UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE & NATURAL RESOURCES (UCANR) - Sugar-feeding ants protect pests that infect trees and damage the fruit they bear. Insecticides are often a go-to solution, but may kill beneficial insects in the process, too. Thankfully, Mark Hoddle, University of California Cooperative Extension entomologist and biological control specialist at UC Riverside, together with...
ECOWATCH - In Southern California, automobile emissions are the biggest source of carbon dioxide in the air. But during the pandemic, when there were fewer cars on the road, those levels decreased. Now, scientists from the University of California have found a unique way to show which neighborhoods’ air pollution returned to pre-pandemic levels after...
SPACE.COM - Ancient Mexicans closely watching the sun from only a single location tracked the seasons and operated a farming calendar that fed millions. The Mexica, or Aztecs, used the mountains located in the Basin of Mexico, now known as Mexico City, as a solar observatory. By keeping track of the sunrise against the peaks...
UNIVERSE TODAY - Pre-Columbian Mexico (or Mesoamerica) hosted one of the largest civilizations and populations in the world. The most well-known and dominant of these civilizations (prior to the arrival of the Conquistadors) were the Aztecs (or Mexica). Their empire, known as the Triple Alliance, was centered around Lake Texcoco and consisted of the major...
NY TIMES - Long before Europeans colonized North America, the Indigenous peoples in the valley where Mexico City would later arise may have followed a natural solar calendar that was so accurate it accounted for leap years. The “horizon calendar,” proposed in a new study, relied on natural landmarks in the valley’s rugged eastern mountains...
NEW ATLAS - But in the new study, scientists at UC Riverside and Virginia Tech have found evidence of another mass extinction event that took place about 100 million years earlier than the currently accepted first. This places it during the Ediacaran period about 550 million years ago, which is when complex multicellular life really...
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL - Incredibly brilliant planetary scientists and astrobiologists at the University of California, Riverside, have discovered that the methyl bromide gases emitted by broccoli—one of the most repellent foods known to mankind—could be pivotal in discovering whether life exists on other planets. READ THE ARTICLE
FORBES - The world’s top female scientists in 2022 have been named in a ranking drawn up by science research portal Research.com. The top 10 female scientists according to Research.com are: JoAnn E. Manson (Harvard Medical School) Virginia M.-Y. Lee (University of Pennsylvania) Aviv Regev (Broad Institute) Tamara B. Harris (National Institutes of Health) Unnur...
ABC 7 - "We're using the wrong grasses so people equate their lawn as just being wasteful, just takes too much water, well it's really the wrong kind of grass being used," said Jim Baird, the director of UC Riverside's Turfgrass & Extension program. UC Riverside has bred grass to better adapt to California's climate...
THE DAILY BEAST - But actually pinpointing these objects, not to mention closely inspecting them, is extremely difficult. It’s so difficult that a close encounter with a passing alien craft is the least likely way we’ll make first contact with extraterrestrials, according to Edward Schwieterman, an astrobiologist at the University of California, Riverside. “In my...
CNN - Without a carbon-rich atmosphere, it’s unlikely a planet would be hospitable to living things. Carbon molecules are, after all, considered the building blocks of life. And the findings don’t bode well for other types of planets orbiting M dwarfs, said study coauthor Michelle Hill, a planetary scientist and a doctoral candidate at the...
INTERESTING ENGINEERING - "The pressure from the star's radiation is immense, enough to blow a planet's atmosphere away," explained Michelle Hill, UC Riverside astrophysicist and the co-author of the study. Earth's own atmosphere is also degraded over time by the Sun, but processes on Earth, including volcanic emissions, replenish the atmosphere at the same time...
THE HILL - In a study recently published in the journal Water Resources Research, a team of researchers from the University of California, Riverside argue that the lake’s shorelines are receding due to a decrease in water flow from the Colorado River. The Colorado River, which supplies 40 million people with drinking water and irrigates...
THE DAILY MAIL - Astrobiologists believe the presence of laughing gas in a distant planet's atmosphere could indicate life. Dr Eddie Schwieterman, an astrobiologist in UCR’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences said: 'Fewer researchers have seriously considered nitrous oxide, but we think that may be a mistake.' READ THE ARTICLE
USA TODAY - In a study published Tuesday in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers from the University of California, Riverside, Purdue University, American University, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center outline how N2O is a "compelling exoplanet biosignature gas." READ THE ARTICLE
CNET - "There's been a lot of thought put into oxygen and methane as biosignatures. Fewer researchers have seriously considered nitrous oxide, but we think that may be a mistake," said astrobiologist Eddie Schwieterman in a University of California, Riverside statement on Tuesday. Schwieterman is lead author of a paper on the topic published in...
FORBES - Our planet contains an estimated 8.7 million species, but vast swathes of its polar regions are lightly inhabited. “If Jupiter’s position remained the same, but the shape of its orbit changed, it could actually increase this planet’s habitability,” said Pam Vervoort, UCR Earth and planetary scientist and lead author of the study, which...
U.S. NEWS - "Though others have identified compounds that attract mosquitoes, many of them don't elicit a strong, rapid effect. This one does," said study co-author Ring Cardé, a professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside. Skin odors appear to be the most important for mosquitoes when locating someone to bite, but other...
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL - According to new research, Mexican mangroves are playing a helpful role in fighting climate change because they have been trapping carbon for thousands of years. Researchers from the University of California, Riverside and University of California, San Diego began the study because they wanted to understand how the mangroves absorb and...
SPACE.COM - University of California-Riverside (UCR) scientists simulated alternative arrangements of our solar system, finding that when Jupiter's orbit was more flattened — or 'eccentric' — it would cause major changes in our planet's orbit too. And this change caused by the orbit of Jupiter — the solar system's most massive planet by far —...