News

Study: Infants Recognize Surprise in Others Before Age 2

February 8, 2017

Infants as young as 20 months of age expect adults to display surprise when discovering a false belief, according to a new study from UC Merced Professor Rose Scott. Previous research suggested that children younger than 4 years old could not recognize when people held beliefs different from their...

Raindrops, Red Wine Inspire Solar Tech Advancements

February 6, 2017

In recent publications, Professor Vincent Tung proves that inspiration for advancements in materials science can come from anywhere — even the merging of raindrops on a windshield or the sheeting of red wine down the inside of a glass. Through those liquid movements, Tung discovered and optimized a...

New UC Grant Enables Deeper, Broader Valley Fever Research

February 1, 2017

Researchers at UC Merced are playing key roles in the new UC Valley Fever Research Initiative, studying how the Valley fever fungus, Coccidioides immitis, causes disease in its mammalian hosts, and identifying the genes involved in this process. School of Natural Sciences professors Clarissa Nobile...

‘Diverse’ Magazine Names Groundbreaking Professor an Emerging Scholar

January 26, 2017

The magazine Diverse: Issues in Higher Education has named UC Merced Professor Ala Qattawi an Emerging Scholar of the Year in its first issue of 2017. Qattawi, with the School of Engineering, is the first woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in automotive engineering, and the only automotive...

Bird Researcher Expands Knowledge About Reserve’s Kestrels

January 23, 2017

Kestrels are a fixture among the birds on the Merced Vernal Pools and Grassland Reserve adjacent to campus. Though they are not endangered, the small falcons’ population has declined by 60 percent in California over the past half-century because of changes in land usage. Nesting-box programs like...

Campus Provides ‘Inclusive Excellence’ Dialogue, Activities

January 19, 2017

Social Justice Initiatives and the Office of Campus Climate will host “Talking Circles,” a space to create dialogue about inclusive opportunities at UC Merced, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Jan. 20. The space is open to the campus community for reflection, quiet contemplation, crafting and individual ...

Artist-in-Residence Brings Theories of Flight to Classroom, Community

January 19, 2017

Spanish artist Olga Diego blends the concepts of art and engineering into the magic of flight. This semester, Diego is bringing her creativity and expertise to UC Merced as the campus’s newest artist-in-residence and lecturer. Diego, known partly for her playful and often-oversized inflatable...

Genetic Changes Made Native Americans Susceptible to Smallpox, Study Shows

January 18, 2017

A new study identifies genetic changes in Native Americans that came about when Europeans settled in the Pacific Northwest and might have played a major role in why so many natives died of infectious disease. In a new paper in Nature Communications, “A Time Transect of Exomes from a Native American...

Cognitive Scientist Earns Early Career Impact Award

January 13, 2017

UC Merced Professor Rick Dale is a recipient of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences (FABBS) Early Career Impact Award from the Society for Computers in Psychology. Dale, a cognitive scientist in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, studies how our bodies...

Students Building Living Machines Out of Engineered Tissues

January 11, 2017

There are many labs at UC Merced where visitors can see students huddled over microscopes and petri dishes, using tweezers to extract and examine different items. But no one at UC Merced has ever seen the likes of what’s going on in Professor Kara McCloskey’s class. The graduate and undergraduate...