BBC SCIENCE FOCUS - A bold new study claims we’ve got the megalodon’s shape all wrong. According to the research, the monstrous prehistoric fish known as the megalodon (Otodus megalodon) may have been more of a long and slender shark than the chunky beast depicted by Hollywood. Nose to tail, the megalodon is generally thought...
THE WASHINGTON POST - The extinct shark megalodon is often imagined as a beefy, supersize great white, with a gaping maw of pointy teeth capping off a powerful body that spanned 50 feet from nose to tail. Now, a team of more than two dozen scientists argues that the megalodon has been misunderstood, and may...
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...
