The New World screwworm lays its eggs in open wounds and burrows into skin. While human infections are rare, the insect poses an existential threat to cattle farming and dairy production. And it is now in Texas.
For generations, scientists believed a queen honeybee was made almost entirely by diet: feed an ordinary larva enough royal jelly and a ruler emerges. But new research suggests queens are created through a more elaborate process.
Scientists have identified the two biggest reasons that once-pristine rivers across the Arctic are growing cloudy with toxic orange iron particles that smother insects and suffocate fish.
Though a major fire killed a million Joshua trees in the Mojave desert, researchers found that fungi and bacteria underneath the scorched earth were totally unaffected.
In northern Argentina, one bird courts romance by snapping its wrists together, producing a sound scientists have puzzled over for decades. Now, researchers have captured the behavior in detail, revealing how scissor-tailed nightjars create one of the most curious sounds in the avian world.
For the first time, scientists have directly measured how smoking changes the mechanical behavior of human lung tissue.
New UCR research shows that the search for life beyond Earth could benefit from a statistical approach that prioritizes patterns rather than searching for individual chemical or molecular traces.
Amidst the many attention-grabbing headlines of 2026, there is a recent one that may have flown under the radar but shouldn’t have. On April 24, the White House dismissed the entire 22-person board that oversees the National Science Foundation. The NSF is an independent federal agency that supports science and...
Experiments shed new light on the ways gravity influences biology.
High in the forests of Hawai‘i, songbirds are stealing twigs and moss from one another’s nests. Researchers find this quiet canopy crime is surprisingly common and could threaten species already struggling to survive.
A unique hybrid honeybee found only in Southern California has demonstrated the ability to survive attacks from deadly mites.
Better farming through technology: A new UC Riverside system can map soil moisture tree by tree, so growers water only where and when it’s needed.
UC Riverside study of nearly 100 dairy farms shows systems designed to capture methane from manure are highly effective, unless they leak.
A UCR researcher worked years into retirement to uncover the biology behind plants' response to environmental stress. Her dedication could help us all.
Fake news can be tricky to spot, but spotting fake drugs just got a little easier. UC Riverside researchers have devised a low-cost way to help distinguish legitimate medications from counterfeit ones.
New UC Riverside-led research suggests Alzheimer’s arises not simply from plaques forming in the brain, as is widely believed, but from one protein interfering with the normal job of another For decades, much Alzheimer’s research has focused on the idea that clumps of amyloid beta or a-beta proteins cause the...
Researchers have identified a network of connections between the brainstem and spinal cord that enables people to grasp, hold, and manipulate objects. The discovery could guide new stroke therapies.
New research has, for the first time, identified one thing that bed bugs seem to fear -- water and wet surfaces.
UC Riverside researchers have developed an oxygen-delivering gel capable of healing injuries that might otherwise progress to limb loss.
UC Riverside plant ecologist Loralee Larios weighs in on the outlook for a wildflower superbloom show this year, where one might see it, and how flower lovers can protect the blooms for years to come.
