THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE - Healthy, undisturbed soil sinks carbon, storing what’s generated when plants and other living things decompose so it doesn’t get released as a planet-warming greenhouse gas. But a new study out of UC Riverside suggests nitrogen pollution from cars and trucks and power plants might make soil release that carbon in Southern California...
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW - “Until CRISPR, the technology simply wasn’t there,” says Peter Atkinson, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, who is working on modifying the sharpshooter. “We’re entering this new age where genetic control can be realistically contemplated.” Scientists didn’t know much about the genetics of the glassy-winged sharpshooter until recently. The...
By Emma Foehringer Merchant | MIT Technology Review |
VOX - What do you know about bees? That they produce honey? That they live in a hive? That they swarm? Well, I have news: These characteristics don’t actually describe most bees in the US. Of the roughly 4,000 native species, not a single one produces true honey. Not one! Most of them live alone...
UC Newsroom - The report provides detailed metrics on UC’s progress in decarbonizing its operations and meeting other sustainability goals, including the fact that 55 percent of its electricity now comes from renewable or carbon-free sources. It also highlights UC activities to advance sustainability through education, research and public service, including community partnerships already underway...
SCIENCE NEWS - Attention alien hunters: If you want to find life on distant planets, try looking for signs of toxic chemical cleanup. Gases that organisms produce as they tidy up their environments could provide clear signs of life on planets orbiting other stars, researchers announced January 9 at the American Astronomical Society meeting. All...
KPPC - The United States Department of Agriculture has approved a vaccine for honeybees, which play an integral role in our food system. The vaccines could help prevent American foulbrood disease, which is a bacterial disease that can spread quickly between hives. In the past, the disease has been handled by burning the infected hives...
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE & NATURAL RESOURCES (UCANR) - Sugar-feeding ants protect pests that infect trees and damage the fruit they bear. Insecticides are often a go-to solution, but may kill beneficial insects in the process, too. Thankfully, Mark Hoddle, University of California Cooperative Extension entomologist and biological control specialist at UC Riverside, together with...
ECOWATCH - In Southern California, automobile emissions are the biggest source of carbon dioxide in the air. But during the pandemic, when there were fewer cars on the road, those levels decreased. Now, scientists from the University of California have found a unique way to show which neighborhoods’ air pollution returned to pre-pandemic levels after...
SPACE.COM - Ancient Mexicans closely watching the sun from only a single location tracked the seasons and operated a farming calendar that fed millions. The Mexica, or Aztecs, used the mountains located in the Basin of Mexico, now known as Mexico City, as a solar observatory. By keeping track of the sunrise against the peaks...
UNIVERSE TODAY - Pre-Columbian Mexico (or Mesoamerica) hosted one of the largest civilizations and populations in the world. The most well-known and dominant of these civilizations (prior to the arrival of the Conquistadors) were the Aztecs (or Mexica). Their empire, known as the Triple Alliance, was centered around Lake Texcoco and consisted of the major...
NY TIMES - Long before Europeans colonized North America, the Indigenous peoples in the valley where Mexico City would later arise may have followed a natural solar calendar that was so accurate it accounted for leap years. The “horizon calendar,” proposed in a new study, relied on natural landmarks in the valley’s rugged eastern mountains...
NEW ATLAS - But in the new study, scientists at UC Riverside and Virginia Tech have found evidence of another mass extinction event that took place about 100 million years earlier than the currently accepted first. This places it during the Ediacaran period about 550 million years ago, which is when complex multicellular life really...
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL - Incredibly brilliant planetary scientists and astrobiologists at the University of California, Riverside, have discovered that the methyl bromide gases emitted by broccoli—one of the most repellent foods known to mankind—could be pivotal in discovering whether life exists on other planets. READ THE ARTICLE
YAHOO - While most bites usually stop with inflammation and heal without medical attention, roughly 10 percent can cause moderate to significant tissue damage and scarring, according to Rick Vetter, a retired research associate of entomology at the University of California, Riverside, per LiveScience. Anyone who develops this type of reaction should seek medical attention...
FORBES - The world’s top female scientists in 2022 have been named in a ranking drawn up by science research portal Research.com. The top 10 female scientists according to Research.com are: JoAnn E. Manson (Harvard Medical School) Virginia M.-Y. Lee (University of Pennsylvania) Aviv Regev (Broad Institute) Tamara B. Harris (National Institutes of Health) Unnur...
ABC7 - "We're using the wrong grasses so people equate their lawn as just being wasteful, just takes too much water, well it's really the wrong kind of grass being used," said Jim Baird, the director of UC Riverside's Turfgrass & Extension program. UC Riverside has bred grass to better adapt to California's climate for...
THE DAILY BEAST - But actually pinpointing these objects, not to mention closely inspecting them, is extremely difficult. It’s so difficult that a close encounter with a passing alien craft is the least likely way we’ll make first contact with extraterrestrials, according to Edward Schwieterman, an astrobiologist at the University of California, Riverside. “In my...
CNN - Without a carbon-rich atmosphere, it’s unlikely a planet would be hospitable to living things. Carbon molecules are, after all, considered the building blocks of life. And the findings don’t bode well for other types of planets orbiting M dwarfs, said study coauthor Michelle Hill, a planetary scientist and a doctoral candidate at the...
INTERESTING ENGINEERING - "The pressure from the star's radiation is immense, enough to blow a planet's atmosphere away," explained Michelle Hill, UC Riverside astrophysicist and the co-author of the study. Earth's own atmosphere is also degraded over time by the Sun, but processes on Earth, including volcanic emissions, replenish the atmosphere at the same time...
THE HILL - In a study recently published in the journal Water Resources Research, a team of researchers from the University of California, Riverside argue that the lake’s shorelines are receding due to a decrease in water flow from the Colorado River. The Colorado River, which supplies 40 million people with drinking water and irrigates...