When COVID-19 reached pandemic level in March, two researchers in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science rapidly switched their focus to combatting the new coronavirus.
Jane-Ling Wang, distinguished professor of statistics, has received a Humboldt Research Award in recognition of her lifetime achievements in statistics.
Two faculty in the Department of Psychology — Professor Paul Hastings and Associate Professor Eliza Bliss-Moreau — have been named fellows of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). Hastings and Bliss-Moreau are among 51 psychologists in the newest class of APS fellows, selected for “sustained outstanding contributions to the science of psychology in the areas of research, teaching, service, and/or application.”
It has long been believed that people can’t change their personalities, which are largely stable and inherited. But a review of recent research in personality science points to the possibility that personality traits can change through persistent intervention and major life events.
Saturn’s tiny, frozen moon Enceladus is a strange place. Just 300 miles across, the moon is thought to have an outer shell of ice covering a global ocean 20 miles deep, encasing a rocky core. Slashed across Enceladus’ south pole are four straight, parallel fissures or “tiger stripes” from which water erupts. These fissures aren’t quite like anything else in the solar system.
Inuit sled dogs have changed little since people migrated with them to the North American Arctic across the Bering Strait from Siberia, according to UC Davis researchers and colleagues who have examined DNA from the dogs from that time span. The legacy of these Inuit dogs survives today in Arctic sled dogs, making them one of the last remaining descendant populations of indigenous, pre-European dog lineages in the Americas.
Although diamonds are mostly thought of as jewelry, synthetic diamonds are being explored for semiconductors because of their unique properties. Structurally identical to diamonds, synthetic diamonds are produced by a controlled process, as compared to natural diamonds, which are created by geologic processes.
New measurements of the rate of expansion of the universe, led by astronomers at the University of California, Davis, add to a growing mystery: Estimates of a fundamental constant made with different methods keep giving different results.
A new institute at UC Davis will advance the fundamentals of data science and prepare students to solve data analysis and machine learning problems in diverse fields.
A synthetic, non-intoxicating analogue of cannabidiol (CBD) is effective in treating seizures in rats, according to research by chemists at the University of California, Davis. The synthetic CBD alternative is easier to purify than a plant extract, eliminates the need to use agricultural land for hemp cultivation, and could avoid legal complications with cannabis-related products.
