In June 2019, we caught up with seven soon-to-be graduates (now our newest alumni) to ask them about what they love most about UC Davis and how well their time in and out of the classroom prepared them for their next chapter. Here are their answers.

Our brains are hard-wired to remember insults and attacks — which explains why so many political campaigns go negative. Research by psychology professor Alison Ledgerwood also finds a bright side: You can train your brain to flip the script.

Published in 1969, the Slant Step Book celebrated a thrift store find that became, and remains, a part of UC Davis art department lore. The Slant Step is a green linoleum-covered plywood stool with a slanted – and seemingly nonfunctional – step that has inspired artists for decades.

Delve into popular conspiracy theories this month with a new podcast from Kathryn Olmsted, professor of history in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science. Olmsted has launched a four-episode “State of Conspiracy” series on the site Crooked Media.

 

Artists and scientists led by UC Davis College of Letters and Science faculty will merge their talents and techniques, both physical and mental, to challenge themselves during a weeklong symposium in Paris.

Many people mistakenly think of evolution as progress. But humans, despite their ability to manipulate objects and change their environment, are not “on top” of the world’s species. Research by Lynn Isbell, chair of the UC Davis Department of Anthropology, suggests that ancestral humans and other primates developed different strategies to find food and avoid predators.

Excitement for a biodegradable diaper designed by UC Davis students just keeps growing, like the bacterial cellulose the diaper is made from. The student group, dubbed Team Sorbit, was motivated to create the diaper by data showing about 4 million tons of disposable diapers end up in landfills, and the plastic and tree-pulp derived cellulose used in most diapers isn’t environmentally friendly.

Stone tools uncovered in Mongolia by an international team of archaeologists indicate that modern humans traveled across the Eurasian steppe about 45,000 years ago, according to a new University of California, Davis, study. The date is about 10,000 years earlier than archaeologists previously believed.

Boosting a single molecule in the brain can change “dispositional anxiety,” the tendency to perceive many situations as threatening, in nonhuman primates, researchers from UC Davis, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found. The molecule, neurotrophin-3, stimulates neurons to grow and make new connections. The finding provides hope for new strategies focused on intervening early in life to treat people at risk for anxiety disorders, depression and related substance abuse. Current treatments work for only a subset of people and often only partially relieve symptoms. 

It is well known that men benefit reproductively from having multiple spouses, but the reasons why women might benefit from multiple marriages are not as clear. Women, as a result of pregnancy and lactation, can’t reproduce as fast as males. But new research by UC Davis challenges evolutionary-derived sexual stereotypes about men and women, finding that multiple spouses can be good for women too.