Researchers at the University of California, Merced, have discovered a new way in which bone health impacts a person's immune system.

The discovery could impact how scientists try to combat bone-related disease, as drugs to improve bone quality could weaken a person's immune system.

"The bone does have an influence on the basic biology of blood development," immunology Professor Jennifer Manilay said. "This interdisciplinary research shows the need to look at the whole organ."

Researchers with the University of California, San Francisco, and UC Merced will examine the effectiveness of state and local antismoking programs across the United States in an effort to make sure health authorities are able to use their increasingly limited resources to support and defend the most effective approaches.

UC Merced may still be a young campus, but that doesn't prevent its students from striving for audacious goals. One enterprising group of students aspires to change the face of how diabetes is managed in the Merced area.

The University of California, Merced, has formed a partnership with the UC Davis School of Medicine to begin training medical students in the San Joaquin Valley.

The first cohort of six medical students will enter the program in Fall 2011. Fred Meyers, M.D., executive director of Medical Education and Academic Planning for UC Merced, will present details of the program to the UC Board of Regents this afternoon (Sept. 15). The presentation is for informational purposes only. Meyers also is a professor and executive associate dean in the UC Davis School of Medicine.

The University of California, Merced, and UC Davis School of Medicine announced today the first cohort of students who are expected to enroll this fall in the UC Merced San Joaquin Valley Program in Medical Education (PRIME).

The two campuses announced in September a partnership to begin educating medical students in the Valley. A gift to UC Merced from the United Health Foundation in 2006 is helping to fund the new program.

The students are:

The opening of a major urban rail system in Taiwan caused a meaningful reduction in air pollution, according to a forthcoming study by two professors at the University of California, Merced.

Self-identified social smokers are less likely to try to quit and to avoid smoking for more than a month, according to a national study in the American Journal of Public Health conducted by professors at the University of California, Merced, and UC San Francisco.

The University of California, Merced, today announced the appointment of Donald M. Hilty, M.D., to the position of co-director of the UC Merced San Joaquin Valley Program in Medical Education. The appointment is the latest step in the university's long-term plan to develop a medical education program leading to an independent medical school.

Hilty will work alongside Frederick J. Meyers, M.D., who was named executive director of medical education and academic planning at UC Merced in fall 2008.