Berkeleyan

Online science magazine debuts

By Robert Sanders, Public Affairs | 22 July 2004

Chung-Pei Ma (left), Paul Alivasatos, and Jennifer A. Doudna are three Berkeley science faculty whose work was profiled in the first issue of ScienceMatters@Berkeley.

The College of Letters & Science has teamed up with the College of Chemistry to launch ScienceMatters@Berkeley, a monthly online research magazine that will highlight groundbreaking research in the physical and biological sciences.

The publication (sciencematters.berkeley.edu/) will feature research running the gamut of scientific fields, from biology and mathematics to physics and chemistry. It will complement a similar online research magazine, Lab Notes (www.coe.berkeley.edu/labnotes), launched three years ago by the College of Engineering.

“An underlying theme of ScienceMatters@Berkeley will be the emerging unity of the natural sciences across traditional disciplinary lines, and the growing centrality of the physical and mathematical sciences in all of science and engineering,” said Mark Richards, professor of earth and planetary science and the dean of physical sciences in the College of Letters & Science.

The first issue of ScienceMatters@Berkeley includes articles on a range of subjects:

* How a new research center will enable scientists to cook up state-of-the-art nanoscale materials, atom by atom, that will revolutionize science and industry;

* New research on “dark matter” that may aid our understanding of the evolution and destiny of the cosmos;

* Innovative work on the structure and reproductive mechanisms of the hepatitis virus that could lead to the development of new treatments for the disease.

Each month, ScienceMatters@Berkeley also will feature a great moment of discovery in the history of science at UC Berkeley.

The articles are researched and written by UC Berkeley writer-in-residence David Pescovitz, who also writes for Lab Notes. Pescovitz has long covered science and technology for publications such as Wired, Scientific American, New Scientist, and The New York Times.

Readers of ScienceMatters@Berkeley can subscribe to an e-mail digest of each issue by visiting sciencematters.berkeley.edu/archives/volume1/issue1/subscribe.php and completing an online form.