Lorena Anderson

The Earth is changing, and humans face major challenges if they hope to adapt, survive and preserve any semblance of the world as it is now.

Humans will need to create sustainable food, water and energy supplies; curb climate change; eliminate pollution and waste; and design efficient, healthy and resilient cities. To support these efforts, they will also need to enhance society’s ability and will to make informed decisions and act; and develop leaders who are prepared to address a sustainable future.

Clinicians searching for a new way to identify Valley fever patients who will develop the disease’s worst symptoms will find hope in a new paper by UC Merced Professor Katrina Hoyer .

In some ways UC Merced is still a blank canvas, even 13 years after opening.

But that just gives this year’s artist in residence Otto Rigan more room to dream as he helps devise a master arts plan for the campus.

“I think the campus is beautiful,” Rigan said, “but it’s missing the unexpected…the voice of the arts. If there had been an arts plan in place all along, art could have been integrated as new buildings emerged.”

Imagine exploring the cores of stars to understand — and ultimately control — the type of fusion that’s taking place.

High-energy density (HED) science is the study of properties and behavior of matter and radiation in extreme temperatures and pressures common to the deep interiors of the largest planets. It’s also the foundation of understanding fusion energy and high-energy astrophysical phenomena, and it’s happening at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, just 75 miles from UC Merced.

The genomes of ancient Andean settlers reveal a complex picture of human adaptation, including when they became able to digest starches and how evolutionary modifications allowed them to live at such high altitudes.

A new paper co-authored by UC Merced Professor Mark Aldenderfer illuminates the changes that took place between initial settlement and the 16th-century colonial period.

The California Teachers Association (CTA) indicates the state faces a massive shortage of highly qualified teachers – especially those who can teach math, science and special education — and early childhood caregivers and educators.

Studies show these shortages disproportionately affect students in high-poverty, rural areas, students from low-income families and students of color, amplifying the persistent achievement gaps between those students and wealthier peers.

Psychology Professor Eric Walle ’s Interpersonal Development Lab will recruit local infants and mothers as an important and unique part of a large-scale study focusing on the development of young children.

Led by scientists at New York University and Pennsylvania State University, the Play and Learning Across a Year (PLAY) project involves 65 researchers across the United States and Canada and is funded by a $6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

If you’re an American with Internet access, you’ve probably done it. You get a headache, a sniffle or a mystery bruise, and instead of seeing your doctor, you consult “Dr. Google.”

According to some studies, more than 80 percent of Americans have used the Internet to “self-diagnose” health issues. UC Merced public health communication Professor Susana Ramirez’s new partnership with an eHealth startup aims to help people get quality information and find out what they do with it once they have it.

Chemistry and chemical biology Professor Ryan Baxter recently became the campus’s 22nd recipient of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) prestigious early CAREER awards for untenured faculty.

The $647,000 he received from NSF will mostly go toward paying student research assistants and purchasing supplies to help advance his lab’s work developing new strategies for initiating radical chemical reactions to engineer mild experimental protocols.

To further his fundamental research into solid oxide fuel cells and other high-temperature electrochemical energy systems, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Professor Min Hwan Lee its prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award.

The grant brings the campus’s total to 20 recipients, but his award is the first for the mechanical engineering department.