THE NEW YORK TIMES - North-facing, sloping ground with loose, sandy soil — if you’re a bumblebee queen on the market for a winter home, these features will have you racing to make an offer. But scientists were recently stunned to find there’s something else these monarchs like in a place to hibernate: pesticides. In...
SCIENCE ALERT - We live in a world where it is virtually impossible to escape plastics and their associated chemicals. New evidence suggests that in southern California, the average urban resident's exposure to plasticizers – the substances used to soften plastics and make them more flexible – is "through the roof". "No matter who you...
KVCR - KVCR's Allison Wang interviews Director of the UCR Botanic Gardens, Jodie Holt. The UCR Botanic Gardens is a 40-acre living museum nestled in the foothills of the Box Springs Mountains. Allison Wang: With 91.9 KVCR News, I'm Allison Wang. As a UC Riverside student, I have the opportunity to live and study next...
LAIST - Chances are you’re inhaling the toxic chemicals used to make plastics more flexible, according to a new study by UC Riverside and Duke researchers. Plasticizers are used in a variety of everyday products like lunch boxes, shower curtains, and garden hoses. The chemicals in this study — known as phthalates — have been...
LOS ANGELES TIMES - In a windowless shack on the far outskirts of Fresno, an ominous red glow illuminates a lab filled with X-ray machines, shelves of glowing boxes, a quietly humming incubator and a miniature wind tunnel. While the scene looks like something straight out of a sci-fi movie, its actually part of an...
SCIENCE NEWS - As dust from the Sahara blows thousands of kilometers across the Atlantic Ocean, it becomes progressively more nutritious for marine microbes, a new study suggests. Chemical reactions in the atmosphere chew on iron minerals in the dust, making them more water soluble and creating a crucial nutrient source for the iron-starved seas...
THE NEW YORK TIMES - In 2020, the Netflix documentary series “Tiger King” introduced the world to America’s large population of captive tigers. Estimates by experts suggest there may be as many as 7,000 of the big cats in the United States today, while only around 5,500 tigers survive in the wild in other countries...
EARTH.COM - Every day, we are unknowingly exposed to a multitude of chemicals. Among these are a group of toxic airborne chemicals known as plasticizers. If you think these are limited to children’s toys, beauty products, or even plastic bags, think again. These robust substances are everywhere, from your lunchbox to your shower curtain, and...
NEWSWEEK - Toxic airborne chemicals known as plasticizers could be making their way into our nostrils on a daily basis, scientists have warned. Exposure to these chemicals has been associated with fertility issues and neurodevelopmental disorders as well as childhood asthma, despite their use in a wide variety of products. "The levels of these compounds...
SCIENCE ALERT - Dust swept from the Sahara desert provides life at the bottom of the marine food chain with a critical nutrient. Without the iron carried far and wide in this mineral cloud, oceanic phytoplankton would struggle to bloom. According to a new study led by the University of California, Riverside, the more time...
THE NEW YORK TIMES - In six billion years the sun will expand into a red giant. That process should consume Mercury, and maybe Venus. For a long time we have thought it might incinerate Earth, too. But perhaps all is not doomed for planet Earth (although it may be a world that will have...
ENTOMOLOGY TODAY - Originally from central Asia, the house fly (Musca domestica) is found pretty much anywhere humans live. In large numbers it can be a nuisance, and it is known to transmit more than 200 pathogens to humans and animals. One of the most common methods to control house flies are toxic baits, which...
FRONTIERS - Scientists from the US measured the relative amounts of ‘bioreactive’ iron in four sediment cores from the bottom of the Atlantic. They showed for the first time that the further dust is blown from the Sahara, the more iron in it becomes bioreactive through chemical processes in the atmosphere. These results have important...
THE NEW YORK TIMES - The snow-blanketed peaks, fishing holes and cool alpine air of the San Bernardino Mountains have beckoned Southern Californians for generations. As far back as the 1880s, travelers braved a 6,000-foot climb in horse-drawn carriages to reach the pine forests that now surround the resort towns of Lake Arrowhead and Big...
QUANTA MAGAZINE - For a molecule of RNA, the world is a dangerous place. Unlike DNA, which can persist for millions of years in its remarkably stable, double-stranded form, RNA isn’t built to last — not even within the cell that made it. Unless it’s protectively tethered to a larger molecule, RNA can degrade in...
THE MERCURY NEWS - Climate change didn’t light the match, but it likely set the stage for the Airport, Bridge and Line fires to burn fiercely and aggressively throughout Southern California, say academics and the head of an environmental group. As of Friday afternoon, Sept. 13, the three blazes had consumed more than 113,000 acres...
ABC 7 - As Southern California contends with the summer's extreme heat, it's important to protect your plants from brutal temperatures. "Overall plants can survive short term heat spikes but damage can be more severe if they have heat spikes that last longer," said UC Riverside Professor of Agricultural and Urban Water Management Amir Verdi...
INTERESTING ENGINEERING - In organ transplantation, time is of the utmost importance as organs’ quality degrades rapidly during transportation. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have developed a new technique that could extend the lifespan of human tissues for transplantation. ... In this new development, the researchers have developed a method to rapidly and...
NEW ATLAS - A new two-step process that safely rewarms frozen tissues using nanoscale magnetic rods could help preserve donor organs long-term. The procedure provides an alternative to current time-limited methods and paves the way for more life-saving transplantations. The gold-standard method for preserving organs prior to transplantation is static cold storage, which involves flushing...
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE - Thanks to a time stamp, Thorben Danke knows the exact moment he got hooked on photographing insects. On July 22, 2016, at 6:05 p.m. he happened to see a green bottle fly sitting near him on his garage wall. Danke had been playing around with the settings on his pricy new digital...