Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

a man says " it 's important to me " in front of a fire

UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 2d

Astrophysicist Adam Reiss will give a talk at UC Davis Nov. 4 about the Surprising Expansion History of the Universe #Expanse @ucdlands.bsky.social lettersandsciencemag.ucdavis.edu/news-notewor...

Alt: A bearded man says " it 's important to me " in front of a fire

media.tenor.com

UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 2d

Lab experiments show how cold, clear mountain lakes like Tahoe could change as the climate warms www.ucdavis.edu/climate/news...

Lake Tahoe Algae Experiment Suggests Seasonal Shifts Ahead

As the climate warms and nutrient inputs shift, algal communities in cool, clear mountain lakes like Lake Tahoe will likely experience seasonal changes, according to a study from the University of Cal...

Nobel Prizes honor great discoveries — but leave much of science unseen

Reposted by UC Davis Egghead

Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 2d

It's Nobel Prize week! If you've ever wondered how exactly people decide who wins one...here you go: www.sciencenews.org/article/nobe...

Longer more detailed version here: www.snexplores.org/article/nobe...

Thing I learned: Even when people try their hardest to avoid bias, the system gets you...

The Nobel Prize might be the most famous science prize but it celebrates just a narrow slice of science and very few scientists.

www.sciencenews.org

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Reposted by UC Davis Egghead

UC Davis College of Letters & Science @ucdlands.bsky.social · 6d

Personality is more flexible than we think. @ucdavis.bsky.social researchers studied daily behaviors and the Big Five traits over multiple years, showing how our personalities shift with time.

Do you know your Big Five? Visit our magazine to find out.

Take the Big Five Inventory of Personality Traits and Learn about What It Means for You

The Big Five inventory of personality traits is the only scientifically supported model of human personality endorsed by scientists and scientific societies. Take this test to get your scores on the B...

lettersandsciencemag.ucdavis.edu

Newly Recognized Pathway Could Protect Diabetics from Hypoglycemia

UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 6d

New work from @huisinglab.bsky.social at UC Davis shows how delta cells in pancreatic islets dampen insulin production and prevent a sudden drop in blood sugar. It could lead to new ways to help people with diabetes. www.ucdavis.edu/news/newly-r...

A new study by the University of California, Davis, shows how cells work together to avoid a sudden drop in blood sugar. Understanding these feedback loops could improve the lives of people with diabe...

UC Malaria Initiative Expands Acivities to Equatorial Guinea

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Reposted by UC Davis Egghead

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 7d

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

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UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 7d

Equatorial Guinea recently announced Vision 2030, a plan to eliminate malaria from the central African country. The plan includes UC Malaria Initiative researchers who aim to use gene drives to eliminate malaria-carrying mosquitoes @ucdavisvetmed.bsky.social www.ucdavis.edu/blog/uc-mala...

The University of California Malaria Initiative, which includes researchers at UC Davis, will partner in the Republic of Equatorial Guinea’s Vision 2030 strategy to eliminate malaria from the Central ...

UC Davis Researchers Develop Theoretical Model to Determine How Pilgrimages Can Emerge

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Reposted by UC Davis Egghead

Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.bsky.social · 8d

You might have heard that we are all made of star dust. Here’s a little more about what that means. 🧵

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UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 7d

Every year, millions of people of every faith make religious pilgrimages. UC Davis anthropologists studying a new pilgrimage site in Peru have come up with a model to understand how these journeys of faith and hope get established @ucdlands.bsky.social www.ucdavis.edu/news/uc-davi...

Pilgrimages are ubiquitous across all major world religions.

Research Impact - UC Davis Office of Research Annual Report 2025

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UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 7d

In the past year, UC Davis received $961M in research funds - and also filed 187 new inventions, secured 70 patents and generated $2 billion in economic activity in California 2025researchimpact.ucdavis.edu

Research at UC Davis not only yields discoveries that improve lives, it drives economic growth and fuels our nation’s global leadership in technology and innovation. Advancements in areas like agricul...

2025researchimpact.ucdavis.edu

Turning Food Scraps into Opportunities

UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 8d

From shells and skins to undersized or damaged fruit, there's value in what food processing leaves behind. The new Byproduct Database at UC Davis will help find new uses for waste material @ucdaviscaes.bsky.social www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/tu...

UC Davis researchers have created an online tool to track food scraps and turn them into useful products.

Psilocybin May Present Unique Risks During the Postpartum Period

UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 8d

New treatments for postpartum depression are needed and psychedelics are a candidate. But a new UC Davis study in mice raises red flags about psilocybin @ucdavisipn.bsky.social @ucdlands.bsky.social www.ucdavis.edu/news/psilocy...

Magic mushrooms may not be the answer to postpartum depression, new research from the University of California, Davis, suggests.

A billion-dollar drug was found in Easter Island soil – what scientists and companies owe the Indigenous people they studied

UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 9d

The blockbuster drug rapamycin has been central to Ted Powers' career in molecular biology. But as Powers learned about rapamycin's origins, he became convinced a debt is owed to the indigenous people of Rapa Nui, where the drug was discovered
theconversation.com/a-billion-do...

Cancer. Diabetes. Aging itself. Rapamycin’s potential to treat an array of diseases has been a source of scientific fascination. But many aren’t aware of its origins – and its complicated legacy.

theconversation.com

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UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 14d

Human eggs and sperm have to have the right number of chromosomes. Work led by UC Davis biologist Neil Hunter is uncovering how this critical event happens www.ucdavis.edu/news/landmar...

