Science & Technology

UC Davis is searching for new and more effective methods to deal with oral cancer.

For most of us, helping the environment means recycling, riding our bikes and drinking from reusable canteens. But now, thanks to the work of chemists, it could mean producing our own energy – from water.

Superheroes and the villains they vanquish are always stealing their powers from the animal kingdom. Spiderman launched webs and Dr. Octopus had eight limbs. Sabertooth was vicious and Wolverine emulated a member of the weasel family. Catwoman? More like copy-cat.

You don’t have to be a conservation biologist to help regenerate a dying breed of blue oak trees. This is the hope of citizen science-advocate, Heidi Ballard, a professor in the UC Davis School of Education, who believes that public volunteers can not only help researchers collect data, but can help create the research itself.

While most people have no problem drinking a nice cold mojito, a young dachshund puppy named Mojito was having trouble swallowing anything at all until he underwent a revolutionary procedure to save his life.

UC Davis is working to help rectify the damage done by the oil spill that occurred in the Gulf Coast over three weeks ago – a cause of great concern among the scientific community due to its potential impact on wildlife.

I would be a terrible astronaut.

This past weekend, limnology students partook on an adventure-filled annual excursion to Castle Lake.

Last week marked the final round of the eighth annual U.S. Imagine Cup. The competition for high school, undergraduate and graduate students combined their passion and creativity in business and technology to tackle global issues.

Toddlers harmed from too much exposure to TV

Politics, smolitics. Forget causes like budget cuts and education spending. Nominate your favorite microorganism for California’s state microbe and you could make history! Microbes are itsy-bitsy organisms, like bacteria or fungi, which can only be seen under a microscope. They are usually unicellular and live everywhere – from your swimming pool to your small intestine. Microbes may not be the cuddliest mascots, but they are the biggest gang of living things on Earth.

Earlier this month, four undergraduates, one grad student and a professor, all from the atmospheric science department, launched a weather balloon 65,000 feet into the air to take pictures and receive weather data. The team not only sent up a camera but a radiosonde – a device that records temperature, pressure and dew point. With this, the team was able to gather a profile of the atmosphere as well as images – a first for this kind of experiment.