Lorena Anderson

Link Between Dementia and Air Pollution Drives Research Collaboration

April 17, 2025

Students Zeyi Moo, back left, and Yaying Wang, right, work with Professor Xuan Zhang, center, on her Alzheimer's-related research. Photo courtesy of Kate Marsh.

California’s Central Valley, famous for producing much of the food Americans eat, is also infamous for its inferior air quality and its high rates of poverty, housing insecurity and at-risk workers. Increasing epidemiological evidence has shown a correlation between long-term exposure to...

One of the 2020 Black Lives Matter marches.

Group Conflict Inspires People to Feel Morally Elevated — for Their Side — Study Shows

You know that warm, uplifting feeling you get when you see someone going out of their way to help other people? You might get goosebumps or even a tear in your eye, and something inside you might...

Professor Rebecca Ryals and her students study soil organic amendments.

Ryals’ Teaching, Research and Service Earns Her Presidential Chair in Climate Change

Professor Rebecca Ryals has made campus history by being named UC Merced’s inaugural Presidential Chair in Climate Change. The appointment was recommended by her peers and Dean Betsy Dumont...

Professor Stephanie Woo, left, and graduate student Leesa Strasser are trying to unlock the mechanics of endodermal cells.

Award Supports Study of Fish Embryos to Understand Process that Affects Birth Defects

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has given Professor Stephanie Woo the CAREER award to help her delve into congenital birth defects by looking at the embryonic cells of zebrafish. Woo is...

Professor Findlater and graduate student Aneelman Brar.

Findlater First at UC Merced to Join DOE-funded Energy Frontier Research Center

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas that is contributing to irreversible climate change. Scientists know how to capture CO2, and they know how to transform it into useful molecules and materials...

UC Awards $16.4 Million in Grants to Address Climate, Energy and Health

For the first time, UC Merced faculty members from each of the campus’s three schools have been chosen as principal investigators on some of the 21 exciting new projects that are being funded...

UC Merced-led Research Predicts How Air Cleans Itself

Although climate change is still a very real challenge, the past decades of efforts to reduce the effects of human activities on the atmosphere have been potent enough to have thrown off the models...

Researchers Look at Tree Reproduction and Effects of Climate Change Across North America

Life and Environmental Sciences Professor Emily Moran and collaborators at several other universities are set to conduct a continental-scale analysis of climate change effects on tree reproduction...

Professor Jeanette Cobian-Iñiguez, front, and her students study heat transfer in fire in her lab.

Experts Recommend a New, More Innovative Approach to Wildfire Research

Fire scientists typically respond to agency opportunities and conduct research in response to past wildfires. But it is time they take more proactive, integrative, predictive approaches toward...

A recent demonstration of how biochar is created

Research Reveals an Easy Way Dairy Farmers Can Dramatically Reduce their Climate Impact

Adding even a small amount of biochar — a charcoal-like material produced by burning organic matter — to a dairy’s manure-composting process reduces methane emissions by 84%, a...