Science & Technology

Flowers are the iconic Valentine’s Day gift. If a person gets nothing else for their significant other, especially since college students are usually on a budget prohibiting expensive dinner reservations or shiny jewelry, the couple will probably still exchange flowers. I’d like to encourage you to look closer at those flowers. Since this is being […]

This last Sunday, UC Davis hosted its first Biodiversity Museum Day. “We haven’t had a turn out like this since Picnic Day,” said Lynn Kimsley, professor and director for the Bohart Museum of Entomology, “I would like to make this an annual event.” UC Davis opened up four of its biological collections to public exhibition. […]

Thomas Schoener and David Spiller, both professors in the UC Davis Evolution and Ecology Department, are among the co-authors of a new study appearing in Science magazine that provides evidence for an evolutionary phenomenon called the “founder effect.” The founder effect is the evolutionary theory that a small number of “founders,” or initial members of a […]

Over the past 60 years, E. coli has been the primary model organism for gene sequencing and recombinant DNA experiments. While the majority of these E. coli strains are harmless, there exist a few strains that, when present in the human body, cause severe food poisoning and intestinal havoc. UC Davis is a member of […]

From using solar energy to replace fossil fuels to using robots to perform everyday tasks, science looks often into the future to solve the world’s problems, but the past could also be a link to the future. UC Davis geophysicist Gary Acton and his collaborators are using centuries old fossil records to make predictions about […]

Utility and leisure may not come together at the same time when the consumer’s most important priority is budget. One great option for consumers looking to buy a tablet on a budget is the Kindle Fire. The Kindle Fire offers video, music, books, apps, games, internet browsing and much more for somebody looking to get […]

When you think of how science is supposed to work, what do you imagine? It’s not all lasers and collecting animals — what people think of as the fun, exciting stuff. It can be about that, of course, but it’s not the most important part. Science is about thinking critically. It’s about finding the closest […]

Imagine not being able to function in society because you are unable to tell the difference between the people who are standing in front of you, and the people who only exist in your mind. About 1 percent of the world population suffers from schizophrenia, and that rate remains constant across all continents, all races […]

An article published in Nature Materials features a new theory to explain how minerals and glass interact with water. The paper was co-authored by James Rustad, a UC Davis Geology Department emeritus professor, and William Casey, a professor in the UC Davis Chemistry Department. Existing models “could explain anything and predict nothing,” Casey said. “Environmental […]

Every now and then, I like to take a break from looking at the beauty of nature to look at the weirder, more terrifying things. For all the beautiful creativity that nature shows in the world around us, a close look can also find creatures that we find horrifying. The most likely kind of creature […]

Chris Fassnacht, a professor in the UC Davis Physics department, has co-authored a paper appearing in Nature, which provides evidence to corroborate a theory of how galaxies form in a process that involves dark matter by detecting a faint satellite galaxy 10 billion light years away. Fassnacht is currently visiting his alma mater, the California […]

Society continues to consume an increasing amount of its media in more interactive ways, in terms of music, videos and games. The medical community is also taking steps to provide its students with the tools to make learning more engaging and convenient. More specifically, medical students are gaining a new way to learn how to […]