News Archive 2014-2015

Adventures on the JOIDES Resolution: Masters student Millie Levin is blogging about her experiences on a scientific expedition off the coast of Australia. For the next two months, as part of her M.S. research, she will be on the JOIDES Resolution, a 143-meter long research vessel that drills sediment cores for the International Ocean Drilling Program.
From KQED Science: Geologic Highlights of California's New National Monument. The Berryessa-Snow Mountain Region: Its Remarkable Geologic Features" by Eldridge and Judith Moores.
"No. 1 in impact in life and earth sciences" from UC Davis Dateline. A new CWTS Leiden ranking of research impact puts UC Davis first in the world in the category of life and earth sciences.
From Sacramento News & Review: "Mars needs this woman - UC Davis scientist Dawn Sumner's work here on Earth might answer whether there's life out there."
"#GirlsWithToys: Women in Lab Coats Prove Science Isn't Just For Guys" - from The Takeaway: an interview with Dawn Sumner
Professor Tessa Hill's work is featured in a California food video series collaboration between UC and renowned New York food writer Mark Bittman. "Mark Bittman: California Matters," a 10-part video series launching May 11, was produced by the University of California and Berkeley Food Institute. "What Oysters Reveal About Sea Change'"
Rob Zierenberg was a guest scientist aboard Leg 5 of the MBARI 2015 Gulf of California Expedition. The purpose of this leg was to study the seafloor-spreading ridges of the Alarcon Rise and Pescadero Basin and volcanic seamounts nearby, with the objective to understand the tectonic and volcanic processes of the ridges and the transition from spreading ridge to bounding transform faults.
"Sea change: What took decades to destroy in oceans took millennia to recover" - from UC Davis News. Tessa Hill is a co-author on this study.
"Impact vaporization of planetesimal cores in the late stages of planet formation" - Sarah Stewart is a co-author on the paper published in Nature Geoscience. Violent collisions between the growing Earth and other objects in the solar system generated significant amounts of iron vapor. Read more at http://blogs.ucdavis.edu/egghead
From the Sacramento Bee: Dawn Sumner discusses the Mars One mission.
"Science at your door: Climate change impacts felt on West Coast" - from the Davis Enterprise. Tessa Hill is profiled in this series featuring UC Davis scientists who are presenting their work at the AAAS Annual Conference.
"Smothered oceans: Extreme oxygen loss in oceans accompanied past global climate change" - Tessa Hill is a co-author on this recent study published in PLOS ONE. The study arose from a graduate level course taught at UC Davis by Hill in winter 2013.
Sarah Gaudio, former Ph.D. Geology Graduate Student with Chip Lesher, is the first author on "Deciphering Compression Mechanisms in Albite Liquids". It was selected as one of the Editors' picks of notable articles published in January's issue of American Mineralogist: Journal of Earth and Planetary Materials.
"Study casts doubt on mammoth-killing cosmic impact" - from UC Davis News Service. Peter Thy is lead author on the study which discredits the controversial theory that a cosmic impact triggered the Younger Dryas cold period.
"The next Napa earthquake could be much bigger, scientists find". From UC Davis News Service: a team of geologists and graduate students from the UC Davis Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences found that the West Napa Fault line is longer than previously thought, and capable of a much stronger, more destructive earthquake in the future.
"Strange Fossil Shows How Life Responded After Mass Extinction" from LiveScience. Ryosuke Motani is a co-author.
Discoveries By Curiosity Rover On Mars: Dawn Sumner is a guest on Insight With Beth Ruyak, Capital Public Radio.
NOAA, partners provide real-time ocean acidification data to Pacific coast shellfish growers. The work includes Tessa Hill's monitoring station in Tomales Bay at Hog Island Oyster Company. They are providing real time pCO2, temperature, salinity (and soon, oxygen) at this site. It is all publicly available, and funded by NOAA.
Free Documentary Screening: Becoming California. November 12 from 4:30-7:00 pm; UC Davis Student Community Center (SCC) Multi-Purpose Room. Becoming California is a documentary that will explore our past, present and future relationship with California's natural environment. Participating UC Davis professors and JMIE affiliates: Robert Bettinger, Tessa Hill, Eldridge Moores, Jeffrey Mount, Peter Moyle and Kevin Rice.
"First amphibious ichthyosaur discovered, filling evolutionary gap" - Ryosuke Motani is the lead author on a a paper published in the journal Nature.
Howie Spero, the 2014 Faculty Research Lecturer Award recipient, will be presenting a public lecture, "The Paleoceanography Frontier: Geochemistry, Marine Plankton and 21st-Century Technologies" on Thursday, October 30th.
Charles Lesher and his former PhD student Eric Brown publish their recent research findings in Nature Geoscience. Compositional variations in the mantle can generate anomalous magmatism, calling into question the need for hot, upwelling mantle plumes. Numerical simulations, however, point to a plume source for the North Atlantic large igneous province. Read an interview with them in the egghead blog.
Dawn Sumner, graduate student Tyler Mackey and Lucy Coleman, a middle school teacher from Natomas, are guests on Capital Public Radio. Ms. Coleman will be traveling to Antarctica with Tyler through the PolarTREC program, an NSF program that connects teachers with field scientists in polar research.