School of Natural Sciences

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Professor Helps Identify New Giant Galapagos Tortoise Species

Professor Danielle Edwards is part of a team of researchers that made a huge discovery recently about two groups of giant Galapagos tortoises — they are actually two different species.

The team’s paper, entitled “Description of a new Galapagos Giant Tortoise Species (Chelonoidis; Testudines: Testudinidae) from Cerro Fatal on Santa Cruz Island,” appears online today in the journal PlosOne.

Professor’s Invention Helps Scientists Win Nobel Prize

Professor Roland Winston's designs contributed to a Nobel Prize-winning experiment.Professor Roland Winston has been tracking the Sudbury Neutrino Experiment since it began in the 1980s, because he invented the light collectors the scientists built

UC Merced Researchers Gathering Data to Tackle California’s Water Crisis on Multiple Fronts

Note: This story originally ran in the Fall 2015 issue of UC Merced Magazine.

By Joel Patenaude

California, long envied by the rest of the country for its climate, beauty and natural resources, is four years into a drought and in the midst of a water crisis a century in the making.

With Gov. Jerry Brown imposing mandatory water restrictions on residents, the state’s staggeringly complex water woes have taken the sheen off at least some of the California dream.

Despite Constraints, UC Merced Enrollment Continues to Grow

First day of fall classesEnrollment at the University of California, Merced, this fall has climbed to another all-time high of 6,685 students — an increase of 6.7 percent over Fall 2014, according to headcount figures compiled during the third week of instruction.

From Africa to the Arctic, Scientist Carries Interdisciplinary Spirit

Professor Marilyn Fogel went from the heat of Africa to the chilly fjords of Norway this summer to lend her biogeochemical perspective to two international, interdisciplinary, intercollegiate research projects.