June 06, 2023
When it comes to bumblebees, does size matter?
While honeybee workers are all the same size, that’s not true for bumblebees. Scientists aren’t sure what’s behind the wide variety in bumble body sizes, but a new UC Riverside project aims to find out.
May 23, 2023
Prescribed burns encourage foul-smelling invaders
Though prescribed burns reduce wildfire threats and even improve habitat for some animals, new research shows these fires also spread stinknet, an aptly named weed currently invading superblooms across the Southwestern U.S.
May 17, 2023
Are Earth and Venus the only volcanic planets? Not anymore.
Imagine an Earth-sized planet that’s not at all Earth-like. Half this world is locked in permanent daytime, the other half in permanent night, and it’s carpeted with active volcanoes. Astronomers have discovered that planet.
May 09, 2023
Earth’s first animals had particular taste in real estate
Even without body parts that allowed for movement, new UC Riverside research shows — for the first time — that some of Earth’s earliest animals managed to be picky about where they lived.
April 26, 2023
Australian fossil goldmine opens permanently
Land where a UC Riverside paleontology professor unearthed whole communities of Earth’s oldest animals is opening today to the public as a new national park in the Australian Outback.
April 18, 2023
Not such small things: microplastics in our streams
UC Riverside scientists are taking a modern approach to studying a murky subject — the quantity, quality, and sources of microplastics in Los Angeles County’s urban streams.
April 17, 2023
Methane from megafires: more spew than we knew
Using a new detection method, UC Riverside scientists found a massive amount of methane, a super-potent greenhouse gas, coming from wildfires — a source not currently being accounted for by state air quality managers.
April 13, 2023
Researchers warn of tick-borne disease babesiosis
UC Riverside and Yale University team sequences and mines genome of the pathogen Babesia duncani
April 06, 2023
Manganese in Central Valley water threatens fetuses and children
Water in California’s Central Valley contains enough manganese to cause cognitive disabilities and motor control issues in children, and Parkinson’s-like symptoms in adults.
March 27, 2023
Surprise effect: Methane cools even as it heats
Most climate models do not yet account for a new UC Riverside discovery: methane traps a great deal of heat in Earth’s atmosphere, but also creates cooling clouds that offset 30% of the heat.
March 27, 2023
Even Sonoran Desert plants aren’t immune to climate change
In North America’s hottest, driest desert, climate change is causing the decline of plants once thought nearly immortal and replacing them with shorter shrubs that can take advantage of sporadic rainfall and warmer temperatures.
March 23, 2023
Without this, plants cannot respond to temperature
UC Riverside scientists have significantly advanced the race to control plant responses to temperature on a rapidly warming planet. Key to this breakthrough is miRNA, a molecule nearly 200,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
March 22, 2023
Hunting Venus 2.0: Scientists sharpen their sights
With the first paper compiling all known information about planets like Venus beyond our solar system, scientists are the closest they’ve ever been to finding an analog of Earth’s “twin.”
March 16, 2023
Humans bite back by deactivating mosquito sperm
New UC Riverside research makes it likely that proteins responsible for activating mosquito sperm can be shut down, preventing them from swimming to or fertilizing eggs.
March 07, 2023
The planet that could end life on Earth
A terrestrial planet hovering between Mars and Jupiter would be able to push Earth out of the solar system and wipe out life on this planet, according to a UC Riverside experiment.
February 28, 2023
Breathing is going to get tougher
When global temperatures increase by 4 degrees Celsius, harmful plant emissions and dust will also increase by as much as 14 percent, according to new UC Riverside research.