UC Davis is one of the world’s leading cross-disciplinary research and teaching institutions, located in Davis, California. The most academically comprehensive university on the West Coast, it is renowned for its programs in food and agriculture, the environmental sciences and sustainability, and veterinary medicine. Among its many accomplishments, it has helped develop the wine industry, pioneered new medical treatments and altered the art world. Part of the University of California system, UC Davis has 100+ majors, 10 colleges and professional schools, a health system, and research stations throughout California and beyond.
The stereotype that popular kids don’t get bullied has been busted by a new study that found becoming more popular at school can actually increase a student’s risk of being bullied. The study, published…
Your face plays an important role in the experience and expression of emotion. Yet despite the complexity of the human face, which has 43 muscles in all, most of existing facial expression research focuses…
The number pi (π = 3.14159265358979323846…), unique among the pantheon of mathematical constants, captures the fascination of the public and professional mathematicians. Three years ago one of the authors…
Smartphones can already understand your voice commands but imagine if they tried to read your emotions as well. What if you asked it for details of movies showing at your local cinema and it replied: Well…
Medical treatments for amphibians, resurrection of extinct species, increasing temperatures in the deep oceans and trade-offs between the financial value of fossil fuels and the magnitude of climate change…
Natural history museum records are most often associated with preserved specimens, kept with information about the place and time of collection. From these we can generate a record of a species’ geographical…
According to British historian Arnold Toynbee, “History is just one damned thing after another.” Or is it? That is the question Peter Turchin of the University of Connecticut in Storrs tries to answer…
Perhaps the only positive note that can be sounded on the Australian science literacy survey results, released on Wednesday by the Australian Academy of Science (AAS), is they are somewhat better than…
In recent weeks, two truly major results have been announced in the realm of (analytic) number theory, namely the mathematics of integers in general and of prime numbers in particular. Number theory, as…
The Australian government’s ironic and perverse decision to better fund schools at the expense of already-promised university funding would make for a good episode of the 1980s sitcom Yes, Prime Minister…
Fraud. It’s an ugly word, an arresting word. As with “cheating” it comes loaded with negative connotations, but can potentially lead to far greater penalties and consequences. And yet fraud in science…
Last week we learned a famous 2010 academic paper, relied on by political big-hitters to bolster arguments for austerity cuts, contained significant errors; and that those errors came down to misuse of…
So, the Higgs boson … Last week, researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) finally announced the new particle discovered last summer is indeed a Higgs boson, a particle predicted…
We assess risk every day. But very few of us receive any formal training in the requisite mathematics and statistics, and, partly as a result, poor decisions are made, both by individuals and governmental…
In an announcement today, NASA poured cold water on rumours that its Curiosity rover had found life on Mars. Curiosity found evidence that it had landed on an ancient riverbed, and it identified some interesting…
So we have a problem for you. Take a moment to steady yourself, maybe sharpen your pencil. Don’t unpack your calculator, and leave your phone to one side. This one will be purely mental – a spot of addition…
Few of us have the time or expertise to sift through all of the scientific papers published every day to determine which research is important and relevant to our lives. In this sense, science journalists…
As the November elections draw nearer, front yards across America are sprouting campaigns signs broadcasting their chosen political candidates. These lawn signs have been a traditional part of politics…
Most fairly well educated people recognise pseudoscience as bunkum when they see it — astrology, young-earth creationism, alien abduction, pyramid power … Yet some of these same people are now being sucked…
Those that can’t do, teach – or so goes the famous saying. But what of those who want to do teaching. What of those who do maths teaching? Can we be sure the job they are doing is the best one for our…