UCSC in the News

December

December 02, 2024 - The Washington Post
Enter the ‘ether,’ where scammers weaponize your emotions

Anthony Pratkanis, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, co-wrote a source book for fraud fighters. “We’re looking at it from the outside, and we may not see all the little details and trappings that create that powerful situation for the targeted victim,” he said.
December 02, 2024 - Los Angeles Times
Elevated radiation detected at former Bay Area landfill turned art park

State-ordered environmental testing has uncovered elevated levels of cancer-causing radiation at the Albany Bulb, a former municipal landfill for construction debris that now features scenic hiking trails and a sprawling collection of outdoor art. The new testing adds to the serious public health and safety concerns for one of the Bay Area’s most cherished coastal spaces. Gamma radiation is particularly concerning as this high-frequency energy can move through solid objects and human tissue, damaging DNA molecules and raising a person’s risk for cancer, according to Daniel Hirsch, retired director of environmental and nuclear policy at UC Santa Cruz. “It’s like subatomic bullets being fired at the cells,” Hirsch said. “There is no safe level. Every level carries some risk.”
November 30, 2024 - Washington Post
Animations of coiled hair for Black film characters improve with new algorithms

The Washington Post highlights research from Professor A.M. Darke. Her recent work helped create programs for better animating coily hair. This work will help create better representation in animation.

November

November 25, 2024 - The Guardian
Revealed: how a San Francisco navy lab became a hub for human radiation experiments

The navy’s San Francisco lab was one of many research centers and hospitals across the country that exposed people to radiation and other hazards for scientific purposes. That makes it a demonstration of “the ways that people have been seen as disposable, to science or to the military”, said Lindsey Dillon, a UCSC assistant professor of sociology who is among a handful of academics familiar with the lab’s history. Daniel Hirsch, the retired director of UCSC's former Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy, says the lab demonstrated a remarkable disregard for radiation’s hazards and a cavalier attitude toward human health, even by the permissive standards of the time. Originally published in the San Francisco Public Press, with an accompanying podcast.
November 22, 2024 - Mongabay
Huge deforested areas in the tropics could regenerate naturally, study finds

Karen Holl, professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the research, noted that it’s critical to include local communities in regeneration efforts. Holl’s own research in Costa Rica has shown that people often see natural forest regeneration as “messy,” and they tend to place more value on planted landscapes. What’s also important is how long these forests last once they’ve regrown, Holl said. “We sort of assume that the land is growing back, and the large-scale data suggests that it’s not as permanent as it seems,” she added. “The problem is that you can’t map people’s decision-making at large scales.”
November 20, 2024 - Los Angeles Times
California's rainy season begins with a bomb cyclone bang. Are we in for a third record wet winter?

“This is welcome to a certain extent, it moves us away from fire risk by wetting down ecosystems,” said Michael Loik, a professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz. “On the other hand,” he added, “it can be too much of a good thing too quickly.”
November 15, 2024 - Financial Express
India and the US elections

Nirvikar Singh, distinguished professor of economics at UC Santa Cruz, argues in this op-ed that the importance of the recent U.S. elections for India cannot be overstated. The political landscape in the U.S. has shifted dramatically.
November 14, 2024 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
UC Santa Cruz awarded $4 million grant to address systemic racism, ableism in K-12 math

The National Science Foundation awarded more than $4 million in grant funding to UC Santa Cruz to support a project aimed at addressing systemic racism and ableism in K-12 math education. “I really want teachers in mathematics education to have better ideas, resources and pedagogies to teach all of their students,” said assistant professor of elementary mathematics education and project lead Paulo Tan. “The big hope is that we can challenge the systemic barriers in math education in a meaningful way.”
November 14, 2024 - The Guardian
Washington state farm workers worry about boom in legal foreign workers

Rosa Navarro, a sociology doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, researches the guest worker program’s expansion in Washington state. Farm workers have told her that some farms replaced their entire workforce with guest workers, and advocates say that the H-2A program is making inroads with agricultural sites that haven’t used its workers before.
November 06, 2024 - Good Times
The Hills are Alive: Concerned residents are saving wildlife from deadly crashes…and saving drivers

