A Shrimp's Eye View

In the deep blue ocean a tropical mantis shrimp puts on a fantastic show for its brethren. Patterns on its sides and back light up in fluorescent yellows and greens while its legs flash red and white. The shrimp opens its mouth appendages and reveals a brilliant blue glow. These dazzling displays are invisible to the naked human eye, but UC Berkeley marine biologist Roy Caldwell has seen them. In fact, he discovered most of these secret signals.

Change Agent

Organic chemistry depends on catalysts to spur the transformation of molecules during chemical synthesis. Like the catalytic reactions that are his specialty, UC Berkeley chemist Dean Toste is an agent of change. Toste develops new catalysts that could someday transform some forms of chemical synthesis, perhaps even streamlining drug discovery and pharmaceutical production. "Our catalytic reactions are less like the difficult transformations people often associate with organic chemistry and much more like cooking," Toste says.

Mathematics of Everything

Edward Frenkel is on a search for symmetry. Most simply, an object is symmetrical if it can be reflected, rotated, or "slid" from one area to another seemingly without changing it. Snowflakes are symmetrical. So are butterfly wings. And the human body. Indeed, the beauty of symmetry surrounds us. But the symmetries sought by Frenkel, a UC Berkeley mathematician, are hidden within esoteric branches of math and physics. In his eyes though, those symmetries are just as stunning.

The mantis shrimp Lysiosquillina glabriuscula in threat posture, photographed near Key Largo. The stomatopod was photographed in blue light with a yellow filter (above) to show only the fluorescence, similar to what other mantis shrimp see at depth. (Roy Caldwell photo)s