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.
The face already plays an important role in communication, but a group of UC Davis computer scientists led by doctoral student Shuyi Sun is taking this to the next level. The team is designing facial jewelry that can use signals from a person’s facial muscles to send wireless commands to at-home devices like Alexa and Google Home.
Two UC Davis College of Letters and Science students will travel to Morocco and Brazil this summer for intensive foreign language and cultural studies as part of a U.S. Department of State program. Charles Sills, a history doctoral student, and Carlie Whiteman, an undergraduate communication major, are among five UC Davis students selected by the State Department as 2022 Critical Language Scholars.
As COVID-19 upended societal norms when it swept through the United States in 2020, a second pandemic — or “infodemic” — was also on the rise. An analysis of Twitter users by researchers at UC Davis and the University of Texas, Austin, suggests that Republican-identifying people who believe their local government has positive intentions are vulnerable to believing politically fueled COVID-19 misinformation. The study did not find the same trend among Democrat-identifying Twitter users.
When you're "in the zone" — experiencing flow — what is your brain doing? In a study of 140 video game players, a UC Davis assistant professor of communication and cognitive science found that flow involves energy-efficient networking of brain regions.
The American Public Health Association recently presented Jingwen Zhang, a UC Davis assistant professor of communication, with its 2021 Ayman El-Mohandes Young Professional Public Health Innovation Award. One of the association’s top awards, it recognizes a public health professional, age 40 or younger, who is using an innovative solution to address a complex public health issue.
A study by UC Davis College of Letters and Science researchers finds that the framing of sexual assaults — and the use of some linguistic features in news reports — can contribute to uncivil social media posts.
Facebook recently awarded two grants to the Department of Communication researchers in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science to study misinformation and polarization on social media.
While a life-altering pandemic has caused a substantial uptick in anxiety and depression symptoms among adults and children alike, LGBTQ+ youth have turned to peers in anonymous online discussion forums for support. New research from UC Davis suggests these LGBTQ+ teenagers — who already experience disproportionate levels of psychological adversity — exhibited increased anxiety on the popular r/LGBTeens subreddit throughout 2020 and the start of 2021.
Seven College of Letters and Science faculty are among 16 UC Davis scholars honored by the Academic Senate and Academic Federation this year. The Academic Senate’s highest honor, the Faculty Distinguished Research Award, goes to Gail Goodman, distinguished professor of psychology.