Good Times covered research by Chris Wilmers through the Santa Cruz Puma project, particularly how findings from the project are informing efforts to protect pumas from traffic fatalities. Wilmers calls a new wildlife crossing tunnel on Laurel Curve “the best opportunity for maintaining puma connectivity across Highway 17 in Santa Cruz County.”
November 26, 2024 - Popular Science
Great Red What? Check out Jupiter's giant, magnetic tornado

Jupiter’s immense size–about 1,000 Earths could fit inside of it–and its swirling and jiggly Great Red Spot typically get most of the attention. Now, the planet’s northern and southern poles have entered the discussion. A team of astronomers that includes Xi Zhang, a professor of planetary sciences, have discovered equally large spots at both poles that appear and disappear seemingly at random. Additional coverage by Forbes, Earth.com, Space.com, Cosmos Magazine, and other news outlets.
November 25, 2024 - Oceanographic Magazine
Whale-ship strikes reduced if 2.6% of ocean made safer

“Trade-offs between industrial and conservation outcomes are not usually this optimal,” said co-author Heather Welch, a research scientist with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and the University of California, Santa Cruz. “Oftentimes, industrial activities must be greatly limited to achieve conservation goals, or vice versa. In this case, there is a potentially large conservation benefit to whales for not much cost to the shipping industry.” Additional coverage in the Conversation, Earth.com, Eco Magazine, the Guardian, and others.
November 22, 2024 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
Stuck in the muck: Scientists study carbon trapped by Elkhorn Slough

Scientists are measuring how much carbon dioxide Elkhorn Slough can suck from the atmosphere. Their research is funded by a $3.5 million grant awarded in 2022 by the University of California Office of the President. It is part of a broader effort to find ways to remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. “Wetlands are one of the best natural systems to sequester CO2,” says Adina Paytan, a principal investigator at the UCSC Center for Coastal Climate Resilience. She is leading the study.
November 22, 2024 - CleanTechnica
Earthquake And Remembrance: The Tsunami Of 2004

Some of the answers could be forthcoming under a research project at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where professor Emily Brodsky is working on a $1.1 million Department of Energy grant aimed at studying the potential to induce earthquakes from different kinds of human activity including geothermal wells and groundwater management systems as well as fracking and carbon sequestration.
November 19, 2024 - Scientific American
Should Offshore Oil Rigs Be Turned into Artificial Reefs?

Mark Carr of the University of California, Santa Cruz, wrote that there are few natural rock reefs at the depths of the California oil platforms and none with comparable physical characteristics. If the goal is to contribute to overall reef area, their value is “minuscule.” If, however, the intent is to preserve their unique habitats, their value is “100 percent.”
November 13, 2024 - Smithsonian Magazine
Voyager 2 Measured a Rare Anomaly When It Flew Past Uranus, Skewing Our Knowledge of the Planet for 40 Years, Study Suggests

“The Uranus system is one of the big blank spots that are left on our map,” said Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
November 22, 2024 - Artforum
Dreams of Dakar

Artforum, one of the world's leading art magazines, highlighed the work of UC Santa Cruz Humanities Professor Gina Athena Ulysse in its story about the prestigious Dakar Biennale (Dak'Art). A featured artist at the Biennale, Ulysse, a prolific Haitian-American scholar and artist, has a vibrant installation on the facade of the Ancien Palace de Justice, where the exhibition is being held in Senegal.
November 20, 2024 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
UC Santa Cruz Theater Arts lives up to a smart adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s ‘Inspector General’

Professor and Chair of the Department of Performance, Play & Design Michael Chemers reimagined the classic Russian play Inspector General for a new era. Santa Cruz Sentinel writer Jake Thomas gives the play a stunning review, in large due to its "ability to inspire reflection." Inspector General will be playing until the end of this week, with its last show on November 23, 2024.
November 16, 2024 - Broadway World
World Premiere of ‘Here Comes the Night’ to Open at Moving Arts Theatre

UC Santa Cruz alumna Hailey McAfee, who graduated with a B.A. in Theater Arts, is currently directing a new play. Here Comes the Night is set to premiere in Los Angeles in January and run through mid-February.
November 14, 2024 - Allure
We’re Much Closer to A Disney Princess With Type 4 Hair

