Media Coverage
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Santa Cruz Sentinel
Fishing vessels as sentinels of ocean health
“We found that the location of fishing vessels accurately revealed how heat waves impact target species. The tuna mirrored the fishing vessels: shifting north and inshore during The Blob but remaining in place during the following marine heat waves.” – By Heather Welch is a marine ecologist at UC Santa Cruz who uses big data…
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The Register
Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Johns Hopkins showed that, in simulated trials, AI systems and the large vision language models (LVLMs) underpinning them would reliably follow instructions if displayed on signs held up in their camera’s view.
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Art Review
The 10 exhibitions to see in February 2026
Acclaimed artist, filmmaker, and Distinguished Professor of The Arts and History of Consciousness Isaac Julien’s exhibition All That Changes You. Metamorphosis was featured in ArtReview’s roundup of the top ten exhibitions to see in February.
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Smithsonian Magazine
Rare Mountain Lion Standoff in San Francisco Ends Peacefully After a 30-Hour Search
“Males will often travel far out,” says Chris Wilmers, an ecologist at UC Santa Cruz and the lead researcher of the Santa Cruz Puma Project. “They’re essentially trying to find a vacant territory, and the Santa Cruz Mountains are pretty trapped in by development on all sides. They wander, and they keep going, and they…
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International Health Policies Network
Immigration Enforcement in Minnesota: Not Just a Political, also a Public Health Crisis
Politics Ph.D. student Lucia Vitale argues that immigration enforcement in Minnesota is leading to deteriorating access to health care, widespread psychological distress, and the displacement of protective responsibilities from the state onto communities themselves.
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CBS News
Mountain lion spotted in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood captured by animal control
The Santa Cruz Puma Project was also called to help. It was founded in 2008 in partnership with UC Santa Cruz to research how mountain lions and their habitats are impacted by people and housing construction.
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Los Angeles Times
California’s iconic Highway 1 is fighting a losing battle against climate change. Can it survive?
“If our storm and other conditions were normal, we would expect closures and losses at some points,” said Michael Beck, director of UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Coastal Climate Resilience.
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Project Censored
Manufactured Borders, Manufactured Intelligence
Education department lecturer and political analyst Nolan Higdon dissects some recent news, focusing especially on AI: what can history tell us about the unintelligence of artificial intelligence, how deep fakes are crowbarring the political divide even further and deeper, the corporate capture of the classroom, and more.
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Education Week
What Trump’s $100,000 Visa Fee Could Mean for Schools
Education Department Chair Lora Bartlett wrote an opinion article explaining how new visa fees could affect school districts struggling with teacher shortages.
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Scientific American
Ancient bacterium’s genome could rewrite the history of syphilis
The discovery of the microorganism’s DNA in the man’s bones was made “totally by chance,” says Lars Fehren-Schmitz, one of the study’s co-authors and an anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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Science
Trove of Mexican genomes could help guide prescribing decisions
Risk of an adverse drug reaction may be influenced by specific Indigenous ancestry groups. Genetic studies using a broad population category such as “Latino” or even “Mexican” wouldn’t pick up these elevated risks, the researchers say. Yet that’s the level of detail usually available in large population-based gene banks, says Max Haeussler, head of the…
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Associated Press
Donald Trump thanks you for your attention to these matters in his second term
“The social media we’re talking about in Trump’s second term is not the social media of Trump’s first term,” said Nolan Higdon, a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he focuses on critical media literacy. For now, there are few brakes on Trump’s impulses.