Science

Starting a university from scratch isn’t for the faint of heart — or the slow of foot. Lucky for UC Merced, Anne Myers Kelley and David Kelley are neither.

Anne, a former Olympic marathon trials qualifier, and David, a competitive cyclist, were no strangers to long, grueling efforts when they packed up their lab gear and headed west from Kansas State University in 2003.

In addition to being used recreationally, marijuana and cannabidiol, or CBD, one of the cannabinoids produced by the marijuana plant, are thought to have medical benefits such as helping with chemotherapy-induced nausea, treating epilepsy, relieving pain and helping with a variety of mental health issues.

Department of Molecular and Cell Biology Professor Chris Amemiya, former interim director of the Health Sciences Research Institute, has been honored by the Pan American Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology (PASEDB) with the Service Award.

More than 100 million land mines remain buried around the world, posing a threat in approximately 70 countries and territories, and killing or injuring about 5,000 people, most of them civilians, every year. 

As the world’s geopolitical landscape shifts, nine scientists studying different aspects of warfare ecology from seven countries — Poland, Ukraine, Norway, Spain, the United States, Finland and Croatia — are warning against the growing deployment of land mines as countries bordering Russia withdraw from global conventions restricting their use.

Shark Week starts Sunday and Professor Sora Kim will be featured again this year in a special airing at 9 p.m. Monday, titled “Jaws vs. Mega Croc,” and the filming allowed her to swim with a Nile crocodile.

“I flew to Florida and learned about crocodiles – their evolution, strength, physiology and behavior. More interactions are being recorded between sharks and crocodiles these days, so I also needed to learn about these situations,” she said.

The National Institutes of Health are backing Professor Clarissa Nobile ’s mission to understand the mechanisms by which microbes form biofilms, specifically those that can be hazardous to human health.

UC Merced students pursuing degrees in chemical sciences now have access to a new source of financial support, thanks to a gift from two of the university’s most dedicated advocates.

Alumna Laura Showalter ’16, ’18 and UC Merced Foundation Diplomat Dr. Jane Binger have established the Showalter Binger Scholarship to assist promising students who demonstrate passion and perseverance on their journeys to becoming future scientific leaders.

With careful planning and a little luck, researchers found a surprising upside to hurricanes after a Category 4 storm disrupted their expedition off the coast of Mexico.

The team was able to sample the ocean right after the storm passed and found that the storms churn the ocean so powerfully and deeply — up to thousands of meters — that nutrient-rich, cold water is brought to the surface.

Two UC Merced graduate students and an alum from the School of Natural Sciences were recently awarded fellowships from the highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

This year, NSF awarded 1,000 GRFP fellowships compared to about 2,000 in previous years.

An average of more than 1 million acres of idled farmland a year is a significant contributor to a growing dust problem in California that has implications for millions of residents’ health and the state’s climate.