Science & Technology

New video series combines material engineering concepts and superhero icons for accessible education ‘Engineering Superheroes,’ a new Youtube video series with a single crowdfunded pilot episode currently released, seeks to introduce elementary school students to material engineering through exploring the science behind their favorite superheroes.  Ricardo Castro, a professor in the Department of Material Science […]

Theranostics, a combination of therapy and diagnostics, offers new biologically engineered technology to image and attack tumors within patients Next-generation cancer treatment is on the horizon, offering a transformative beacon of hope for many patients who may find conventional treatments like chemotherapy and surgery incompatible. UC Davis Health has incorporated this new state-of-the-art approach to […]

Team of 20 receives funding from the National Institutes of Health’s Helping to End Addiction Initiative A team of 20 researchers are working tirelessly to transform protoxin-II, or ProTx-11—a peptide from the Peruvian green velvet tarantula’s venom—into a novel, non-addictive pain medication.    According to the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience, peptides are chains […]

The Delta variant has more efficient transmissibility with selectively advantageous mutations in its spike protein With recent anticipation and plans for students to return to campus this coming fall, the Delta variant of the coronavirus has brought yet another wave of cases that continue to plague the population of both the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike.  […]

UC Davis assistant professor and graduate students help identify a new type of supernova  By AARYA GUPTA — science@theaggie.org   UC Davis assistant professor of physics and astronomy Stefano Valenti and graduate students from the Department of Physics, Azalee Bostroem and Yize Dong, were part of a team of international astronomers that recently discovered supernova 2018zd, […]

Increased frequency of open-note exams due to virtual classes results in mixed opinions among students Is it B or C? B or C? The multiple-choice answers toggle back-and-forth in your mind as you glance up at the clock to see that there are only two minutes remaining. This exam is worth 60% of your grade, […]

Engineers and neurologists collaborate to create a device that could help brain injury and stroke patients   Cerebral blood flow (CBF) is essential to human brain functioning, and yet current imaging techniques are costly and usually do not provide continuous measurements for physicians. Recognizing this problem, Vivek Srinivasan, an adjunct associate professor of biochemical engineering at […]

Chaparral shrublands, found all throughout the state, are facing increasingly frequent wildfires that may threaten the native lichen communities A collaborative study that looked at the impact of wildfires on chaparral ecosystems and long-term lichen recolonization in California was published in the journal Diversity and Distributions on May 10. The paper was co-authored by Alexandra […]

Enrollment is open for participants ages 12-17 in the Novavax COVID-19 clinical trial UC Davis Health is taking the next step in the fight against COVID-19 by beginning to enroll children ages 12-17 in a clinical trial to test the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine. The trial is currently in Phase 3 clinical trials with the National […]

A discovery regarding T cells can help the creators of a future vaccine know how to produce the best immune response     Research at the Center for Immunology and Infectious Disease at UC Davis found that tissue-resident immune cells are not necessary for secondary protection in the female reproductive tract, suggesting that a vaccine can […]

Gene discovery could potentially improve growth and fitness in plants in stressful conditions After 10 years of embarking on a “very, bold risky project,” UC Davis researchers recently published a paper in Cell, according to Shiobhan Brady, a professor of plant biology and lead author of the study, via email.  For the first time, researchers […]

The SeaDoc Society, a donor-funded program of the UC Davis Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center, presents a collaborative project aimed to help save the wild southern resident killer whale population from extinction “Free Willy,” which came out in 1993, portrayed killer whales as beloved and personable animals rather than killers—quite different from public perception […]