Lauren Mandel

“Pick your curiosity” was the phrase used by bird enthusiast and member of Golden Gate Bird Alliance Julian Rivera when describing the goal of the 2023 Berkeley Bird Festival on Sunday.

At 6 A.M. this Wednesday, nearly 800 healthcare workers and supporters formed a picket line outside Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center to mark the beginning of a three day nationwide strike for increased wages and staffing at Kaiser facilities. It is deemed the largest healthcare strike in American history.

The U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, awarded $3,702,880 to Siemens Energy, Inc. and its partners UC Berkeley, Constellation Energy and Battelle to accelerate the development of negative emissions technology in the form of direct air capture, or DAC.

Berkeley Distinguished Professor of Astronomy Alex Filippenko hosted a casual star-gazing session with friends in Woodside, California, on May 18. That night, he captured pictures of galactic objects and stars, one of which pictured the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101. 

California State Treasurer Fiona Ma announced that a total of $706.6 million in revenue bonds will fund capital projects chosen by the UC Board of Regents. 

A new field of chemistry developed by UC Berkeley researchers, dubbed “reticular chemistry” by campus professor of chemistry Omar Yaghi, has led to the creation of a water harvester. These harvesters are capable of extracting drinkable water from the air via ambient sunlight anywhere in the world — even Death Valley — a study by Nature Water reveals.

The Gill Tract, located on San Pablo Avenue in Albany, underwent landscape improvements this spring to support the waning local monarch butterfly population.

James W. Valentine, a paleontologist known for his humble nature yet striking mind that made him a key figure in the field of paleontology, died of natural causes at age 96 on April 7.

“I'm cut from the same cloth. So I can do this too. I can graduate,” are the words Tomie Lenear II, a student parent in UC Berkeley’s graduating class of 2014 used to describe how he felt while watching the student parents of 2013 gather to celebrate their departure from UC Berkeley.