Coronavirus: When Will We Know if California Is Flattening the Curve?
Flattening the curve on a graph of the number of COVID-19 cases over time is the goal of the extreme social distancing measures undertaken in California. (Siouxsie Wiles and Toby Morris) Experts are...
View ArticleThis Dangerous Mosquito Lays Her Armored Eggs – in Your House
Here’s something easy you can do to fight disease this spring. While the efforts to end COVID-19 have upended daily life, it may only take a few simple steps to stop the carriers of other dangerous...
View ArticleCalifornia Floater Mussels Take Fish for an Epic Joyride
Ecologist Jonathan Young steered his rowboat alongside a rectangular container that was floating between two bright orange buoys. He reached under a plastic mesh covering and pulled out a large black...
View ArticleCheat the Coronavirus This Weekend: Bay Area City Nature Challenge a Great...
Even though we still have to follow public health guidelines and practice social distancing, there are still ways to celebrate nature from your home or close to it. The City Nature Challenge 2020 will...
View ArticleHow the Coronavirus Attacks Your Lungs
COVID-19 resources for Deep Look Fans The coronavirus has had an enormous impact on our lives: how we work, communicate and congregate. At this point, we’re familiar with how to protect ourselves from...
View ArticleSharpshooter Insects’ Sexy Vibrations Spell Trouble in the Vineyard
Entomologist Rodrigo Krugner has spent days on end listening to insects’ intimate conversations. This esoteric and painstaking bit of spy work is for a good cause: protecting your glass of California...
View ArticleGlasswing Butterflies Want To Make Something Perfectly Clear
Bay Area biologists are studying a beautiful and exotic butterfly with the hope that their findings may one day improve technologies from eyeglasses to solar panels. Named for their transparent wings,...
View ArticleThese Sneaky Ensatina Salamanders Are Heading For a Family Split
Graduate student Regina Spranger walked just off the path on the UC Santa Cruz campus and flipped a log over to reveal a reddish-brown salamander. She picked up the squirmy amphibian, about as long as...
View ArticleInside SF’s New Biosafety Lab, Where Scientists Wrangle Live Coronavirus
There’s so much scientists still don’t know about the novel coronavirus: basic stuff, like how exactly it invades a host’s healthy cells, the molecular interactions that enable it to spread through the...
View ArticleCape Sundews Trap Bugs In A Sticky Situation
If you have houseplants, most of the time there’s not a lot of visible activity. They just quietly add some outdoor beauty to your indoor surroundings. A trapped insect is slowly digested by a Cape...
View ArticleWhat Actually Makes Water Roll Off a Duck’s Back?
Video by Josh Cassidy Article by Annie Roth Summer is a great time to be a bird watcher in California. Ducks, geese, and many other species of aquatic birds come to California to breed, build nests and...
View ArticleScientists Look to Convalescent Plasma, Antibody Cloning as Possible COVID Cures
Since early in the pandemic, scientists have said antibodies that the immune system makes to fight the coronavirus could be crucial in finding a cure for COVID-19. UCSF expects results from a...
View ArticleIs a Spider’s Web a Part of Its Mind?
Next time you see a big spider sitting in the middle of its web, before you scream, run away or squash it, maybe pause and consider for a moment all of the wondrous things it can do with that...
View ArticleRaising Peregrine Falcon Chicks is a Real Cliff-hanger
Grinnell, a male peregrine falcon, looked up from his nest and started screaming. It was late March and he was taking a turn warming the four eggs he and his partner, Annie, were caring for in their...
View ArticleProposition 14: With Just Handful of Cures, California Stem Cell Agency’s...
A Yes vote authorizes the state to sell $5.5 billion in general obligation bonds primarily for stem cell research and the development of new medical treatments in California. A No vote would mean the...
View ArticleStarfish Gallop With Hundreds of Tubular Feet
On an extended research visit to a friend’s lab in Tokyo, marine biologists Amy Johnson and Olaf Ellers witnessed something they’d never seen before. The starfish in Tatsuo Motokawa’s lab weren’t...
View ArticleSea Slugs Scrub Seagrass by the Seashore
“They’re so majestic,” ecologist Brent Hughes says as he looks out across Elkhorn Slough, a large winding estuary off the Monterey Bay coastline. He’s not talking about whales or pelicans. He’s...
View ArticleHere’s How That Annoying Fly Dodges Your Swatter
If an outdoors, socially-distanced gathering is part of your Thanksgiving plans, beware of uninvited guests. I don’t mean friendly neighbors who might invite themselves to a piece of pie. A blowfly...
View ArticleThese Silk-Swinging Caterpillars Will Ruin Your Picnic
California oak moth caterpillars eat all the leaves on an oak, leaving a brown skeleton. Then they rappel down on a strand of silk, twirling and swinging. If you were enjoying the shade, good luck...
View ArticleThese Mites Rain Down To Save Your Strawberries
Two tiny mites duke it out on strawberry plants throughout California. One is a spider mite that sucks the juices out of the delicious crop and destroys it. The other, persimilis, is a crafty predator...
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