Science | UC Davis College of Letters and Science

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Has Social Media Discourse Affected People’s Hesitancy to Get Vaccinated Against COVID?

by Karen Nikos-Rose
September 21, 2022

Despite vaccine availability, vaccine hesitancy has inhibited public health officials’ efforts to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, which has killed more than 1 million people in the U.S. and nearly 6 million people worldwide.

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Dean Estella Atekwana Elected an American Geophysical Union Fellow

by Kathleen Holder
September 19, 2022

Estella Atekwana, a geophysicist and dean of the UC Davis College of Letters and Science, was named a fellow today by the American Geophysical Union for outstanding contributions to her discipline.

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Faculty Develop New Calculus Course for Social Science Majors

by Kathleen Holder
September 12, 2022

Data increasingly drives research and policy on a broad array of pressing global issues, including climate change, misinformation in social media, and the future of the social safety net in our aging society. A new mathematics course in the works at UC Davis will help to prepare the next generation of social scientists to analyze and use data in mathematical models.

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Faculty Couple Attend Dutch Royal Reception

by Kathleen Holder
September 09, 2022

When Queen Máxima of the Netherlands visited San Francisco this week to celebrate her country’s economic ties with California, a UC Davis couple was on hand to celebrate their own Dutch connections and to represent the campus. Husband and wife psychology professors George “Ron” Mangun, who is American, and Tamara Swaab, who is Dutch, were invited guests at a Sept. 6 royal reception at San Francisco City Hall.

College Faculty Lead Three UC Davis ‘Grand Challenges’

by Kathleen Holder
September 01, 2022

Four focus areas for UC Davis’ first “Grand Challenges” are bringing together experts from across the campus to address climate change, emerging health threats and sustainable food systems — and to reimagine the university itself.

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Annaliese Franz Named Fellow of the American Chemical Society

by Kathleen Holder
August 16, 2022

Annaliese Franz, professor of chemistry, was recently selected as a 2022 American Chemical Society Fellow. Franz is one of 45 chemists across the country named in August as 2022 fellows for their outstanding contributions to science, the chemistry profession and the ACS.

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Air Pollution, Including During Wildfires, Shows Ill Effects in Children

by Karen Nikos-Rose
August 08, 2022

Science

New research linking air pollution data from federal monitors in the Sacramento area of California, including during significant fires, is showing ill effects of pollution exposure among children, a new UC Davis study suggests.

Scientists Pinpoint 1 Reason Why Women May Not Respond to Depression Treatments the Same as Men

by Karen Nikos-Rose
July 13, 2022

Science

Although treatments for depression exist, sometimes these treatments don’t work for many who use them. Furthermore, women experience higher rates of depression than men, yet the cause for this difference is unknown, making their illnesses, at times, more complicated to treat. UC Davis researchers teamed up with scientists from Mount Sinai Hospital, Princeton University, and Laval University, Quebec, to try to understand how a specific part of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, is affected during depression.

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International Society Honors Memory Research Pioneer

by Kathleen Holder
June 27, 2022

Charan Ranganath, a professor of psychology and director of the UC Davis Memory and Plasticity Program, has been selected for a Psychonomic Society 2022 Mid-Career Award for his research on the science of human memory. Ranganath is one of three scholars worldwide chosen to receive the award from the international society.

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Long Ago, Far Away and Hard to See

by Andy Fell
June 24, 2022

Science

The ancestors of galaxy clusters, the largest structures in the universe, have been identified by a team of astronomers including Brian Lemaux, who is affiliated with the UC Davis Department of Physics and Astronomy. Galaxies in the newly identified protoclusters are surprisingly sparse and dim, which may be why they have been so difficult to find until now. The work was published June 15 in Nature. The first galaxy clusters formed as matter began to clump together after the Big Bang. Galaxies formed within them and eventually, clusters and superclusters contained thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. Conditions inside the cluster influence the size, shape and color of galaxies.