News Briefs
May 20, 2020
Scientists who normally study how human activities impact the planet have been given a rare opportunity over the past few months to observe what happens when industry, transportation and other sources of carbon emissions are curtailed.
May 15, 2020
About ten years ago, teaching courses online was still in its infancy, and many people saw the practice as mostly “gimmicky,” explains Professor Philip Collins of the UCI Department of Physics & Astronomy. But that didn’t stop Collins from moving his classes online long before most others followed suit. He has worked to improve online course delivery ever since, and for his ongoing efforts Collins recently received the Excellence in Digital Learning Award from UCI.
May 14, 2020
Irvine, Calif., May 14, 2020 — A $1.5 million gift from philanthropist Roy Eddleman to the University of California, Irvine School of Physical Sciences will support the creation of a research institute focused on ushering in the future of quantum science.
Apr 24, 2020
WHAT DID THE 2010 EARLY CAREER AWARD ALLOW YOU TO DO?
The motility of electrons within a molecule is at the very heart of chemistry. Moving electrons drive molecular reactions and allow electrical conductance. Despite the fundamental nature of electron flow within molecules, it has remained extraordinarily difficult to measure the exact spatial and temporal electron dynamics in molecular systems.
Apr 22, 2020
Katherine Mackey studies the boundary between the living and the nonliving worlds. She wants to know how those two worlds define one other, as things like aquatic microorganisms can alter the chemistry of the water they live in, and the chemistry of the water can then affect the kinds of organisms able to live there.
Apr 22, 2020
In January, UCI chemistry doctoral student Brenna Biggs visited a dairy farm in Visalia, California where there are lagoons churning with cow manure. Biggs drove around the farm in a white Sprinter van owned by the University of California, Riverside, and the van had nothing in its trunk but empty space and lab equipment.
Apr 21, 2020
As the pandemic rages, Department of Earth System Science Chair Eric Rignot defines what coronavirus means for climate change and those who study it.
Apr 20, 2020
This simulated galaxy image, representing a structure spanning more than 200,000 light-years, shows the prominent plumes of young blue stars born in gas that was originally rotating and then blown radially outward by supernova explosions.
Apr 16, 2020
The air that pours into your lungs when you breathe travels, on average, at about 10 centimeters a second. But it’s often not just air you’re breathing. There can be dust, pollen, soot and bacteria in air, and now, floating inside the droplets that people emit when they cough and sneeze and talk, there can be coronavirus.
Apr 8, 2020
When a snake bites, it can inject a toxic cocktail of venom that can kill soft tissues in the body. The venom can be fatal — between 81,000 and 138,000 people die every year from snake bites, according to the World Health Organization — which is one of the reasons why Ken Shea in the Department of Chemistry, along with a team of researchers, just made a new synthetic antivenin that could help treat far more snake bites than is possible right now.
Apr 3, 2020
For work, Francisco Mercado spends his days thinking about stars and metals. He usually does his thinking at UCI in Frederick Reines Hall where he works during the week as a third-year graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. But when there’s a pandemic, Mercado can do his work just as well at home where he lives in the Campus Village. Mercado’s an astrophysicist who studies how metals distribute themselves in faraway galaxies, and since he does all his work on a computer,…
Apr 3, 2020
Coronavirus is not the only virus plaguing humanity. Human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, began befalling us in 1981, and with about 32 million people dead to date due to complications caused by the virus, it has yet to loosen its chokehold.