Biochemistry Professor Andy LiWang has spent much of his career studying how life keeps time. His work on the circadian clock of cyanobacteria — tiny, ancient organisms that share the planet with us — has shed light on one of biology’s most elegant systems.
But his newest research project, supported by a prestigious $1.2 million grant from the William M. Keck Foundation, pushes that inquiry into bold, uncharted territory.
As nations cut emissions that once fueled urban smog, scientists are discovering unexpected chemistry taking place in the atmosphere.
UC Merced Professor Xuan Zhang is leading a project to uncover how these chemical shifts could affect the air we breathe and the climate. The project is supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
Zhang is the 43rd researcher from UC Merced to earn a CAREER award from the NSF.
In addition to being used recreationally, marijuana and cannabidiol, or CBD, one of the cannabinoids produced by the marijuana plant, are thought to have medical benefits such as helping with chemotherapy-induced nausea, treating epilepsy, relieving pain and helping with a variety of mental health issues.
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology Professor Chris Amemiya, former interim director of the Health Sciences Research Institute, has been honored by the Pan American Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology (PASEDB) with the Service Award.
More than 100 million land mines remain buried around the world, posing a threat in approximately 70 countries and territories, and killing or injuring about 5,000 people, most of them civilians, every year.
As the world’s geopolitical landscape shifts, nine scientists studying different aspects of warfare ecology from seven countries — Poland, Ukraine, Norway, Spain, the United States, Finland and Croatia — are warning against the growing deployment of land mines as countries bordering Russia withdraw from global conventions restricting their use.
Professor Andy LiWang knows what makes us tick, at least at a cellular level.
His research into the mechanisms of the oldest biological clock known to humankind has led him to understand how proteins — and hence cells — can tell time.
It has also led the UC Merced biochemist to become this year's recipient of the prestigious Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin award, sponsored by the Rigaku Corporation and given by The Protein Society (TPS).
The National Institutes of Health are backing Professor Clarissa Nobile ’s mission to understand the mechanisms by which microbes form biofilms, specifically those that can be hazardous to human health.
An average of more than 1 million acres of idled farmland a year is a significant contributor to a growing dust problem in California that has implications for millions of residents’ health and the state’s climate.
California’s Central Valley, famous for producing much of the food Americans eat, is also infamous for its inferior air quality and its high rates of poverty, housing insecurity and at-risk workers.
Increasing epidemiological evidence has shown a correlation between long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and the incidence of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD).
Areas with severe PM2.5 pollution — including the Central Valley — are often inhabited by low-income residents who are disproportionately affected by these environmental hazards.
