NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC - Some of this variability in motivation or ability to do hard exercise is related to genetics. For example, Theodore Garland, Jr., an evolution biologist at the University of California Riverside, wanted to understand how complex traits—like marathon running—evolve at multiple levels of organization, ranging from behavior to DNA. He has shown in...
THE WASHINGTON POST - While we know that exercise can influence the health of the microbiome, it’s much less clear whether the effects work the other way, and your microbiome can influence your exercise. Anecdotally, people and lab mice taking antibiotics don’t exercise much, but the reason might be that they probably felt ill before...
BBC SCIENCE FOCUS - A whiff of your gym bag might make you wince, but your nose could be the key to getting fit. New research in mice suggests there is a link between doing voluntary exercise and the expression of genes that relate to scent perception. Rodents are used in scientific research for various...
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE - Millions of years ago, monstrously sized sharks named megalodons dominated the ocean. These giants grew larger than modern day humpback whales, casually snacked on animals like dolphins and seals, had the strongest bite force of any creature to ever exist— yes, including T. rex. But despite being fierce predators, a new study...
The UCR Alumni Service Award honors superior service in the public sector or a sustained pattern of volunteer service in the community, arts, or for the benefit of UCR that has positively represented the university and fellow citizens. Dr. Pedram Salimpour serves as Chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Pierce Health Solutions, a California-based company focused...
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...
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...
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...
UC Riverside’s Chris Cosma, a second-year doctoral student studying evolution, ecology, and organismal biology, has received a California Native Plant Society 2019-20 Education Grant. The grants are awarded to student researchers focused on California native plants. Cosma is researching moth-plant pollination at Boyd Deep Canyon Desert Research Center, a UC Natural Reserve in the Colorado...
