Science & Technology

It’s that time of year when the thousands of trees on and off campus experience a dramatic change before the cold winter. Leaves are turning gold, red and orange — what is the secret behind these changes? To answer that question, we need to understand the biological purpose of leaves and their chemical components. Leaves […]

UC Davis Professor Qing-Zhu Yin of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences has collaborated with an international team including NASA’s preeminent meteor astronomers in the first ever study of the Chelyabinsk meteor. The research was published Nov. 7 in the journal Science. Studies of this type, which employ experts’ knowledge, highly-practiced sets of eyes […]

Canyon of fire appears on Sun’s surface, according to NASA A filament of charged particles blasted away from the sun at more than 3 million kilometers per hour, leaving behind a scar in the plasma that NASA has dubbed the “Canyon of Fire.” Interesting mating habits discovered in Australian sea slugs It has been discovered […]

Most students are aware of the Tipsy Taxi service run by Unitrans, which brings you back home safely after one too many drinks. However, Tipsy Taxi is only available from Thursday to Saturday between the hours of 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Wouldn’t it be nice to have other late-night modes of transportation that aren’t […]

Today’s data centers have ever-increasing workloads placed upon them, resulting in the wildly expensive cost of operations and maintenance in addition to supplying the thousands of watts of power they can require. This is the question highlighted in the Oct. 11 edition of the journal Science by Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Chair Shaya Fainman […]

Africa could be receiving some new hot, healthy chicks if Davis scientists have anything to say about it. Researchers from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis and the School of Veterinary Medicine are working on creating disease-resistant, heat-resistant chickens for hunger-prone areas of Africa. In particular, the work focuses on fighting […]

It could be possible in the near future to arrive to class looking just as good as when you left, not like you just biked two miles. FlyKly has recently unveiled their prototype for Smart Wheel, a pedal assist unit that can transform almost any bike into an electric bike. For a community like Davis, […]

UC Davis is no stranger to the crows that hover over campus. There seems to be a colony of them in particular areas around campus, especially the Silo. Andrea Townsend, an assistant professor of urban conservation ecology in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology, studies social behavior and disease transmission in birds, including […]

The coming of winter means less sunlight but more starlight. The beginning of November hailed a rare solar eclipse, but the eclipse was only visible to viewers from the US East Coast to the middle east. However, Davis astronomy aficionados can still catch the highly anticipated Comet ISON. Born from the primeval matter of the […]

A new device is poised to revolutionize the way people think about bicycle security. LOCK8, an induction-charged, keyless, alarm-secured, GPS-tracking bike lock is the first smart bike lock with sharing capabilities. Two Oxford students, Franz Salzmann and Daniel Zajarias-Fainsod, developed LOCK8 after having both of their bikes stolen in a two-day time span. “LOCK8 is […]

At Least You Get to Keep the Glasses A study to be published in Media Psychology found that watching a movie in 3D vs 2D doesn’t actually make a significant difference in the experience. Aside from costing slightly more than 2D, 3D usually helps the viewer from being distracted by the usual theater norms like […]

Why do we sweat? Where in the long path of human history did we evolve this embarrassing characteristic? How does it work? Well, the truth is that sweating is what gave us the ability to achieve greatness. Most other mammals don’t sweat, causing them to run internal body temperatures much higher than our own. They […]