Research

A group of UC Merced's researchers will focus their expertise on the campus in an effort to determine what can be done to ensure the university has a diverse faculty as it continues to grow.

A team of researchers led by IBM, including a pair of professors from the University of California, Merced, unveiled today a new generation of experimental computer chips designed to emulate the brain's abilities for perception, action and cognition. The result could be processors that use much less power and far less space than those found in today's computers.

An increase in wildfires due to climate change could rapidly and profoundly alter the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, according to a new study authored by environmental engineering and geography Professor Anthony Westerling of the University of California, Merced.

A relatively simple combination of naturally occurring sugars and amino acids offers a plausible route to the building blocks of life, according to a paper published in Nature Chemistry co-authored by a professor at the University of California, Merced.

The prolonged, extensive emission of greenhouse gases over the next several decades could have significant impacts on ocean life, according to a study by UC Merced marine biologist Michael Beman.

Increases in carbon dioxide emissions — exacerbated by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities — are making ocean water more acidic, and Beman's study shows that the increased acidity will fundamentally alter the way nitrogen cycles throughout the sea.

Researchers at the University of California, Merced, have devoted years of hard work to finding solutions to some of the world's most challenging problems.

The campus' Office of Research has released a publication that showcases many of those solutions, from technologies that increase the efficiency of solar energy collectors to medical developments that could limit the reproduction of the hepatitis C virus or the spread of HIV to materials that could improve the performance of lithium-ion batteries.

University of California, Merced, cognitive science Professor Teenie Matlock has been given Sigma Xi's 2011 Young Investigator Award for excellence in research.

Sigma Xi is an international research organization founded in 1886 to honor excellence in scientific investigation and to encourage a sense of companionship and cooperation among researchers in all fields of science and engineering.

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.

A cap-and-trade system is more likely than a carbon tax system to trigger the adoption of clean energy technologies, according to a study by Professor Yihsu Chen at the University of California, Merced.

The study — coauthored by Chung-Li Tseng of the University of New South Wales in Australia and published this month in The Energy Journal, a quarterly journal of the International Association for Energy Economics — also found that the volatile pricing of a cap-and-trade system could lead to earlier adoption of clean technology by firms looking to hedge against carbon cost risks.

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.