Like many people this summer, Professor Shahar Sukenik has dehydration on his mind.
But it’s not the soaring outside temperatures prompting this focus. Dehydration has been a theme of his lab’s work for the past year, from understanding how seeds know when to germinate to a new grant to further knowledge about the proteins that help protect cells and organisms against irreversible drying.
The over the counter, “safe,” organic-compliant insecticides people purchase at home-improvement stores could be causing a problem that goes far beyond the vegetable garden or farm field — antibiotic resistance.
With a new $20 million federal grant, UC Merced becomes part of a multi-institutional research collaborative to develop artificial intelligence — or AI — solutions to tackle some of agriculture’s biggest challenges related to water management, climate change and integration of new technology into farming.
When physics graduate student William Delmas made samples of solar energy harvesting perovskite films two years ago, he had no idea that this summer, he’d be analyzing those same samples after they made a round trip to the International Space Station (ISS).
“It’s really cool to see this come full circle,” Delmas said.
A group of researchers harnessing the power of light to control gene expression has dramatically improved its method, optimizing speed and precision, and opening new research avenues for scientists who employ optogenetics — the use of light and genetic engineering to control cells.
A new paper in the journal Zebrafish details the advancements made in Professor Stephanie Woo’s lab and quantifies the results of experiments on zebrafish embryos.
Scientists often study the relationship of global warming and topsoil because soil is an important mediator of climate change. A newly released study indicates it’s critical to consider subsoil in climate-change research, too.
Immunology Professor Jennifer Manilay and bioengineering Professor Joel Spencer are using a new grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to expand a project they’ve been working on for the past two years — delving into the immune systems of living mice to see how B-cells develop under different circumstances.
From graduate student Jose Zamora’s perspective, the CREST Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Machines (CCBM) has been a spectacular success.
UC Merced occupies just one small corner of the world. But through the research, teaching, experience, and connections of two new Department of Physics faculty members, students can access and begin to understand the universe.
Physics Professor Dustin Kleckner has received a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award for his research — the third in his department this year. He studies how optical and acoustic binding controls interactions between/among particles and how it manipulates them into self-organizing structures.
In the long term, this research aims to enable fundamentally new types of materials for industrial, defense and consumer applications.
