Mind & Body

June 24, 2026

UC Merced researchers extract sewage samples from university system
Key points: Researchers successfully tested a technique that uses human sewage to measure the use of nicotine products such as cigarettes and vaping pens in a selected community. The project, led by scientists at UC Merced, can strengthen public health efforts by supplementing...
If you’ve ever wondered why people stand where they do on the political spectrum, science might have at least part of the answer: People can be biologically predisposed to certain feelings...
Jazz musicians riffing with each other, humans talking to each other and pods of killer whales all have interactive conversations that are remarkably similar to each other, new research reveals....
Five students gathered around a table in front of a large glass building. The two students in the foreground are facing each other, with one holding an iPad and the other interacting with the iPad's screen.
UC Merced recently launched a new standalone Ph.D. program in Public Health, further establishing the university’s commitment to educating the next generation of scholars who are addressing the...
The monks take tea with Professor Noelle and continue discussing concepts in neuroscience.
Two UC Merced cognitive scientists spent part of their summer in India this year, teaching neuroscience to a group of exiled Tibetan Buddhist monks. Professors Ramesh Balasubramaniam and David...
Nearly 70 percent of Americans use some form of social media, according to a Pew Research Center survey. There is little doubt it affects our daily lives — but how? UC Merced Ph.D....
Patricia LiWang was at an impasse. It was 2011 and the UC Merced professor’s research group had figured out how to make some of the most potent HIV inhibitors even more powerful. LiWang was thrilled...
UC Merced’s branch of the Blum Center for Developing Economies rebooted this spring with a faculty-led effort to spend two years working on becoming the hub for all food-security-related research and...
Right now, while you are reading these typewritten words, your hand muscles are moving imperceptibly, but measurably. These movements would be even greater if the words were handwritten. That’s...
In finding a way to see assemblies of the proteins that direct cyanobacterial circadian rhythms, or biological clocks, UC Merced biochemistry Professor Andy LiWang and his colleagues have done what...

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