Egghead Content

Egghead Weekend Basket for April 24

Andy Fell — April 24, 2026 - 12:22pm

This week's round up of research ranges from plant clones to wildfires with a detour into helping families in poverty. Also, geese.

Propagating plants without mutations

A cool thing about plants is that you can generally grown an entire new copy of a plant from any small piece of it. People have been doing this for centuries by growing plants from cuttings.

Not All Clones Are Created Equal

Andy Fell — April 24, 2026 - 11:12am

Plant scientists use clones for their research, but they’re different from the kind people grow from cuttings. Scientists grow these clones in Petri dishes by the thousands, along with a potential headache: The resulting little plants can carry loads of mutations that must be culled out for research to continue.

Egghead Weekend Basket for April 17

Andy Fell — April 17, 2026 - 2:56pm

It's the 112th UC Davis Picnic Day tomorrow (April 18) and whether your tastes run to cockroach races or fashion, there's something for every taste on campus. A rundown from Dateline and highlights of arts activities here.

And in research news from the past couple of weeks:

Discovery of Addison's Disease Gene in Dogs Could Help Humans, Too

Andy Fell — April 14, 2026 - 3:45pm

Among dog breeds, Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers (tollers) have an unusually high rate of Addison's disease, a condition in which the adrenal glands do not produce enough hormones, notably cortisol and aldosterone. In humans, Addison's disease is thought to occur when the body's immune system attacks the adrenal glands, making it a type of autoimmune disease.

Good News for Pasta Lovers: Durum Wheat Resistant to Deadly Stripe Rust Developed

Andy Fell — April 13, 2026 - 4:10pm

On a sunny day in early April, young wheat plants stood waist-high in test fields near the UC Davis campus, their heads full of still-green grain. A walk along some furrows left pants and boots covered with a fine, orange dust. These plants were bred to fight a stubborn pathogen that threatens the world’s wheat: stripe rust.

New Visual Analysis Tool Calms the Climate Data Storm

Andy Fell — April 10, 2026 - 11:28am

Climate models generate billions of data points, but traditional analysis methods can't keep up. UC Davis Ph.D. student Yuya Kawakami developed ClimateSOM, an interactive visualization tool that helps scientists explore thousands of climate futures and uncover patterns that current methods can miss.

Shields Up! Cosmic Rays a Challenge for Deep Space Travel

Andy Fell — April 09, 2026 - 10:38am

One of the big challenges with traveling to the Moon and beyond is protecting both human bodies and the electronics that support them in space against the onslaught of radiation from the sun and the rest of the universe.

Egghead Weekend Basket for April 3

Andy Fell — April 03, 2026 - 2:50pm

Back from Spring Break, here's a roundup of UC Davis research news from the past week.

No, They Don’t Eat Mosquitoes

Andy Fell — March 30, 2026 - 3:38pm

Some folks call them "Mosquito Hawks" or "Daddy Long Legs" or "Skeeter Eaters." But they're not hawks, they're not arachnids, and they don't eat mosquitoes. They are crane flies, members of the family Tipulidae of the order Diptera (flies).

With the temperatures rising, crane flies are everywhere right now, looking for mates. They are landing on your plants, bumping into walls and windows, and getting tangled (and eaten) in spider webs.

Where Do Sturgeon Go?

Andy Fell — March 24, 2026 - 10:56am

White sturgeon can grow to 12 feet long and live for a hundred years. Despite this, not a great deal is known about the lives of these ancient fish as they move between rivers, estuaries and the ocean. Recently, UC Davis researchers published a study of how white sturgeon move around the San Francisco Estuary and Sacramento river system as they grow and mature. The research shows how white sturgeon face environmental hazards, fishing and other threats over their lives.