LOS ANGELES TIMES - Attention, art lovers of Southern California: There’s a new museum in town. Earlier this month, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture of the Riverside Art Museum officially opened its doors to the public. The center is already making history as the only permanent art space to exclusively showcase...
THE DAILY BEAST - Cast your mind back to your fifth grade biology class when you first learned about photosynthesis, the process where plants use energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into glucose for food. Lose the sunlight, and the tomatoes you planted this spring aren’t likely going to last very long...
GIZMODO - Some of California’s most crucial insects seem to have gone missing. A new study suggests that populations of once-abundant bumble bee species in California may have experienced serious decline, after researchers conducted the first statewide survey of bumble bee species in 40 years. Unlike their popular cousins, bumble bees don’t create honey for...
Brazil is rushing to roll out high-tech alternatives to fertilizer to boost farm production because of global price surges exacerbated by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
By Vinod Sreeharsha and Samantha Pearson | Wall Street Journal |
THE EPOCH TIMES - A study by the University of California (UCR) suggests that broad-spectrum oral antibiotics may reduce motivation and endurance for voluntary exercise in humans, with the effects magnified in high-exercise cohorts. “We believed an animal’s collection of gut bacteria, its microbiome, would affect digestive processes and muscle function, as well as motivation...
PALM SPRINGS DESERT SUN - For many, planting trees has become synonymous with fighting climate change. But in the hot and arid desert, it isn't that simple. However, desert landscapes can also serve as carbon sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide from the air and storing it in desert shrubbery, soils, and geological features. While this phenomenon...
CNN - There is a lot to love about bees. They are crucial to growing many of our favorite and healthiest foods as they move pollen from plant to plant, pollinating more than a hundred fruits and vegetables including strawberries, potatoes and apples. Unfortunately, many bee species are under threat as a result of changes...
WASHINGTON POST - Marilyn Fogel, a scientist dubbed the “isotope queen” for illuminating fundamental scientific questions through analysis of atomic isotope ratios, died May 11 at her home in Mariposa, Calif. She was 69. The cause was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, said her husband, Chris Swarth. Dr. Fogel spent much...
NASA.GOV - NASA's Astrobiology program announced its newest Research Coordination Network (RCN) ‘LIFE: Early Cells to Multicellularity,’ bringing together a collaboration of researchers from around the world that will spend the next five years investigating the earliest biological processes and the evolution of life into more complex organisms. The new RCN was officially launched today...
LAist.com - Bee populations have been struggling for years due, in part, to climate change and the use of pesticides. Boris Baer, a professor of pollinator health, keeps bees at UC Riverside and gets updates from beekeepers across Southern California. He says the region is a global hotspot for pollinators. "Because we have like, I...
GENETIC ENGINEERING & BIOTECHNOLOGY NEWS - When stem cells divide, they have the remarkable ability to choose to self-renew or mature into defined lineages. How a specific lineage identity is maintained every time a stem cell divides is now better understood thanks to new research that shows how the histone chaperone chromatin assembly factor-1 (CAF-1)...
BBC.COM - During the day-long shuttle ride from the coastal state capital of Adelaide to the start of South Australia's Mawson Trail, we debated where the bush stopped and the outback began. But there was no doubt we were fully immersed in it when we arrived in the rust-coloured dust of Blinman, an ex-copper mining...
PALM SPRINGS DESERT SUN - A few weeks ago, David Foxen asked why he occasionally sees lights high up in the San Jacinto Mountains near the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway’s Mountain Station and the Skyline Trail. As we reported at the start of the pandemic and answered earlier in our Ask The Desert Sun series...
EARTH.COM - The ozone layer is vital for our planet since it stops dangerous ultraviolet radiation from reaching the Earth’s surface. The fundamental role this gas plays was clearly understood in the 1980s, when scientists discovered a hole in the ozone layer high in the atmosphere over the South Pole, due to damage caused by...
NPR - When a team of exoplanetary treasure hunters joined forces with professional astronomers, they discovered a whole new world. Short Wave host Emily Kwong talks with astronomer Paul Dalba and community scientist Tom Jacobs about how their collaboration led to the recent observation of a new Jupiter-like exoplanet. You can follow Emily on Twitter...
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES - On the heels of the driest ever start to the year in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday issued a sweeping executive order calling on local water suppliers to implement more aggressive conservation measures as reservoirs dwindle and residents backslide in their efforts to cut back. Specifically, the order requires...
PHYS.ORG - When western banded geckos are hungry, they pounce on crickets, beetles, or other small arthropods in their environment, and quickly gobble them up. But when they catch scorpions, they begin to shake themselves violently from side to side at high speeds, smashing their prey back and forth against the ground for several seconds...
THE CONVERSATION — Geothermal energy has long been the forgotten member of the clean energy family, overshadowed by relatively cheap solar and wind power, despite its proven potential. But that may soon change – for an unexpected reason. Geothermal technologies are on the verge of unlocking vast quantities of lithium from naturally occurring hot brines...
USA TODAY - Honey bees and bumble bees only fly during the day. This fascinating fact has come to light, so to speak, as a video of bees not being able to fly without light has gone viral on TikTok and Reddit. The video captures dozens of bees plummeting to the bottom of a laboratory...
An unusual galaxy cluster EARTHSKY - Stars form in a range of colors, from blue to red. The most massive stars are blue and very hot, but these stars don’t live very long. They live only a few hundred million years, in contrast to billions of years for stars like our sun. So when astronomers...