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Five students awarded NSF fellowships

Five UC Riverside students have been selected to receive a 2020 Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, or NSF. The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions. Fellows often...
By Imran Ghori | Inside UCR |
Mosquito

Manipulating mosquito behavior through their odorant receptors

UC Riverside researchers have published a paper in Cell Reports that addresses an important question in the field of sensory receptor function, particularly for some odorant receptors that function as “heteromers” — receptors with more than one subunit: How do the different subunits of a receptor contribute to the detection of different ligands? Ligands are...
By IQBAL PITTALWALA | Inside UCR |

Biochemistry student wins Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship

UC Riverside student Jennifer Le is among about 400 college students across the nation to be awarded the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, one of the most prestigious and competitive awards in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematic fields, or STEM. From a pool of over 5,000 sophomores and juniors, 1,343 students were nominated by 461...
By Imran Ghori | Inside UCR |

This is a great time to busy yourself with Bees

ATLAS OBSCURA - When Hollis Woodard picks up the phone on a Friday afternoon in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, she has to pry her hands from the dirt. “I’m working on the yard furiously to try and soothe myself,” she says. Woodard, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, studies bumble bees—a...
By Jessica Leigh Hester | Atlas Obscura |
Chemical Sciences building

CNAS graduate students recognized with public policy awards

UC Riverside graduate students, Kavya Samudrala and William Ota, have each been named winners of the 2020 STEM Solutions in Public Policy Award, which recognizes an outstanding proposal for new California state legislation from University of California graduate students in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics, or STEM, fields. The winners received a $1,000 research stipend...
By IQBAL PITTALWALA | Inside UCR |

Here’s what happens to science when California’s researchers shelter in place

CALMATTERS - As California officials desperately try to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, Chris Miller is coaxing a sample of the virus to grow in a secure laboratory at UC Davis. Working in a laboratory nestled inside containment rooms and cut off from the world by filters, scientists dressed in space suit-like protective...
By Rachel Becker | CalMatters |

This worm-like creature is the first ancestor on the human and animal family tree

CNN - Evidence of a worm-like creature about the size of a grain of rice has been uncovered in South Australia, and researchers believe it is the oldest ancestor on the family tree that includes humans and most animals. The creature lived 555 million years ago. "We thought these animals should have existed during this...
By Ashley Strickland| CNN |
Coronavirus COVID-19

Coronavirus testing for UCR students

The Office of Student Health Services at UC Riverside has a limited number of kits from Quest Diagnostics for COVID-19 testing and is currently using them for designated students who meet Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria. At this time, the office is not offering a drive-thru option, where a student remains in the...
By IQBAL PITTALWALA | Inside UCR |
Coronavirus UCR Updates

UCR responds to broadening COVID-19 impacts

As COVID-19 coronavirus impacts broaden across the world, UC Riverside is pointing its campus community to a frequently updated website for the latest related news. The site, https://ehs.ucr.edu/coronavirus, includes updates and frequently asked questions. UCR Coronavirus updates On Saturday, March 14, Chancellor Kim Wilcox announced that the campus is closing, with only critical campus operations...
By UCR News |

California adds online triage for Coronavirus to help with test shortages

CALMATTERS - California still does not have enough capacity to test for coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday, despite furious efforts by private, university and government laboratories to scale up to handle thousands of more patients. “The PCR is the really easy part,” said Frances Sladek, a professor of cell biology and toxicology as well...
By Rachel Becker | CalMatters |

Why bees have one of the most important jobs in America

IN FOCUS - The bee population is declining and experts say that’s a serious issue because they provide us with a very important service … pollination. Professor Boris Baer of UC Riverside talks about how 1/3 of the food grown in the U.S. is pollinated by bees, a process necessary for plants to reproduce. Baer...
By "In Focus" staff | In Focus |
Nanoscale structure

New work has potential to accelerate development of nanotechnology

Nanoscale technology has greatly improved our daily lives with products such as computers, phones, and solar cells. To develop the next-generation nanotechnology, new classes of materials need to be explored. Two-dimensional “valley semiconductors,” such as monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2) and tungsten diselenide (WSe 2), have remarkable properties and novel applications. When these materials absorb...
By IQBAL PITTALWALA | UCR News |
Wildflowers in California / pixabay.com

Rapidly changing flowering times imperil pollinators

Plants are not simply flowering earlier with climate change, as is often reported in the media. Instead, they are responding to the changing climate in more complex ways. The rates at which communities of plants are shifting their flowering times differ greatly in different locations, even when those locations are only a couple hundred meters...
By Jules Bernstein | Inside UCR |

Life on Mars: what climate change tells us about the red planet

INVERSE - Timothy Lyons, a distinguished professor of biogeochemistry, discusses his new research to better understand the history of the atmosphere on Mars. Scientists have developed a new model to better understand whether Mars once hosted water — and maybe even life. The Martian surface is an inhospitable place: It is too cold for humans...
By SOFIA QUAGLIA | Inverse |
Yanou Cui (c) UCR

Major neutrino experiment yields new publications

Yanou Cui, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, is a coauthor on two important research papers on boosted dark matter, a novel type of dark matter model. A member of a flagship next-generation neutrino experiment named the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, or DUNE, Cui is an expert on the interface between particle physics and...
By Iqbal Pittalwala | Inside UCR |
UCR graduation, bell tower

UCR ranks No. 3 in graduating Hispanic students in STEM majors

A National Science Foundation report found that UC Riverside ranks third in the nation when it comes to graduating the most Hispanic or Latino students in science and engineering fields. The data is included in a 2019 report called “Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering”, which looks at the progress of...
By Imran Ghori | Inside UCR |

Harmful levels of metal linked to DNA damage found in the urine of e-cigarette users

NEWS-MEDICAL - Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have completed a cross-sectional human study that compares biomarkers and metal concentrations in the urine of e-cigarette users, nonsmokers, and cigarette smokers. They found that the biomarkers, which reflect exposure, effect, and potential harm, are both elevated in e-cigarette users compared to the other groups and...
By Reviewed by Kate Anderton, B.Sc. (Editor) | News-Medical |
Dr. Jason Stajich

Jason Stajich elected as Fellow into the American Academy of Microbiology

Washington, DC – In February, the American Academy of Microbiology (Academy) elected 68 new Fellows to the Class of 2020. Fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology, an honorific leadership group within the ASM, are elected annually through a highly selective, peer-review process, based on their records of scientific achievement and original contributions that have...
By Joanna Urban | American Academy of Microbiology |
Dr. Jolinda Traugh

Remembering Jolinda A. Traugh

In Memoriam Jolinda A. Traugh UCR Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Biochemist (1937 - 2019) Jolinda A. Traugh, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Biochemist, passed away on October 11, 2019. She was 82 years old. In 1960, Dr. Traugh earned her undergraduate degree from University of California, Davis becoming one of the first women to...

In the Noah’s Ark of citrus, caretakers try to stave off a fruit apocalypse

LOS ANGELES TIMES - It has been described as a Noah’s Ark for citrus: two of every kind. Spread over 22 acres, UC Riverside’s 113-year-old Givaudan Citrus Variety Collection was founded as a place to gather and study as many citrus specimens as possible — right now, the inventory numbers at over 1,000. It’s an...
By Gustavo Arellano | Los Angeles Times |
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