Issue 13
Fall 2007

Editor in Chief
Meredith Carpenter

Managing Editor
Matthew Mattozzi

Art Director
Jacqueline Chretien

Copy Editor
Wendy Hansen

Editors
Jacqueline Chretien
Daniel Gillick
Lenny Grokop
Kate Kolstad
Niranjana Nagarajan
Tracy Powell

Layout Editors
Meredith Carpenter
Tim De Chant
Melissa Fabros
Kate Kolstad
Tony Le
Matthew Mattozzi
Kathryn Quanstrom

Contributing Artists
Jennifer Bensadoun
Mani Yahyavi

Photographer
Annaliese Beery

Web Editor
Jesse Dill

Printer
Sundance Press

22 Robot Flea Circus

Berkeley engineers build bionic bugs

by Tracy Powell

27 Location, Location, Location

WebGIS puts science on the map

by Tim De Chant

31 Hive Minds

Learning more about indigenous bee species

by Jacqueline Chretien

36 A Human Genome Project

Why HapMap is only half the story

by Natasha Keith

41 Follow the Money

Corporate funding of university research

by Adam Schindler

47 The Light at the End of the Channel

Synthesizing light-switchable neurons

by Wendy Hansen

10 Needle-less Injections
Taking the sting out of vaccinations

11 Frozen to the Core
Bacteria persist in polar ice

12 The Ancestor's Tale
Sponge research focuses on drug discovery and multicellularity

14 A Star is Dead
Astronomers discover the largest ever supernova

16 ODed on ADHD?
Interpreting the increase in diagnosis and medication

17 Chasing Cars
Traffic researchers change "stop and go" to "go with the flow"

18 Mighty Moss
Tracking the cultural conservation of traditional medicine

20 Chemistry Behind Bars
UC Berkeley graduate students teach science at San Quentin

52 Faculty Profile: Chung-Pei Ma

Professor of Astrophysics

by Danae Schulz

Snail Sex by the Seashore

Shifting Shorelines on Mars

The Ambidextrous Brain

A Molecular Ouroboros



7 Letters to the Editor
Our readers write in

13 Quanta
Heard on Campus

54 Book Review
Mathematics at Berkeley: A History

55 Who Knew?
Secrets of San Francisco Sourdough