A.M. Darke, a UC Santa Cruz professor of Performance, Play, and Design, recently released a paper with a colleague from Yale focusing on their research in animating coily hair. Animation didn’t even include texture in Black hair until 2021 with Disney’s Encanto. Darke’s research is game changing in the field of animation and will lead to greater representation in film, video games, and more.
November 12, 2024 - San Francisco Chronicle
A mysterious deep-sea creature appeared in Monterey Bay. Now scientists are finally telling the world

In 2000, a team of scientists first laid eyes on what they would later call the Mystery Mollusk via a remotely operated vehicle at 8,576 feet. After 150 viewings, many rounds of measurements, some genetic studies and 24 years later, a scientific description of the animal with the scientific name Bathydevius caudactylus has been published. The description was co-written by Steven Haddock at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz.
November 12, 2024 - Modesto Bee
S.F.’s Ocean Beach could be transformed with massive seawall. Surfers are not happy

An upcoming scientific article about the impact of development on California beaches by geologist Gary Griggs of UC Santa Cruz and coastal engineer Bob Battalio called armoring and repeated beach nourishment solutions that are expensive and only "effective over a few decades at best."
November 11, 2024 - Australian Broadcasting Network
Composing music with AI isn't new, but recent advances have serious implications for the music industry

As AI quickly advances there are a lot of questions about its ethics. But whether it is good or bad there is no denying that AI plays a major role in the future of music making. One of the early pioneers of AI music was David Cope, a UC Santa Cruz professor emeritus of music. His work with computers starting in the 1980s laid the groundwork for the music we have today.
November 12, 2024 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
UC Santa Cruz’s ‘Inspector General’ updates classic political play

The UC Santa Cruz Arts Division is premiering a new play this week. Inspector General, which is an adaption of a Russian play by the same name, raises a conversation around political corruption in the modern day. The Santa Cruz Sentinel spoke to Michael Chemers, the chair of the department of Performance, Play, and Design who wrote the play, to break down its importance in relation to contemporary politics.
November 01, 2024 - Mother Jones
Environmental Justice? Not if Project 2025 Has a Say.

Mijin Cha, a professor of environmental studies at University of California, Santa Cruz, says Inflation Reduction Act grant programs could be improved by providing benefits more directly to underserved people. “The federal government gives money to a third party, and then that third party distributes the money,” says Cha. “Is it not more efficient to just have that be a direct investment?” Project 2025, however, would eliminate these programs entirely.
November 02, 2024 - BBC Wildlife Magazine
As scientists plot to bring back the dodo, Helen Pilcher asks whether we should—and what would happen if we did

In 2022, geneticist Beth Shapiro from the UC Santa Cruz, who is a scientific advisor to Colossal Biosciences, decoded the dodo’s genome. Scientists at Colossal are now determining the sequences which they will edit into cells collected from the dodo’s closest living relative, the Nicobar pigeon. Then, just as for the passenger pigeon, the edited cells will be used to create adult birds that create dodo sperm and eggs.
November 01, 2024 - Washington Post
How to use AI to help plan your vote

University of California, Santa Cruz Associate Professor of History Benjamin Breen was featured in a Washington Post story about using AI chatbot technology to help voters research long and complex ballots.
November 01, 2024 - The Atlantic
MAGA is tripping: Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign has cemented the right’s romance with psychedelics.

University of California, Santa Cruz Associate Professor of History Benjamin Breen, author of Tripping On Utopia: Margaret Mead, The Cold Ward, and The Troubled Birth Of Pscyhedelic Science, was featured in an Atlantic Monthly feature story about the American hard right's recent embrace of psychedelics.

