By Wudan Yan, UC San Francisco | February 25, 2021 As obesity becomes a growing issue worldwide — nearly tripling over the last-half century — scientists are trying to gain a better understanding of the condition at the molecular level. Now, new research led by UC San Francisco scientists suggests that a single protein could play an outsized role in weight gain. As ... Continue Reading »
Our earliest primate ancestors rapidly spread after dinosaur extinction
By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley | February 24, 2021 The small, furry ancestors of all primates — a group that includes humans and other apes — were already taking to the trees a mere 100,000 years after the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and most other terrestrial animals, according to a new analysis of fossil teeth in the collections of the University of ... Continue Reading »
Poorer mental health smolders after deadly, devastating wildfire
By Scott LaFee, UC San Diego | February 09, 2021 In 2018, a faulty electric transmission line ignited the Camp Fire in Northern California, ultimately consuming 239 square miles and several communities, including the town of Paradise, which was 95 percent destroyed. At least 85 people died. Structures have been rebuilt, but some things are worse. In a paper published ... Continue Reading »
Binary stars are all around us, new map of solar neighborhood shows
By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley | February 22, 2021 The latest star data from the Gaia space observatory has for the first time allowed astronomers to generate a massive 3D atlas of widely separated binary stars within about 3,000 light years of Earth — 1.3 million of them. The one-of-a-kind atlas, created by Kareem El-Badry, an astrophysics Ph.D. student from the ... Continue Reading »
Latinx, Native Americans carry heavier pandemic burden, new poll reports
By Edward Lempinen, UC Berkeley | February 23, 2021 Voters of color in California — especially Latinx and Native American people — face disproportionate risks during the coronavirus pandemic and are far more worried than white voters about job and income loss and access to medical care, according to a new poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS). By ... Continue Reading »
Computer analyses of cough sounds reveal infection by COVID
By Doug Ramsey, Jacobs School of Engineering, UC San Diego | February 5, 2021 Millions of people already use Fitbit and other devices to monitor and track a variety of personal health metrics. Now, a researcher at the University of California San Diego has published data indicating that analyzing voice signals can detect COVID-19 infection when compared with sample audio ... Continue Reading »
Buyer beware: Massive experiment shows why ticket sellers hit you with last-second fees
By Morgan Foy, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley | February 9, 2021 There’s a reason that online ticket sellers hit you with those extra fees after you’ve picked your seats and are ready to click “buy.” Pure profit. A massive field experiment by Berkeley Haas Prof. Steven Tadelis with the online ticket marketplace StubHub concluded that so-called ... Continue Reading »
Dogs can sniff out cases of COVID-19
Sonia Fernandez, UC Santa Barbara | February 11, 2021 For some 15,000 years, dogs have been our hunting partners, workmates, helpers and companions. Could they also be our next allies in the fight against COVID-19? According to UC Santa Barbara professor emeritus Tommy Dickey(link is external) and his collaborator, BioScent researcher Heather Junqueira, they ... Continue Reading »
Genetic tool could improve monitoring of marine protected areas
Sonia Aronson, UC Los Angeles | February 24, 2021 Researchers used to need to scuba dive to find out which fish live in any given area of the ocean. Now, a new UCLA study has found that environmental DNA, or eDNA, can be used to identify marine organisms living in a certain space. Environmental DNA is the term for the DNA from cells that are constantly released ... Continue Reading »
Parasitic plants conspire to keep hosts alive
By Jules Bernstein, UC Riverside | February 23, 2021 The plant that encourages kissing at Christmas is in fact a parasite, and new research reveals mistletoe has an unusual feeding strategy. Like other plants, mistletoe is capable of using sunlight to create its own food, a process called photosynthesis. However, it prefers to siphon water and nutrients from other trees ... Continue Reading »