Tiny, seemingly harmless ocean plants survived the darkness of the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs by learning a ghoulish behavior — eating other living creatures.

Boil the water, add the ingredients, stir.  The instructions given in undergraduate science labs can feel a bit like making ramen noodles. “Lab courses that accompany many large science undergraduate lectures often adopt a cookbook-type approach, where students follow a series of instructions in a stepwise process without really understanding why they’re doing what they’re doing,” said Marsha Ing, an associate professor of educational psychology in the University of California, Riverside’s Graduate School of Education. 

Wildfires don’t stop being dangerous after the flames go out. Even one modest rainfall after a fire can cause a deadly landslide, according to new UC Riverside research.

Though some believe prehistoric humans lived in harmony with nature, a new UC Riverside analysis of fossils shows human arrival in the Bahamas caused some birds to be lost from the islands and other species to be completely wiped out.