October

October 30, 2024 - The Jewish News of Northern California
Founder of Center for Monster Studies isn’t scared when the lights go down

Michael Chemers, the chair of the department of Performance, Play, and Design and the founder of the Center for Monster Studies, talks about his role in monsters studies. In this Q&A for The Jewish News of Northern California Chemers explores monsters through the lens of Judaism, in particular discussing the golem which comes from Jewish folklore.
October 28, 2024 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
Guest Commentary | Immigrant safety at risk from election rhetoric

Political leaders who use racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric are directly harming safety and wellbeing in our communities, write UC Santa Cruz faculty members Regina Day Langhout and Saskias Casanova. Recent research conducted in Santa Cruz County supports this assertion. In Fall 2023, youth researchers in United Way of Santa Cruz County’s Alzamos la Voz program worked with undergraduates and faculty from the University of California, Santa Cruz to analyze data from a survey of over 500 Santa Cruz County community members. Findings showed the importance of immigrant safety for the wellbeing of all community members.
October 25, 2024 - Financial Express
Growth, jobs and manufacturing

Distinguished Professor of Economics Nirvikar Singh argues that increases in productivity and wages that come from investment in human capital are going to benefit a larger slice of the population than investment in physical capital that substitutes for workers, though both kinds of investment matter.
October 24, 2024 - WIRED
This App Set Out to Fight Pesticides. After VCs Stepped In, Now It Helps Sell Them

Silicon Valley–style venture capital places enormous emphasis on scale and a startup’s ability to grow rapidly, says Madeleine Fairbairn, a sociologist at UC Santa Cruz, who studies agriculture and food systems. “Everybody’s used to this claim that we have a growing population, and they’re going to starve if we don’t feed them,” she says. For Fairbairn, this is a failure of imagination. “If the imperative for corporate and venture capital profit and rapid funder exit could be decentered from this drive for digital agriculture, it could potentially be something really amazing,” she says.
October 31, 2024 - Los Angeles Times
A deadly fungus that has killed millions of bats may have arrived in Southern California

“Those early kind of signals can be helpful for understanding the progression of the fungus, of where it’s getting to,” said Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International and an adjunct professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz.
October 30, 2024 - earth.com
Weddell seals have a surprising survival strategy

“Weddell seals live in one of the most hostile environments on the planet and need to keep their internal clock running during periods when the sun never sets or when the sun never rises,” noted Daniel Costa, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
October 24, 2024 - Voices of Monterey Bay
Monsters under the microscope

Professors Michael Chemers and Renée Fox are featured in an article about the Center for Monster Studies, an interdisciplinary space where scholars from across the academic spectrum can come together to explore the role of monsters in culture, literature, politics, and even science and technology. The GoodTimes also featured the center.
October 24, 2024 - earth.com
Military sonar does a lot more damage to dolphins than previously disclosed

Scientists from UC Santa Cruz and their collaborators have achieved something monumental — they’ve managed to directly measure the behavioral responses of these dolphins and unraveled some surprising findings. Also covered by Study Finds, Interesting Engineering, and others.
October 23, 2024 - Radio New Zealand
Our Changing World: Lead bullets – a health risk to humans and kea

Myra Finkelstein is an adjunct professor in the microbiology and environmental toxicology department at the University of California Santa Cruz and a world-leading researcher in the detection and impacts of lead on human and animal health. Myra's pioneering work with California condor has shown that the ingestion of lead from lead-based ammunition is preventing the highly endangered species from recovering.
October 18, 2024 - New York Times
Gaming’s Uneven Progress Toward Diverse Female Figures

Soraya Murray, a professor of Film and Digital Media here at UC Santa Cruz, was interviewed about female representation in video games. Women are often overtly sexualized in video games, and there have been calls for more diversity in the gaming industry.
October 17, 2024 - Mongabay
Largest dam removal ever, driven by Tribes, kicks off Klamath River recovery

Environmental studies Ph.D. student, artist, and Yurok Tribe restoration engineer Brooke Thompson celebrated dam removal on the Klamath River. “This has been 20-plus years in the making, my entire life, and why I went to university, why I’m doing the degrees I’m doing now,” she said. “I feel amazing. I feel like the weight of all that concrete is lifted off my shoulders.”
October 16, 2024 - Lookout Santa Cruz
Building brighter futures in Santa Cruz County: Join us in building homes, communities, and hope!

