Science
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The Pacific Coast Highway, a Mythic Route Always in Need of Repair
Gary Griggs, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has advised on a major repair to the route, said that he doubted the highway would ever again be open in its entirety for an extended period. “Attaining stability is impossible,” he said.
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Vitamin D may slow a process related to aging, new study suggests
Carol Greider, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz who won the 2009 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for her discovery of telomerase, an enzyme that protects telomeres from shortening, said that she was skeptical of the new study’s findings.
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How do clownfish survive a heat wave? By shrinking themselves down
Many animals around the world are getting smaller, says Alexa Fredston, a quantitative ecologist at University of California, Santa Cruz, who wasn’t involved in the study. … By measuring individual fish, “the results paint a fascinating and complex picture of how individual animals respond to a prolonged marine heat wave,” Fredston says.
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The Coyotes of San Francisco
“Did they walk over the Golden Gate Bridge?” asked Christine Wilkinson, a carnivore ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “That’s my top theory.” Once the first coyotes returned to the city, she said, they probably howled to attract others to follow. “Coyotes will be where they want to be,” Wilkinson said.
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As Coastline Erodes, One California City Considers ‘Retreat Now’
“We overall are much better at spending recovery money — that is, addressing issues after disasters — than we are at spending hazard mitigation,” said Michael Beck, director of the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience at the University of California, Santa Cruz. On the East Coast, the predominant strategy for protecting shorelines has been to…
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Intelligence on Earth Evolved Independently at Least Twice
“One of the reasons I kind of like these papers is that they really highlight a lot of differences,” said Bradley Colquitt, a molecular neuroscientist at UC Santa Cruz. “It allows you to say: What are the different neural solutions that these organisms have come up with to solve similar problems of living in a…
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Our moon may have once been as hellish as Jupiter’s super volcanic moon Io
“The moon gets sort of confused,” planetary scientist Francis Nimmo, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, told Space.com. “It doesn’t know exactly what orbit it should be adopting, and so it can develop kind of a weird orbit.”
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Bay Area universities reel from cuts in research funding from National Institutes of Health
“I think the big concern is, if this goes on too long, then we’re just going to lose a generation of researchers who are going to have to go find other jobs,” UC Santa Cruz biology professor Grant Hartzog said. “I’ve got a 21-year-old son who’s a biochemistry major and has been thinking about whether…
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Scientists once thought only humans could bob to music. Ronan the sea lion helped prove them wrong
Not many animals show a clear ability to identify and move to a beat aside from humans, parrots and some primates. But then there’s Ronan, a bright-eyed sea lion that has scientists rethinking the meaning of music. Ronan has been a resident at UC Santa Cruz’s Long Marine Laboratory, where UC Santa Cruz researchers have…
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Plastic is harming seabirds even more than we realized
A new study co-led by researchers at UC Santa Cruz shows that ingested plastic can release hormone-altering chemicals in northern fulmars, a species of seabird that inhabits the North Atlantic and North Pacific.
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Trump’s escalating attacks on research and education are hurting UC Santa Cruz – the public needs to act now
The Trump administration’s attack on scientific research will deeply affect UC Santa Cruz, write three eminent UC Santa Cruz professors: Needhi Bhalla, Susan Carpenter, and Carol Greider. Since Donald Trump took office, the campus has lost 10 NIH grants worth $6 million, they write. In the past two weeks, the professors have lost $2.8 million…
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Surprise atmospheric rivers, toxic seafood: How NOAA cuts could impact California
“Collaborations between universities and NOAA are powerful partnerships,” said Eric Palkovacs, professor and director of the Fisheries Collaborative Program at UC Santa Cruz. “They leverage the expertise and resources on both sides to do cutting-edge research.”