy of the hardware (i.e. the implanted electrodes) that detects the electrical brain signals and communicates them to a computer processor. And on the physiological side, work remains on understanding the process of neural plasticity, or how the brain rewires itself to incorporate the artificial limb into the natural thought process. While this sounds like a rigorous agenda, many of these fields are quite mature already. It is not far-fetched to believe that devices fit for human clinical trials will be ready in the near future.

Engineers and medical doctors have long enjoyed fruitful collaborations that have fueled progress in fast-paced research fields like biomedical engineering and nuclear medicine. But neural engineering? That’s a whole different ball game. Progress in this field will generate vast opportunities for researchers to benefit the lives of patients suffering from a variety of afflictions, not only physical ones.  Once they have finished coming up with solutions for serious neurological conditions, I do have a small question for them: when can I stop going to class and just download all of the world’s knowledge into my brain?

Carmena JM, Lebedev MA, Crist RE, O’Doherty JE, Santucci DM, Dimitrov DF, Patil PG, Henriquez CS, & Nicolelis MA (2003). Learning to control a brain-machine interface for reaching and grasping by primates. PLoS biology, 1 (2) PMID: 14624244

I had never heard the above Einstein quote until I attended “Green Chemistry: Collaborative Approaches & New Solutions”, a conference hosted by the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry on March 24th, 2011. To my surprise, two separate speakers included this quote in their presentation; by the end of the conference, I understood why. Making materials that are both safe and inexpensive is one of the main challenges in the field of chemistry today. After listening to all of the speakers, I’m convinced that chemists can only overcome this challenge if we consider it an opportunity to think about chemistry in a new way.

The field of green chemistry grew from an awareness among chemists of the environmental and human health effects of many chemicals. Green chemists endeavor to design molecules with toxicology in mind, ultimately replacing hazardous materials that must be contained with materials that are designed to safe. Two of the founders of green chemistry, Dr. Paul Anastas and Dr. John Warner, spoke at the conference about their twelve principles for chemists who are dedicated to creating less hazardous materials. These principles include using safer solvents in synthesis and designing molecules that will degrade into harmless components. Warner refuted the idea that “green chemistry is a set of handcuffs that slows productivity,” citing examples from his own company (Beyond Benign) of chemicals which are both profitable and harmless, such as a green hair dye.

Though I was inspired by Anastas and Warner, the highlight of the conference for me was a presentation from Nobel laureate Dr. Robert Grubbs. The chemistry professor from Caltech discussed his famous olefin metathesis reactions, which now has commercial importance in making pharmaceutical drugs and polymers. His work incorporates the green chemistry principles of using sustainable starting materials and an efficient catalyst. Dicyclopentadiene is made using Grubbs’ catalyst, and it is now used to make longer blades for wind turbines, exemplifying a symbiotic relationship between green chemistry and renewable energy. What is most interesting to me, though, is that Grubbs never intended to contribute to green chemistry and only recently began identifying as a green chemist.

Many chemistry researchers are still uninformed about green chemistry, and this is probably one of the greatest challenges in the mainstream adoption of green chemistry principles. All the legislators, academic chemists, industrial representatives, and toxicologists at the conference agreed on the importance of changing the way that new chemicals are designed, but they are certainly in the minority overall. Warner made the point this way: “Green chemistry isn’t about good and evil.  It’s about fundamental knowledge and the lack of fundamental knowledge.” By spreading this knowledge, I’m hoping that more and more chemists will dedicate themselves to designing molecules that are safe for ourselves and our planet.

J. M. Smith is a graduate student at UC Berkeley in the Department of Chemistry. Most of the presentations from the BCGC conference are available on youtube.