Habitat for Humanity Monterey Bay shared findings from a collaborative study with UC Santa Cruz's Center for Economic Justice and Action on the improvements in economic stability, mental and physical well-being, family relationships, and community involvement that come from receiving housing.
October 11, 2024 - High Country News
Migrating birds find refuge in pop-up habitats

A program that pays rice farmers to create wetland habitats is a rare conservation win, and UC Santa Cruz conservation ecologist Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela explains why. “We thought we could rely on protected areas to conserve habitat globally, and we now know that’s not enough, and we need to complement that with a suite of different conservation strategies,” she said. While market-based solutions shouldn’t be the only answer, she said, they are “a piece of the puzzle.”
October 09, 2024 - AFP/France 24
British skull auction sparks Indian demand for return

UC Santa Cruz Anthropologist and Director of the Center for South Asian Studies Dolly Kikon recently helped stop the sale of Indigenous remains and demanded repatriation. Kikon is a member of the Recover Restore and Decolonise (RRaD) initiative, which works to return ancestor remains to their rightful communities.
October 07, 2024 - KQED
Uber and Lyft’s Appeal in California Labor Case Won’t Be Heard by Supreme Court

The Supreme Court's decision to kick a case on pay and benefits for gig workers back to state courts means there’s a continuing lack of clarity, according to UC Santa Cruz Sociology Professor Steve McKay, who directs the university’s Center for Labor and Community. “When we have a system where employers pay for a lot of the benefits, who’s covered and how?" McKay said. "That’s actually falling more and more to the state to provide that then, if employers aren’t doing it.”
October 06, 2024 - Seattle Times
Two WA men were arrested in mental health crises. Only one survived

Across the country, jails have become “the default placement” for people in mental crisis, said Craig Haney, a University of California, Santa Cruz, psychology professor. “In worst-case scenarios, that can have fatal consequences,” because mentally ill people “oftentimes react badly to the oppressive nature” of jail environments, Haney said.
October 18, 2024 - The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
New faculty appointments for six black scholars

New art and photography professor Jonathan Jackson included in a list honoring black faculty in higher education. Jonathan Jackson has joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz as an assistant professor of photography.
October 20, 2024 - CBS News
Scientists say they've made a breakthrough in efforts to bring back the extinct Tasmanian tiger

Colossal Biosciences in a Thursday press release said its reconstructed thylacine genome is about 99.9% complete, with 45 gaps that they'll work to close through additional sequencing in the coming months. ... "The thylacine samples used for our new reference genome are among the best preserved ancient specimens my team has worked with," said Beth Shapiro, Colossal's chief science officer and the director of the UCSC Paleogenomics Lab, where the samples were processed. "It's rare to have a sample that allows you to push the envelope in ancient DNA methods to such an extent."
October 15, 2024 - Daily Mail
Global warming is NOT surging, scientists say

The team stress that a surge in global warming may be happening – just that it's not detectable yet. "Of course, it is still possible that an acceleration in global warming is occurring," said lead author Claudie Beaulieu, a professor of ocean sciences at UC Santa Cruz. "But we found that the magnitude of the acceleration is either statistically too small, or there isn’t enough data yet to robustly detect it." Also covered by AFP Fact Check, Carbon Brief, NY Breaking, and other outlets.
October 15, 2024 - Yahoo News
Incredible discovery on deep ocean floor: 'Could not believe our eyes'

Andrew Fisher, a hydrogeologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz wasn't involved in the study, but he explained why the incredible breakthrough has important implications when it comes to cosmic exploration such as that on Europa, Jupiter's moon. "Where there is space, life often finds a place to take hold," Fisher said. "When probes finally land on Europa and burn through the ice to explore the underlying ocean, I would not be surprised if they find hydrothermal flow, but [finding] life is a bigger challenge." Also covered by the Austrialian Broadcasting Co.
October 10, 2024 - Los Angeles Times
Opinion: When Trump talks 'bad genes' and 'racehorse theory,' he is telling us who he is

Among those aghast at this pseudo-science was Beth Shapiro, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz: “This is eugenics,” she tweeted. “As President of the American Genetics Association and a human, I reject this. We are better than this.” Also quoted in Scientific American.
October 18, 2024 - Jacobin
You Know About the KKK, but What About the Black Legion?

