UCOP - As the world continues to confront the global pandemic, the University of California community has stepped up like never before, drawing on the spirit of ingenuity and service that defines us. From hospitals and labs to neighborhoods across California, UC staff, faculty, alumni and students are putting their creativity and compassion to work...
LOS ANGELES TIMES - When news of the Asian giant hornet’s arrival in the United States first broke, the public was understandably worried: First the coronavirus, now “murder hornets”? What’s next, three days of darkness? But bug experts from Washington, where the hornet was discovered in the U.S., to California agree that the 2-inch hornet...
BUSTLE - The world has been abuzz (yep, pun totally intended) about the arrival of the Asian giant hornet, otherwise known by the charming nickname "murder hornet," in North America. The New York Times reports that they've been found in Vancouver Island and Washington State, and there's a concern that scientists won't be able to...
USA TODAY - An invasive hornet species that slaughters honeybees and can be deadly to humans is sparking concern in the United States. A small number of "murder hornets," an invasive species of Asian giant hornet, have been spotted in the Pacific Northwest. While experts have been tracking the invasive species in the U.S. for...
THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE - One of the common frustrations of gardening is having to deal with creepy, crawly insects that chew up the leaves of your plants and their fruits once they eventually make them, with bugs such as aphids, snails and mealybugs being some of the notable offenders. Doug Yanega, senior museum scientist for the...
BLOOMBERG - Gilead Sciences Inc., whose Covid-19 treatment has whipsawed markets amid conflicting early reports about its efficacy, is set to report the first results from a company-sponsored study of the experimental drug. Data from the first 400 severely ill coronavirus patients being treated with Remdesivir in an open-label study are expected before the end...
LOS ANGELES TIMES - Growing citrus is a dicey business these days in Southern California, and not at all recommended if you live within a two-mile radius of a tree infected with Huanglongbing disease — a.k.a. HLB or citrus greening disease. However, if you live outside a “red zone” and you’re willing to actively fight...
ATLAS OBSCURA - When Hollis Woodard picks up the phone on a Friday afternoon in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, she has to pry her hands from the dirt. “I’m working on the yard furiously to try and soothe myself,” she says. Woodard, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, studies bumble bees—a...
CALMATTERS - As California officials desperately try to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, Chris Miller is coaxing a sample of the virus to grow in a secure laboratory at UC Davis. Working in a laboratory nestled inside containment rooms and cut off from the world by filters, scientists dressed in space suit-like protective...
CNN - Evidence of a worm-like creature about the size of a grain of rice has been uncovered in South Australia, and researchers believe it is the oldest ancestor on the family tree that includes humans and most animals. The creature lived 555 million years ago. "We thought these animals should have existed during this...
CALMATTERS - California still does not have enough capacity to test for coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday, despite furious efforts by private, university and government laboratories to scale up to handle thousands of more patients. “The PCR is the really easy part,” said Frances Sladek, a professor of cell biology and toxicology as well...
IN FOCUS - The bee population is declining and experts say that’s a serious issue because they provide us with a very important service … pollination. Professor Boris Baer of UC Riverside talks about how 1/3 of the food grown in the U.S. is pollinated by bees, a process necessary for plants to reproduce. Baer...
INVERSE - Timothy Lyons, a distinguished professor of biogeochemistry, discusses his new research to better understand the history of the atmosphere on Mars. Scientists have developed a new model to better understand whether Mars once hosted water — and maybe even life. The Martian surface is an inhospitable place: It is too cold for humans...
NEWS-MEDICAL - Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have completed a cross-sectional human study that compares biomarkers and metal concentrations in the urine of e-cigarette users, nonsmokers, and cigarette smokers. They found that the biomarkers, which reflect exposure, effect, and potential harm, are both elevated in e-cigarette users compared to the other groups and...
By Reviewed by Kate Anderton, B.Sc. (Editor) | News-Medical |
LOS ANGELES TIMES - It has been described as a Noah’s Ark for citrus: two of every kind. Spread over 22 acres, UC Riverside’s 113-year-old Givaudan Citrus Variety Collection was founded as a place to gather and study as many citrus specimens as possible — right now, the inventory numbers at over 1,000. It’s an...
LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE - “Super blooms”–seasons in which unusually high numbers of wildflowers blossom in California’s deserts–can only occur if very specific conditions are met. We saw the phenomenon last year and in 2017, but before that, there had not been one since 2008. And, it seems, there is no reason to expect a super...
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION - NSF's National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), ranked UCR #3 in Hispanic STEM graduates in the nation, in its 2019 Report, Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering. The report provides statistical information about the participation of underrepresented groups in science and engineering education and employment...
INDEPENDENT, UK - Scientists have been left puzzled by a vast "monster" galaxy that mysteriously went dark. The web of stars, known as XMM-2599, existed about 12 billion years ago, in the early days of the universe, when it was only about 1.8 billion years old. It spewed out a vast number of stars in...
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE - Tim Gottwald will never forget the sight: the mottled yellow leaves, the withered branches, the small, misshapen fruits, tinged with sickly green. These were the signs he’d learned to associate with huanglongbing, or citrus greening—a devastating and wildly infectious bacterial infection that slashed the United States’ orange juice yields by more than...
SPACE.COM - A pair of Harvard astrophysicists have proposed a wild theory of how life might have spread through the universe. Stephen Kane, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside, told Live Science that he was deeply skeptical of the suggestion that microbes from Earth might have actually turned up alive on alien planets...