A new study shows how the brains of Egyptian fruit bats are highly specialized for echolocation and flight, with motor areas of the cerebral cortex that are dedicated to sonar production and wing control. The work by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and UC Berkeley was published May 25 in Current Biology. Professor Leah Krubitzer’s lab at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience studies how evolution produces variation in brain organization across a wide variety of mammals, including opossums, tree shrews, rodents and primates. This comparative neurobiology approach shows how both evolution and development influence brain organization.
Suad Joseph, Distinguished Research Professor of Anthropology and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, is among a cohort of three interdisciplinary teams awarded $45,000 each from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) to advance public understanding of global religions. The new award builds on an ongoing UC Davis project on Muslim women and the media, as well as a New York Times media project, both led by Joseph. “Decolonizing the Representation of Muslim Women in the Media: Training Next Generation Journalists” is an extension of Joseph's 25 years as general editor of "Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures."
The image of young adults living in a hookup culture with emotionally meaningless relationships is a common theme in movies and daytime talk shows. But it seems not to be the norm in real college life, according to a study from UC Davis Psychology led by Paul Eastwick.
Attention unpublished Aggie alumni novelists! After a yearlong hiatus, the Maurice Prize for Fiction is back — and bigger than ever before. The $10,000 award, doubled in size this year, recognizes the best book-length prose fiction written by a UC Davis graduate who has not yet published or been accepted for publication by the contest deadline. Manuscript submissions are being accepted through July 15 for the 2022 contest.
Veterinarians and researchers at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and the Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Research — led by professor of mathematics Thomas Strohmer — have discovered a technique to predict leptospirosis in dogs through the use of artificial intelligence.
Filmmaker Joseph Patel won both an Oscar and a Grammy this spring for the documentary Summer of Soul. The UC Davis economics alumnus credits his success to campus radio station KDVS.
The culmination of two or more years and a lifetime of experience and exploration by UC Davis students, “The Arts & Humanities Graduate Exhibition” offers new ways to understand the world, ourselves and the issues we face. We spent time with three students from art studio, music and design to learn about their journeys of creating works that are in the exhibition.
Evidence from human and animal testing suggests the brain-altering effects of psychedelics could be repurposed for treating addiction. Now, researchers at University of California, Davis, and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus plan to screen hundreds of compounds to discover new, non-hallucinogenic treatments for substance use disorders.
To uncover something new, first you must look far into the past. That’s what the producers of the IMAX film Secrets of the Universe did, explaining how physics professor Manuel Calderón de la Barca Sánchez’s hunt for answers about what happened moments after the dawn of time is built upon scientific discoveries of the past.
Two students and three alumni of the UC Davis College of Letters and Science have been awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants to study and teach in other countries.
A five-year, National Institutes of Health-funded study that revealed new insights into teen bullying, dating violence and substance use is getting a sequel — this time looking at long-term impacts of racism.
Assistant professor Jesús Velázquez, a material chemist in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science, is one of 18 faculty in the U.S. selected as Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars for 2022. These faculty are within the first five years of their academic careers, have each created an outstanding independent body of scholarship and are deeply committed to education. Each Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar receives an unrestricted research grant of $100,000.
Three faculty members from the University of California, Davis, have been elected as members of the National Academy of Sciences. They are among 120 new members and 30 international members announced by the academy May 3.
When he was a college student, Pierpaolo Polzonetti was hired by an opera-loving cookbook author to research composer Giuseppe Verdi’s favorite recipes. There weren’t any, but it led Polzonetti to a fascination with what he dubs “gastronomic signs” in opera. Many years later, the result is the recently published book Feasting and Fasting in Opera: From Renaissance Banquets to the Callas Diet by Polzonetti, the Jan and Beta Popper Professor of Music at UC Davis.
Two professors from the University of California, Davis, have been elected as members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, including Archana Venkatesan of the College of Letters and Science. Pamela C. Ronald, Distinguished Professor in the College of Agriculture and Environment Science, was also elected to the academy.