Description
January 01, 2020 - Alta
Trekking to Delta

Alta Journal is publishing a five-part serialization of “Trekking to Delta,” a historical essay by acclaimed novelist Karen Tei Yamashita, University of California, Santa Cruz Emerita Professor of Literature.
October 08, 2024 - KBPS
Scientist looks for DNA evidence to trace the migration of his Polynesian ancestors

Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Alex Ioannidis was quoted in a KPBS story about research he is working on to trace genetic evidence of the migration of ancient Polynesian people.
October 09, 2024 - Tech Xplore
Study addresses challenges in digital animation of coiled hair

A. M. Darke, a UC Santa Cruz professor of Digital Arts and New Media, participated in a project to help animate coily hair. This research aims to help created animated characters who are Black with more realistic hair patterns. Previous animation work made curls go all in one direction, but this new research created an algorithm for a curling pattern with switchbacks that more closely resembles real-life coily hair.
October 10, 2024 - People
How Netflix’s “Rez Ball” Spotlights Indigenous Sports

Netflix's new movie, "Rez Ball", which premiered late in September highlights indigenous people in sports. The movie stars UC Santa Cruz student, Kauchani Bratt, who is also the nephew of the popular actor Benjamin Bratt. In the article Kauchani talks about his heritage and how he ended up in the movie.
October 10, 2024 - Los Angeles Times
Opinion: Trump says he'll expel a million immigrants. Believe him. It's happened before.

Dana Frank, University of California, Santa Cruz Research Professor and History Professor Emerita wrote an opinion piece showing "a chilling precedent'' for Donald Trump's threats of mass expulsions if elected president. "During the Great Depression, when many falsely blamed Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans for the economic crisis, as many as a million were forced out of the country, a majority of whom were U.S. citizens," she wrote.
October 10, 2024 - New York Times
When Harlem Was ‘as Gay as It Was Black’

Sir Isaac Julien, University of California, Santa Cruz Distinguished Professor of the Arts and Humanities, was featured prominently in a New York Times feature story, "When Harlem Was 'as Gay as It Was Black,' mapping the people, homes and hot spots that transformed the neighborhood during its Renaissance. Julien is an acclaimed filmmaker and artist.
October 09, 2024 - Lookout Santa Cruz
Festival of Monsters brings insight, scholarship to Halloween season

Lookout highlights the UC Santa Cruz Center for Monster Studies and professor Michael Chemers, the director of the program. October's annual Festival of Monsters highlights monster storytelling on stage, on screen, and more. This years festival is done in collaboration with the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.
October 08, 2024 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
Circus performance, silent film screening among Festival of Monsters highlights

Every year the Center for Monster studies, a multidisciplinary program in the Arts Division, hosts The Festival of Monsters. Through various performances, movies, and collaborations with outside organizations UC Santa Cruz celebrates the history of monsters and what they mean to our culture. Culminating in a monster ball, the next few weeks will be filled with exciting events that are open to the public.
October 07, 2024 - Tech and Science Post
Ending jet lag: Scientists discover secret to regulating our body clock

“Our findings pinpoint to three specific sites on CK1δ’s tail where phosphate groups can attach, and these sites are crucial for controlling the protein’s activity. When these spots get tagged with a phosphate group, CK1δ becomes less active, which means it doesn’t influence our circadian rhythms as effectively," said Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Carrie Partch, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz and corresponding author of the study. "Using high-resolution analysis, we were able to pinpoint the exact sites involved—and that’s really exciting.”
October 05, 2024 - Popular Science
Are you my baby? The clever ways that brood parasites trick other birds

“There’s always something new — it’s like, ‘Oh, man, this group of birds went down a slightly different pathway,’” says behavioral ecologist Bruce Lyon of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who studies the black-headed duck, the sole obligate parasitic duck species.
October 03, 2024 - Oceanographic
Exploring California's enchanting kelp forests

According to the a study from the University of California, Santa Cruz, led by adjunct professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Tim Tinker, satellite imagery has shown a dramatic reduction in kelp forest coverage, plummeting by over 95% in certain areas of the state. In Northern California, only isolated patches of healthy bull kelp remain. The decimated areas have been overtaken by what scientists refer to as "urchin barrens," where purple sea urchins dominate rocky reefs that were once vibrant with kelp and other algae.
October 02, 2024 - National Geographic
Europa is an icy ocean world—and NASA is finally going to explore it

