Since 2007, UC Merced researchers have been extremely productive in the Southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory (CZO), delving into investigations of hydrology, climate change, geology, biology and more.
But the National Science Foundation, which funded the CZOs, is decommissioning the sites and has reconfigured the program around themed research clusters in a new program called the Critical Zone Collaborative Network (CZCN).
The technology world is punctuated by startups, and UC Merced is “starting up” its own program to invigorate computer science education in the San Joaquin Valley.
The National Science Foundation awarded a $300,000, two-year grant to support START UP SJV, which stands for “STEM Teachers Alliance for Regional Tech thinking through Underrepresented Professional development in the San Joaquin Valley.”
The world is a complex place, and humanity faces major challenges. Climate change mitigation might be the most difficult, in large part because of the interdependency of living things and their ecosystems.
How do people transform economic systems so they are also sustainable for people and the planet?
As scientists build smaller and smaller machines, they need to understand the invisible forces that make those machines work.
Thanks to research and the initiative of then-UC Merced graduate student Jake Pate, some of those forces can now be measured and manipulated.
UC Merced is rapidly gaining a strong reputation for research and scientific computing across many disciplines and a major expansion of its computing infrastructure is about to cement the campus’ status as a research computing hub.
Having had the common cold appears to have programmed some people’s immune cells to recognize the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
That discovery — by an immunology team that includes a UC Merced alumnus — could change scientists’ understanding of the virus behind the current pandemic.
There’s a whole world of activity beneath your feet. Soil holds a large proportion of Earth's biodiversity, and is the place where organisms interact with each other and with plants, serving important functions for their ecosystems.
It is said that rainforests are the Earth’s lungs, capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, building it into lush vegetation and releasing oxygen and water back into the air.
When people think of engineering in nature, they tend to think of species such as beavers — the tree-felling, dam-building rodents whose machinations can shape the landscape by creating lakes and changing the path of rivers.
But beavers are far from the only organisms to reshape their environment. A squirrel that inadvertently plants oak trees is also an “ecosystem engineer.” Roughly speaking, any organism whose impact on the environment outlasts its own lifetime is an environmental engineer.
Wildfire seasons are intensifying because of climate change. That means reforestation efforts will increase, making it important for scientists and resource managers to understand how to make sure restorations will thrive in the future.