Landmark Discovery Reveals How Chromosomes Are Passed From One Generation to the Next

When a woman becomes pregnant, the outcome of that pregnancy depends on many things — including a crucial event that happened while she was still growing inside her own mother’s womb. It depends on th...

AI Tool to Help Farmers Measure Real-Time Crop Health from the Field

UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 14d

If an almond farmer wants to know the nutrition status of his trees, it can take 2-3 weeks to get lab results. A new UC Davis invention brings that down to five seconds. @ucdaviscaes.bsky.social @ucdavisengineering.bsky.social www.ucdavis.edu/news/ai-tool...

Leaf Monitor, a new mobile tool backed by artificial intelligence and predictive modeling, could revolutionize how farmers monitor crops and make decisions by providing real-time nutrition and leaf tr...

Valley Fever Is Spreading Across the Arid West, Affecting People and Dogs

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UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 15d

The fungal disease Valley Fever thrives in the dry soil of California's Central Valley and other western states. Often misdiagnosed, researchers are finding that cases in dogs can help predict spread in people www.ucdavis.edu/health/news/...

A soil fungus fuels valley fever, now reaching beyond California and Arizona due to climate change. UC Davis doctors and veterinarians trace the threat.

UC Davis Researchers Look at How the Brain Prioritizes What We See

UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 15d

Is that a bird, or a baseball coming right at me? Researchers at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain study how the brain prioritizes attention www.ucdavis.edu/news/uc-davi...

How we focus our attention before we even see an object matters. For example, when we look for something moving in the sky, our expectation would be very different if the object is a bird flying past ...

From the Field to the Classroom: Soccer Analytics and Data Science at UC Davis

Reposted by UC Davis Egghead

UC Davis College of Letters & Science @ucdlands.bsky.social · 19d

Soccer looks different when studied through the lens of analytics. At @ucdavis.bsky.social, students are discovering how data shapes the game from tactical decisions to player recruitment.

Turns out, numbers can tell a pretty exciting story about the world’s most popular sport.

Read more:

UC Davis statistician Alexander Aue saw the growing usage of statistics in sports as an opportunity to bring the real world into the classroom. His First-Year Seminar class Soccer Analytics is a crash...

lettersandsciencemag.ucdavis.edu

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UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 19d

AI has revolutionized study of protein structure and design. UC Davis researchers are taking part in two new NSF-backed projects to apply AI-driven protein engineering in industry. www.ucdavis.edu/news/federal...

Federal Grants Support Research on AI-driven Protein Design

Two projects at the University of California, Davis, that use artificial intelligence to design and engineer proteins for industrial and health applications have been funded by the U.S. National Scien...

Constitutional Law and Students Who Help Their Peers Keep up with Whats at Stake

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Reposted by UC Davis Egghead

UC Davis College of Letters & Science @ucdlands.bsky.social · 21d

#DidYouKnow that today is #ConstitutionDay?

Supreme Court decisions on immigration, education, and funding aren’t just headlines; they’re shaping lives in real time. At @ucdavis.bsky.social, undergraduates are making sense of constitutional complexity with the support of peer learning assistants.

Learning assistants in political science guide their undergraduate peers through the complexities of the U.S. Constitution in a moment when the outcomes of Supreme Court cases on immigration, universi...

lettersandsciencemag.ucdavis.edu

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UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 22d

A new study of samples from asteroid Ryugu finds that asteroids from the early Solar System may have been much wetter for much longer than previously thought, potentially delivering that water to Earth and other planets @ucdlands.bsky.social www.ucdavis.edu/blog/hayabus...

Hayabusa-2 Sample Return Mission Suggests Protracted Wetter Asteroids

New results from the Hayabusa-2 space probe show that asteroids formed at the very beginnings of our Solar System retained substantial amounts of water for hundreds of millions of years, potentially d...

The Texas Flood Tragedy was Predictable, but was it Preventable?

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UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 23d

The Texas flood tragedy was predictable, but was it preventable? We need a new approach to flood management and community resilience, writes Kathleen Schaefer in the California WaterBlog @ucdaviswater.bsky.social californiawaterblog.com/2025/09/14/t...

By Kathleen Schaefer Photograph: Brandon Bell/Getty Images In the wake of recent tragic events, such as the devastating floods in Texas, it’s become clear that our current approach to flood m…

californiawaterblog.com

Alissa Kendall Appointed Director of the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies - Office of Research

UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 23d

Congratulations to Alissa Kendall, new director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at UC Davis! Kendall succeeds founding director Dan Sperling. @ucdavisresearch.bsky.social research.ucdavis.edu/alissa-kenda...

The Office of Research at UC Davis is pleased to announce the appointment of Alissa Kendall, the Ray B. Krone Endowed Professor of Environmental Engineering, as the new director of the UC Davis Instit...

research.ucdavis.edu

UC Davis Egghead @ucdavis-egghead.bsky.social · 23d

Video: Smaller, cheaper bioreactors could bring plant biomanufacturing to remote regions on Earth as well as deep space missions youtu.be/uyRSjfW_NRw?...

Plant Biomanufacturing on Earth and in Space

YouTube video by UC Davis College of Engineering

youtu.be