Hubble images from around a decade ago hinted that such plumes could be erupting. But “all the detections have been at the detection limits,” says planetary scientist Francis Nimmo of the University of California, Santa Cruz. “If [the plumes] exist, then they're pretty intermittent, and they may not actually be there at all.”
October 02, 2024 - Mongabay
Across reforestation organizations, best practices claims abound, but details are scarce

Mongabay covered prior research by Environmental Studies Professor Karen Holl on the practices of tree-planting organizations and shared news about a new phase of the research, starting this month, in which the team plans to investigate links between reported practices and reforestation outcomes.
October 02, 2024 - Science
To slow global warming, could methane be stripped from the air

Science interviewed Environmental Studies Professor Sikina Jinnah about a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that recommends a two-phase approach for studying the need and potential for methane removal technology in the United States. Jinnah was a member of a special committee formed by the organization to help develop a research agenda on methane removal.

September

September 25, 2024 - NPR
How can we bring extinct species back from the dead?

“It's the icon of how awful we can be,” says Beth Shapiro, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. “They went extinct within just a few decades of people first appearing on Mauritius, which is the only place that dodos ever lived.” Shapiro is also a MacArthur Fellow, which scientists commonly refer to as the “Genius Award.”
September 26, 2024 - CNA
Explainer: What sparked Sudan’s civil war and humanitarian crisis

Politics Professor Mark Fathi Massoud gave a 15-minute interview about the ongoing conflict in Sudan, including the history that led to the current civil war.
September 26, 2024 - Los Angeles Times
Opinion: Imperial County residents deserve to benefit from a potential lithium boom

Environmental Studies and Sociology Professor Chris Benner, who is the faculty director for the Institute for Social Transformation, co-wrote an opinion article about the need for local communities to benefit from lithium extraction in the Salton Sea region. More detailed coverage is available in The Conversation.
September 25, 2024 - The New York Times
Silicon Valley Renegades Pollute the Sky to Save the Planet

Environmental Studies Professor Sikina Jinnah explained the harms of unregulated and uninformed solar geoengineering efforts, like the group Make Sunsets. “They are a couple of tech bros who have no expertise in doing what they’re claiming to do,” she said. “They’re not scientists and they’re making claims about cooling credits that nobody has validated.”
September 17, 2024 - Financial Express
Deficits, debt and India’s growth prospects

Distinguished Professor of Economics Nirvikar Singh wrote an opinion article for Financial Express about the fiscal architecture necessary to managing public debt and deficits in India.
September 17, 2024 - Space.com
A 'primordial' black hole may zoom through our solar system every decade

"The black holes we consider in our work are at least 10 billion times lighter than the sun, and are barely larger in size than a hydrogen atom," said study co-author Sarah Geller, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Additional coverage in the Earth.com, Futurism, Gizmodo, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and Popular Mechanics.
September 18, 2024 - The 19th
Trump’s claims about Haitians draw from a centuries-long narrative. These women explain why.

Haitian-American anthropologist Gina Athena Ulysse, a professor of Humanities at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was quoted in detail in a news story by The 19th about former president Donald Trump's debunked comments about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Ulysse said that she's tired of defending her personhood and identity. Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Ulysse wrote a book called “Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle” because she found the dehumanizing remarks about Haitians then disturbing.
September 13, 2024 - WIRED
The Bird Flu Outbreak Takes a Mysterious Turn

“Regardless of the source, it’s concerning, because it suggests that there’s a lot of the virus out there,” says David Boyd, a virologist at UC Santa Cruz who studies influenza. “This indicates that there is widespread transmission among animal sources.”
September 10, 2024 - The Scientist
A Neural Circuit That Helps Flies Stay on Course

“These behaviors that they're looking at, goal-directed steering, are universal to animals that navigate,” said Daniel Turner-Evans, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the studies. “It's just beautiful to see how these behaviors unfold across these different layers and different neurons in the brain, and how you can create these really nice conceptual and quantitative models that really match the anatomy and the biology.”