Science & Technology

Geologists at UC Davis have a tool at their fingertips that puts everyday laser rangefinders to shame. Their technology allows them to take 100,000 range samples per second. The system is called Light Distance and Ranging, or LiDAR for short, and is being used to create hyperaccurate topography maps of post-earthquake regions. The juiced-up rangefinder […]

A team of researchers at UC Davis led by Stephen McSorley, in conjunction with collaborators at UC Irvine, identified antigens on salmonella bacteria. This new discovery could lead to salmonella prevention. Salmonella is a bacterial infection that is carried through food. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 400,000 cases of salmonella are […]

Scientists have a love-hate relationship with science books meant for the general public. On the one hand, making science reachable to the general public is a great goal; on the other hand, this can sometimes mean oversimplifying research or being less accurate. It’s a delicate balancing act that not every author can accomplish. If a […]

Researchers have directly observed an essential three dimensional DNA damage repair process using a special microscopy technique. Anthony L. Forget, who now works at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Stephen Kowalczykowski in the department of microbiology and the department of molecular and cellular biology at UC Davis to make the […]

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 […]