THE WASHINGTON POST - Death Valley, known as the driest place in North America, is teeming with life with a once-in-a-decade blossoming of wildflowers known as a superbloom, transforming a normally brown desert landscape into carpets of gold. Wildflowers bloom across parts of southern California and Nevada at different degrees usually every year. In some...
LAIST - Do you hate composting as much as I do? Even though I know it has benefits for both my garden and the environment, I hate turning the pile and worrying about the right ratio of greens to browns and whether it’s too wet or too dry. And it’s always dispiriting to check for...
SCIENCE ALERT - One of the driest regions in the world is being transformed into a carbon sink through a long-term, large-scale tree planting program, absorbing more greenhouse gases than it emits. It's the result of almost five decades of work around the edges of the Taklamakan Desert in northwestern China, and evidence that with...
FUTURA - These substances are known as plasticisers. They are chemical compounds added to materials to make them softer, more flexible and easier to use. While that might sound harmless, their widespread presence in everyday objects means our exposure is constant. You can find plasticisers in many common household items. Food storage containers, shower curtains...
QUANTA MAGAZINE - I’ve spent a long time exploring the crystalline beauty of traditional mathematics, but now I’m feeling an urge to study something slightly more earthy,” John Baez wrote on his blog in 2011. An influential mathematical physicist who splits his time between the University of California, Riverside and the University of Edinburgh, Baez...
GIZMODO - Despite their tiny size, bed bugs are perhaps the scariest thing a person can realistically encounter in their home. But what do these blood-sucking fiends fear most? The answer, recent research shows, is apparently water. Scientists at the University of California, Riverside, tracked how bed bugs behaved around water. The insects avoided wet...
EARTH.COM - Have you ever wondered if bed bugs are afraid of anything? These tiny blood-sucking insects cause stress in homes around the world. Once bed bugs enter a room, getting rid of them can feel almost impossible. But new research from the University of California, Riverside has revealed something surprising. Bed bugs fear water...
EARTH.COM - After a wildfire tears through a landscape, the destruction looks absolute. Hillsides turn black, trees collapse into ash, wildlife scatters, and the soil itself seems lifeless. Then something unexpected happens. Within days or weeks, life creeps back. Not trees. Not deer. Fungi. Some of these fungi were barely there before the fire. You...
IFLSCIENCE - China has a new Great Wall, but this one isn't built of stone and mortar to repel marauding invaders from the north. Instead, the “Great Green Wall” is a vast belt of trees and shrubs lining the bottom of its northern deserts, designed to halt the steady creep of desertification. New research suggests...
THE WEATHER NETWORK - Scientists may have solved a mystery of how Earth recycles its carbon, and what it could mean for the future. The general understanding of how Earth's climate is regulated is that it happens through the climate-sensitive reaction of carbon dioxide (CO2) removal by the weathering of silicate rocks on land. As...
BIG BIOLOGY PODCAST - What are eco‑evolutionary dynamics and how can we study them in the wild? Why do some fish evolve placentas? In this episode, we talk with David Reznick , Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of California, Riverside. David has spent much of his career studying Trinidadian guppies to understand adaptation...
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE - As the world shuttered in 2020 amid Covid-19 lockdowns, scientists expected to see one silver lining to the pandemic: a decrease in air pollution. With fewer cars on the roads and a drop in industrial activity, researchers did notice a dip in daily carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants. But methane, the...
NEWSWEEK - Breathing in lingering, secondhand e-cigarette vapors has the potential to damage lung tissues. This is the warning of a new study by researchers from the University of California Riverside, who found that aged vape aerosols contain fine particles bearing metals and highly reactive compounds that can combine to produce harmful radical particles. "Our...
DISCOVER MAGAZINE - Although wildfires are a natural and recurring phenomenon in certain regions, climate change is intensifying their impact. Each year, fires now swallow around four percent of Earth’s land surface, leaving behind vast, unrecognizable charred landscapes. While most living organisms succumb to the flames, certain plants need regular fires to help bring life...
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY - Electronic cigarettes — or vapes — can release puffs of vapor in aromatic clouds. The health risks of breathing in this secondhand or passive vapor aren’t fully understood. So, researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology conducted a preliminary study on lingering vape plumes in indoor environments. They found that...
NEW SCIENTIST - Compared with Earth, Mars is tiny, yet it seems to have an outsized effect on our planet’s climate cycles. Similar small planets could affect the climates of worlds beyond our solar system, which we must begin to take into account when evaluating their potential habitability. Stephen Kane at the University of California...
THE WEEK - Small but mighty, the red planet — our celestial neighbor — has made Earth’s climate what it is today. Mars’ gravitational pull serves as a stabilizing force for our home’s orbit, tilt and position from the sun. Without it, life could potentially have been a lot different from what we know today...
ZME SCIENCE - Mars is about half Earth’s size and roughly a tenth its mass — not really the sort of planet you’d expect to leave fingerprints on Earth’s climate history. Yet a new set of simulations by an international group of researchers suggests the Red Planet helps shape some of the slow, repeating orbital...
DAILY GALAXY - Mars, long admired for its rusty hue and alien deserts, may play a far greater role in shaping life on Earth than once believed. A new study published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific reveals that Mars’ gravitational influence subtly but significantly affects Earth’s climate cycles, planetary tilt...
EARTH.COM - New simulations suggest Mars helps set a 2.4 million-year rhythm in Earth’s orbit that can steer the timing of ice-ages. Scientists recently tested whether a small planet could leave a detectable trace in deep-time climate records. Testing a planetary hunch Computer runs allowed the experts to switch planets on and off, turning the...