Researchers release report tying methane to air toxins in Aliso Canyon gas leak

UCLA researchers found higher than average levels of various toxic air pollutants in residential areas near the largest gas leak in U.S. history. In a study published in Environment International last month, researchers found that methane released in the 2015 Aliso Canyon blowout is linked to higher levels of other hazardous air pollutants in nearby […]

Pangolin Trafficking Project researchers voice concerns about pangolin awareness

Researchers in the UCLA Congo Basin Institute and Center for Tropical Research are using genomic tools to track down the global trafficking routes of pangolins and their scales. Ryan Harrigan, an ecology and evolutionary biology professor and researcher in the Pangolin Trafficking Project, said pangolins are severely endangered due to poaching for their scales, which […]

Do computers dream of algorithmic sheep? Symposium takes deep dive into dreams.

UCLA researchers are integrating artificial intelligence and psychoanalysis to unearth the mechanisms and purpose of human dreaming. Researchers gathered at The Science of Dreams symposium Wednesday and Thursday to discuss the neuroscience and quantification of human dreaming. Mark Blagrove, a visiting psychology professor from Swansea University, said dreams occur during the rapid eye movement, or […]

UCLA researchers find multiple antibiotics together have greater effect on bacteria

UCLA researchers found combining antibiotics may help combat dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In a study published last month, researchers found that combinations of three, four and five antibiotics were effective in stopping the growth of E. coli bacteria. This finding challenges a commonly-held belief in the medical community that using more than two antibiotics can be […]

Campus Queries: Do rising carbon dioxide levels in the ocean benefit any organisms?

Campus Queries is a series in which Daily Bruin readers and staff present science-related questions for UCLA professors and experts to answer. Q. Are there any species benefiting from rising carbon dioxide levels in the ocean? A. Researchers say yes: A coastal species of single-celled plankton, known as coccolithophores, is doing fine even as carbon […]

Student-developed tool brings 3D molecular models to smartphone screen

Chemistry students can now visualize 3D chemical structures by scanning a QR code with their smartphones. A team of undergraduate students developed an online tool, QR Chem, which provides QR codes that provide a link to a 3D image of a molecule. The codes can then be used in lecture slides or printed in homework […]

Atomic City: Student researchers, natives weigh consequences of growing up in Los Alamos

As a child growing up in New Mexico, Dakota Klasky did not think she could be anything other than a scientist. Klasky, a third-year mathematics and economics student, moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico when she was 8 years old with her mother and father, who are both physicists in the Los Alamos National Laboratory.