Media Coverage
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This App Set Out to Fight Pesticides. After VCs Stepped In, Now It Helps Sell Them
Silicon Valley–style venture capital places enormous emphasis on scale and a startup’s ability to grow rapidly, says Madeleine Fairbairn, a sociologist at UC Santa Cruz, who studies agriculture and food systems. “Everybody’s used to this claim that we have a growing population, and they’re going to starve if we don’t feed them,” she says. For…
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As scientists plot to bring back the dodo, Helen Pilcher asks whether we should—and what would happen if we did
In 2022, geneticist Beth Shapiro from the UC Santa Cruz, who is a scientific advisor to Colossal Biosciences, decoded the dodo’s genome. Scientists at Colossal are now determining the sequences which they will edit into cells collected from the dodo’s closest living relative, the Nicobar pigeon. Then, just as for the passenger pigeon, the edited…
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A deadly fungus that has killed millions of bats may have arrived in Southern California
“Those early kind of signals can be helpful for understanding the progression of the fungus, of where it’s getting to,” said Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International and an adjunct professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz.
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Weddell seals have a surprising survival strategy
“Weddell seals live in one of the most hostile environments on the planet and need to keep their internal clock running during periods when the sun never sets or when the sun never rises,” noted Daniel Costa, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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How to use AI to help plan your vote
University of California, Santa Cruz Associate Professor of History Benjamin Breen was featured in a Washington Post story about using AI chatbot technology to help voters research long and complex ballots.
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MAGA is tripping: Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign has cemented the right’s romance with psychedelics.
University of California, Santa Cruz Associate Professor of History Benjamin Breen, author of Tripping On Utopia: Margaret Mead, The Cold Ward, and The Troubled Birth Of Pscyhedelic Science, was featured in an Atlantic Monthly feature story about the American hard right's recent embrace of psychedelics.
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Monsters under the microscope
Professors Michael Chemers and Renée Fox are featured in an article about the Center for Monster Studies, an interdisciplinary space where scholars from across the academic spectrum can come together to explore the role of monsters in culture, literature, politics, and even science and technology. The GoodTimes also featured the center.
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Military sonar does a lot more damage to dolphins than previously disclosed
Scientists from UC Santa Cruz and their collaborators have achieved something monumental — they’ve managed to directly measure the behavioral responses of these dolphins and unraveled some surprising findings. Also covered by Study Finds, Interesting Engineering, and others.
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Our Changing World: Lead bullets – a health risk to humans and kea
Myra Finkelstein is an adjunct professor in the microbiology and environmental toxicology department at the University of California Santa Cruz and a world-leading researcher in the detection and impacts of lead on human and animal health. Myra's pioneering work with California condor has shown that the ingestion of lead from lead-based ammunition is preventing the…
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Gaming’s Uneven Progress Toward Diverse Female Figures
Soraya Murray, a professor of Film and Digital Media here at UC Santa Cruz, was interviewed about female representation in video games. Women are often overtly sexualized in video games, and there have been calls for more diversity in the gaming industry.

